The Week.

At the rate he's going, President Clinton will have to get impeached to distract attention from his bombing.

Judge Susan Webber Wright held Clinton in civil contempt for his lies in the Paula Jones case, lies that she found "were designed to obstruct the judicial process." The ruling, made in response to a charge filed by the Landmark Legal Foundation, is incontestable on the merits. But this justice was too long delayed. Judge Wright, in attempting to stay out of the political process of impeachment, nonetheless affected it by depriving Congress of important information. Not that it would have changed the outcome. Too bad no one can (legally speaking) hold the Senate in contempt.

So if Clinton gets disbarred, does that mean he doesn't have the ethics to be a lawyer?

President Bush, in defense of his verbal ineptitude, used to say, "I don't articulate much, but . . ." Only he wouldn't say "I," of course; and he'd pronounce "articulate" as an adjective, not as a verb. But it was endearing, sort of. Enter George W. The other day, according to reports, he referred to the Kosovars as "Kosovoians" and to the forces opposing Slobodan Milosevic as "NATO and its allies and the United States." Every public figure, as every person, sometimes trips over his tongue and fumbles his ideas. But Republicans have run enough candidates who can't talk. Wouldn't be prudent to run another.

Elizabeth Dole declared that while she would like to ban abortion, a Human Life Amendment is not possible and the debate over it should thus be abandoned as "irrelevant and divisive." Because of the "inordinate focus on an amendment," she says, "urgent issues such as domestic violence, child care, sexual harassment, women's health, and the financial security of women are nearly ignored." The GOP platform should be changed to "add the fact that good and honorable people disagree on the subject of abortion" and that "we should agree to respectfully disagree." We should "stop partial-birth abortions, enact parental notification requirements," and promote adoption. Let the respectful disagreement begin. First, disagreement among good and honorable people is hardly so unusual as to require a declaration specifically on abortion. Second, NOW and the like have already made sure that women's health, etc., get plenty of (often misleading) attention, while the unborn are still waiting for their Violence Against Women Act. Third, it is temporizing of the sort Mrs. Dole is engaged in that invites further scrutiny from the press: Would a President Dole work to overturn Roe v. Wade, for example? Finally, Mrs. Dole's minimalist agenda abandons legal protection for all members of the human race as a working goal rather than an airy wish. In her, the GOP now has its first objectively pro-choice candidate.

Jesse Jackson declared at a rally that the Diallo shooting in New York demonstrates it is "open season on blacks." Which is exactly the phrase he used two decades ago, attributing the Atlanta serial killings of black children to the early Reagan administration's skepticism about affirmative action. Al Sharpton, for his part, is "advising" the grieving parents of Diallo, which in this case means parading them around on a 16-city tour. Neither Jackson nor Sharpton is quite able to conceal his joy at the Diallo killing and the political opportunities it affords. When it comes to preying on racially charged tragedies, it's always open season.

The Defense Department has announced that it will be sending Certificates of Recognition to all veterans and selected civilians-in foreign service, DoD, intelligence-who served in the Cold War. Unlike the First or the Second, the Cold War ended without a Verdun, a D-Day, or a Stalingrad. But many Americans labored for victory, and many of them died. In light of this sacrifice, the certificate is a flimsy token: not even a medal, one step up from a parking-lot sticker. More appropriate would be a monument-perhaps in Fulton, Missouri, where Winston Churchill (with Harry Truman listening) delivered his Iron Curtain speech; perhaps in a permanently Americanized sliver of Berlin, where John F. Kennedy said, "Ich bin ein Berliner," and Ronald Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" As this evil century ends, our victory in its last great conflict deserves commemoration, and its heroes should be recognized before what Lincoln called "the silent artillery of time" begins to sweep them away.

In a familiar rite of spring, leftists brought protesters from points north to throw garbage in the yard of a Washington politician who threatens their cash cow-the Community Reinvestment Act. This year the home of Phil Gramm, the new chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, was targeted by 13 busloads of revelers. Under the act, liberal community groups can exercise an effective veto over many bank mergers or expansions by complaining about allegedly "racist and classist" lending practices. Banks can get off the hook by making huge payoffs to local nonprofits, adopting race quotas on hiring, and establishing set- asides for minority businesses. According to the Wall Street Journal, the merger of NationsBank and BankAmerica included payoffs worth $350 billion over ten years. Sen. Gramm, for his part, wants to put a stop to this type of thing. And he is not so easily intimidated. After all, his favorite local community group defended the Alamo.

Libya has handed over the two alleged perpetrators of the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103. They will stand trial in Holland by Scottish judges under Scottish law. (Hey, isn't that what Arlen Specter specializes in?) It's a bad deal. Qaddafi will gain an early lifting of international economic sanctions no matter what the verdict. The U.S. and U.K. have dropped their demands that the Libyan government accept responsibility for the actions of the two and turn over all relevant documents. In other words, the link between the two underlings and the Libyan authorities who ordered the attack-most likely Qaddafi himself- is severed. Qaddafi literally gets away with murder.

Well, that's just perfect: Maureen Dowd has won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, her reward for a year of New York Times columns that were the consummate expression of establishment opinion concerning impeachment. Thus has journalism's synod blessed orthodoxy. Every day during 1998, Dowd could be counted on to reflect the safe view of the moment. When it was time to criticize President Clinton for his immaturity and recklessness, she did so. When it was time to turn on Ken Starr and the Republicans, as the far greater threat to the Constitution, she did that. She charged, typically, that Starr was "pressing the ominous Orwellian concept of sex crimes against the government." And on September 23, she published the most despicable political-opinion column in memory. Starr, she asserted, was "the helpless victim of his cravings for ecstasy," a man who "couldn't stop thinking about [Monica Lewinsky's] thong underwear," which "inflamed his imagination," "quickened his pulse," and "made him catch his breath." He kept seeing Lewinsky in "that blue Gap dress": It was "too tight, and he was glad." As John O'Sullivan recently pointed out in our pages, Dowd's "specialty is putting the generally approved view with extra zing and added paradox." The extra zing and paradox are indeed there; but so-always-is the approved view, now more approved than ever.

"Dr." Jack Kevorkian, with his profound taste for the macabre, may now have an opportunity to sample prison life. He has been given a sentence of 10 to 25 years for the second-degree murder of Thomas Youk, famously broadcast on 60 Minutes. Said Judge Jessica Cooper of Oakland County, Michigan, to Kevorkian: "You had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did, and dare the legal system to stop you. Well, sir, consider yourself stopped." Barring a successful appeal, Kevorkian will be killing only time. Still at large, though, will be a culture that has yet to come to grips with an inhumanity that travels under the name of mercy.

Feminist author Susan Faludi is back in the news. Her targets now are women and girls. They are forming clubs, it seems-book clubs and makeup clubs, where they exchange tips on love, cosmetics, literature, and work. Seems pretty harmless. It's not, says Faludi, who angrily calls this shift "a retreat into girl life." Because they are giving one another advice instead of rallying for political change, this trend "doesn't lead to anything of particular significance. In its origin, feminism had nothing to do with lipstick." Or the lives of everyday women. The feminist legacy continues.

Lately he's omnipresent on TV interview shows, plugging his book Kosher Sex, a compendium of Borscht Belt humor and traditional Jewish teachings on marital relations. He poses for Newsweek, lying in bed in a suit and tie, a giant cigar in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other. He notes on CBS that his surname is often mispronounced "Buttock." He is Shmuley Boteach, an Orthodox rabbi for whom "kosher sex" is where "you remember each other's name the next morning," in contrast with "great sex," which is where you "scream the name of the deity." He advocates sexual restraint and modesty as a formula for excitement in marital relations. One might think that modesty would also entail some dignity and humility, quite independent of sex. But in an undignified age, traditionalism must take what spokesmen it can get.

In February, at a dinner for family-planning advocates, media mogul and Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner made disparaging remarks about the Pope, Poles, and Christianity. Turner apologized shortly thereafter. The Catholic League, however, points out that Reds owner Marge Schott was suspended from the game for eight months in 1993 for positive remarks about Hitler. When she offended again in 1996, an apology did not spare her from a two-and-a-half-year suspension. Does Major League Baseball have more lenient standards for owners with more fashionable prejudices?

Iranian president Seyed Mohammed Khatami has canceled an April visit to Paris because of a protocol dispute. The Iranians insisted that "Islamic rules" be observed; the French made every effort to accommodate them-except on the demand that no bottles of wine even be present at the state dinner. "Unacceptable," huffed the head of the French Parliament's France-Iran Friendship Committee. So the French have principles after all.

But hang on: After NR published its April 5 issue, whose cover package was devoted to "The Ugly European," a man identifying himself as an official of the French embassy called. "This is exactly what the SS did to the Jews fifty years ago," he said. Come again? "You are morally equivalent to the SS. This sort of racial stereotyping is completely inappropriate. Do you want to exterminate the French?" He also complained that NR has "a very simplistic understanding of Europe," which, "of course, is not surprising coming from Americans: After all, you have a mere 200 years of culture behind you." We invited him to write a letter to the editor, whereupon he sniffed, "I will compose my letter in French." It has yet to arrive.