The insta-celebrity of last year's Senate impeachment trial, former White House deputy counsel Cheryl D. Mills, returned to public view May 4 -- for just long enough to prove that she knows only one trick.
In 1999, as THE SCRAPBOOK recalls, Mills made herself briefly famous by arguing, from the well of the Senate, on national television, that it was inappropriate to charge Bill Clinton with a civil rights violation in the Paula Jones case because he had a life-long record of support for federal civil rights enforcement. The national media swooned at this. Ooh! Aah! Such an impressive lady! Such intelligence! Such conviction!
Such scary nonsense, really -- the notion that a politician may never be accused of breaking a law he claims to endorse, merely because he claims to endorse it.
And now comes Mills with an important corollary to this "principle": Congress must never investigate possible illegality -- in the White House or, presumably, anywhere else -- unless the investigation promises to advance domestic policies of the sort Cheryl D. Mills endorses.
At last week's House Government Reform Committee hearing on the suppression of subpoenaed White House e-mails, Mills took the stand and immediately rebuked the committee's members, while current and former Clinton aides in attendance nodded their heads in vigorous assent. "Nothing you discover here today," the allegedly impressive lady intoned, "will feed one person, give shelter to someone who is homeless, educate one child, provide health care for one family, or offer justice to one African-American or Hispanic juvenile."
In other words: Favored Democratic social policies are the test of all government work. A man has committed murder. Should he be sent to prison? Will sending him to prison "feed one child?" The answer being no, the murderer must go free.
They don't actually believe this bilge over at the White House, THE SCRAPBOOK figures. They're just prepared to act as if they do -- if that's what it takes to spare the boss an embarrassment.
And with a compliant press corps bored by Clinton scandals and eager to "move on," they'll probably get away with it.