As promised on this page last week, an update on Brent Scowcroft's invitation to 28 worthies to join him, Presidents Bush, Carter, and Ford, Henry Kissinger, and Lawrence Eagleburger in signing a treacly "Open Letter to the U.S. Congress" aimed at overawing congressional critics of President Clinton's Tiananmen Square summit. The letter appeared as a full-page ad, paid for by the "United States-China Education Foundation," in last Wednesday's New York Times and Washington Post.
Scowcroft batted an impressive .750, with 21 of the 28 former big shots signing on. Who resisted his entreaties? Henry Fowler, Melvin Laird, Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle, and Donald Rumsfeld. And also both of the men whose names were misspelled in Scowcroft's original invitation, Lloyd Bentsen and Caspar Weinberger. Coincidence? THE SCRAPBOOK tips its hat to the Magnificent Seven for their principles, but wonders whether Scowcroft might raise his batting average in the future by investing in a spell-checker.
Pixley, as Tucker Carlson reported in a WEEKLY STANDARD cover story in January, is a District of Columbia woman who smothered her infant daughter to death several years ago because the baby "wouldn't stop crying." At the time, Judge Mitchell sentenced Pixley to probation for the second-degree murder. "I tried to understand the drama that the -- your life had been very bad," the judge explained to Pixley after the sentencing. "You had gone through the kind of crisis that would cause a person to do things, and your mind gets warped, and you get depressed, you get down, you get oppressed and you do things."
Follow the reasoning? If so, you'll be able to make sense of Judge Mitchell's latest idea -- to send Pixley and her son to Hannah House, a supervised group home in Washington. It wasn't an original idea. A couple of years ago, Mitchell did the same thing, ordering Pixley to report to Hannah House. Only problem was, Pixley never showed up, and the judge was forced to send her back to jail. Sadly, one fears this won't be the last time Latrena Pixley's name makes the newspaper.