Tim is right to bring this up. It will have immense impact on the issues the cypherpunks care about. How can Clinton talk about policy proposals (crypto, Net-taxes, etc.) when his presidency is spiraling away? At the daily press briefing yesterday, McCurry tried to talk about some welfare plan or something. Whatever. Doesn't matter what it was; I don't remember -- point is you don't see it on the front page of newspapers today. Note the grand jury is set to meet next Tues, not coincidentally, the day of the SoUA. A week ago everyone was scrambling to find out what was going to be in it. Nobody cares anymore. I may sit in on it in the press gallery just to see the dynamic and hear the catcalls. Where I work, most of the folks are liberals. Before this week, they lent scant credence to Paula Jones etc. -- the previous Bimbo Eruptions. This time is different. This time there is serious talk of impeachment: what the legal standards are, what the Republicans are doing on the Hill, what this means for Gore. This time, it's for real. -Declan At 18:30 -0800 1/23/98, Tim May wrote:
At 8:35 AM -0800 1/23/98, Jonathan Wienke wrote:
Has anyone else heard a "giant sucking sound" from the vicinity of the White House lately?
If that was an intentional pun, a good one.
But I had been marveling at how the Clinton troubles were being ignored by the Cypherpunks...I figured we were all so jaded about government and the criminals who flourish in Washington that there was no point in commenting on this latest revelation of corruption. (The apparent perjury, suborning perjury, and witness-tampering, not the affair with Lewinsky, however tawdry it was.)
It would have been interesting to see the whole process leading up to Clinton's resignation (next week?) pass without any discussion by us.
(Actually, I threw in an aside yesterday about "President Gore," but no one picked up on it.)
Personally, I think having a crippled and ineffective President is better than having an activist bozo President Gore, so I'm kind of hoping this whole affairs takes several more months to unwind.
--Tim May
The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."