Friday, January 19, 2001 12:50 P.M. EST

Clinton Makes a Deal
With less than 24 hours to go in his term, President Clinton has reportedly struck a deal with Independent Counsel Robert Ray to avoid indictment. The Washington Post reports that as part of the agreement, Clinton will release a "statement of regret" later this afternoon and "also will agree to a lengthy suspension of his license to practice law."

"It could not be learned this morning whether Clinton would reverse his stand and admit to a lie, but his statement will apparently acknowledge the the problems his misleading statements caused," the Post adds.

Chao and Huang
Two columnists raise questions about Labor Secretary-designate Elaine Chao's ties to Clinton fund-raiser John Huang, who pleaded guilty in 1999 to felony campaign-finance violations. Michelle Malkin reports:

Chao, a rising GOP star, had contact with Huang in both political and professional contexts. In sworn testimony before Congress, Huang noted that he had received a call from Chao in the early 1990s asking him to support former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY), who then headed the Senate Banking Committee. Huang shelled out a donation. In 1993, Huang organized a coalition of Chinese banks and individuals to sponsor a visit by Chao to Los Angeles, where she was honored by ethnic business and community leaders for her leadership at the United Way.

And Robert Novak adds:

On the day before the 2000 election, convicted Clinton-Gore fund-raiser John Huang revealed under oath that he was illegally reimbursed by the Lippo Group of Indonesia for $2,000 that he and his wife gave Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for his 1990 campaign. Huang testified that he contributed at a money-raising event where he met McConnell's future wife, Secretary of Labor-designate Elaine Chao.

According to Malkin, Chao told the Dallas Morning News that in reporting the scandal, "media selectively targeted Asian-Americans in their zeal to cover the story. That's a disgrace to our free society." Novak writes that "Chao's association with the star money launderer of the '90s will not threaten her confirmation. But her hearing gives senators of both parties a chance to look into Washington's bipartisan money game--if they want to. Almost surely, they won't."

On her Web site, MichelleMalkin.com, Malkin has posted links to an array of other anti-Chao material, including an article from WorldNetDaily about a purported "pro-China coup" at the Heritage Foundation, where Chao is a distinguished fellow. Heritage's Web site, Townhall.com, usually carries Malkin's and Novak's columns, but the ones criticizing Chao do not appear on the site.

My Boss the Fanatic
An Orthodox Jew who worked for John Ashcroft in the Senate reports that Ashcroft is "more than tolerant, he's downright philo-Semitic." Writing in The New Republic, Tevi Troy reflects on the nature of religious tolerance and the kinship between people of all faiths who take their religion seriously:

What most liberals and most Jews don't understand about people like Ashcroft is that their deep respect for religious faith genuinely transcends sectarian divides. And that often makes it easier for me, as a religious Jew, to work for them than for Jews or Christians who don't take any religion seriously as a force in people's lives. In my experience, when you tell a nonobservant Jewish boss you need time off for Shavuot, there is often a moment of discomfort, as if he thinks you are acting superior for taking off what many Jews see as a minor holiday. When you tell an observant gentile, he may ask you what the holiday is and then say he is happy that you are observing Pentecost.

Liberal Jewish groups like the National Council of Jewish Women have joined the anti-Ashcroft crusade. So, for that matter, has The New Republic, which declares in an editorial: "We would love to see the Senate reject Ashcroft's nomination to be attorney general." That's increasingly unlikely, however; the Associated Press reports Ashcroft now has the support of two Democratic senators, Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Zell Miller of Georgia.

What Will You Miss About Clinton?
National Review Online poses the question to an array of pundits on the topic and gets some amusing answers:

• Anita Blair and Doug Welty: "The warm crackle of billing records aglow in the fireplace."

• Charles Paul Freund: "The daily matinee of empathy, the long-running performance of contrition, the well-timed teardrop, the carefully rehearsed podium pounding, the whole record-breaking enactment of sincerity."

• Tim Graham: "The White House spin machine's lines [that] were just so preposterous they just made you laugh."

• Lucianne Goldberg: "I'll miss checking his mottled skin for small wounds of confrontation."

• Charles Murray: "Not one goddam thing."

I Can't Drive 55. I'm Mentally Ill.
Some traffic offenders in Arlington, Va., will soon be sent to "anger management" clinics rather than traffic school. A Washington Times editorial warns: "Instead of simply fining you and assessing points, a judge may send you to the shrink to deal with your 'anger.' People who run afoul of the safety lobby's edicts are not merely scofflaws--they are considered in need of 'treatment.' "

A Warning on the Mideast
Writing in The American Spectator Online, Frank Gaffney Jr. reports on talk that Edward Djerejian, a protégé of James Baker and former ambassador to Syria, could land a top State Department job, as could former Bush National Security Council Mideast staffer Richard Haass and Clinton Mideast aide Aaron Miller. Gaffney is critical:

Should these and similar appointments occur, there is very little likelihood that the new administration will do what is so urgently needed: Take stock and drop the illusions about Arafat (and, for that matter, most other Arab authoritarian interlocutors); make appropriate adjustments in our negotiating goals and practices; and, above all else, stop pressing forward along a path that is clearly exposing Israel to mortal peril as her enemies prepare for the first regional war since 1973.

The Rumsfeld Effect
"Bush's pick for secretary of defense--described in European headlines as a 'hawkish missile advocate'--has gone a long way toward convincing the Europeans that Bush, unlike Clinton, is serious about going forward with an ambitious missile shield," Robert Kagan writes in the Washington Post.