Well now - it's really too bad that Clinton can't govern anymore. . .

With the budget victory, with the pasting the Reps got at the polls, with Newtsie forced to resign, with Iraq backing down ... makes one wonder at the brilliant punditry of the Republican think tanks devotees who pass themselves off as "independent" news pundits.

On Sunday, the once highly regarded news programs have become parades of ultra-right-Republican-reactionary- religious-repugnants. The news people were George "Nixon speechmaker" Will, Sam "employee of Scaife" Donaldson, and Cokie "I'm a Roman Catholic who obeys my Pope in every regard" Roberts - and on another show Bob "Ghengis Khan" Schieffer. The guests? Asa "Mr. Religious right Republican of Arkansas" Hutchinson who is rumored to have his own sex problem and Sen. McCann, a Republican presidential hopeful. Not a democrat or a liberal in sight. Or a real woman.

Is it any wonder people are turning off news shows?

And the latest polls show that people are developing a greater dislike and contempt for news people than they have for Ken Starr and Newt Gingrich.

Thank GAWD for Internet. Is it so hard to see why it is so very necessary for them to control and degrade Internet?

Ever see any news shows about the wonderful availability of so much information?

Nooooooo. Only the porno -

The reason is obvious.

The RRRRr MUST control Internet to control the American people.

Oh yeah, they all have web sites that pour out the same kind of propaganda that you see on TV

It's taken this long for my hands to heal from putting DENTS into the top of my kitchen table election night.

Applauding and screaming in elation when the nasty trio of women haters D'amato, Faircloth, and Fong went down to defeat wasn't enough as I slapped that table silly.

And to those democrats who refused to invite Clinton to their campaigns, I have one word ... na-nana-nana, idiots. You lost, didn't you? Schummer said, "please come" ... and guessie who won!

When are you so-called political experts going to learn about the political wisdom of Bill Clinton.

He is, by far, the finest politican mind of this century.

And dammit, he's been a great president!

We're a nation of news media idiots.

Millions of dollars spent in the great cottage industry to make sure the prediction "Clinton will be gone by the end of the week" comes true some year . . . .

Well, Sam Donaldson, you can now claim full membership with the psychics who do the predictions for the National Enquirer and the Starr, etc.

100% WRONG.

You silly bastard.

New Mexico officials are playing footsie with the 29- year-old man who pushed Faye Smith, 39, from his truck and dragged her nine miles after she "became entangled in the seat belt." Haven't we heard this story before? Wasn't there a similar case in New England a couple of years ago?

The man is claiming he didn't know she was caught and was being dragged ... he was a little drunky?

When is that an excuse?

Drink and drive and kill someone. Try it and you will be looking at the inside of a prison.

This case in Las Cruces, N.M. stinks.

When he got home he found the woman still attached to his truck. He then loaded her body into his cab, took it to a deserted spot and dumped it.

What an awful excuse for a human being.

But the woman is described as a drunk who did things for money so what rights did she have? Not even the right to justic, I guess.

The U.S. Justice Department is authorizing an investigation of Ken Starr's interrogation of Monica Lewinsky. What Starr's office did - with Starr's knowledge and approval - has freed many a brutal murderer in this country.

Monica asked for her attorney. Starr's people refused.

Monica asked for her mother. Starr's people ridiculed her.

They held her without giving her a chance to use the toilet.

I believe the term is something like "tainted" evidence.

If this whole mess were a criminal case, everything Monica said subsequently to the grand jury would be thrown out ... no case.

Ain't it wonderful to be President of the United States and find yourself without the basic civil rights afforded the meanest criminal in the world?

Put this on a shelf for 2001 - a famous Washington resident will return to her HOMESTATE and run for political office as a single woman. Why do you think Starr is trying so hard to defame her? She's popular and powerful - and has a future.

Can you believe the silly RRRRr's who are trying to woo women to their party by putting up their idea of poster girls.

Jennifer Dunn as majority whip in the house? Please bring back Dick Armey. He's a flaming liberal next to JD who will sell out any woman for a smile from any guy. And has been dealing with a money launderer for campaign cash.

And Christine Whitman who may be pro-choice in her statements but never walks that walk as a government official. She got lots of press recently in a fake hype about getting an award from the women of a catholic school. Seems like the award ceremony had to be moved to an outside location because she was - horrors - prochoice.

Only one difficulty - every one of the women who got the award in the past years was PROCHOICE - every one!

And they got their awards at Seton Hall at the school. . .

But it got coverage in every major newspaper in the country.

NOW of New Jersey did NOT support her for reelection. She only got NOW's support in her first election because the prexy was an undercover Republican who loved the idea that she could phone the governor ...

The Suffolk County (Boston) district attorney in commenting on a recent case of a 9-year-old boy raping a 9- year-old girl said it's "hard to fathom how someone that age could get it in his mind to perform an act like this.''

First of all, a 9-year-old isn't that young except in the minds of stupid adults who aren't around children. Kids as young as three play doctor ...

Secondly, ask the male role models of the boy - such as father, brother, grandfather, etc. - about what they do on Saturday night for kicks.

Hard to fathom?

Not hardly.

Look around at the families of his peers . . . .

Look at TV, movies - and our daily newspapers.

This fantasy that children are inherently good in spite of their surroundings is really ridiculous.

Children learn to walk, to talk, to eat, etc., from observing their parents. Examine how a person acts during a sex act and you can tell exactly what his parents are like.

The Baptist minister who is governor of Arkansas has a 17-year-old son who AS A BOY SCOUT tortured and killed a dog at scout camp with another boy.

Rev. Huckabee defended the boy and insisted that he get his Eagle Scout rating.

Rev. Huckabee was supported by the religious right and reelected.

Who said, "many are the sins that shall be committed in my name."

Pro-life huh?

An Egyptian man refused to work or help his wife run her sandwich business that she conducted from a pushcart. He forced her to sleep on a straw mat rather than the bed.

Nothing peculiar in this story because it's all within the rule of men as supreme gods over women in that nation's religion/government.

But then she did the unpardonable. She crawled into bed to sleep comfortably while he was out carousing on her money.

How DARE she!

He doused her with gasoline and set her afire. She died a day later.

He is awaiting trial. His penalty is not expected to be severe.

Think the ways of third world countries are different?

Think again.

Scott Anderson, 33, a Los Angeles POLICEMAN pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and received a NINE MONTH SENTENCE for killing his wife two years ago.

The following is the AP news report:

"She, too, was a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy. Anderson said the couple were role-playing when he donned a ski mask, handcuffed her and put a piece of tape across her mouth. She suffocated from compression of her throat, an autopsy found. Anderson then dressed his wife's body, drove a few miles and staged a single-car wreck. Investigators soon suspected a coverup."

COMPRESSION of her throat? Do they mean she was strangled? That's involuntary manslaughter?

What a crock!

Yeah, the blue line protects MEN in blue; women in blue need not apply.

WHAT PROOF that it was role playing and that he didn't subdue her with handcuffs so he could kill her?

Then faked a one-car accident?

NINE MONTHS!

Wonder what he'd get for kicking his dog?

Next time the so-called liberal Human Rights Commission asks for money tell them to go blow themselves.

The group - at the insistence of the Republican gay men organized as the Log Cabin Republicans - voted to support D'amato of New York and Fong of California for election. Both men are RRRRrs, both are ANTICHOICE and antiwomen's rights.

But the gay MEN got them to agree to a couple of things for the monied gay boyz and garnered the HRC endorsement. To hell with lesbians and to hell with ALL women.

A number of member of the HRC board resigned as did a number of members. Wouldn't it be a great thing is Melissa Etheridge turned back her award from HRC?

You know, the idea that gay men DEMAND through shaming us that women support the rights of gay men is ludicrous. You guyz ever hear of one hand washing the other?

It's bad enough you snookered women into supporting the no AIDS testing laws even when it prevents a rapist from being tested and blocks a raped woman getting "some" peace of mind.

But to say that a woman's right to choose is not as important as your wallets is just plain bullshit.

You are contemptuous.

Both D'amato and Fong lost, of course - thanks to women's votes - and lesbian and gay men's voters who were as disgusted by the HRC endorsement as I am.

Come on Melissa, turn back that award. It's tainted.

Thank you for the many, many birthday greetings.

One in eight women in our country will develop breast cancer during her lifetime, compared to one in 20 a generation ago.

Every 12 minutes a woman dies of breast cancer.

Every three minutes a woman is diagnoses with breast cancer.

And 46,000 American women will die of breast cancer this year.

Time for your monthly breast exam - remember, the breast you examine is the one you want to keep.

For some reason (sic!) the ancient methods of human fertility control has been suppressed, in fact so suppressed that women don't even use logic to combat the absence of such knowledge.

We know, for example, that the basic break in woman- to-woman information (oral tradition) occurred during the burning of the witches, i.e., the murdering of women who held knowledge and power: the herbalists, and the midwives during the 14th into the 16th centuries.

But the information was recorded in manuscripts and books that were not destroyed - they have always been there and have only been recently unearthed by MEN scholars.

What we don't understand is why feminist scholars of today don't attempt to further unearth the old knowledge and disseminate it to modern women.

As John Riddle wrote in an article in Archaeology magazine in 1994, "In ancient times, contrary to what historians have been telling us for the past several centuries, many women practiced birth-control with little interference from religious or political authorities. The knowledge of the plants that allowed them to do so and the lapse of that knowledge by the time of the Renaissance is a story that is only now emerging with clarity."

For example, Soranus in the 2nd century A.D. suggested avoiding intercourse during a woman's fertile period, inducing sneezing to expel sperm, wiping out the vagina and drinking something cold. He also suggested smearing the cervix with a mixture of olive oil, astringents, and gums of certain trees such as juniper, cedar or balsam, to close the cervix before intercourse.

Many of the things suggested by Soranus for use as vaginal suppositories have been found to be spermicidal by modern chemists.

To read more about ancient anti-fertility methods, read John M. Riddle's Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to Renaissance, andThe Control of Late Ancient and Medieval Population by Josiah C. Russell.

We recommend women buying copies of the books to be put away for the just-in-case future. The religious right is aiming at the presidency control in the year 2000.

The Emergency Contraception (EC or Morning After Pill). Phone number is 1-800-584-9911, available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, and will refer you to the nearest place to get EC. EC has a website (http://opr.princeton.edu/ec/ec.html.

EC hotline has information about emergency contraception and have a directory of more that 1800 clinicians willing to prescribe emergency contraceptives.

To receive Catt's Claws by email, mail to Listserv@Netcom.com and in the body of the note "subscribe Catts-Claws". We thank Jennifer Gagliardi for handling the madding subscription list through her listserv.

Send your ideas, comments, and news for inclusion in the Catt's Claws feminist newsletter which will be emailed as we get to it. This is NOT an interactive discussion net but an exchange of information. Catt's Claws is NOT sponsored by any organization. The contents are strictly the opinion of the author. Copyright 1998, Irene Stuber. PO Box 6185, Hot Springs, AR 71902