For the past year or so the dominate political story in the country has been the developing
White House sex scandal as rumors and leaks swirled throughout the nation. The case
has slowly progressed through the various channels inherent in a democratic government
- the investigation by the independent council; the report to the judiciary committee of the
House of Representatives; the investigation by that committee; presentation of the case
by the committee to the full House and the vote for impeachment by the House. Now we
have reached the climax - today (January 7, 1999) the case moved to the United States
Senate for the actual trial with the outcome determining whether or not we will remove
a twice-elected president from office.
Details of the trial and its outcome will be distributed over the Web by the various
news gathering agencies until the final page is written. The details will no doubt be
appearing in most of the country's newspapers - both print and electronic - for some time
to come. Here are a few links to media sites likely to carry these details:
Now back our normal political discussions although I suspect that for a long time to come
discussion of the Independent Counsel's report and the uproar that will follow it will
change political discussion forever. Let us hope that the country will benefit from this
discussion and steer a clearer course in the future.
The presidential campaign for the year 2000 is already warming up.
Among the many declared candidates George W. Bush, the present
governor of Texas, appears to be the front runner for the Republican
nomination while Vice President Al Gore occupies that position for the
Democrats. Of course, there are many months before the nominating
conventions and much can happen to change that in the interim. All
of the politicians are realizing the potential of the Internet and we are
seeing more and more political web sites.
First of all, the national committees of the Democratic party and the
Republican party are both
maintaining their Web pages with up-to-date views of their side of the business of
government. And, of course, the official White House page is still there and no political party who controlled that page
could refrain from a bit of politicking - it is just as natural for political parties to take
advantage of something like this as breathing is for you and I.
If you are interested in looking back on the recent election, particularly as to the
financial aspects of the various federal races the
Federal Election Commission has a boatload of facts and figures of interest although
they are somewhat behind current.
If you want to keep up with what Congress is doing The Congress continues to
maintain a presence on the Web and more and more of our senators
and representatives realize the advantages of exposure on
the Information Superhighway (the politician's term, not mine) and the Congressional
participation can only grow.
Each of us is particularly interested in the congressmen from our own states. We
in Cincinnati are interested not only in those from Ohio but also from what is
locally referred to as the TriState (Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana). The six senators
representing these three states each has his own Web page which interested readers
may access from here:
For those of you in Ohio who may not be sure just who the candidates in your particular
district are there is a very good web site called
Ohio Roundtable - Decision '98 available which will list the state and national
candidates in your particular area when you enter your postal zip code.
While the site seems to have gone dormant since the 1998 elections it
seems inevitable that it will soon be replaced with Decision 2000 or
some such title.
And, finally, to keep our elected representatives on the mark it is necessary for all
of us to communicate our wishes, desires and opinions to them. To facilitate this the
Electronic Activist
continues to maintain a very complete list of the electronic addresses of our elected
officials, the media and other involved parties. Their WWW page even provides
an easy means of sending your messages to them.
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