Editorials
Thursday, December 4, 1997SOON after taking office as Bill Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno made the colossal blunder of approving the FBI raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. By accepting responsibility for that misjudgment, Reno won widespread praise, but the fact remains that it was a tragic mistake. In refusing to seek an independent counsel to investigate President Clinton and Vice President Gore's campaign fund-raising activities, Reno has made another blatant error. Janet Reno’s rejection
of independent counselThis time, the FBI is on the other side of the issue. FBI Director Louis Freeh had urged Reno to appoint an independent counsel, and he had solid grounds for doing so. Administration critics are certain to cite Freeh's views.
On the surface, the attorney general seemed to be acting reasonably, but only because she chose a narrow legal issue as the basis of her decision. The question was whether Clinton or Gore had violated a century-old law barring campaign fund-raising on federal property.
Reno concluded that the law did not apply because the calls were made from residential areas of the White House, had not involved specific solicitations or had not raised actual campaign money. But the issue of making calls from federal property was the least serious of the alleged violations justifying the appointment of an independent counsel.
By focusing on it, Reno used the calls as a decoy to avoid the graver problems: the illegal use of "soft money" contributions to the Democratic Party to do the work of "hard money" contributions to candidates; the acceptance of millions of dollars of illegal contributions from foreign contributors, some with ties to China; the appearance of Gore at a Buddhist fund-raiser in California at which illegal contributions were solicited; the appointment of a campaign aide to solicit funds from foreign sources who previously worked at the Commerce Department and had been cleared for access to classified material; the unprecedented sale of White House overnighters for campaign contributions and the outrageous overruling by Democratic Party officials of a National Security Council recommendation that the controversial financier Roger Tamraz be denied access to the White House.
Freeh has seen through the smokescreen tactic, which appears to have been sold to Reno by administration sympathizers on her staff. He has let it be known that he remains worried about a suspected Chinese government effort to influence the 1996 election and that he has no confidence in the officials who have been entrusted with the Justice Department investigation.
Reno's decision does not exonerate Clinton or Gore. Instead, it will only fan the flames of demands for a full and impartial investigation of what the New York Times called "the most significant political scandal since Watergate."
CONTRARY to some opinions, the First Amendment's ban of "an establishment of religion" has never been held to require a total separation of church and state. The opening of sessions of Congress with prayers, the use of the Bible to swear in presidents, the official use of the motto "In God we trust," the chaplain service in the armed forces are only some of the ways in which religion and government are intertwined in violation of an absolutist interpretation of the Constitution. Prayer breakfast
In Hawaii, the issue has been embodied most prominently in the objections to the large crosses that were installed at Camp H.M. Smith and in Kolekole Pass on Schofield Barracks. The Camp Smith cross was removed when a federal court found it in conflict with the First Amendment; the Kolekole Pass cross was dismantled after a local group, Hawaii Citizens for Separation of Church and State, filed suit for its removal last September, with a high probability of success.
These actions were justified because the crosses clearly expressed a government endorsement of Christianity, in violation of the so-called establishment clause. However, it is doubtful that the group's latest victory -- the renaming of the annual Governor's and Mayor's Prayer Breakfast -- is required by the First Amendment.
Mitchell Kahle, leader of Hawaii Citizens, announced that the governor, the four mayors and military commanders "will disentangle themselves from the event and terminate the practice of inviting attendees." Kahle claimed that high government officials' sending invitations to the event violated the separation of church and state.
This seems a stretch. Government officials are entitled under the same First Amendment to have religious -- or nonreligious -- convictions and to practice their faith. Gov. John Burns, for example, attended Mass daily. Does anyone doubt his right to do so?
Governors and mayors who participate in the breakfast act in their private capacities, exercising their right to worship. Issuing invitations is an extension of that right. No government property or funds are involved.
As a result of the complaint, the affair will be renamed the Hawaii Prayer Breakfast, but Mayor Harris says he will still attend -- as is his right. Harris correctly commented that "Changing the name of this important event certainly won't alter its purpose, which is to bring together the leaders of our community in the spirit of fellowship. It will continue to be a prayer breakfast, and I intend to keep participating."
The objection to the governor and mayors issuing invitations to a nonsectarian service held on private property without government funding is a quibble of questionable validity that should have been ignored.
Rupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
