Not for the delicate audience:

Malcolm was tickled by the revelation that the FBI is trying to suppress the details of the defence material of Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

Ms Palfrey is being prosecuted on charges of racketeering and money laundering. She has had a long career, it seems, running an "escort agency". Now she would like, as part of her defence, to call witnesses from her Rolodex (or wherever else she kept her list of clients). One name has so far emerged: Dick [sic] Morris.

Don't listen to Malcolm: go for the smoking gun.

The older generation might recall that Morris, who was running Bill Clinton's 1996 Re-election Campaign, was given the order of the boot two months before Election Day, and just before Clinton's formal acceptance to the Democratic National Convention. Malcolm remembers the Washington Post's delicious headline for Howard Kurtz's story: The Hooker, Line and Sinker:

Sherry Rowlands, the suddenly famous Virginia call girl, is taking all the credit for the downfall of presidential adviser Dick Morris. She says the Republicans had nothing to do with it ...

As for Morris's downfall, Rowlands said: "Someone as intelligent as he is should have kept his lip buttoned when he unzipped his pants. I mean, how can you maneuver worlds, and he can't even control what he's doing in his own room with a paid lady?"

Morris's resignation was announced hours before President Clinton delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last Thursday night. His departure came after the Star, a supermarket tabloid, published allegations by the $200-an-hour prostitute that she had a long-running relationship with Morris.

Morris has spent a significant part of his subsequent life blackguarding the Clintons (for a flavour, dip into his internet columns). He claims that his dislike stems from when Bill Clinton, back in 1990, "beat me up".

If one is judged by one's acquaintance, Morris is in strange company with frontpagemag.com. Here he consorts with the likes of Anne Coulter (she of the "faggot" farrago), Charles Krauthammer (so sure that Iraq would share nuclear weapons with terrorists) and (more recognisable for our local readers) the blessed Melanie Phillips. Behind frontpagemag.com is David Horowitz and his Freedom Center. Just like Time magazine, frontpagemag.com features a "man of the year": this year it named two US border guards, who:

agents shot [a] drug smuggler ... near the Mexico border and [were] convicted of assault with serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, violating the “civil rights” of an illegal alien, and obstruction of justice “for not reporting that their weapons had been fired”. They were sentenced to 11 years and 1 day and 12 years imprisonment, respectively...

According to frontpagemag.com, such actions were merely:

bureaucratic infractions ... these men have lost their money, their reputations, and (perhaps soon) their freedom trying to protect our nation. For that, they deserve our thanks.

Malcolm view is: let's hope Ms Palfrey's other names are revealed and are as revealing.

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