Tuesday, August 15, 2000 (AmpolNS) -- I disagree wholeheartedly with the conclusions of Chris Anderson that the
impeachment battle is over.

Chris apparently hasn't been watching the "dark side" -- where the hatred is still on full boil, the plots are still
concocted, and the thousands of minions are still ordered to do this and that and to pledge allegiance to extremist
groupthink.

I, too, have suffered personally and financially over the last several years  as I was obligated to combat the dark side
as an Internet activist. I have monitored conservative web sites on a daily basis -- sites filled with so much
gut-wrenching hatred that I was shaken to the core.

I have seen the principles of propaganda, demonization, scapegoating and mind control successfully applied in our
own country for partisan gain, with arrogant disregard for democracy and for the American people. And I have seen a
corrupted media commit journalistic fraud on the citizens by failing to expose the machinations of those who control
the dark side.

Let us be blunt about what happened to Clinton: a loosely affiliated group of people nearly completed a coup.

For the second time in the twentieth century, conservatives plotted the overthrow of a popular president. They nearly
succeeded against Franklin D. Roosevelt, and they nearly succeeded against Clinton. Two such plots when added to
Nixon's criminal disregard for the Constitution and President Bush's extra-Constitutional gun-running constitute a
trend. It is an anti-Constitutional trend and an anti-American trend. And it is a trend that will not stop when William
Jefferson Clinton leaves office. This trend reappears whenever the GOP can't win at the ballot box, and it comes in the
form of an end run around the Constitutional right of the people to elect their leaders.

The same forces that relentlessly attacked the Clinton family and hog-tied the Clinton presidency from the get-go lie in
wait for Al Gore. The demonization against Gore is already completed, the lies already disseminated and generally
accepted as truth, the media already co-opted, the scapegoating accomplished, and the traps baited. The dirty tricks
are already drawn on the chalkboard, ready to be rolled out.

There are no boundaries of propriety with this cabal of partisan coup-plotters and no allegiance to truth. They are the
embodiment of the totalitarian slogan: The end justifies the means. The end for them is the triple crown of the
presidency, the Supreme Court and Congress. The means has only one operating principle: "How low can you go?"

Think back for a moment: how was their plot against Clinton finally foiled? It was only when some
conservative players were made to feel pain that the partisans blinked. The pain was administered by
investigative writer Dan Moldea and the controversial first-amendment advocate/pornographer Larry Flynt,
who exposed some hypocrisy in those elected officials who pursued Clinton on issues of morality.
For a brief moment, the American people were able to see in bold relief the force behind the impeachment.

George W. Bush was savvy enough to see how mightily the American people reacted to the hypocrisy
of the power grabbers. And this is precisely (as Anderson writes) why the impeachment players have
been sent to the attic. This is why Hyde and DeLay and Armey and Lott and Gingrich are absent,
and why Robertson and Falwell and the other theocrats had no cachet at this convention.

Right now there is nothing the GOP seeks more than invisibility for the cabal.

Recently some of the coup-plotters stomped the possibility of publication of an investigative book
that would have exposed further conservative hypocrisy.

In an unprecedented attack against independent author John Connolly, a manuscript was stolen
from the author, reportedly doctored, and subsequently either sold or given to Matt Drudge,
Internet gossip maven and a participant in the attack on Clinton. Drudge and members of the cabal
killed the book contract within 48 hours through a vicious and malicious media blitz against the author.

Conservatives will stop at nothing to keep the cunning tricks of the impeachment secret from the
American people. Chris Anderson's letting go of the impeachment battle would ensure the invisibility
and anonymity the coup-plotters need.

Chris may very well be able to let it all go and call the current hiding of the impeachment victory enough.
I can't. I might be able to if the plotters were finished with their attacks on the Constitution and the will of
the people. But they aren't finished just because they're momentarily quiet. They won't be finished with the
bomb-throwings and the character defamation and the politics of personal assassinations unless there is
full exposure of their excesses and crimes, and until some measure of pain is applied by public repudiation.

So here's my message to Chris: We didn't win yet. It isn't over. They didn't stop, they just went
momentarily underground for cosmetic reasons. Our personal and national nightmare continues,
and you are needed in the trenches still. You're needed for the election of Gore and for the aftermath,
when the post-election euphoria might make Dems generous and forgiving and vulnerable. You're needed
to call for congressional hearings into the coup attempt, and to help limn the proceedings from your
experience as a coup-watcher. You're needed to lend support to any brave journalists who speak truth
about the media's demonstrated complicity with the cabal.

Don't cave now.
Buck up.
Stay with it.

Lord knows I want to let go, too, but I just can't.

Stand with me, won't you?