Molly Ivins February 8

AUSTIN, Texas — I don't know about y'all, but I'm starting to think maybe the country would be better off if we put all the politicians into Bedlam and let them carry on from there. Here's the state of Texas, 15 billion bucks to the good, courtesy of a big win over the tobacco companies, and here comes Gov. George Dubya Bush to undo the whole deal because a group of private lawyers, who financed and prepared the case on behalf of the state, is going to get a couple of bill off the top.

Not that anyone likes to see lawyers walking off with a big boodle, but in fact, these guys are getting "only" 15 percent of the settlement, $2.3 billion, and the standard trial-lawyer cut is between 25 percent and 40 percent. The further fact is, if it weren't for this group of lawyers, the state wouldn't be getting a nickel.

Jim Mattox, former attorney general and a complete realist when it comes to the intersection of law and politics, points out that if A.G. Dan Morales had gone to the Lege and asked them for $50 million to finance a lawsuit against tobacco, he would have been laughed out of chambers. No way the state would have put up that kind of money on spec — that's why trial lawyers get such a big cut out of these deals.

When the contract with the private lawyers was negotiated two years ago, Bush had nothing to say about the contingency fee. And under contract law, a deal's a deal. Now, the taxpayers have to fund Bush's challenge to the settlement we got scot-free because these lawyers put up the dough.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Congress is making the president, scandal and all, look like a titan. First, they have a huge fight about whether to rename Washington National Airport after Ronald Reagan, our former president's greatest contribution to aviation having been the firing of a bunch of air traffic controllers who are still mad about it. Ever get the feeling our lawmakers don't have a lot to do there?

Next up, several members, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, decide to demand that if we use air strikes against Iraq, we take out Saddam Hussein. In the first place, murdering foreign leaders is not a proper tool of foreign policy, for the sensible reason that you never know what you'll get if you do. One of the most famous hypothetical questions of history is: What if someone had managed to murder Adolf Hitler early on? Suppose someone did, and then the Nazi movement had been taken over by, say, Albert Speer, who was a lot better organized than Hitler?

The other rather comedic element of this loony demand is the assumption that we can do it.

Smart bombs we may have, but not that smart. Even our so-called smart bombs manage to do an enormous amount of what the Pentagon so delicately refers to as "collateral damage" — i.e., killing civilians.

Some of the more bloodthirsty brethren in the press are already trying to downplay "collateral damage" by suggesting that the Iraqis will use dead babies for propaganda purposes. Yes, I think we can assume they will.

Look, bombing kills innocent people, and we collectively will bear the responsibility for that. That's one reason why it's such a terrible option. The other is that it's not very effective at taking out what we do want to hit, as we learned in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War. Still a third reason for Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to keep talking is that if Saddam has stored biological or chemical weapons, we want to disassemble any such facilities very carefully. Bombing them is potentially disastrous.

In D.C., where the media have gone totally bonkers about the Lewinsky scandal, we are all getting an instructive lesson in how an unscrupulous prosecutor works. Leaks from the prosecutor's office are so obviously orchestrated to put pressure on Lewinsky that we hardly need her lawyer to point this out. As if the example of Susan McDougal, who has spent 18 months in prison for refusing to answer Kenneth Starr's questions, were not enough, one leaker used the media to remind Lewinsky that her mother, who allegedly knew that her daughter allegedly planned to lie in a deposition, could face legal action. 'Fess up, or we put your mom in the slam.

Starr, let us recall, has been prying into President Clinton's sex life for quite some time now. Last summer, Starr called in eight Arkansas state troopers to ask them about any knowledge they had of Clinton's extramarital relationships. The incredible explanation given out at the time was that Clinton might have engaged in "pillow talk" with women about Whitewater, the 20-year-old land deal that Starr is supposed to be investigating. Do you have a life-size vision of "pillow talk" about a real estate deal?

Roger Perry, one of the troopers questioned by Starr, said: "In the past, I thought they were trying to get to the bottom of Whitewater. This last time, I was left with the impression that they wanted to show he was a womanizer."

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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