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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 6, 1997)
CONTACTING US NEWSROOM. (541)346-5511 E-MAIL: ode@oregon. uoregon.edi ADDRESS: Oregon Daily Emerald P.O. BOX 3159 Eugene, Oregon 97403 ONLINE EDITION: darkwing uoregon.edu/~ode Perspectives EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Sarah Kickler EDITORIAL EDITOR Mike Schmierbach NIGHT EDITORS Mike Schmierbach Laura Cadiz Reno covers Clinton’s TRAIL Alt EMERALD EDITORIAL By deciding against appointing an independent prosecutor, Attorney General Janet Reno has missed a chance to help clean up campaign financing. CHRIS HUTCHINSON/Emerald Bill Clinton is a shaky character. He has to be. He ran for and won the presidency. Winning the political game these days requires a willing ness to sell your princi ples to the highest bidder, and Clinton has been holding quite an auction during the last few years. Exactly what Clinton has done remains un clear. Questions have been raised about his use of the White House, his dealings with foreign companies and his con nection to suspicious De mocratic National Com mittee fund-raising efforts. U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno has decided to toss all those questions aside. Reno, who was ap pointed to her job by Clinton in the first place, concluded that sufficient evidence did not exist to appoint an independent prosecutor. Only on one issue — fund-raising calls made from the White House — did Reno decide an objec tive investigation might be warranted. On this is sue, she has yet to decide whether to appoint a prosecutor. Clinton may have done nothing illegal. Even if many of his actions were devoid of ethics, they might still fit within what’s allowed by the lax campaign finance laws. Even if this is the case, an investigation is still justified, however. Cam paign finance reform is a crucial issue, and if an in dependent prosecutor turned over enough rocks, the dirty political secrets that crawl out might help advance ef forts to fix existing laws. Bill Clinton and the De mocratic party are cer tainly not alone in their questionable fund-raising methods. They probably aren’t even the worst of fenders. This doesn’t mean their actions should not face more scrutiny than a Clinton nominee was willing to give. While it is Republicans in Congress who are most keen to see Clinton torn apart by a prosecutor, the GOP also stands to look foolish under the intensi ty of investigation. An ef fective investigation would not only objective ly explore Clinton’s deal ings, but would also ex amine the corrupt way in which most campaigns are currently financed. Opting to kill the issue by not calling for an inde pendent prosecutor will not clarify and improve the rules for the future. Nor will it vindicate Clin ton, who only appears more corrupt because of the possibility of a cover up. As long as elections are bought and sold by spe cial interest dollars, the American public will not feel the issue has been ef fectively resolved. Hav ing Reno proclaim Clin ton’s innocence from on high does nothing to make the public feel jus tice has been served. This last issue is the most crucial one. It is public reaction to the ex cesses of campaign fi nance that will finally force reform. And it is public distrust of govern ment that makes an effec tive, independent investi gation necessary. Such an investigation will probably not restore public trust in govern ment. But it should help convince people that bla tantly unethical acts will not go unexamined. More important, it can help il luminate an issue to which the public desper ately needs to react. Bill Clinton isn’t about to go to jail. But he should have to explain his ac tions to the American people, not just to an at torney general he hired. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald edi torial board. Responses may be sent to ode@ore gon.uoregon.edu. Paula Jones ,,fevvaf( er Gam paign com*uaaa, Q& f\o' .^ets ^elfare ■efon« I didn’t inhale.” ueU” Salvage ri^er Numbers Wouldn't it be great if there was one book where you could look and find out if a word existed or not, what it meant and how to spell it? Thankfully, there is — the dictionary. What follows is some of the useful in formation we found in the 1993 American Heritage Dictionary: The first word fist ed in the dictionary is, not surprisingly, "a." There are 54 meanings given for “a," divided into ten categories and in cluding abbrevia tions. The last word giv en in the dictionary has only one mean ing—the word, “zyzzyva,” is defined as "any of various tropical American weevils of the genus Zyzzyva, often de structive to plants,” Prior to that last word is a category far more interesting to the average college student—words that begin with the prefix “zym." There are seven “zym” words, all of which deal with some aspect of fermentation. Our favorite is “zymurgy," i which happens to be | a magazine as well as the word for “the branch of chemistry that deals with fermentation processes, as in brewing.” Another word of interest to many stu dents is “weed.” While the dictionary gives the usual meanings, it also suggests a new spin on an old slang term —•weed can also mean “a token of mourning, as a black band worn on a man’s hat or sleeve, " Let's smoke some arm band, guys. The letter at the beginning of the smallest word cate gory is “x." Only 95 words fall under the "x” header, most of which are probably not part of the aver age person’s vocabu lary. For example, the “xebec" is “a small three-masted Mediterranean vessel with both square and triangular sails." We’re not sure what word has the longest entry in the dictionary, but “well” has to rank high on the list. With 35 en tries, none of which are abbreviations, “weir means a lot of things. Finally, in the cool sounding word cate gory, we have “kerf." You probably would n’t guess it, but “kerf is the proper term lor “a groove or notch made by a cutting took such as a saw or