10/28/98
Pennsylvania

Dear Henry Hyde,

I'm sitting in my 150 year old farmhouse in Pennsylvania on a clear and beautiful October morning. Upstairs my wife and her two friends are happily trying on clothes and laughing. As a man there is nothing more precious to me than the sound of women's laughter. The sheer job of relations between men and women makes life worthwhile to me. When I bought this house it was a wreck. Rather than tear it down I decided to preserve and restore it.

I hope that you will read this message and take it to heart. Framed on the wall of my home is a copy of the Bills of Rights. I often think about what is contained in that document. As a citizen of this country I am distressed at the level of disregard for this document by the recent congress, the special prosecutor and the media.

The meaning of these rights is quite clear and specific. For instance the 6th amendment states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons,houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized." How can you as a man of good conscience preside over an impeachment hearing that has so blatantly denied this right to the President of the United States?

As a citizen of this country I am, within this electronic format, exercising my right under the 3rd amendment, "... of the people to peaceably assembly and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Here are my grievances. I feel that my elected government officials are not listening to the wishes of the people they represent. Indeed, it sometimes seems to me they are only interested in engaging in political warfare using the public funds. Somehow our country has become a government of television, by television and for television rather than of the people etc.. Or to paraphrase John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, "government by a hallucinating mob."

Let me tell you this, I no longer take televised information seriously. I prefer to get my information through two way electronic discourse or intimate RL (real life) gatherings. I was bemused at the spectacle of TV news reporters reading the Starr report directly off the internet. The process that you are engaged in will have an unanticipated and positive consequence. It will drive people away from mass media. It will cause them to seek out the internet as I have done. It has already made television irrelevant.

The private joys and travails of President Clinton and his wife, are private and should remain so. What you are about to present, the spectacle in which you and your colleagues are engaged, is IMHO out of control and obscene. It has presented women as shrews, victims or aggressive careerists. It has removed any idea of the joy and strength that bounds men and women in relationships. This is not a procedure that should continue on the world stage.