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Newt Gingrich: Last Calls
(TIME, Oct. 7) -- It was supposed to have been newt Gingrich's valedictory, the
week in which the first Republican House in 40 years could count
its accomplishments before returning home to face the voters. As
he sat last Thursday afternoon on the sun-washed balcony of his
Capitol suite, the Speaker ticked them off: the line-item veto,
a sweeping telecommunications law, a crackdown on illegal
immigration, an expansion of health insurance, welfare reform,
even a savings of $500,000 by ending daily ice deliveries to
congressional offices. Then, in Gingrich fashion, he reached
back--quite a reach--for a historical analogy. "You could make a
pretty good case," he said, "that this is the most significant
Congress since the Great Society."
At that moment two floors below, a bipartisan group of
Congressmen--two Democrats, two Republicans--was deciding there
might be a pretty good case to be made against Gingrich. After
weeks of partisan squabbling in Congress, the investigative
subcommittee of the House ethics committee voted unanimously to
expand its two-year probe of the Speaker. Soon after, the full
10-member committee seconded the decision. Of the four new
charges they decided to pursue, the most serious one asks
whether the Speaker gave investigators "accurate, reliable and
complete information"--meaning, did he lie to them?--about the
tangled links between his videotaped college course, the
tax-exempt foundation that developed it, and gopac, his
political operation. The questions boil down to whether he used
tax-exempt donations to support a political undertaking.
Although Gingrich insists the charges are groundless, the action
guaranteed that the case will dog him beyond the election,
whether or not he returns as Speaker. --By Karen Tumulty
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