Patrick Leahy: “the first comment this morning is that everybody wishes the President well in his upcoming surgery. It is almost like…”

“the first comment this morning is that everybody wishes the President well in his upcoming surgery. It is almost like those in some of the terrorist groups that go out and kneecap somebody and then send flowers to them in the hospital. I am not suggesting that there is hypocrisy in it, but I am waiting for all of the requests for special counsel and for some of my friends on the other side to ask for a resolution to spend money to send Senators in surgical gowns out to Bethesda to make sure the President really is out there having an operation. It has reached that kind of a level around here. For some of my colleagues, if President Clinton were to walk across the water to save somebody from drowning, the headline in their statement would be, ``It proves he can't swim.'' When I hear some of the statements being made, I am reminded of a what a former Republican President--who, incidentally, was one of the best fundraisers I have ever known--said, ``Well, there you go again.'' Some in the Congress simply cannot avoid the temptation to jump the gun, draw the most negative possible inferences, and take every opportunity to discredit those who serve in the Government, and, as one who has served for years in law enforcement, they also take every possibility to discredit those who serve in law enforcement, and demand yet another costly, time-consuming, largely unaccountable and potentially destructive independent counsel investigation so long as it is limited to only i…”