A L S O+T O D A Y Combover Congress By Cynthia Heimel How can we trust our leaders to manage impeachment when they can't even manage their hair?   T A B L E+T A L K Should gun manufacturers be sued à la the tobacco lawsuits? Weigh in on guns and personal responsibility in the Politics area of Table Talk   Find deep discounts and great selection on the books you need to read at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author       R E C E N T L Y The mysteries of Bill Clinton By Gabriel García Márquez Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez compares the president's fate to that of Hester Prynne (02/02/99) A twisted tale of two brothers By Jeff Stein A year after the Birmingham abortion clinic bombing, the gay brother of suspect Eric Rudolph still mourns its victims (01/29/99) Chasing Monica By Barbara Ehrenreich The House managers got their wish -- a chance to probe, examine and even "de-brief" the luscious Lewinsky (01/29/99) The trickster president By Richard Goldstein Clinton's enemies have made him a culture hero (01/29/99) No apologies By Debra Dickerson How I learned to fight for my country, proudly (01/28/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		_____When Sid meets Jim   The Rogan-Blumenthal showdown could be the most important confrontation in the impeachment trial. BY HARRY JAFFE | The most dramatic face-off between House prosecutors and witnesses in the Clinton impeachment trial was not Monday, when Monica Lewinsky was interviewed for the 23rd time. Her lawyers had prepared her to say nothing in her private session that could convince senators they needed to see her testify live before the nation. And it wasn't when Vernon Jordan had his meeting with House prosecutors on Tuesday. Jordan is too cool and savvy to give up a morsel. But Wednesday, when Rep. James E. Rogan questions Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal, the heat of the Republican right will meet the guile of the Democratic left -- with potentially combustible consequences. Both Rogan and Blumenthal are true believers; they are political and personal opposites. And neither is on very solid ground in the current mess. Blumenthal is a well-known character here in the capital and now on the national stage, where the Clinton-Lewinsky affair has been playing for more than a year. He's been a member of the journalistic and political elite since the 1980s, first as a writer for the Washington Post, then for the New Yorker and the New Republic. He's a playwright. In the Clinton White House, he's known as a loyal political knife fighter who would use whatever means necessary to protect Bill and Hillary. The Republicans believe the Chicago-born Blumenthal is also the dirty trickster who planted the stories about the sexual indiscretions of Henry Hyde and Bob Livingston, though neither actually came from Blumenthal. On a personal level, Blumenthal, 50, is a well-bred, well-educated intellectual who comes off as smug to an objectionable degree to his critics, and even to some of his friends. Taking Blumenthal's testimony was a gamble for the Republicans. His Ivy League cool might let him survive the ordeal unruffled; or his partisan ire could get the better of him, provoking the unscripted eruption House managers were praying for when they put him on the witness list. Rogan is Blumenthal's antithesis, a hardcore, hardscrabble Republican who just finished his first two-year term in Congress. He was born out of wedlock to a cocktail waitress and came up rough in San Francisco's Mission District. Rogan told the San Francisco Chronicle recently that he made his entrance into the world when his mother "got pregnant by the bartender who then didn't marry her." He was raised on welfare. He was a high school dropout. He was a Democrat who learned politics from his longshoreman grandfather. But Rogan righted himself, completed high school, got a political science degree from UC-Berkeley in 1979 and then a law degree at UCLA -- and became a Republican. He stayed in Southern California and acted out his political junkie tendencies by running for office. He won a seat in the California Assembly, rose to majority leader and in 1996 took the congressional seat in the Los Angeles suburbs of Glendale and Pasadena. Word is Rogan's a born-again Christian. Rogan says he just goes to church at times. "I'm not quite sure what that means," he told the Chronicle. "I bartended my way through law school and I was a bouncer in an adult theater in Canoga Park for three days ... so I didn't exactly come from a prudish background." It was Rogan's legal background that got him a seat on the Judiciary Committee and a leading role in Clinton's impeachment. In Los Angeles he served as a deputy district attorney and later became California's youngest sitting judge. Now he's a star on CNN, C-Span and the floor of the House and Senate, where he took the floor to make the closing arguments for Clinton's removal from office. And Wednesday, Jim Rogan takes on Sid Blumenthal. N E X T+P A G E+| Will Sid pop off?