Travel with me, if you will, back in time. It's 1992. The election campaign season is well underway. A New York Times article published in March reports that Bill and Hillary Clinton, then governor and first lady of Arkansas, had invested and lost money in the Whitewater Development Corporation. The article stimulates the interest of L. Jean Lewis, a Resolution Trust Corporation investigator who was looking into the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, also owned by Jim and Susan McDougal.

Lewis looks for connections between the savings and loan company and the Clintons, and on September 2, 1992, she submits a criminal referral to the FBI naming the Clintons as witnesses in the Madison Guaranty case. (Note that Bill Clinton is currently running for President.) Little Rock U.S. Attorney Charles A. Banks and the FBI determine that the referral lacks merit. Undeterred, Lewis continues to pursue the case. From 1992 to 1994, Lewis issues several additional referrals against the Clintons and repeatedly calls the U.S. Attorney's Office in Little Rock and the Justice Department regarding the case. Her referrals eventually become public knowledge, and she testifies before the Senate Whitewater Committee in 1995.

The Clintons are never charged or prosecuted over Whitewater. Three separate inquiries by the tenacious Ken Starr find insufficient evidence linking them with the criminal conduct of others related to the land deal. Nor are they prosecuted over the Travelgate scandal. Nor "Filegate". Nor the allegations surrounding the Vince Foster suicide. The only allegations ever substantiated are that Bill lied under oath about an affair with intern Monica Lewinski... after Starr had spent 6 years investigating almost every charge ever brought against the Clintons, with the Washington Examiner's so-called "Arkansas Project" searching the state for anyone who might make any allegations. Bill is impeached by a Republican-dominated House; the Republican-dominated Senate does not come up with the 66 votes to find him guilty.

Vice President Al Gore is narrowly defeated in the controversial election of 2000, in which the Supreme Court puts a stop to vote recounts in Florida, narrowly giving George W Bush an electoral victory, even though Bush lost the popular vote. Gore concedes. (Remember that bit; the losing candidate conceded. We'll be returning to that later.)

Are we caught up? Okay, let's return to 2023.

The same Republican Party, Republican politicians, and Republican pundits who wanted to see Bill Clinton expelled from office and had investigated him since even before he became President, are declaring that the prosecution against Donald Trump for over 30 charges of business fraud results from a politically motivated "witch hunt". They claim that President Biden has "weaponized" (another word I'm getting sick of) the justice system of, apparently, the entire country, to "get" Trump. (Oh, and by the way, Trump never ever conceded his defeat in 2020, even though he lost the popular vote. He also lost the electoral vote by margins he had described, in 2016, as "a landslide" when he was the winner- even though he didn't win the popular vote in 2016 either, and spent years lying about that.)

Most Republicans also claim that the January 6 Committee's investigation into the insurrection which Trump inspired at the Capitol was "political" and a "witch hunt", just as they do the Georgia investigation of the Trump campaign's election interference (which was famously caught on tape). And his impeachment for trying to blackmail Ukraine into interfering in the election on his behalf (also caught on tape). And his impeachment for inciting an insurrection.

So, hypocrisy. If it was wrong for Clinton (who I'm not defending; he lied and he was wrong), isn't it wrong for Trump? If an affair was immoral and disqualified Clinton from the Presidency, what of Trump's multiple alleged affairs (at least some of which he apparently had hushed up via his friends at the National Enquirer)? What of (and I keep coming back to this) trying to steal an election and fomenting an insurrection when that failed?

Pardon me, I'm off to get a quart of antacid. Blatant hypocrisy always gives me heartburn.

Then again, maybe I need some Tucks, because it also burns my ass.

Goodnight, all...