Dennis Bernstein, Leslie Kean "Henry Hyde's Moral Universe: Where More Than Time and Space Are Warped."
This addition to "Common Courage's Read & Resist" series might be more aptly titled Dennis Bernstein and Leslie Kean's "Moral Universe," for this is really the world according to Bernstein and Kean, both of ultraliberal Pacifica Radio. Liberals may enjoy their recounting of the Iran-Contra affair and the probable Nicaraguan Contra/drug-trafficking connection, but any link with Henry Hyde is tenuous at best.
The authors want us to believe that U.S. Representative Hyde has flexible standards when it comes to wrongdoing and lawbreaking because he supported Oliver North and the Reagan administration's actions and then later, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, led the fight for Bill Clinton's impeachment. But the book is far more successful when it deals directly with Hyde's own politics and personal life.
Bernstein and Kean have plenty to work with, but in their attempt to paint Hyde as a villain they overreach. However much one may disagree with Hyde's position on abortion and his "Hyde amendment," which prevents federal funds from being used for abortions for poor women, it seems questionable to personally blame him for the death of women who have undergone illegal abortions. (The authors are on much firmer ground, though, when they take Hyde to task for testifying at trial on behalf of a man advocating violence as a way to shut down clinics that perform abortions.
There is also a chapter on Hyde's eight-year "youthful indiscretion" with a woman 20 years younger than himself, complete with the woman's side of the story. For liberal supporters of Clinton, the taste of Henry Hyde's Moral Universe will be sweet, while conservatives will no doubt find only bitterness.
Paperback, 1999.
New book.