Rated R for language . . .

Spotty is going to write a very bad word a little later in this post. Some of you may wish to avert your eyes. Fellow potty mouths, read on!

Last Sunday in the Strib, Annette Meeks, the chief harpy and wet blanket at the Center for the American Experiment - the harridan superior so to speak - wrote an epic hymn of praise to Newton Gingrich. According to Annette, Newton single-handedly changed the face of the world forever. Wow. Spotty had no idea. How did Newton do this? Apparently by breathing life into the moribund Republican Party, getting the Party to offer the Contract with America, and hookwinking enough voters into voting for Republicans to take control of both houses of Congress.

Here are things that the CwA committed the House to do immediately:

On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government:

* FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
* SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
* THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
* FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;
* FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
* SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;
* SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
* EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.

How much of this happened even after the Republicans took control? Spotty doesn't think any of it did. Annette, if you're listening, correct Spotty if he his wrong.

The CwA also promised, inter alia, a balanced budget constitutional amendment, and term limits for Congress. Never mind that a balanced budget amendment would have been really stupid and unworkable - you can ask W about that - the shiny new Republican Congress didn't even present a bill to President Clinton to veto. Term limits? Of course not.

The CwA was all Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing, a huge dishonest shell game perpetrated by Annette's former employer Newton in order to gain the upper hand in Congress. It worked, as confidence games sometimes do.

Annette concludes with "history books and God will provide final judgment on his life." If history is honest, it will conclude, to paraphrase Vanity Fair's James Wolcott, that Newton was a giant fuckrat.

Many critics of Gingrich have noted that while his party hammered President Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal, that Gingrich himself had a history of questionable personal conduct.

In 1981 Gingrich reportedly informed his first wife, Jackie Battley, that he wanted a divorce just as she had received a diagnosis of cancer. Gingrich and Marianne Ginther were married months later.

Also, during the very time of the Lewinsky scandal, Gingrich was having an extramarital sexual affair with Callista Bisek, a scheduling and assistant hearing clerk on his staff who is 23 years his junior. The affair reportedly began well before Gingrich assumed the speakership in 1994, and continued through his divorce from his wife, Marianne Ginther Gingrich, in 1999. Reportedly, Gingrich's fellow Republicans knew he was engaged in the extramarital relationship and used that knowledge to ease him out of the speakership.

According to the Washington Post, in late 1999, Gingrich reportedly telephoned Marianne in Ohio during Marianne's mother's birthday party to inform her that he "didn't want [her] as his wife any more." There was controversy as to whether Gingrich knew whether his wife had a neurological condition that might be a "forerunner of multiple sclerosis."

Spotty doesn't know what God will think.