Now that the frenzied obsession with Bill Clinton's sex life has abated a bit, perhaps the doings of some other personages nearer home might engage our attention. In particular the doings of Mr David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. Two matters concerning him.
Throughout the recent spate of sectarian killings of innocent Catholics by loyalist murderers, David Trimble - while condemning sectarian killings and violence in general - was slow to address the reality that what was going on was a campaign of murder conducted by friends of Billy Wright, whom he had met in Drumcree in July 1996.
The second matter concerning David Trimble is his response to the announcement of the new inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday. It was quite beyond him to acknowledge that Bloody Sunday had been a particularly traumatic occurrence for the nationalist community of Northern Ireland as a whole and that the outcome of the Widgery tribunal had added pain to that trauma. (Incidentally, not a single unionist figure at the time uttered a word of sympathy over what happened.)
Instead, David Trimble has sought to balance (as he would see it) the sectarian scales by demanding an inquiry into the events that led up to the arms trial of 1970 in the Republic. His claim is that in both instances there were allegations of state involvement in murder, followed by a cover-up.
Even if there were such similarities, there would be no equivalence. In the case of Bloody Sunday there is evidence of officially predetermined murder, followed by a predetermined and choreographed cover-up. (I am not asserting that this is what happened, rather that there is evidence to support these contentions.) And this caused huge trauma.
Not even the most shrill and paranoid partisan could claim that the background to the arms trial of 1970 represented evidence of officially predetermined murder.
Neither could it be claimed that there was a choreographed cover-up of such plans. Furthermore, the arms trial represented an amusing diversion for the unionist community in Northern Ireland in 1970, not at all the trauma that was caused by Bloody Sunday to the nationalist community.
In any event, it is hardly as though we do not know what happened in the lead-up to the arms crisis of 1970.
Representatives of the nationalist community in Northern Ireland came to Dublin in a series of delegations and asked the government to make arms available to nationalists. This was to enable them to protect themselves in the perceived likely event of another assault on vulnerable nationalist areas by loyalist forces, backed up by elements of the security forces.
We now know (or at least many of us believe) that such apprehensions were misplaced, but there is no doubt that the apprehensions existed and that they were not then unreasonable, given what had happened in August 1969.
Charles Haughey, Neil Blaney and other former ministers met these delegations, and these two men agreed to provide funds for the purchase of arms. In addition, the Army provided training in the use of arms for Derry nationalists in August and September 1969, and in February 1970 the Army moved arms to Dundalk in case it became necessary to make them available to nationalist communities under attack.
A sum of £100,000 was made available by the government for the relief of distress in Northern Ireland, and Charles Haughey, as minister for finance, agreed that some of that money should be used for the purchase of arms, again for distribution to people in vulnerable nationalist areas.
The decision can be criticised on the grounds that he should have sought specific cabinet approval for this and that it was reckless to give arms to people over whom the government would have no control. But, given the (false?) perception at the time that nationalist communities were in grave danger of imminent murderous attack, it was not entirely unreasonable.
From all the available evidence it was on such perceptions that Mr Haughey acted. His culpability on the arms crisis relates not so much to his agreement to provide funds for the purchase of arms but his failure to keep his government colleagues informed and his untruthfulness about it during the arms trial.
About £39,000 of the £100,000 was spent on purchasing arms (which were never imported). About another £32,000 was given to members of the Central Citizens' Defence Committee in Belfast and in a ratio of 2:1 to members of the Provisional and Official republican movements, supposedly for the manning of barricades.
A large part of the remainder seems to have been misapplied to on ventures that had nothing to do with paramilitary or political affairs (one well-known "Official" Belfast republican carpeted his house with some of the proceeds). Some of the money went for the relief of distress.
The claim that in August and September 1969 Fianna Fail ministers sought to split the republican movement to disengage the greater part of it from the Marxists and to get a guarantee from the others that they would engage in military operations only in Northern Ireland is a fiction devised by the Official republican movement spin doctors. Many of the spin doctors of that era are still around and still spinning.
There is absolutely not a shred of evidence that the government ever decided to subvent the Provisional IRA, which was formed at the end of 1969, or in any way encouraged its formation.
Indeed there is copious evidence that from the beginning the government sought to oppose the Provisional IRA vigorously. Remember this was the government led by Jack Lynch, with (from May 1970) Desmond O'Malley as minister for justice.
Within a short time that government threatened to introduce internment; it established the Special Criminal Court for the trial of offences connected with terrorism; it banned the political representatives of the Provisional IRA from the airwaves; and in December 1972 it introduced legislation which Mr Trimble's fellow unionist, Conor Cruise O'Brien, castigated as fascist and in breach of civil liberties.
That government had no truck at all with terrorism. Nor was there any pussy-footing with known killers, such as Mr Trimble engaged in with Billy Wright at Drumcree in July 1996. It may be, however, that David Trimble's approach is determined by the political reality; that this is what he needs to do in order to retain the leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party.