Still, it’s a rather extraordinary and egregious thing to have oneself disbarred by both the U.S. Supreme Court and the supreme court of one’s own home state, wouldn’t you think?
Especially over a blowjob.
No.
Because I’m not ignoring the context.
So those who say he ‘broke the law’ cannot t show a statement from a court to say “Guilty”? Such a thing is nowhere to be found and the ‘broke the law’ theme is no more than conjecture?
That’s right…he was fined $25,000, impeached by congress and disbarred by the Arkansas supreme court and the U.S. supreme court over mere conjecture.
Surely you’re aware that, on occasion, when the consequences of a trial are possibly of greater concern than the outcome of the trial itself, a settlement may be reached between the parties involved so as to avoid the trial. This in no way means that no law has been broken, and it in no way exonerates the accused. Both the Arkansas Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court found sufficient evidence of malfeasance on Clinton’s part to warrant his disbarrment. He lied under oath to a grand jury and that is what is was impeached and disbarred for. The fact that no jury found him guilty and that he wasn’t hauled bodily from the White House and sent to the penitentiary does not absolve him of guilt.
And btw, Evil Captor, it wasn’t over a blow job; that was a different lie. He was impeached and disbarred by both courts for perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice regarding the Paula Jones contretemps. The fine, settlement and agreement not to prosecute once he left office were related to the blow-job.
In my opinion, Bush has violated some of the most important laws of our country:
From the Bill of Rights:
He and his security agencies have no probable cause to listen in on everyone’s phone conversations, read our emails indiscriminately or look at our bank records.
Amendment V says
Amendment VI:
Amendment VIII:
Does violating the Constitution and his Oath of Office count as breaking laws?
Gee Golly.
Which among these is the most irrelevant to the welfare of our country?
- Lying to Congress about intelligence reports
- Lying to a judge about sexual involvement and possible harassment
- Lying to the American people to frighten them into supporting you
- Lying to the troops about what they are fighting for
Please don’t tell me that I’m the extremist because I am a Progressive. In comparison to Bush and his band of thugs, I am a Goldwater Conservative.
That’s what happens when they watch too much Fox News! They start believing that everyone who is a Democrat is as radical as SDS in the 1960’s. It’s all hype that is scripted for entertainment and attention. The moderates who have been elected to office now are as typical of Democrats as any you will find. We are probably more liberal here at the SDMB than in the public in general.
Which statute is it you believe he violated? Could you cite to the specific statute, please?
Lying isn’t a crime unless we have clear evidence that Bush lied under oath, which would be perjury. Initiating a war of aggression is also not a crime. If you disagree could you please point me to what specific part of the criminal code it violates. Initiating a war without Congressional approval is very questionable, but Bush had overwhelming Congressional approval, meaning the war, whether it be one of defense or aggression was approved by Congress.
If it was a violation of a treaty then it was a violation approved by the Congress who play a very large part in the implementation and interpretation of treaties in this country.
I’m not entirely sure how to take your post, but you do hit on a fundamental truth. There’s always going to be “multiple sides” of things, and they are going to function as counterbalances to one another.
An interesting sentiment that I feel underlies post-election discussions is similar to the sentiments that come after the super bowl or the college football national championship game. There’s this attitude that a “decisive and lasting victory” has been won. While the victories are very often decisive, they are certainly not lasting. A few months later, the new season begins, and no one knows what will happen then.
There’s always going to be “multiple sides to the coin” in the context of our election systems there will always be “two parties.” Anyone who thought the GOP was going to hold on to the Congress forever was insane. That just doesn’t happen. Anyone who thinks the Democrats have “won it all” with permanence are also insane, it just isn’t so, the GOP will some day control the House again as well as the Senate. And then someday, the Dems will take it back, and that’s going to continue on long after every single person on this forum is worm food. It certainly won’t continue forever but in the context of our lifespans it might as well.
Conservative is a basically impossible term to define. There’s a textbook definition, there’s contextual definitions, there is the “pop culture” definitions.
I’ve always detested the use of conservative/liberal on the internet forums and popular culture in general. I’ve always thought it’d be easier if we stuck to the core definitions of liberalism/conservatism.
Basically, conservatives are traditionalists who prefer gradual and moderated change. Reactionaries on the other hand are traditionalists who seek to actively revert societal norms and etc to those of the past.
The stance of “moderate progress” is one designed around the core value of stability in government and society. Theodore Roosevelt was once asked if, as a conservative, that meant he did not want there to be change. He quite aptly replied that of course that is not what he meant, and that such a stance would be ludicrous. He responded that what he means when he says he is a conservative is that he opposes change without prior thought and planning, and he opposes changes that cause more harm than whatever problem they are trying to fix.
Throughout the South Roosevelt appointed several blacks to government positions, he did this at roughly a 1:10 ratio of blacks:whites for such positions. He did this because that was a rough formula him and Booker T. Washington felt was a good idea. Roosevelt and Washington both worried that if more blacks than that were appointed to said positions mass lynchings and riots would occur, they both felt that a gradual erosion of the existing system was better. That decision is very much a conservative decision.
Liberals are basically, at least as I see them, those who wish to experiment with the world by implementing changes and then seeing what happens. The best example of this comes from another Roosevelt, FDR, who basically admitted he was going to try just about everything to try and alleviate the Great Depression.
There are times when we need grand experimentation on the societal scale, and the Great Depression is probably one of those times. But I think most of the time, the conservative approach is preferable, I don’t think experimenting with society is a good thing. And I don’t think you should implement, rapidly, reforms even if they are the “right thing to do” when so doing causes great instability and creates more problems than it alleviates.
These definitions of liberal/conservative are quite separate from the “political” definitions most often used at the SDMB.
In the context of the “political” definition, yes, I think many traditional conservatives would oppose the war in Iraq, Rick Santorum, and support solar energy. In fact I have no idea why conservatives of any breed would oppose solar energy unless it was shown to be economically inefficient.
Conservatives have traditionally trended towards isolationism (an aspect of traditional conservatism in this country that I reject) and in that vein, intervention in Iraq isn’t really something you would imagine a traditional conservative supporting.
How many people do you know who have ever been convicted of the crime, “violating the Bill of Rights?” There are people who have been convicted of Federal civil rights violations, but it’d take the best legal team in the world and the most sympathetic judge in history to extrapolate anything that Bush has done to constitute a crime under one of the civil rights acts.
With the wiretapping issues there actually is clearly the possibility of crimes being committed. However it would probably be hard to link those crimes directly to Bush and there are currently outstanding constitutional issues about whether or not the restrictions on the executive in this regard are even constitutional.
The SCOTUS has also in the past approved military tribunals, the SCOTUS has in the past denied that certain types of persons held under U.S. authority have the right to habeas corpus. (And while this wasn’t done, the writ can in fact be legally suspended, too, for everyone.)
See above, the SCOTUS has approved exactly the type of military tribunals Bush has set up with recent legislation in the past, the only reason they opposed the first go-around is because in absence of an official declaration of war they felt such tribunals needed specific congressional approval (whereas FDR could set them up with an executive order because actual war had been declared.)
If the SCOTUS says it’s okay constitutionally, then it is not unconstitutional, in the strictest sense of it.
In general this amendment acts as a prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment as criminal sentences, and is not really fit to deal with issues of harsh interrogation techniques (which by their nature occur outside the criminal justice system of the United States) outside of our national borders.
The answer to your first question is probably no. Many Presidents have had their actions declared unconstitutional in the past, that doesn’t mean they’ve committed crimes. The SCOTUS is there to define constitutionality, and we can’t expect Presidents to know something they have done is unconstitutional if it hasn’t been so clarified by the court.
I think you’ve failed to show evidence he hasn’t lived up to his Oath of Office. If there was a legitimate claim that he wasn’t then theoretically a writ of mandamus could be issued against him and if he failed to comply he would have committed a crime, otherwise I don’t think so.
I won’t say they are irrelevant to the welfare of our country, although in general keeping the public and troops ignorant of a wide number of things is not only irrelevant to the welfare of our country it is essential that we commit such deceptions.
Either way, only one of those things is a crime (two if lying to Congress is done under oath.)
Your going to have to explain this one to me. Do you mean to say that we’re not sure whether the Constitutional requirement of probable cause is Constitutional?
However, we are not talking about conviction for perjury in a court of law.
The vague “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” phrase allows a bit of latitude to Congress (which they have abused, twice, to the point where impeachment is a severely compromised tool).
The Congressional support for military action was given on the premise that Hussein was not complying with the UN resolutions and that he was actively working toward establishing a means to threaten the U.S. Neither of these claims was true, the administration knew that these claims were false, and they used lies that the claims were true to launch an invasion.
If a President claimed that there was a stealth invasion of the West Coast that created a Public Emergency and the California, Oregon, and Washington National Guards were ordered nationalized while martial law was declared, would, in your opinon, the Congress have the right to impeach that president for lying about the Public Emergency that granted him the power to take those actions? Or do you feel that, since that president acted in accord with the provisions of the John Warner Defense Authorization Act , even if he lied to do so, he is outside the reach of legitimate impeachment?
He actually did not lie about it under oath. In the deposition he asked for a clarification of terms in the question he was asked, and the clarification specifically defined sexual intercourse for the purposes of the question as “vaginal intercourse,” after said clarification he answered he did not have intercourse with Lewinsky. Now obviously it’s entirely possible that Clinton and Monica did more than just oral, but there has never been any credible evidence of that.
I do think he lied to the American people concerning the whole affair, but Clinton was a politician and to be honest in many situations I’m willing to forgive a politician for lying to the American people, many times Americans need to be lied to.
A bit of latitude? The Congress has virtually unlimited power to impeach the President for virtually any reason whatsoever. And as you have noted the phrase High Crimes and Misdemeanors is quite vague, and both times Presidents have been impeached it has clearly been because of political disagreements between the President and the Congress; in Johnson’s case the law he broke was a law mandating he keep someone as Secretary of War, a law which was clearly declared unconstitutional later and personally I think Johnson was perfectly in the right to disregard a law that was unconstitutionally attempting to handcuff the executive.
For the record, yeah, Bush can be impeached for any reason whatsoever. However the discussion, at least as I understood it, was about crimes being committed, and I’ve not seen any credible evidence that Bush has committed any crimes. If I thought the debate was, “could Bush be impeached” then I would have made no posts whatsoever, as it is beyond obvious Bush, or any President, can be impeached at any time.
In my opinion not only would the Congress have the right to impeach the president for lying, they would have the right to impeach the president for virtually anything else, too. The constitution is fairly clear in its vagueness.
FWIW, the actual impeachment process does try to mirror that of a criminal proceeding, as evidence is submitted in the Senate phase just like it would be in a criminal proceeding. Now of course, the Senators can go through the whole process with the mockery that it is an “impeachment trial” and then proceed to vote on strict partisan lines without regard to the facts of the matter, and that is most likely what would happen; but theoretically we are talking about specific crimes when it comes to impeachment. Only theoretically, though.
A better question might be, “Do I think it would be justified to impeach Bush?” And my answer is a resounding no. But everyone has their own opinion, and since there is unfortunately no established rules on what is and is not impeachable action, the real matter is entirely decided on the whims of Congress. I think it is worth mentioning rephrased slightly your entire argument could apply to FDR.
No.
I’m saying, the specific statute (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) which makes it a crime to engage in wiretap-surveillance for intelligence purposes without a warrant is argued by some to be an unconstitutional act in and of itself.
Furthermore, it’s also questionable how a trial would play for Bush in this particular instance because he certainly did not do the wiretapping personally. It’d be an unprecedented legal situation.
How did the House of Representatives kick off their drive towards impeachment, you may ask? I remember that in September of 1998, the GOP decided to publish a massive docu-dump of juicy stuff about Clinton and Lewinsky:
The point of releasing all that juicy stuff was, of course, not the least bit political or designed to sway public opinion about President Clinton. It was simply to show that somewhere in that massive docudump, Clinton told a lie.
Is this sarcasm? Considering about 80% of the posts on this forum are sarcastic it’s not the easiest task in the world to sort them out.
That’s because, despite all the proselytizing that gets done on these forums, both parties are “big tent” parties. Both have isolationists and free trade camps, pro-life, pro-choice, anti-death penalty, pro-death penalty, pro-gun control, anti-gun control, pro-Iraq war, anti-Iraq war and etc.
The party platforms are different sure, but Congressmen in general don’t run on a national party platform, they run on local issues with as much help as they can get from the national party apparatus.
No one is saying that the Republicans actually won or that the Democrats elected were actually Republicans, its very easy to look at party affiliation, it’s a factual thing.
What is beyond doubt is that many of the newly elected Democrats are conservative Democrats, and trying to deny that dynamic because you seem to think it’s impossible that conservatism is accepted at all in the United States because Bush = evil is just ridiculous.
Yes, it’s sarcasm. There may be a lot of it going around, but I’d have thought this one would be pretty straightforward to pick up.