Why does everyone focus on the sex part when the actual crime was perjury and the content of the lie immaterial?
Right, it was the PERJURY that got everybody so upset. Because our culture has such a long history of becoming outraged and focusing months of news headlines over issues of PERJURY. Yeah, I know most people I’ve ever spoken to about it considered “the content of the lie immaterial”. What they remembered most was the act of PERJURY, not the act of fellatio. Give it the fuck up. I can’t believe you can even make such a claim with a straight face.
Why, woodstockbirdybird, I’m surprised at you! Surely you know that our conservative counterparts are morally upstanding people!! Why I’m certain that if our current president committed such a heinous lie which compromised the trust of the American people, they’d be the very FIRST to… oh, wait…
Well, that was what the whole impeachment proceedings were about. The perjury.
You don’t get to lie under oath. He knew that. He should of either told them to stick it when they asked the question or just fessed up. Either would have won him points in my book. But not lying under oath.
Maybe I’m just a libertine or something, but I don’t give a fat baby’s ass that he lied under oath about a blowjob. If he’d lied under oath about something that affected me/my country/national security or had an impact on foreign relations or something, it might be different. But if I were in his position (heh), I’d have done the exact same thing. Be realistic: telling the American people you’ve got an intern bobbing on your cock (or telling them to stick it, which amounts to the same thing) is not going to be beneficial to anyone - I doubt he was interested in “winning points” from a few moralists in the Republican Party. That’s precisely the type of lie I think most reasonable (Dem and Rep) people would expect to be told, even if they won’t admit to hypothetically telling it themselves. THere are things you can call Clinton on: his handling of Rwanda especially comes to mind - but this whole “perjury” outrage just comes off like partisan sour grapes. Like I said, give it up.
Hi, I’m spooje. Lifelong democrat! Howya doing?
Well, Clinton could have done the honorable thing (relatively speaking) and refused to answer the question.
True. But that would have amounted to an admission of guilt in most peoples’s minds.
I’m not here to be a huge Clinton apologist. But that whole incident seems to me to have come about because of the machinations of doctrinaire right-wingers with a boner to bring the man down. To say that the impeachment proceedings were primarily about the perjury seems disingenuous to me.
He was already guilty in most people’s minds. Of getting a hummer, anyway. So refusing only wins him points, he loses nothing, IMO. I agree with you about the machinations. My problem with Clinton was that he walked right into their hands. He should have seen that one coming.
So you answered something I didn’t ask. I asked why people focused on the sex when the actual crime comitted was perjury.
Because at least for me, I wanted nothing to do with a President who lies under oath and encourages others to do the same. That is the legal reason he was impeached, the reason he faced censure, etc.
Yet when anyone on this board or in many other places discusses it, they completely leave out the fact that a felony was comitted and just start repeating ‘blowjob blowjob blowjob’ over and over again. Why?
Does it not matter if a sitting President commits a felony?
By the way, I’ve been a registered Democrat since I was 18.
Depends on whether the felony committed is of any actual possible consequence, IMO. In this case, as I said, I don’t give a shit. It’s what I would expect most people to do under oath when charged with adultery. Maybe I’m too much a fan of situational ethics, but I don’t see everything as black and white or every act of perjury as being of the same degree.
As for lying, and encouraging others to lie, give me a break. Surely you’ve read enough to know that every single president in our lifetimes are guilty of that, in many instances about things that were far more sinister and had much more far-reaching implications and consequences than a hummer. Unless you think the fact that he lied “under oath” (and surely no other sitting president or politician has been guilty of such a thing) is what makes it inexcusable. Which leads us right back to situational ethics.
As long as we’re all giving out our party affiliations as if it will add weight to our arguments, I’ll point out that I’m not a Democrat. Or a Republican, either.
Apparently it matters so little, we now elect them after they’ve already been charged and convicted of felonies. Yes. It should matter. But it should also matter that he was acquitted. To a lot of people, it doesn’t. It should matter that he and the republican congress accomplished a hell of a lot. That doesn’t. It should matter that our current president has lied so many times, in so many different ways over things so much more important to us…but that doesn’t either. What matters is spin. What matters is image. What matters is what you can make people think by appealling to their fear and prejudices. Because that’s how you win elections. Idealism is nice, but cynicism is a lot closer to reality.
I remain pissed off that Ken Starr spent $40 million in my taxpayer dollars just so he could dig up some partisan dirt on the President of the United States.
For that kind of money, if you’re gonna nail a President for perjury, it should be something more substantial than consentual sex… like, say, starting a fuckin’ war on false pretenses.
I’m not a fan of lying in any regard, but I tend to think that because lying under oath is a felony, and because a lawyer ought to know better, this was worse than a ‘No, your ass does not look fat in that.’
I also think it’s not because it was regarding adultery, but because it fucked up someone else’s day in court that it was not excusable.
Further I think that if there are people who have been put in jail for perjury, or fined for it, someone shouldn’t get away with it because he ‘only lied about sex’ or because he’s President.
He faced less punishment than the average citizen probably would have, it was a disappointing moment, and I still wouldn’t vote for him (which I did not in the 1996 election, either, and would not have in 1992 had I been elligible, because I don’t like his politics), but the crime is over, the punishment is over, and I see no use in frothing at the mouth about it.
The only thing I don’t like now is having my opinion that commiting perjury is wrong being mischaracterized into partisan hatred because of a blowjob and a cigar.
Situational ethics are not, necessarily, wrong, in my opinion. And I do expect better of a lawyer under oath in a deposition or in court than to commit perjury.
catsix, I’m willing to believe that you, personally, would be equally upset if it turns out that John Ashcroft lied under oath as you were about Bill Clinton’s perjury.
But given the near-total lack of reaction to the testimony of two FBI agents directly contradicting Ashcroft’s testimony under oath before the 9/11 Commission by the same right-wing noise machine that made such a big deal out of Clinton’s perjury, I would have to say that there are a lot of people out there, with a lot of money behind them, who do not share your scruples.
As for me, I do believe that - all other things being equal - lying under oath is much more serious than lying while not under oath, I also believe that the content and seriousness of the lie (under oath or not) must be accorded great weight.
And I also believe that there are situations that should be treated as the moral equivalent of being under oath. When our highest public officials go on prime-time television to address the nation about grave matters of war and peace, we have to be able to rely on their honesty and their seriousness, even though they don’t raise one hand and put the other on a Bible.
So when the President says we’re about to invade Iraq, because they’ve got WMDs that they could well give to terrorists at any time if we don’t invade - I regard that as the moral equivalent of perjury if he’s lying to me. Even without the 1,000 US and allied soldiers dead, which would also suffice to lend perjury-level seriousness to the lies, IMHO.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
Did Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and others also commit the moral equivalent of perjury? They also said that Iraq had WMDs, and that they constituted a grave threat to the US.
No, because they were relying on the information from the CIA, which we now know was colored by demands from the White House to produce a justification for war in Iraq no matter what. I don’t hold Bill, Hillary & Kerry responsible because they were deceived by George Bush. I do hold George Bush responsible for creating a climate for manufacturing acceptable intelligence within the CIA.
Why can’t Republicans ever take responsibility for their own actions, instead of blaming others?
I can’t speak for Republicans, but speaking for myself, I’d say that people who have oversight obligatons ought to, well, oversee. Frankly, were I a Democrat, I’d be ashamed to admit that my two brightest stars had been duped by the dimmest bulb in Washington.
If Bill Clinton had been going to take us to war over the WMDs, but had reason to believe that the intel books were cooked, absolutely.
If not, then no.
The war issue, and the weight of the President’s remarks to the nation, is what makes it a ‘grave matter of war and peace’, and having reason to believe the falsity of the information raises the issue of dishonesty generally, of which perjury is a subset.
Kerry and Hillary: not an issue - when’s the last time a Senator has taken this country to war?