There’s a huge difference in materiality there. Battalino lied about a sexual relationship that was at the center of the case. The question posed to Clinton was irrelavant to the Paula Jones complaint.
You know damn well that, as a rule, people don’t go to jail for prevaricating about all the tangential, trivial, chickenshit fishing that goes on in civil depositions.
Answer Airman’s question a little more honestly, Counsellor. Would he have gone to prison for doing the same thing Clinton did? Really? The state goes after nobodies for being overly technical with unrelated sex questions during civil depositions? I don’t think so.
One man’s fishing is another man’s legitimate discovery process. Which is why witnessess are not allowed to decide for themselves before the fact what is or is not material, and which is why perjury should be prosecuted even if the matters inquired about later turn out to be inconsequential to the case at hand.
Seriously. Suppose for the moment that the facts in the instance of the Lewisnky affair had more closely paralleled Jones’ allegations. Putting aside your distaste for Jones’ case, aren’t Jones’ attorneys entitled to discover that? Isn’t any civil plaintiff entitled to truth in the discovery process?
Replace Bubba with your most hated CEO if it helps you focus on your answer. This point isn’t tied inexorably to Clinton – it’s a fundamental point about the fairness of the litigation process.
What cops and prosecutors elect to do in the discretion held by their office is irrelevant as to what the actual law is. A lot of people run stop signs and get away with it too; that fact is not a defense if you get busted for rolling on through.
It is irrelevant to me if it was proveable in court, or not.
Well, I’ll add another catagory to my list then. He is either:
a)ignorant of something so obvious that not knowing it is paramount to imbicility. Really, who needs a guide as to what the definition of sex is?
b)lying.
c) a weasel.
I have no problem adding the third option. None of which are traits worthy of someone holding the position of President.
I wouldn’t disagree with this at all. Yes, in the grand scope of things this is minor, but just because other people do things worse than you do shouldn’t give you a pass.
The context of my question was a response to Airman’s claim that he would have gone to jail for doing the same thing that Clinton did, My answer was intended to express disbelief that, as a rule, ordinary people do, in fact, go to jail for doing what Clinton did. My characterization of “what Clinton did” - i.e. that he “lied about a blow job during a civil deposition” was overly truncated in that I left out the information that the blow job question was tangential and immaterial to the plaintiff’s case.
[quote]
One man’s fishing is another man’s legitimate discovery process. Which is why witnessess are not allowed to decide for themselves before the fact what is or is not material, and which is why perjury should be prosecuted even if the matters inquired about later turn out to be inconsequential to the case at hand.[/question]
You’re expressing a personal opinion here, not stating the law as it actually stands in either writing or practice. As a matter of written law, materiality is a requirement for an untruthful statement under oath to be perjury. You may not like that condition but the question of what Dewey Cheatem Undhow would like the law to be is of no consequence to establishing whether Bill Clinton committed a criminal act or as to whether Airman Doors would be likely to to serve time for committing the same offense.
And whatever the technicality of the law as it is written, as a matter of practice, defendants are seldom prosecuted for lying about immaterial matters in civil depositions. Yes, materiality is a matter for the jury to decide, but prosecutors have to make the decision about whether a jury is likely to make that finding and I feel confident in saying the case would be rather slim in this instance. Speculating that a jury might have found materiality is not, in itself, an argument for materiality.
They’re entitled to ask whatever they want and the defendant is entitled to risk perjury charges by dissembling on what he perceives to be immaterial personal questions. But it isn’t perjury unless a jury says it was material. The plaintiff’s attorneys are aware that materiality is a requirement to sustain a perjury charge and accordingly, they should restrict their questions to matters which they are confident are material to their case.
The plaintiff is legally entitled to honest answers only insofar as those answers are material to their case. Essentially that is what the law amiunts to. It is not automatically illegal to lie under oath. It is only illegal to attempt to alter the outcome of the case by lying under oath. It’s a subtle distinction, perhaps, but a tangible one, nonetheless. If a dishonest answer under oath cannot reasonably be exected to affect the outcome of the case, it isn’t perjury. For example, if a witness lies about her age on the witness stand while testifying about the man who carjacked her minivan, it would not amount to an attempt to alter the outcome of the case and would not be perjurous (although, a jury would still have the prerogative of finding that the witness was not credible if the subterfuge was exposed somehow).
And that goes to the heart of my response to Airman. Regardless of what the laws actually are, as a matter of practice it is very unlikely that an ordinary citizen would have been criminally prosecuted or received prison time for doing the same thing Clinton did in the PJ deposition.
Especially when it’s not even a slam dunk that a prosecutor could prove that the defendant intended his answer to be dishonest.
Your anser was technically truthful to my badly worded question but it wasn’t really an answer to the broader question of whether someone who was not the President of the United States would have gone to prison under the same circumstances.
In that case, I have no idea what your point is.
How about d) an intelligent enough man not to let himself get sandbagged by a couple of weasels who, rather than actually trying to build a case for their client, were more concerned about shaping their deposition to serve the motives of an unrelated and completely partisan federal investigation which, after several years and millions of tax dollars sent failing on every other front to find wrongdoing by a president whose rightful democratic election was intolerable to them, resorted to setting a sleazy perjury trap about whether he might have cheated on his wife?
I like the fourth option because it happens to be the correct one.
I will also offer, once again, the point that Clinton’s answer was technically truthful as to the definition of sex that he was given.
Yes it should. Some things are important. Some things aren’t. If we don’t pass on the chickenshit, we’ll never be able to function.
An intelligent man wouldn’t have cheated on his wife if he was in that sort of position where having it found out would be a major issue. What does it matter what the motives of the people asking the question are? If you are obligated to answer then you answer truthfully. Just because they are weasels doesn’t mean you sink to their level. I can live with the consequences of my actions, it appears he was afraid of the consequences of his.
That is a matter of opinion. The classification of a blowjob isn’t.
Whatever, Dude. I don’t need a classification of what sex is to know what sex is. Someone touching my winky to get me off is sex, period.
[/UOTE]Yes it should. Some things are important. Some things aren’t. If we don’t pass on the chickenshit, we’ll never be able to function.
[/QUOTE]
While minor, I don’t think it is chickenshit. It goes to the character of the person who is in charge of the most powerful nation on the planet. If this was something that happened years ago when he was young and irresponsible, yeah it is chickenshit and not worth even talking about. As it happened while he was in office, he showed a supreme lapse of judgement in his actions. The question arises what other lapses was he making at the time that could have had catastrophic consequences?
This is why I question his ability to do his job and be president.
He didn’t do anything wrong. It’s a free country. We’re allowed to get blow jobs if we want. Why should there be “consequsences” for consenusal sex? His arrangements with his wife are no business of mine.
Non-sequitur, but whatever.
Clinton wasn’t asked if he “had sex” with Lewinsky, he was only asked if he had touched her, “genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks…with an intent to arouse or gratify” her “sexual desire.” There is nothing in that question about receiving, only giving. So his answer was truthful. They failed to ask him if she had touched “winky.” That’s their bad, not his. His answer was not a lie, neither was he obligated to volunteer information which had not been solicited.
You are entitkles to believe this. Personally, I think the issue was chickenshit and that neither personal character nor professional ability are in any way hindered by the enjoyment of blow jobs.
I can’t disagree with the latter part of this regarding the enjoyment of BJ’s. But, I can’t help thinking that someone in a position of incredible power and influence having an affair with a young employee of theirs is only chickenshit and not a major lapse in judgement.
We knew he was a horndog when we elected him. We still knew it when we re-elected him. The sore losers tried to overturn the results using that as an excuse, with some contrived legalistic mumbo-jumbo as cover.
Democracy matters, fellas. The Nixon impeachment was an effort to protect it. The Clinton impeachment was an attempt to overturn it. See the difference yet?
You’re talking to people who would LOVE to see the Bushes turn the U.S. into a monarchy. I’ve come to the conclusion that conservatives don’t really GET democracy. Oh, it’s a fine thing and all, they say, but then sometimes liberals win elections, and we can’t have that. Hence the theft of the 2000 election.
You’re full of crap. I don’t even like Bush and I understand democracy quite well. Clinton was democratically brought up on charges and democratically acquitted. That doesn’t make him any less of a liar and a scumbag.
And talk about sour grapes! The 2000 election? Boy, we’re just hitting all the whining points on both sides with this thread, aren’t we?
Do people ever get busted for rolling through stop signs?
Can you give me an example of anyone who has gotten prison time for committing perjury in circumstances relatively similar to Clinton’s (i.e., lying–I’ll stipulate that–about a matter that has no bearing on a civil case)?
Airman seems neither up to the challenge or willing to admit his mistake, but maybe you can show me someone who saw prison walls for telling a similar lie.
Actually, I’ve decided that this is like trying to teach a pig to sing. You said you wanted a cite where someone got sent to jail for perjury in a civil case. Fine, you got that. But that wasn’t good enough because it wasn’t the exact same circumstances. If I found one with the exact same circumstances you would say that it was unjustified and incorrect.
There’s no point in going any further, and since I don’t care whether you defend that scumbag or not I’m done here.
More i think about it, the more disgusted I am with Airman here. He was given a challenge–admittedly vague (I shoulda started by defining the word “relevant”), but certainly one that he could’ve asked for clarification on, and certainly not the challenge that he’s falsely claiming now. I soon clarified the challenge for him; rather than admit he can’t meet it, he’s resorted to lying about what I said.
Hang on here. Isn’t this same thing is what Clinton used to weasel out of the sex question? Clinton could have asked for clarification, too. Geez. Goose-Gander, Pot-kettle, what have you. Give one a pass then everyone gets it, sorry. It seems his assertion that there are different rules for different people holds out after all.
I don’t think you’re following the thread here. I’m making no claims about whether what Clinton said was weaselly; I’m only calling bullshit on Airman’s claim that if he’d done what Clinton did, he’d be in jail. Focus, man, focus!