I have been using illustrative examples because reasoning is not penetrating your plodding intellect. You keep repeating “the law, the law, the law.” So here we go again. And this is the last time I am going to try to explain it. And yes, I am going to use an example.
The independent counsel was legally appointed. Unpredecented, but legal. There was a real concern that the president had been involved in crooked real estate transactions back in Arkansas. Perhaps the IC attacked him with undue vehemence. Nevertheless it was still entirely legal.
The IC did not have carte blanche to uncover whatever dirt it could about the president. His personal life was not being vetted. If the IRS is auditing your records, it does not send private investigators to test your marital fidelity. Sure, you may be unfaithful to your wife. But that doesn’t mean that you are cheating on your taxes.
So the IC tried to pin Bill’s blowjob to Whitewater. And guess what? It failed. So all have left is to string Clinton out on testimony improperly acquired. Furthermore, the crime is utterly victimless. Finally, anyone who says that Clinton got away with lying if he doesn’t face criminal prosecution is perhaps too literal to be living on this planet. The question is not so simple as “did the president break the law,” but “what right did the IC have to set the president up in an unrelated issue?” If the tree is poisoned, so is the fruit.
Maybe I missed this little fact among all of the moaning and whining about actually being held accountable for breaking the law, but one thing stands out in the story. This is not from the link provided, but it is from the CNN.com website.
You may be hacked off that people are still pursuing this, but don’t assume that there is any political gamesmanship going on. I’d put even money on the leak coming from a Democratic source just to try and garner either sympathy for Clinton (and transferring it to Gore) or to make us nasty, evil Republicans appear even more nasty and evil.
I’ve got to agree with the Democrat-leaks-news theory emerging here. I wouldn’t put it past them to do it to make Clinton/Gore look good. Also, the only way to stop the Republicans from looking even worse, would be to stop the proceedings and drop charges, which would make the Democrats the BIG winner and Republicans look like bigger idiots.
Interestingly enough, I found out that the democrats knew about McCain’s cancer two weeks ago, in enough time to leak it right during the Republican convention. For their own reasons, whether good or bad I do not know, they didn’t.
No numb nuts. Your company can not send you to jail from the results of your review. They have to allow the courts to deal with that aspect.
But, during an impeachment trial, the Senate has the power to PUNISH the President. In addition to removeing him from office, they can send him to jail. Why do you think the Chief Justice had to preside?
Maeglin, I understand your frustratio with this whole deal, and I too have grown tired of the endless grand juries and trials, and bull shit.
But since you’ve taken the side of Righteousness (:rollseyes:) and decided to defend the good and honarable Bill Clinton against the illegal independant counsel, please tell me what you think of the record number of Executive Orders Bill has used to get his way - ie go around the Congress, and therefore the representatives of the voters. This is about as nasty aaa thing one can do, in order to just get what he wants. Now if you keep stating that the Independant Counsel is ‘just plain wrong’, I can tell you that there are planty of opinions the other way, plenty of those who think Bill is just plain wrong, and has no business running amok, all over the constitution.
i do. nothing helps democrats look good more than the bullshit charges and redneck conspiracies republicans keep dredging up and choking on. clinton getting acquitted was like a heimlich manuever for the gop and now this ray idiot is about to take another big chomp of gristle.
hmmm. that’s not much clearer than the quote, but suddenly i’m in the mood for a steak.
I dunno about that. Sure, Clinton enjoyed massively high approval ratings during the investigation…but this whole nonsense has turned both parties into a bunch of bible-thumping, sanctimonious assholes. As if this country weren’t puritanical enough.
Don’t mistake my ire at the independent counsel for a blanket defense of Bill Clinton. And I have done plenty more than say that the IC is “just plain wrong.” If you want to hold Clinton accountable for his executive orders, then by all means go ahead. I may like their results if they suit my own agenda, namely undermining a backwards republican legislature on social issues that I consider important, but I completely agree that they can be utterly totalitarian. If a president was using them to force an agenda more contrary to mine, I would be screaming bloody murder.
I don’t believe that anyone should run amok all over the Constitution. It is pretty clear to me that both parties are magnificently guilty. If you want to discuss the specifics of this issue, I would be happy to participate in such a thread.
Maeglin, fair enough. Please continue with previous Independant Counsel bashing. (BTW, I also think they expande the thing waaaaayyyyy beyond the original scope).
NO. The senate had the power to remove Clinton (a/k/a The AntiChrist, a/k/a The Spawn of Nyarlathotep) from office, but it did not have power to punish him. The purpose of impeachment is not to punish the officeholder, but to protect the country. The constitution allows the Senate to remove the president or judge from office, but that’s it. You could look it up.
However, the president could concievably be indicted for an ordinary crime by any prosecutor in the country, and could concievably be sent to jail. But a prosecutor…even an independent prosecutor…cannot send Clinton to jail. Only a judge can do that. But that has nothing to do with impeachment, which is merely firing the president, not a criminal proceeding.
An impeachment is not double jeopardy for the reasons Lemur866 already described–it is not a criminal proceeding as such. It is the mechanism by which an executive or judicial officer may be fired, and that’s it. This is all made completely clear by the Constitution, Article I, Section 3, Paragraph 7:
In other words, Revedge, John Corrado’s comparison–for which you refered to him as “numb nuts”–was completely correct. You obviously have no clue about what you are attempting to discuss…which demonstrates who the real"numb nuts" is here.
As for why the Chief Justice presides at impeachment trials of presidents, the answer is because the Constitution says so (in the paragraph before the one cited). It obviously has nothing to do with criminal punishments. My guess (and it’s only a guess) is that it was a protection for the president, since the regular presideing officer of the Senate is the vice president. Under the original rules the vice president could be (and was, once) the losing candidate for president, and allowing him to preside over the possible removal of the man who defeated him could have been seen as inviting political revenge. (Since the 12th Amendment in 1804, the problem would be just the opposite–the VP is the president’s political ally.)
Well, Lemur866 pretty much made my argument against Revedge, though I probably would have been much more condescending and insulting.
As for Maeglin…
And it’s pretty hard to find evidence when the key players (like Jim McDougal) are willing to sit in jail in contempt rather than admit any evidence which might point at the President.
Huh. I can’t see where I ever said that Lewinsky threatened to go public.
Except that Vernon Jordan had gotten Jim McDougal a job shortly after the Whitewater probe began. Making a pattern that when Jordan offered someone a job, it was from Clinton in exchange for keeping their mouth shut about ‘their little secret’; in McDougal’s case, Whitewater; in Lewinsky’s case, their affair.
Bullshit. The reason for involving Lewinsky was because Starr hoped that he could show the grand jury a pattern that Clinton followed, and therefore the grand jury could walk to the conclusion that Clinton was trying to cover his tracks in the Whitewater matter. However, this process was interrupted by Clinton getting on the stand and brazenly lying about his relations with Lewinsky; Starr realized that his somewhat tenuous evidence against Clinton in Whitewater was nothing compared to the obvious perjury by Clinton regarding Lewinsky, and so decided to follow up that.
As far as the ‘implication is that if he is guilty of sexual improprieties, then he is guilty of nonsexual ones as well’, I’m sure Starr thought that would go over brilliantly with the grand jury or the Senate, both of whom were the ones who would make the final decision. (That’s, I say, that’s sarcasm, son.)
Besides, if anyone was throwing shit, it was Clinton and his aides. Did you hear Sidney Blumenthal stand outside of the grand jury and completely fabricate for reporters what he had been asked about? Not a single thing he said in his press conference about his testimony was true; it was all lies designed to make Starr look like a vindictive bastard. Apparently, you’ve bought that argument.
Funny. Sounds like you’re arguing that Clinton should have been impeached in the first place. People do go to jail for perjury. The fact that Clinton didn’t get removed from office is pure partisanship on the part of the Democrats, who felt that they could get more mileage out of portraying the Republicans as “harsh” and “moralistic” than they could out of actually doing the right thing.
Damn straight, it’s victimless. Lord knows that none of us expected to trust Clinton. Lord knows we’ve learned that when the President says something, generally the exact opposite is true. Lord knows that we don’t expect the President to ensure that the laws are enforced. We’ve certainly come through this with the same respect for the Presidency and Clinton that we had going in.
Finally:
Let me make sure I’m interpreting this correctly. Because what it looks like to me is that you’re trying to hold this up as evidence that the Democrats do the right thing regarding events within the other party and leaking information, while Republicans do the wrong thing. If I’m misinterpreting your statement, ignore my next paragraph, but please give me an explanation of what the hell this has to do with anything then.
Now, if that’s what you’re trying to imply, then fuck off, you shithead. You still haven’t addressed why Ray- who is an Independent after being a Democrat for over 30 years- would make such a leak in order to make the Democrats look bad. You haven’t provided any proof whatsoever that this wasn’t anything other than the Democrats trying to smear themselves in the hopes that the backlash would hurt the Republicans. And as far as the news of McCain- how the hell does that make any difference? Do you really think the news of McCain having cancer would have made people look differently at the Republicans and Bush? Hell, if anything, it would have made some people much happier that Bush was the nominee, since Bush wouldn’t be the one with possible major medical problems! So if your point is trying to say that the Democrats are somehow more ‘noble’ than the Republicans, you can stick that up your ass sideways, because you haven’t proved word one of that.
But again, if that wasn’t your interpretation, then I withdraw the previous paragraph.
Sorry, I’ll just tuck my tail between my legs and wimper off in to the sunset.
Then I don’t understand why I read that some Rpublican Represenitives were put out by Tom Delay for pusing the Impeachment. They were caliming that it would jepordize future prosecutions. (It was Time magazine where I read this, but I don’t have a cite.)
Sure thing. I like to do my part to make sure Pit threads don’t get exiled to Great Debates–be a real stain on the honor of everyone involved if that happened.
Revedge said:
I have no idea where that would come from, but I’ll note that neither Timenor US Representatives are necessarily the best sources to rely on for Constitutional law.
And, of course, it now comes out that the actual leak was from one of the oversight panel judges, (the one who has been most favorable to Clinton, to boot).
Ray can now go back about his business in private, but he is now claiming that the knowledge of the existence of the grand jury will impede its work. (Just when I was about to give him the benefit of the doubt. . . . )
Yes, that’s right. A Democrat-appointed judge is the source of the leak. Inadvertant he says.
I’m waitng for the round of apologies due Robert Ray, especially from the Clinton spokesman who blamed Republicans and said they “stank to high heaven” because of the leak.
Yeah, right; that’ll happen.
Lots of nasty insinuations from a lot of people over this, some even on this thread. If something bad comes out against Clinton, well, it must be those nasty Republicans, you know. I wish I had time to cut and paste the quotes from above, and from the papers over the last couple of days, but I’m on my way out of town and just don’t have the time.
I’m sure Ray was just as put out over the leak as most others. This can’t do anything but hurt his case.
<sigh> Guess no one remembers 1998, when the Republicans were losing seats all over the country, and somber faced old farts addressed the nation after the election with hat in hand saying “OK, the people have spoken…We’re sorry…We’re listening…No more Clinton bashing…”
