I’m not sure anyone you’re speaking to right now voted for Bush. Meanwhile, I await your comment on this:
Of course he was weaseling. If by weaseling you mean bobbing and weaving and running circles around the monkeys. And in my opinion he weaseled without ever crossing the line. I’m not arguing what he did was not the equivilent of deceiving me and the public, telling me a lie, but I am arguing that the evidence they had and the lawyering they did was pretty crappy.
Other people think what he did amounted to perjury, and they are entitled to their opinion and I certainly see why they think that, but I sure as hell don’t agree.
But I also think that it matters. If a President consciously tells a lie under oath (or whatever the perjury elements are), he should be criminally prosecuted, certainly when he leaves office, even if the matter is minor or bullshit as the Jones case was. (A woman who has a third person in the room taking pictures while she is fucking a man and those pictures are in Penthouse is not offended by a man she has been following about due to a crush dropping his pants if in fact he did that at the time and place she said he did, when records reveal he was in another town giving a speech).
But I don’t think Starr had a perjury case. He had a weaseling adulterer case. That’s not a crime. Starr’s many ethical lapses were not a crime, and in my opinion more of an attack on our system of government than Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky.
When Starr (or his successor) had the opportunity in 2001 to charge Clinton with perjury and go up against a talented lawyer like Bill Bennett with unlimited resources and using the full panoply of rights (as Delay will do), he remembered how Julie Hiatt Steele spanked his ass red with limited resources, folded up his tent and went to Pepperdine to lament that maybe he had gone too far. (He did, no maybe.) (Yeah, it may have been his successor after 2001, I don’t remember, I just like the poetry of it.)
It offends me to see people proclaim the criminal guilt of a good man (albiet an adulterer) in such a bullshit charge in such a weak case.
I will admit that I am a bit less offended about the OJ and Robert Blake matters because at least the charge was not bullshit, it was murder. I’m angry at Martha Stewart for not being truthful and for even cooperating, but she did deserve to do some time, but I thought not that much.
I’m angry at the press for trying and convicting Michael Jackson of pedophilia when the only reliable evidence we have is that he in fact slept with boys and has porn. I think that in 1993 he didn’t rape that boy either, but was convinced to settle the case because sleeping with boys would look like pedophilia. (That said, a grown man sleeping with boys is a mind boogling stupid thing to do: so stupid it is beyond description, but not illegal.)
And I don’t mind Clinton jokes, or MJ jokes or OJ or Blake jokes.
Did you hear that Robert Blake has moved to Florida and is spending all his time playing golf and looking for the real murderers with OJ? Who would have thought they would both be looking in the right place?
I can’t do the quotes within quotes, but you do realize that is objectionable as speculation. She will not be allowed to testify as to what his thoughts were. Her state of mind is not important.
And I just don’t accept your interpretation of the definition. It was badly written to encompass what they were doing in 1998, and it still is today. Had they asked, did you stick your penis in her vagina, mouth or ass, and he said no, then they would have had him. But they didn’t. They used a legalized definition that didn’t cover what Clinton thought was going on.
I’m still not a court. Please give me another reasonable interpretation of why she had to bite her hand to stifle the noises she was making if she was not being pleasured. It seems to me you can’t bite your hand while giving head, so…
Without a doubt, it could be better written. Nonetheless, Clinton said he did not have contact with her genitals with intent to arouse or gratify her sexual desire. And yet there’s a pretty strong indication that he did that. While I wish I knew where the rest of Starr’s writing came from and I can say nothing good about the guy, you have provided no evidence that Starr fabricated the instances where Clinton got her off or touched her breasts. And in the links I provided, she confirms some of what he says in his summary of her testimony, so there’s at least that much reason to think it’s legit. If it’s legit - and you need to pony up and show that it’s not; insinuations about threatening witnesses are not even close to sufficient - then we know they had sexual relations under the court’s definition when Clinton said they didn’t. Got anything?
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. But do shut the door, it’s only 41 degrees C in here.
I ask a bunch of questions and get a reply to that. Good work. I suppose if I let morons wreck another political party, the country’s even more fucked.
You know this is what wring was talking about, right? I can’t tell if you understood that. Anyway, where is your evidence that Lewinsky actually didn’t testify that Clinton touched her breasts and get her off on a number of occasions?
First graph: I’m not clear on why she had to bite her hand. That’s why they lawyer needs to ask more questions. Besides, her state of mind isn’t something Clinton could have testified to or perjured himself about unless he was reporting an exclamation she made.
Second graph: A pretty strong indication isn’t really on the point and asking the question still hasn’t been done. This is all by inference. When Starr was investigating Clinton, he had the opportunity to ask direct questions. I seem to recall seeing Clinton testifying on videotape in the White House. I don’t know if that was grand jury testimony or the Jones depo testimony, but my recollection at the time was that it was Starr’s office, and again, they weren’t asking the question. The one one time they did come close, Clinton refused to answer and no one made any motion to a judge to require him to do so.
Yeah, I know you aren’t a court, and neither am I. If Clinton were to have had been charged after he left office he would have had that.
Instead, we have this BBQ Pit debate. And the standard isn’t whether I convince you or you convince me, but rather neutral judges, of which we have none. I’m arguing that since you are making criminal accusations, you need to meet a crimnal burden of proof. Nobody disputed that he got a blow job and tried to weasel his way out of it, what we are arguing about is whether his weaseling combined with the crappy questions and crappy evidence amounts to what a jury needs to convict or a prosecutor needs to charge. At least that’s the way I’m framing the issue, and I say it doesn’t.
But if you are trying to frame the issue that a fellow in the BBQ Pit discussing this is entitled to think what he wants, well, then I’ll agree with you that a fella is entitled to think what he wants.
But I strongly believe that you are saying that the evidence is better than two guys bsing over beer, and that you think it’s a slam dunk, no-brainer, court of law federal perjury conviction. I’d particularly say so if it were a D.C. jury, which I recall it would have been and there was much punditry (for what that’s worth) that was a reason the prosecutor did not proceed.
If I had been the prosecutor or the Jones lawyer, I would, with 20/20 hindsight, have asked: did you two have vaginal sex, did she fellate you, did you have anal sex with her? Based on what we know the prosecutor knew by the time of Clinton’s grand jury testimony, the prosecutor certainly knew of the bjs. The Jones lawyer probably knew from Tripp in 98. I would have asked, you would have asked. Any high school student would have asked. Instead we get the weasel’s invitational definition, and guess what? Pop goes the weasel.
There is a legal principle that if you don’t bring forward what should be your best evidence that it is inferred that it would not have been favorable Site Has Moved see instruction 203 (it took me an hour to find this!) “You may consider the ability of each party to provide evidence. If a party provided weaker evidence when it could have provided stronger evidence, you may distrust the weaker evidence.”
Having failed to ask a more direct and powerful question, there is a strong inference that they didn’t because had they, he would have told the truth. If you have any kind of unbiased jury, how are you going to say he denied having a BJ under oath when Bill Bennett (not an idiot like his brother Bob) argues in closing that you knew he had a BJ and didn’t ask him the question? The answer is that the jury is at best for the prosecutor, going to hang.
Ladies and gentlemen, yes, Bill Clinton was playing weasel games, just like the prosecutor is playing weasel games. But the People have the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, they knew of the BJ, and didn’t ask about the BJ because they wanted to play weasel games, had they asked, of course he would have told the truth, you are required to give him the benefit of that doubt. Is there any doubt it would have been better question to ask directly what you wanted to know. They didn’t because they are playing games.
Lewinsky didn’t testify except to a grand jury. I don’t have the burden of proof when I am defending Clinton, you do. Beyond a reasonable doubt. You may use Ms. Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony to impeach her credility at trial if she strays from it, you may not use it directly as evidence against my Client, Mr. Clinton (gee I think I’m gonna go to law school) because he did not have the right to cross-examine.
As to my portion of the testimony from Ms. Lewinsky that Clinton didn’t touch her breasts, I didn’t get a chance to cross-examine, and neither did Clinton’s real lawyer, Bill Bennett. He might very well have asked that.
Let’s take another tack. Suppose you get to trial and Clinton says: oh, yes, I said I understood your instruction, but it turns out I didn’t. I thought you were asking if I bf’d, os’d or fk’d her, it wasn’t clear, I was mistaken, you’re right, mea culpa, but why didn’t you ask me directly? You lose again.
Yeah, I got a bunch of windows open at once because I can’t figure out how to do the series quote things. I answer the important ones first and then the jokes later. My jokes come in and you’ve addressed more serious points. That and my misspellings must be really irritating. Can’t remember if misspellings is two s or three. Sigh.
As for rjung, no, I don’t get his point. And I don’t expect all dems to carry the torch for Clinton’s innocence (well, not guiltiness) because of all the propaganda in the past 7 years on the subject. I rehash this because people go around saying he was guilty of a crime, when he was not convicted or pardoned, or even charged. I remember at the time hoping for a charge so he could stompt it into the ground because he could.
I don’t get to go around saying Nixon was charged or found guilty of a felony, only that he was impeached for obstruction and resigned rather than face trial. Clinton faced his trial and won. When they could have had a non-politically elected jury, they blinked, turned and ran. That’s because the evidence of perjury sucked and it sucked because the definition left wholes big enough for Clinton to dance through. And he did.
Clinton surrendered his law license in what was effectively a plea bargain.
** wring**, not rjung and I’m female.
as an aside, I find it interesting to see the lengths we on the left seem to be willing to go to get the ‘loony lefts’ to see the error of their ways. can those on t’other side say the same?
Oooo. Looks like Bob Loblaw is going to give Scott Plaid a run for his money in the “every time I read his posts, I become more conservative” contest. If I was a Republican, I’d just love these guys.
And a good thing you don’t go around saying that Nixon was impeached, because you’d face even more scorn than is already heaped upon your richly deserving shoulders. Nixon resigned rather than be impeached. The House never voted any articles of impeachment. He resigned in order to prevent that from happening.
Returning briefly to the OP topic (you all remember that, don’t you?): There has been essentially no output from the echo chamber about Hutchison’s “technicalities” remark. Does anyone not think it was most likely a trial balloon for DeLay’s political (not criminal) defense, not (necessarily) a simple expression of a howling moral void at the core of the GOP? That there’s no way she’d have been turned loose on the talking-head scene without some preclearance of what she intended to say, or that we’d have been hearing about “technicalities” all week if it had had any resonance at all?
There are several ways to ask this question. Would a jury have convicted him? Very possibly not. As you noted above, we’re talking about a DC jury, and we’re talking about a prosecution which many viewed as mean-spirited and politically motivated.
But you’ve said something very different in the paragraph I quoted above… and what you say there is absolutely incorrect, as a matter of law.
*…whether his weaseling combined with the crappy questions and crappy evidence amounts to what a jury needs to convict or a prosecutor needs to charge…
[/quote]
A prosecutor needs probable cause to charge. That is a very weak standard. It merely means that there is evidence that the accused probably committed the act in question. There’s no question that, as a matter of law, Clinton’s conduct provides probable cause for the belief that perjury was committed.
Now - “what a jury needs to convict”. Again, I’m not arguing the point that a jury might NOT convict, out of sympathy, out of a genuine belief that the evidence did not convince beyond a reasonable doubt, or some other factors.
But a jury could, on the record presented, convict. The question you’ve raised is: as a matter of law, does the record sustain such a jury conviction? In other words, if Clinton had been convicted on the record as we have it now, would an appeal for insuffient evidence have any legs?
It would not. The jury is the trier o fact, and their factual determination will be upheld so long as there is support in the record for it. The jury would be entitled to credit Ms. Lewinsky’s testimony in its entirety, and resolve any conflicts in her favor. And if Ms. Lewinsky’s testimony is credited as being true, then Clinton lied EVEN BY THE “CRAPPY DEFINITIONS” HE WAS WORKING WITH.
Now, of course, her testimony was never subject to cross-examination. Perhaps she would have broken down on the stand, sobbing, and said that Ken Starr made her say all those lies. But that’s merely speculation on your part.
The bottom line is this: no one knows, for sure, what a jury would have done. AND THAT’S TRUE IN EVERY SINGLE CRIMINAL CASE. But in this case, the record is sufficient for a jury who heard all the evidence to return a verdict of guilty - as a matter of law.
Ah. See, I thought you asked for evidence, with cites, that Clinton lied, and that a bunch of people replied. Good thing you keep coming up with new requirements. You’ve got questions about her testimony? Do something with it. Everybody else has done all the work here. Two pages ago, you were insisting he never even said under oath that they didn’t get busy.
[quote=ElvisL1ves Returning briefly to the OP topic (you all remember that, don’t you?): There has been essentially no output from the echo chamber about Hutchison’s “technicalities” remark. Does anyone not think it was most likely a trial balloon for DeLay’s political (not criminal) defense, not (necessarily) a simple expression of a howling moral void at the core of the GOP?[/quote]
Anything’s possible. We’ll see what happens if and when the indictments come out.
Yep, I was incorrect, they had drawn up the articles and were getting ready to vote on them when he resigned.
Clinton lied, but … nobody died. Blowjob vs. treason, my friend. One is hardly important in the scheme of things, the other is vile beyond reproach.
Oye… Again with the treason crap. Must we go over the definition of treason yet again???
Nah. I understand that there is a legal definition of treason that will be very hard to meet in the Plamegate case. I also understand that there is a more widely understood, generic definition of treason: betrayal of one’s country, that Rove and Libby most definitely meet. It is that one I am referring to. I’m a big one for real-world stuff as opposed to lawyeristic dribbling.