# Top 11 known arrests/crimes from the family that was to restore dignity.. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 22, 2003, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828 "2003-10-22T02:27:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/21 "2003-10-22T15:43:23Z")
> [@](#): > > Do you not realize where this leaves the Clintons? Well, he does have an outstanding arrest warrant, and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but hey. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/22 "2003-10-22T15:55:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lieu \* > \*\*Bwhaaa! Fuck the proof or any simple explanations. Let’s run rampant with the accusations! > > Do you not realize where this leaves the Clintons? \*\* Oh, come on, if we didn’t challenge the Bushes on their “family values” and morality line, people might assume they weren’t a bunch of big-ass hypocritical liars. Which, of course, they are. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/23 "2003-10-22T16:03:36Z")
This is the best they could come up with? A 27 year old DUI (at a time when DUI wasn’t as stigmatized as it is today), stealing a Christmas tree and a bunch of stuff that Bush has no control over? The daughters drink underage? Like virtually every other teen in America? His brother’s family is dysfunctional? So? I don’t particularly like the guy, but I don’t find this piece of mud slinging particularly compelling. Show me convictions for corruption, fraud, influence peddling, or something else that would make someone unfit to be chief executive. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/24 "2003-10-22T16:48:18Z")
Yeah. Like Clinton, the widely-noted and much-accomplished philanderer, never spoke glowingly of “traditional family values.” He’s every bit as hypocritical as you’ve made Bush out to be on that subject. Perhaps it’s best you try another tack. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to browbeat Bush. I don’t think this is one of 'em. ---
**Author:** ![Angel\_Heart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@Angel\_Heart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angel_Heart)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/25 "2003-10-22T17:12:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by leatherheather \* > \*\*I dare anyone to find a politician who doesn’t have a soiled background. I won’t hold my breath. \*\* True. Has anyone here read Fall From Grace? It covers political scandals from the cross-dressing colonial governor of New York to the Iran-Contra Affair (it was written in 1991 so it doesn’t cover the Clinton scandals, obviously). It has all sorts of stuff like James Buchanan possibly being the first gay president, the disputed election of 1877, the Adamses as the 18th and 19th century version of the Kennedys, Grover Cleveland’s illegitamate child. ---
**Author:** ![Kaspar\_Hauser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b3f665/32.png) [@Kaspar\_Hauser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaspar_Hauser)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/26 "2003-10-22T17:18:14Z")
Can’t they both be full of shit? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/27 "2003-10-22T19:03:07Z")
**Finagle** , let me remind you of the saga of [brother Neil Bush and Silverado Savings and Loan](http://www.rationalrevolution.net/bush_family_and_the_s.htm). Only $1,600,000,000 in taxpayer money went to settle that case alone. As for the significance of DUI’s, there are a lot of people in _prison_ right now for drunken driving. In my state, a third lifetime DUI, no matter how much time passes between them, brings an automatic six month sentence without parole. Their DUI’s do, also, make Bush and Cheney the first convicted criminals ever to reach the White House. **UncleBeer** , if you have any cites for Clinton speaking of “traditional family values” in the way you suggest, let’s have 'em, pardner. Or else that’s just another example of a stretch to create a moral equivalency where there is none, just to help you feel better. Doesn’t work here, of course. I’m wryly amused by the argument that Laura Bush didn’t do anything wrong because there weren’t actually any criminal charges filed. That makes her exactly as pure as the Clintons, ya know? But the guy is still dead. She did kill him. One might wonder if a poor black guy who did the same thing would have been let off the same way. **leatherheather** , you’re right about no politician being truly above reproach. But few have been so public about proclaiming themselves to be anyway, and few have had so compliant a media as to let that claim stand. It’s that hypocrisy, by Bush himself as well as by his reflexive apologists, that is the topic here, not his wrongdoings or his family’s. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/28 "2003-10-22T19:43:35Z")
> [@](#): > > Their DUI’s do, also, make Bush and Cheney the first convicted criminals ever to reach the White House. Cite? Not saying this is wrong, but I would have thought that many other presidents/VPs have had past criminal offenses that were minor and/or from their youth. Either way, as others have said, there are much more relevant issues to raise about the Bush administration. These are pretty silly IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/29 "2003-10-22T20:38:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kaspar Hauser \* > \*\*Can’t they both be full of shit? \*\* Definitely. Drunk driver hypocrite George W. Bush has his Dick Cheney, and impeached disbarred liar William J. Clinton had his Henry Cisneros. Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/30 "2003-10-22T22:06:42Z")
Sure. How 'bout Clinton’s nomination acceptance speech at the '96 Democratic national convention? Here’s one analysis: [http://dm.olemiss.edu/archives/96/9608/960830/news.html](http://dm.olemiss.edu/archives/96/9608/960830/news.html) > [@](#): > > His speech contained topics including welfare, unemployment and family values. Here’s a 1994 article from _The Atlantic_. It’s an analysis of another Clinton speech. [http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/jfnpr/jf41110.htm](http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/jfnpr/jf41110.htm) > [@](#): > > But the president also played defense on values, which really means admitting his party’s negligence since the 1960s on issues of family, morality, individual responsibility. Many people obviously hate the idea that Bill Clinton would even dare speak about “duty” or “family values.” But during the campaign such themes were crucial to his identity as a “New Democrat” and to his party’s attempt to escape its ruinous image of permissiveness. Here’s part of the lead-in to a 1994 _Time_ magazine article (you gotta buy the thing from their archives if you wanna read it all) [http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/from\_redirect/0,10987,1101941017-163064,00.html](http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/from_redirect/0,10987,1101941017-163064,00.html) > [@](#): > > Election time, and the " family values" season is upon us again, kicked off right after football with speeches by that unlikely duo of Bill Clinton and Dan Quayle. Both praised family values and, sportingly, each other – for praising family values. Here’s a line from yet another 1994 article - this one from the University of Tennessee’s _Daily Beacon_. > **[utdailybeacon.com | The editorially independent student newspaper at the...](https://www.utdailybeacon.com/)** > > The Daily Beacon is the campus newspaper serving the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, campus and surrounding community. The paper is editorially independent and is entirely student written, produced and managed. > [@](#): > > Events like this make it hard to query with the proclamation of politicians and pundits that American society has deviated, at least somewhat, from what has been coined as “traditional family values.” It has become so apparent that polar opposites- Bill Clinton and Dan Quayle two weeks ago, in the span of two days, both gave a speeches on the need to return to traditional family values. Another, September 12, 1992: [http://www.tyndallreport.com/cc9237.html](http://www.tyndallreport.com/cc9237.html) > [@](#): > > On Bill Clinton’s centerpiece theme, George Bush presented his Agenda for American Renewal, a defense of Republican small-government low-tax free-trade economics. “It is at least an agenda for after the election,” needled CBS’s Susan Spencer, “should he need it.” ABC’s Chris Bury reported that Clinton “portrayed himself as a model of tolerance on Family Values” at Notre Dame University. _The American Prospect - Online_, 2002 > [@](#): > > Clinton '92 is often remembered as a centrist campaign. It wasn’t entirely. It was a combination of populist family-values progressivism (back when the Democratic Leadership Council and its sister organization, the Progressive Policy Institute, were still salons of ideas) Or ya know, just see any Clinton speech written by Dick Morris. He’s the guy who co-opted Qualye’s “family values” malarkey for Clinton’s use. So, _stretch **this** _, pardner. > [@](#): > > It’s that hypocrisy, by Bush himself as well as by his reflexive apologists, that is the topic here, not his wrongdoings or his family’s. Haven’t read the OP, have ya? The whole thing is a list of his and his “family’s” wrongdoings. Nary a word about hypocrisy. ---
**Author:** ![leander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bcef8e/32.png) [@leander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leander)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/31 "2003-10-22T22:40:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by UncleBeer \* > Haven’t read the OP, have ya? The whole thing is a list of his and his “family’s” wrongdoings. Nary a word about hypocrisy. > [@](#): > > Top 11 known arrests/crimes by the family who would **restore honor and dignity** to the White House [bolding mine] So, _nary **this** _, pardner. No, no, no…_word **this** _, pardner. No, no, no…Oh, never mind. ---
**Author:** ![cheddarsnax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cheddarsnax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cheddarsnax)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/32 "2003-10-22T23:42:32Z")
Bush might be bad, but at least he never had anyone run down by a train. ---
**Author:** ![Jello](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@Jello](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jello)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/33 "2003-10-22T23:56:10Z")
I’m just nitpicking, but I’ve always heard he stole a Christmas wreath (I think from Paul Begala’s _Is Our Children Learning?_), not an entire tree. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/34 "2003-10-22T23:58:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ElvisL1ves \* > \*\ ***Finagle** , let me remind you of the saga of [brother Neil Bush and Silverado Savings and Loan](http://www.rationalrevolution.net/bush_family_and_the_s.htm). Only $1,600,000,000 in taxpayer money went to settle that case alone. \*\* Unless you have some evidence to show that George W. Bush was involved or knew about this, then you have to explain to me why it’s of interest in a discussion of our current President. Otherwise, it’s just cheap political mudslinging. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/35 "2003-10-23T00:32:35Z")
Yeah, Dubya’s family wasn’t at all involved in his successful theft of the Presidency. The fact that he’s a previous President’s son and his brother was governor of the key state in the election was a big, fat coincidence. Neil Bush … George probably wouldn’t recognize him nowadays … ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/36 "2003-10-23T00:46:31Z")
the bush involvement in the savings & loan scandal is more important than any DWI as far as im concerned [http://www.rationalrevolution.net/bush\_family\_and\_the\_s.htm](http://www.rationalrevolution.net/bush_family_and_the_s.htm) ---
**Author:** ![thatDDperson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9de0a6/32.png) [@thatDDperson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thatDDperson)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/37 "2003-10-23T07:21:45Z")
C’mon folks, they went after Clinton by dragging a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park. With GWB, you’d just need to drag a coke spoon through a country club. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/38 "2003-10-23T07:59:57Z")
Wow, people have spots on their past. And family members have spots too! I’m shocked. ---
**Author:** ![1kBR\_Kid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/dc4da7/32.png) [@1kBR\_Kid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1kBR_Kid)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/39 "2003-10-23T10:46:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kaspar Hauser \* > \*\*Can’t they both be full of shit? \*\* No. That goes against Doctrine. From the first page of the Liberal Doctrine manual: “…damning evidence, no matter how trivial, petty, or preposterous” Coincidentally, that same line is in the manual of Conservative Doctrine. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828/40 "2003-10-23T12:43:47Z")
Now you know how WE felt when the conservatives were beating up on Clinton for a bunch of mostly made-up stuff. Now, shut up and take your lumps. You’ve EARNED every last one of 'em. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-11-known-arrests-crimes-from-the-family-that-was-to-restore-dignity/208828.md?page=3)