How about lying under oath in order to protect yourself from charges of sexual harassment?
Marc
A FEDERAL judge? I thought it was the Bar assoc. You can be disbarred without ever commiting any crimes, you know. Anyway, he had a trial for perjury, and got off. He skimmed the surface of the law, re perjury, and came as close to it, without actually doing it as possible. Remember, “perjury” is not just lying. It has to be: 1. Under oath. 2. About a material matter 3.Knowingly 4.Deliberately. The prez had JUST enuf wiggle room in those clauses to get out of it.
Personaly, I don’t think “perjury” was a “High Crime and Misdomeaner”, and thats gonna come back to them and bite them on the ass.
As far as “lying under oath” in the Civil trial, he had 2 outs. 1. Was it material? 2. And, was it “sexual intercourse”? In a Civil trial, it is an adversarial forum, you are under NO responsibility to volunteer anything. You may ask how the opposition defines something, and even if their definition does not include stuff that “a reasonable man” would include, you can take advantage of the loophole. The Plaintiff defined “sexual intercourse” in a way that did not include what Clinton did. Either the Plaintiffs attorney was dim, or they were setting Clinton up. I think they were setting him up. Clinton was too arrogant, and should have refused to answer on the grounds it was “not material”, instead of going for the loophole.
Danielinthewolvesden:
I believe he’s referring to Judge Susan Webber Wright’s contempt citation, in which she explicitly states that the president’s testimony “may have been material,” and was certainly never ruled immaterial. Granted, there’s that “may have been,” (since the case was settled without a trial, we’ll never know unless the new Independent Counsel decides to charge Clinton with perjury after he leaves office) but the president’s lawyers and press proxies, who reiterated over and over that it definitely wasn’t were (surprise!) lying.
Well, it’s certainly a felony, which is a stronger class of crime than a misdemeanor. In addition, it should be noted that the phrase “High Crime,” which was borrowed (like much of American law) from English common law, referred not to the “height” of the crime, but to that of the accused criminal, i.e., “the Crime of one in a High position.”
Not according to the Starr Report. Or have we forgotten that the reason it was so graphic was not because he was interested in getting into the amatuer erotica business, but because it was just that point - perjury, suborning perjury and covering up the perjury - that Starr was trying to prove.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Before we go around painting Starr as loyal and faithfull civil servant, perhaps we should consider that he, like most other politicians, had a vested interest. He saw a chance to grab his 15 minutes of fame and he grasped the brass ring. He did not perform a service for anyone but himself and in the end he wound up looking like a small time pornographer… and rightly so.
Clinton, though obviously an adulterer, was not elected to be a poster child for American Values (as if such a thing actually exists!). He was elected on his political platform not his personal extra-marital exploits. I think America should grow up and quit whining about how this politician or that athelete is a poor roll model for the rest of america. If americans need to have roll models then they should lobby their gov’t to establish “National Roll Model” running mates during their elections. This way, the country would get a President, a VP and an NRM after each election. Then guys like Starr can delve as deeply into the NRM’s bedroom as they like without negatively impacting the running of the country with their thinly veiled voyuristic tendencies.
For chirst sake, Clinton did not invent adultery, he is not the first person to participate in it, nor the last. He’s also not the first person to lie about it either.
An anecdote if you don’t mind…
An 80 year old southern bell of some means was asked if Clinton should be impeached for lying about his dalliances. “Absolutely not”, she replied, “the President is a gentleman.”
“How can you say that madam?”, she was asked, “the President had an extra-marital affair in the White house and then proceeded to lie about it!”
The older woman answered. “A gentleman will always lie to protect a woman’s reputation.”
In other words, at least in her eyes, Clinton did the right thing by lying. He was protecting the reputation of both his wife and his mistress… not to mention trying to keep his bacon out of the fire.
It is the state that wants to disbar him. Three or four judges turned down the case for conflict of interest. The one who accepted was recently apponted by the current Republican governor, Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister who has taken thousands of dollars in gifts from a local rich guy. Like he would really want to practice law after being president.
Quicksilver:
Ah, I understand. Kenneth Starr, who obeyed the law (as far as we know, pending any new information in the leaks probe) and followed the job he was hired and mandated to do, not investigating any matter without express permission from the panel of judges that oversees Independent Counsels, was a bad guy who wanted fame and got what was coming to him. And Bill Clinton, who quite possibly broke the law, lied to the nation on national television, and smeared women from Gennifer Flowers to Kathleen Willey to Monica Lewinsky as liars and/or predatory stalkers, is a gentleman.
If this doesn’t illustrate what I said in my first post about why people hate the guy, then I don’t know what does.
Chaim Mattis Keller
cmkeller,
Let’s not forget that Starr made a point of avoiding public displays. He went about his job without seeking the photo ops so important in today’s politics.
All Mr. Starr’s 15 minutes of fame cost him is a certain University Presidency, an all but certain Federal Judgeship, and a probable Supreme Court nomination.
Before blasting Mr. Starr, consider what he gave up to perform the duties assigned to him. I wish that we could find MORE judges with his dedication and values.
Just on the economy issue: suppose for a moment that your economy had gone down the gurgler at some stage during the last five years, rather than having arguably the best run since the early 1960s.
Do you think the right would be saying that it wasn’t really Clinton’s fault?*
BTW, nice job astorian.
picmr
*[sub]this is an adaptation of a Paul Krugman argument[/sub]
Forget about the sex thing. What good is it to be king if you can’t get head at will? Isn’t that why he is called the “head of State”?
What hurts teh nobility of the office is stuff like dancing to Fleetwood Mac tunes, playing the damn saxaphone and trying to be a normal guy instead of The Leader OF the Whole Freaking World. Could you see Roosevelt doing the boogie woogie, or Lincoln?
Damn undignified.
I thought that Mr. Starr was hired to investigate Whitewater, not any dirt at all that he could scoop up.
carnivorousplant:
The course of the investigation that led to his Lewinsky probe was documented in the Starr Report. Or did you skip over that to get to the sex part and then accuse him of being the one obsessed with prurient details? To recap:
He was hired to investigate Whitewater.
At some point in the Whitewater investigation, he became convinced that Webster Hubbell, who worked with Hillary Clinton in the Rose Law Firm, should have some information he was looking for.
Webster Hubbell didn’t say anything. However, it struck Starr as suspicious that following Hubbell’s ouster from a job with the Clinton Administration, he managed to land several hundred thousand dollars worth of income for jobs which he did not appear to do much work at. These job opportunities had been arranged by Vernon Jordan, a good friend of the Clintons. Starr became convinced that Clinton had Jordan arrange this in order to buy Hubbell’s silence, but couldn’t prove anything.
Then, lawyers for Paula Jones, independent of Kenneth Starr, dug up the Lewinsky dirt. They put both Clinton and Lewinsky on the stand (or took affidavits/depositions from them; whatever), and the two denied everything. However, due to conversations with Lewinsky that were recorded by Linda Tripp, it was certain that the two were lying. Then, it turns out that Vernon Jordan placed Monica Lewinsky in a high-paying job as well.
In comes Starr. If he could prove Lewinsky’s false testimony had been bought by Clinton for job favors granted by Vernon Jordan, he could potentially get dirt on Hubbell as well, and could break the whole original Whitewater matter wide open.
Part of that, though, necessitated proving that Lewinsky’s testimony had indeed been false, hence the need to investigate and describe the affair in sordid detail.
I’m certainly over-simplifying things here, but that’s the basics. As I said, the Starr Report itself details the course of the investigation. And every expansion of the investigation was approved by the panel of judges that oversees Independent Counsels.
Chaim Mattis Keller
And Lewinsky had what to do with Whitewater?
carnivorousplant:
All right, I’ll try to make this even simpler.
Lewinsky had to do with Vernon Jordan.
Vernon Jordan had to do with Webster Hubbell.
Webster Hubbell had to do with Whitewater.
Understand now?
Chaim Mattis Keller
An analogy:
If I can’t prove that Carny killed Jesus, I’ll show that he eats Christian babies. If I can’t prove that, I’ll prove that he is freed from all vows on Kol Nidre. Then people will believe that he killed Jesus.
If the police think that I stold someones pen, they can’t stop all my friends and search their cars to see if they have any strange pens.
astorian,
Thank you very much for you high quality post. The JFK and Nixon reversal of roles is a pet peeve of mine. For the 1000th time, JFK was not a true liberal. His was a war hawk. Nixon was liberal. FWIW, Nixon also tried to pass national health insurance. He gave at least one national tv speach in support of a health insurance bill, but the bill never passed congress.
carnivorousplant:
As I said, my post oversimplifies for the sake of readability on this Message Board. Of course the connection is less tenuous than it seems from my summary; need I remind you again that the expansion of Starr’s probe had to be approved by a panel of judges? He managed to convince them that the links were relevant.
The details on this are available…in the Starr Report itself and elsewhere. If you really want to understand his justification, read them. Or, you can rely upon a message-board summary and convince yourself that since it seems sketchy from there, you must be correct that Starr was a voyeuristic glory-hound and Bill Clinton was an innocent babe who never broke the law and deserves to be allowed to be left alone to screw his employees in peace.
Chaim Mattis Keller
I just think that Starr wanted to be Dean of Law really, really, badly and that giving someone a job so that she will not talk about having sex has nothing to do with a real estate swindle.
carnivorousplant:
Say what??? He turned down such a job at Pepperdine University in order to complete the investigation.
No, but giving someone a job so that he will not talk about a real estate swindle has something to do with a real estate swindle.
Chaim Mattis Keller
CM -
Nobody is arguing that Clinton is a slug when it comes to unprofessional conduct with regard to some of the women in his staff. The guy is an adulterer, no doubt. He got caught red handed and I believe Hillary has and will punish him more than any jury of his peers ever could.
But let’s consider Ken Starr’s motivation in all this. Yes, he may have had a cushie job lined up for himself. Yes, he may have had a shot at the Supreme Court at some future point - maybe.
But along comes an opportunity to be lead investigator in a bid to impeach a president on grounds that even the commonest american can understand. The president cheats on his wife, lies about it and there are witnesses. Wow! It’s almost too good to be true! It’s a cake walk. It’s a gimme. A freebie. Sure Ken can work and scheme like the devil to get to the Supreme Court or he can jump on the band wagon and write himself a first class ticket directly to the top. What’s more he’s got cart blanche to investigate anything he likes because there is that Watergate connection. That’s a hard thing to say no to. Even for such an earnest and unimpeachably honest public servant as Mr. Starr.
I know you are not so naive to believe that Mr. Starr had absolutely no personal agenda?
Whitewater - Watergate… Shlemiel - Shlemazel… you know what I mean… :o