: Sam, I was replying to "Slack Willy's" question about lying politicians. As for the Republicans you mentioned, no I don't condone the fact that they too failed to "dance with the one that brung 'em".SDF: By this logic such politicians should have been removed from office, especially Hyde, long before they had an opportunity to impeach Clinton.
: However, and I admit I haven't followed those other revelations closesly, as I understand it, most of them didn't go around making passes at the employees of the female gender at the office, nor did they conduct their pleasure romps while on duty. Again, that doesn't make what they did right.
SDF: See, Mike, no one has any real proof that this is what Clinton did -- who made the first move is in doubt -- nor is it relevant to the test of "high crimes and misdemeanors" that is SUPPOSED to be the test for impeaching Presidents, if you believe the Constitution. BTW, Clinton claimed he had a case for his assertion that he did not commit perjury (the correct spelling), but the public never heard it. But, to go back to my quote of the LOS ANGELES TIMES REVIEW OF BOOKS, people don't seem to take a lot of stock in truth or falsehood anymore.
: What makes Clinton's action impeachable is again he lied under oathe about his at the time alleged affair with Lewinsky, and caused Paula Jones' harrassment case against him to be thrown out. As I understand it, even Presidents don't have a special license to commit purgery. But if I understand this right, an action doesn't exactly have to be "illegal" to get you removed.
SDF: If it isn't "illegal," it can be "high crimes and misdemeanors"? How so?
: Clinton and Monica "played house" at the White House, and while Monica was on her knees servicing him, and while Clinton was returning the favor using a cigar as the tool, he kept various people he had appointments with waiting to meet with him. And that was the point I was trying to make. It is goddam very much my business, because Clinton commited most of his self-gratifying acts on MY time, on OUR time.
SDF: And Kenneth Starr wasn't threatening people with eternities in jail, covering up his connections to right-wing think tanks, hiding his invasions of privacy etc. on YOUR time and with YOUR $40 million? Look, the question is about justice, it's not about your desire to be a dupe for the religious Right. Starr's investigation was so sleazy, involving so many invasions of Clinton's privacy and so much intimidation of witnesses, and his use of public office was so perverted by his connections to right-wing Virginia money (as were covered up by Starr himself), that his case would be thrown out by any right-thinking judge. I'm sure that Senate deliberations on impeachment were conducted in secret, among other reasons, to avoid publicizing the President's case.
Fortunately for Starr, his case was considered not by a judge but by a politically-motivated Republican Congress, so he made it to trial. Presumably, the point of Constitutional laws permitting impeachment is to preserve the framework of justice, not merely to railroad Presidents out of office on idle whims being trumped up to preserve the Republican Party's employment of the religious Right.
Of course, such framework is being violated every day by Clinton's bombing of Iraq. But of course nobody gives a damn about justice, neither Congress nor the President, nor, it would seem, you. "Throw him out," never mind our necessary attention to the legal process.
None.
