Linda Minor
Tue, 15 Dec 1998 23:43:46 -0500
from: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (D. Deming) wrote: > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David > Goldman) wrote: > > > > > Has Bob Dole joined the Slime Club? > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ High Crimes and Misdemeanours What are high crimes and misdemeanours? Is it too much to assume that rational people would rise up in protest if the President defendant had indeed committed high crimes and misdemeaners? Does anybody who is reasonable and seeks to uphold the rule of law, actually believe that the public would tolerate a President who is in fact guilty of perjury, of obstruction of justice and of abuse of power? The standards of the vast majority are clearly too high to dismiss the sort of abuse that is alleged. Moreover, most of the charges have proved to be so utterly preposterous that they collapsed on their own transparent frivolity. The only thing that remains is the McCarthyite charge that crimes were committed but details cannot be exposed. It's the old, perpetual, pending investigation gimmick -keep the target under investigation, claim phony secrecy privileges and he or she is always a suspect. And that is the sort of suspended animation that produced the desperate charge that President Clinton committed perjury -but who says? That is the question and it not entirely facetious because it goes to the heart of "specific intent". In particular, perjury is a specific intent crime that relies upon the mindset of the defendant. When, for example, Monica Lewinsky said that she hadn't had a sexual relationship with Bill Clinton, she was telling the truth because Monica Lewinsky made a clear distinction between what she called "fooling around" and sexual intercourse. It is Linda Tripp who ultimately insists that Monica committed perjury because she is the one who persistently quarrelled with Monica, in effort to plant in her mind, the necessary elements that are required by law, to expose a target to the charge of perjury. It all sounds absurd and difficult to imagine but it's all on tape and the charge cannot simply be dismissed. Blinded by the mentality that the end justifies the means, criminal perpetrators do not appreciate the scope of self-incrimination. On tape, Linda Tripp is heard clearly insisting that Lewinsky and Clinton had sex, and she aggressively disputes the "fooling around" characterization that Lewinsky firmly believed. Indeed, she pushed and pushed and pushed to the point where Linda Tripp claimed that if you have an orgasm, it's sex. Can you imagine a grown woman, any grown woman, arguing with a young girl, any young girl, about the definition of sex? Can you imagine a grown woman, any grown woman, insisting that orgasm equals sex? Is masturbation also sex? If they are willing to re-write the dictionary to expose the President of the United States to the charge that he committed perjury, is there anything that they are not willing to do? Like Linda Tripp, attorneys for Paula Jones were preoccupied by the bizarre obsession to define sex. In the end, the tortured definition they produced provided Bill Clinton a cover to deny a sexual relationship -and the trap was sprung. But it was a trap with an illusory bite. Perjury is not the failure or the reluctance to expose a sexual play by play. It was a nice try, but it was a trap that lacked substance and demanded the sort of zeal that reasonable prosecutors reject. Moreover, if collusion between Linda Tripp, the Jones camp and the Office of the Independent Council is responsible for the parsimonious definition about sex, the astounding scope of the behind-the-scenes set-up reflects unethical, clever lawyering, to say the very least. Having deliberately limited their questions to encourage Clinton to mislead, it certainly takes extraordinary contempt for the law to turn around and call that perjury. There is indeed no limit to the stretch of reason that Clinton's accusers claim. They even have the unbridled arrogance to call Jones versus Clinton a Federal civil rights action. Frivolous on merit, bogus on substance, Jones versus Clinton was about abusing the court system to procure a perjury charge about a non-criminal matter. Lawyers for Paula Jones essentially betrayed the fact that they were more anti-Clinton crusaders than advocates for Paula Jones when they claimed that Clinton was guilty of perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power. Having oblitherated the distinction between the Jones camp and Starr's Office, it is essentially naive to deny the evident collusion. Indeed, the assault was essentially treasonous, because Monica Lewinsky and the Jones case were used in a manner which was tantamount to manufacturing justification to criminally indict the President of the United States. And when the Jones case was thrown out of court, even the inconsistent Dick Morris, the very man whose rhetoric is selectively used to demonize Clinton, claimed that Paula Jones owed the entire country an apology. Isn't it ironic that Paula Jones owes Bill Clinton what she in fact demanded from him? Indeed, isn't everything about a witch hunt ironic, when the rule of law comes to bear? Isn't the effort to turn Dick Morris into the John Dean of the Whitewater scandal, a laughable, transparent fraud? Black is not white and white is not black. Service justice my friend. Service justice well because if you do not, anybody can call you a murderer, and instead of substantiating the charge, they will simply compare you to other murderers and demand a confession. Confess and die fast, defy and die slow. Guilty today, or guilty tomorrow. You will be confined and the switch will be pulled. Your body will convulse and your eyes will pop. Justice for one, justice for all. Resist the temptation to label and destroy. To borrow Mary Bono's repeated boast, this is not the work of lawyers. This is not a defense for Bill Clinton. This is simply a reflection of every single, reasonable person who is sick and tired of all the bullshit and you can take that poll to the bank. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.angelfire.com/va/nsnews/news.html > Bob Dole has been a member of the slime club > forever. He never left. > _ > -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own