Washington Times-September 1, 2000
A footnote to the lie: How he beats the rap
By Wesley Pruden
Bill Clinton is fading quickly now, often not even bothering
to look presidential.
He went through one African country in a flowing dashiki (or
maybe somebody's nightgown), and showed up in Colombia a few days
later without his jacket, without his tie, looking in the
newspaper photographs as if he had slept late in his clothes and
hadn't taken time for a shave and a shower.
The Arkansas Supreme Court is threatening to take away his
law license because he lied about Monica Lewinsky in the Paula
Jones lawsuit.
You have to feel a little sympathy for a studly guy having a
hard time keeping his molls straight (and separated). Haven't we
all been there?
But to a layman, untrained in how to find the loopholes that
lawyers put there to make the law a profitable crap-shoot for
tort artists, the disbarment case against the president looks
airtight.
The American Bar Association has what it calls (do not
laugh, please) "standards" that lawyers are required to live up
to. Standard No. 6.11 states plainly that disbarment is
"generally appropriate when a lawyer, with the intent to deceive
the court, makes a false statement, submits a false document or
improperly withholds material information, and causes serious or
potentially serious injury to a party, or causes a significant or
potentially significant adverse effect on the legal proceeding."
And it's not just the bar association. Only two years ago,
the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld its board of law examiners who
had denied a license to someone who had merely been "less than
candid" on his application for membership in the bar. The
justices said "there simply is no place in the law for a man or
woman who cannot or will not tell the truth."
Nevertheless, the Arkansas legal establishment, manipulated
skillfully by Henry Woods, the 82-year-old senior federal judge
in Arkansas whose hands are still sticky from a career as the
plunderer-in-chief of Arkansas politics, may have cooked the
outcome of the proceedings to a drearily familiar recipe.
The case against Bill Clinton will be heard by state Circuit
Court Judge Leon Johnson, appointed earlier this year by the
governor to fill out the term, which expires Dec. 31, of a judge
bounced from the bench by the Arkansas Supreme Court when he got
caught stealing from a client.
If Judge Johnson is unable to conclude the proceedings by
New Year's Day, the case falls to his elected successor, a
Democrat who was once appointed by Gov. Bill Clinton to the state
commission on law-enforcement training standards. You might think
this is bad news for Mr. Clinton —law enforcement standards and
all that — but if you think that you don't understand Guatemala.
Henry Woods once had a go-fer named Bill Wilson, and not
only took him into his law firm but got him elected, first, as
president of the state bar association and then got him appointed
a U.S. district judge in Arkansas, where he now sits not far from
his old mentor. Mr. Wilson subsequently found a protege of his
own, named Stephen Engstrom, who is — Arkansas being the world
capital of coincidences — Bill Clinton's Arkansas lawyer in the
disbarment case.
The wise men in Little Rock expect the judge who decides
whether to take the Clinton law license to file a devastating
critique of the president's behavior, a critique similar to Joe
Lieberman's famous impeachment speech, eloquently written with
ruffles and flourishes that even a casual reader might think had
been written by, say, Henry Woods and Bill Wilson, indicting and
convicting Mr. Clinton for everything short of treason, child
molesting and cheating the pizza delivery boy. But he will
conclude that none of that is reason to keep a man from
practicing law with the good opinion of his colleagues at the
bar.
The bill of particulars will be so inclusive, so expansive,
so humiliating for the defendant that the Arkansas Supreme Court
would feel churlish indeed to reverse the circuit judge's
opinion.
I called my old friend Justice Jim Johnson, late of the
Arkansas Supreme Court himself, a onetime Democratic nominee for
governor who has won and lost more statewide races than any man
in Arkansas politics, to ask whether this was too harsh, too
cynical, too satirical.
"Well," he said, with a heavy sigh, "It's evident enough to
me that Stephen Engstrom will have the active help of all his old
friends in obtaining some more 'Arkansas justice' for his new
client." Bill Clinton's a New Yorker now, and he might get a
Yankee's just deserts. But don't bet on it.
For now he's California dreaming, practicing the rumpled
earth-tone and bag-lady chic so familiar in Hollywood, impatient
to get to Beverly Hills for a new job as Barbra Streisand's pool
boy. But before that, he needs one last "Arkansas coincidence" to
beat one last rap.
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
=================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
