Darrell & rest, my earlier turgid post demands a more concise summary.
Contact and interest in the law seems to center on 3 areas: traditionally criminal, issues of constitutional rights, and newer social/lifestyle crimes - hate crimes, abortion, sexual harassment, anything PC, as examples .
Crimes are pretty simple: Any abnormal activity that replaces a normal activity. There has been 8000 years of rigorous 'debate' on what is which. Criminal law chooses to define abnormal instead of normal. This negative definition works fine, since only normal or abnormal can exist in one situation.
Rights are less simple. Two rights can coexist, peacefully or in conflict. Plus, they have not been debated, but through lawsuits, and that for only 300 years. So a negative definition can identify the obvious rights abuses, then it bogs down with today's debates on the rights abused by saying, 'God says don't kill', rather than, 'It is illogical to kill'. These are not on the same level of severity as slavery, or one true church. Negative definitions alone can not separate this level that finely.
Worse are these decade or two old crimes of lifestyle. What is abnormal and what normal blend together with what is chance. There are many events coexisting. Seeking only negative definitions among so many actors and circumstances is not difficult; it is the definition of paranoid personality disorder and paranoia psychosis. Finding negatives can say as much about the finder as the suspect or the situation. I'm not sure even adding a positive definition will make these laws very fine toothed.
How this relates to Clinton is that his 'charges' were all in the 3rd, weakest link. The US is not yet PC enough to prohibit coworkers dating. Nor has the right yet been added to the Constitution that dating a distant boss will guarantee happy employment. These are all the facts the court could substantiate as true. All other suspect actions were explained to the court's satisfaction as normal, not abnormal. So why would PJ's team go to court with so little? To get 'on the record' her accusation of criminal behavior on the date. And to get a look at Clinton's current sex life. Win or lose the legal case, PJ's team has made two body blows to their enemy. You decide to what degree the facts of Monica turn this case around, I see nothing but ulterior motives and using the law as a cheap political weapon.
About the criminal sex of the date itself, and all the whispered scores of others like it. Of all these hordes of women 'done wrong', only Paula who failed at her job has ever filed charges. I see three reasons: One, the 'bureau of tracking and intimidating former Clinton sex victims' is the most efficient part of the bureaucracy, especially being covert and clandestine; Two, the law is unable to protect our womenfolk - not just some but all of them; Three, The women of America, from the trailer trash to the top, are so used to being hit upon by men that Clinton's advances were 'boorish' and not out of line with social custom. Women deal with this daily; making a stand on this sap is not going to change things at all.
And for those who judge the man by these 2?, 3? alleged, but likely, rapes. Even the law knows the world, and a man, changes. These incidents were longer ago than the statute of limitations on a capital crime. When the law can't remember back that far, who are you to bring it up? |
