And as noted previously, special prosecutors assigned to investigate public officials should be restricted to investigating ONLY matters having to do with said officials' conduct of their office. Anything else can be dealt with through ordinary channels. Wanna go after Clinton for illegal campaign contributions? Okay. "Travelgate"? Not so sure. Whitewater? No. Adultery? Certainly not.
That is a position I agree with. The govt is not there to run Gestapo operations against politician. The people's elected officials arrived at their office by a vote of the citizens, and no matter how disagreeable a politician's personal life is to some other politicians, the govt shouldn't be used to run smear campaigns.
Which brings me to an oft-repeated point of mine: When the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, there were witchhunts conducted into the personal lives of both of Clarence Thomas and Bob Packwood. Bob Packwood's diaries were subpoened by Congress, and exerpts of his diary containing the juiciest sexual items were published in our local newspapers. This was done with the full approval of the Democrat controlled U.S. House and Senate. While, as noted before, I may not agreed with Packwood politically, what they did to him was reminicient of Germany starting in the late 1930's.
There is a LOT of anger left over from both Thomas and Packwood's treatment by the Democratic Congress, therefore I admit that the current troubles of the Clinton Whitehouse do little to evoke much sympathy from me. Perhaps if some of the key senior Democrats who handled and approved of the prior privacy violations of Republicans were to issue some sort of apology for wrong-doing, some of this anger may abate. To my knowledge, no Democrats in Congress feel any sense of shame or guilt for their part in past witchhunts and violations of privacy; indeed, they have not even admitted any wrongdoing. |
