I haven't really thought about the subdivisions and catagories of perjury before, and which ones are really-and-truly-evil, and which ones are not-so-bad-lets-just-look-the-other-way. I guess, in your mind, if sex is involved, then it fits into the let's-not-punish-it type of perjury. A man's home is his castle, and all that. I'm a doctor, not a lawyer, and certainly not a constitutional scholar, so I don't know if the law makes any distinctions between "sex perjury" and "non-sex perjury". But I've never heard of any such distinction, in the law or otherwise, so I suspect that the distinction is only in your own mind.
Bones, Bones! That's "Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a lawyer!"
The law recognizes that there are tremendous variations in the seriousness of a crime and the punishment it deserves, depending on a variety of extenuating or aggravating circumstances. Even homicide, that most fundamental and irreparable of crimes, is subdivided into several categories, ranging from involuntary manslaughter to first degree murder with special circumstances. We punish the enraged mother who shoots the man who molested her sun less severely than the man who shoots a 7-11 clerk in cold blood for $100, while still recognizing that both are crimes. Even when the charge is the same, judges are supposed to weigh the particular circumstances of the case when passing sentence.
I don't take what Clinton did lightly. But do Clinton's actions warrant removal from office? There are a number of extenuating circumstances, including the fact that no prior President has been under such intense, ongoing legal scrutiny by a politically hostile prosecutor with a nearly unlimited mandate, and that the alleged perjury occurred in a matter of tangential relevance (indeed, a matter later ruled to be not relevant) in a civil lawsuit unrelated to the President's official duties, underwritten by the President's political enemies. Again, that doesn't make it right; but it is an extenuating circumstance. Compared with some of the things that have gone on in previous administrations, it starts to look downright inconsequential. |
