>I think it is also clear that a crime, if it is bad enough, even though it has nothing to do with his office, would constitute a "High Crime and Misdemeanor."<
Imagine confronting someone as corrupt as Bill Clinton with such precise language as "If its bad enough". "If it is bad enough" is such mushy-headed language. Its pure "goo goo". Perjury is indeed "bad enough", particularly as it attempts to obstruct justice.
If a question is important enough to at any time stand in an American court, then the President is bound by law to answer it truthfully. If a question is important enough to stand before a grand jury, the President is bound by law to answer it truthfully. Clinton failed miserably, and has thus committed a crime against the state. This crime was not committed merely against Hillary. It was committed against the country.
> Murder would certainly qualify.<
Dear me. You simply do not get it. My friend, we have entered the age of "Clintonese" where such language as "Murder would certainly qualify" is mere "goo goo".
Murder qualifies now to you because you use common sense. The problem enters when we begin to change the reality of the definition of "murder", just as Bill Clinton now changes the definition of "sex" and "perjury". Using Bill Clinton's cynical tactics, I can literally fashion in my mind a concept of killing, and orchestrate the parameters of the concept in such a way that I can kill a man, never overstepping the boundaries of what I would allow myself to conceive as "murder". To pin me down, you would have to construct a definition so broad, that it perhaps would prohibit self-defense, or would be unworkable in that I would not be able to remember it (this is what happened in the Jone's case). In this way, when asked "Did you murder this man?" I could legally say "No. I did not", knowing all along I, by any reasonable description, murdered him. In Clintonese, the goal is eternally never to take responsibility or suffer the consequences for your own misdeeds. One defense is always remain passive.
To pin down a person who speaks Clintonese, you must first define every word you use, your definition growing so broad as to be unworkable. This is what your President has done to your country, and to you this is no great issue. If Clinton is merely censured, the country will suffer the ill effects of it for centuries. Indeed, it never will recover from it. The totality of the effects will not be realized immediately, but slowly. Nevertheless, based upon the Clintonian precedent, they will filter through society as surely as the noonday sun, eventually to oppress us.
>I think if the President was running a penny stock fraud machine on the side, to augment his Presidential salary, that would probably qualify as well.<
This language of yours is common sense, and is therefore useless. I could short-circuit it in a second. In my mind, I have already done so. We really can no longer speak as we once did and think we approach one another from compatible contractual positions.
You may think it alarmist or absurd, but even a decade ago no one would have dreamed that a President of the United States would have the kind of "experiences" Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinksy, and then claim he did not have sex, and then when physical evidence forces him to the public, claims he only had an "inappropriate relationship", eventually to claim his statements were "legally accurate" because he was totally passive, a virtual mannequin during his "inappropriate relationships". |
