<<It does not matter if Monica stripped herself naked, stood on her head and offered him money in addition to a BJ. He could have, and should have said NO owing to his position. However, once he said yes and once he was subpoenaed in a civil case he had an obligation to the Court and to the country to tell the truth. He did not. He is not fit to lead. JLA
Now, if he had taken money from Monica that WOULD have been serious. Bribery, would you say? Or that other way of describing it? <gg>
<<It does not matter if Monica stripped herself naked, stood on her head and offered him money in addition to a BJ. He could have, and should have said NO owing to his position.>>
Even the Great Ulyssess had to have his men strap him to the mast to avoid similar temptation. And he not only had been warned of the sirens to come before he was within their range, he knew Homer and his successors would be telling the tale for milenia to come. <gg>
Glad you're so strong JLA. It's probably you who should be President.
<<However, once he said yes and once he was subpoenaed in a civil case he had an obligation to the Court and to the country to tell the truth. He did not. He is not fit to lead.>>
I think at that moment in responding to the Jones deposition he had no obligation whatsoever to the country. He was being subjected to hostile deposition questions and had the obligations, but also the rights of every other citizen. The Supreme Court had ruled that the President should undergo civil trial while in office, but also that he was not only entitled to the same rights as every other defendant, but also certain considerations. (I think that mandate was ineffectively carried out by Judge Wright when she did not promptly rule on the President's efforts to exclude the Lewinsky testimony as not material and further when she failed to provide really effective sealing of that testimony. As she could have by hauling all the lawyers in upon the first instance of leak that had happened much before, and putting them all through an inquisition leading to some real consequences.)
But back to the point. The President was fully entitled to mislead away in his deposition testimony, as Judge Walsh has repeatedly pointed out. And the latitude for giving misleading testimony, as long as it can be argued it was technically accurate within the testifiers reading of the language, is very broad indeed. As the leading Supreme Court case much of whose language I clipped for you some while ago amply demonstrates. It's up to the questioning attorneys to trump misleading answers by asking key questions several different ways, and following up answers which could be slippery. Jones's lawyers didn't do that because they didn't want to push the President hard enough that he just might end up telling the complete truth. With the Tripp tapes in hand at the time they were questioning the President, their chief aim was to have some arguable perjury to hand over to Starr.
The Pres. just barely skated on the right side of perjury.
Not to mention that that testimony had no possibility for effecting the outcome of the Jones case, according to Judge Wright's subsequent ruling. And hence could not be perjury, even if he had committed bald faced lies.
Nope. No grounds for impeachment at all.
Not even under a low crimes and misdemeanors standard. Which is of course not the one the Constitution specifies.
Just grounds for a partisan witchhunt. Which is starting to backfire.
Doug
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