Dwight, are you asking me those questions in order to "put me on the spot," or are you really interested in my opinion? And if I give you my opinion, will you promise not to jump all over me if I don't agree with you?
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, so here goes.
1) As I have already said, I have only recently begun to inform myself on the issues involved. Generally speaking, it is nauseating work. And on many matters, I am still withholding judgment, because I do not feel I know enough.
2) Paula Jones.
a) I think the Supreme Court made a mistake in not postponing the Paula Jones case, that is, in concluding that the case would not materially interfere with the President's handling of the duties of his office. That may be because Clinton's lawyer did not employ the right arguments; he should have perhaps argued that holding the trial while Clinton was still President was not in the public interest.
b) But after the Supreme Court ruling, I believe Clinton should have ignored the advice of his lawyer, and should have settled out of court, whether or not he was guilty. That would probably have spared us all this mess. (Although it might conceivably have inspired scores of other women to bring charges, justified or not, against him too.)
c) I don't know whether Jones was "in it for the money"; I am not a mind reader. But I do think her case for sexual harassment had little, if any merit. As I understand it (and I am no lawyer), propositioning someone is not in itself sexual harassment. I believe there has to be some evidence that the "harassee" was discriminated against, job-wise, for failing to "put out." In Paula Jones' case, there is nothing of the sort -- that bit about Secretary's Day was a ludicrous afterthought, IMO.
d) I am not comfortable with the role played in the Jones case by the Rutherford people. I think they had their own axe(s) to grind, and were using Jones in order to do so.
e) On the perjury issue. As you point out, courts do not always come up with the "right" decision, from the moral point of view. Cases are often decided not on moral grounds, but on what you or I might think of as technicalities. I have heard legal experts argue the pros as well as the cons on such questions as 1) whether Clinton actually did commit perjury, 2) and if he did, just how important was that perjury (was the lying on a central or peripheral point, did it affect the outcome of the case,etc.) and 3) was the perjury serious enough to fall into the "high crimes and misdemeanors" category? I think I would like to hear some more arguments before I make up my mind definitively on these points.
It is not enough to say that the President is a sleazebag. The question is whether he CAN be impeached for being a sleazebag (not the same thing as whether he OUGHT to be).
jbe
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