JBL, I never read the Starr report, and I haven't followed the detailed legal arguments in the Senate either. I'm not a lawyer, and I trust your objective representation of the (carefully chosen) facts as much as I trust Drudge's. Yes, Jordan may well have lied, but that's not exactly unusual. Expecting a confidant of the President to assist the Starr Inquisition in its careful construction of the one correct version of the "truth" is dubious. "Common sense" may say that's perjury, but technically speaking, it's an allegation, not a fact, and may be legally defensible. To repeat, I haven't heard anybody talking about bringing up the brilliant Bill Gates on perjury charges for his faulty recollection under deposition.
I assume you think, like others here, that whatever Starr did was ok, as long as he was going after the broader "truth" that Clinton is evil. Most people don't hold that view. After the NYT story on the behind the scenes lawyers in the Jones suit, I don't personally give anything coming out of that suit any credence legally. That's my own personal jury nullification, of course, but the Jones suit certainly wasn't about "truth and justice" in any conventionally idealistic legal sense of the word. It was about exposing the evil Clinton, by any means available. To make a legal metaphor, the whole well is poisoned, as far as I'm concerned. That Starr couldn't come up with anything better to hang his impeachment case on, after all these years and accusations, is too bad, but that's life. Maybe he can put the screws on Jane Doe 5, like he's doing with Julie Steele.
That's my view. Others have a different view of "truth and justice", usually consistent with their personal opinion of Clinton. I don't want to argue the semantics of hating Clinton, versus despising him, or whatever.
On the dreaded "media spin" argument, I don't read the NYT because it's a liberal dispenser of the Clinton line. That's quite a joke, they have a lot of coverage and I usually don't post references to the straight impeachment articles, they're not in general very favorable to Clinton. They're not as righteously and uniformly anti-Clinton as Drudge and the WSJ editorial page, of course. I note the political coverage and opinion pieces I find amusing. I've noted the editorial page proper a few times, but I don't expect people to find that convincing.
I post a bunch of op-ed pieces, but the Times' op-ed page is far from uniformly pro-Clinton either. You have Frank Rich and Anthony Lewis, who are pretty solidly pro-Clinton. Then there's Maureen Dowd, who doesn't favor impeachment but is certainly not pro-Clinton by any conventional measurement. She's sarcastic as hell, and has been down on Clinton for a long time. Then there's William Safire. Finally, there's A.M. Rosenthal, the closest to the Times' inner circle. He called for Clinton to resign on Saturday. Thomas Friedman tends to stick to foreign affairs, I don't know if he's said anything about impeachment one way or the other.
So, of the 5 clearly political op-ed columnists, 2 are pro-Clinton, 1 more is anti-impeachment though hardly pro-Clinton, and 2 are pro impeachment/ resignation. That seems fairly representative of the nation as a whole to me. If you want to claim the same for Drudge and the WSJ editorial page, be my guest, but then you get into the "you're stupid, and we're not" thing.
And, of course, today you can check out the op-ed page and see Robert Bork's thoughts on indicting the President. This whole indictment spin/plant story is bizarre, at least in the context of this forum, where DD did the local "breaker breaker" with the obvious angle that it was a good thing. Others chimed in to agree here, including you addressing me, as in:
Somehow, I have the feeling that Clinton's fate will be decided by the Supreme Court which, sooner or later, will have to rule on wether a sitting President can be indicted. Message 7579238
Bork seems to differ with you on that question, or at least on whether the question should even be raised. You can spin it out however you want, though. |
