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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BlueCrab who wrote (3499)	1/29/1998 6:19:00 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20981

William Safire: you forgot to mention that he calls Hillary Clinton a congenital liar.

To: BlueCrab who wrote (3499)	1/29/1998 9:03:00 PM
From: Janice Shell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20981

Starr has less of a "pedigree", and has spent far more time as special prosecutor than did Cox. Um, yes. Cox was special prosecutor for what?, about a month? And then the Saturday Night Massacre....

To: BlueCrab who wrote (3499)	1/30/1998 6:04:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20981

>> BTW, one of my favorite commentators, Wm Safire (favorite because half the time I'll scream, "Bill, you ignorant twit", the other half I'll scream, "Bill, bro!") had asked much the same question - when is Ken Starr gonna get on with his life? Safire has at least the credentials with conservatives as George Will (sycophant; Cubs fan; affected nerdism) but is far better connected. <G> Safire has been saying alot of things about the Clintons, such as Hillary being a congenital liar, and has had much to say about the many Clinton scandals. Safire's main complaint now is that why, when there is so much more substantive evidence in say, the Clinton campaign finance scandals, is there this firestorm about Clinton-Lewinsky? (Re: Cox - Read some of the books about the Kennedy-Nixon election and you'll see that Cox was very much a partisan.

To: BlueCrab who wrote (3499)	1/30/1998 6:42:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20981

Re: Starr Potomac Watch Starr 'War': Back to Smash- Mouth Defense By PAUL A. GIGOT President Clinton should fire Kenneth Starr. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton this week all but accused Mr. Starr, the court-appointed special counsel, of fomenting a coup d'etat. "We get a politically motivated prosecutor who is allied with the right-wing opponents of my husband," she told NBC's "Today" show. That evil man is "scratching for dirt, intimidating witnesses, doing everything possible to try to make some accusation against my husband." Mrs. Clinton is saying she believes Mr. Starr is coercing people to lie. That is a crime. Does her husband believe it too? Because if the president does, he has a duty to order Attorney General Janet Reno to fire Mr. Starr. Mr. Clinton is sworn to faithfully execute the laws, and his wife is saying, presumably on his behalf, that Mr. Starr is breaking the law. This president isn't about to give those orders to Ms. Reno, of course. He knows the political price would be too great, as Richard Nixon learned. Mr. Clinton knows that unleashing his wife to attack Mr. Starr is politically so much craftier. This defense lets the first lady play the role of a wounded but stalwart Tammy Wynette, a public favorite. It creates a "partisan" foil against whom he can rally his supporters. And it provides a theory of how 24-year-old Monica Lewinsky could be induced to say such lurid things about the president she worshiped like a rock-star groupie. The beauty of this defense is that it might work whether or not Monica Lewinsky cooperates with Mr. Starr. If she doesn't, then White House spinners can tear into Mr. Starr for tormenting an innocent young thing (who nonetheless is recorded on tape asking another woman to lie for her). But if she does cooperate, the spinners can claim she was coerced by Simon Legree into lying to avoid a jail term. (Never mind that Paul Begala and other White House defenders-without-facts are kept away from the real truth by the lawyers.) Granted, this is a long shot, but what other choice do they have? Clearly the first couple is hunkering down for a long and nasty fight. And if the Clintons are going to be run back to Fayetteville, they're going to take a few other reputations down with them. As first spearcarrier James Carville says, this is "war." Smash-mouth defense has always worked before for the Clintons, though we now know at a fearsome future price. Their strategy of deny, delay and attack got them past two elections and every congressional probe. It induced in both press and public a kind of ethical numbness. But it has also kept the investigative machinery alive long enough to stumble across Monica's tapes. Had Mr. Clinton not delayed the Paula Jones trial so long, her lawyers wouldn't have been around to subpoena other women. Had his agents not smeared Paula Jones, maybe she'd have settled her suit long ago. Had superlawyer Bob Bennett not said Linda Tripp wasn't believable, maybe she wouldn't have taped her friend Ms. Lewinsky. But most of all, had the Clintons not stonewalled so long and successfully on Whitewater, Mr. Starr wouldn't threaten them today. The White House wants Americans to believe Mr. Starr is just digging up adultery. But the real linchpin of his request to Ms. Reno to expand his probe was Webb Hubbell, of Whitewater fame. The former first friend had once pledged to cooperate with Mr. Starr but suddenly clammed up. Later Mr. Starr discovered that Mr. Hubbell had been steered toward big money by other friends of Bill. One of those friends was Vernon Jordan, who took him to a Revlon-affiliated company that paid Mr. Hubbell some $63,000. Maybe this was just a case of Mr. Jordan's legendary generosity. But when the names Jordan and Revlon both showed up on tape helping Ms. Lewinsky, Mr. Starr was duty bound to pursue the case for a pattern of witness tampering. My sources say Mr. Starr gave Ms. Reno's department the option to investigate this itself, or along with him, but she quickly told him to do it. Mr. Starr's decision to wire Ms. Tripp before he got permission to expand his probe is standard prosecutorial procedure. This all helps explain why Mr. Starr seems willing to drive a hard bargain over immunity with Ms. Lewinsky now. He wants to avoid another Hubbell-like memory lapse. He'd like her to take a polygraph and perhaps to plead to a crime herself. And he knows her testimony isn't the sole basis for an obstruction of justice or perjury case against the president. Mr. Starr has made mistakes as special counsel, but they've been political, not legal. He should have dropped his other clients to avoid even the appearance of partisan taint. His Pepperdine detour was a fiasco, as he quickly recognized. And he underestimated how much this White House would resist his probe--and assault him personally. But all of this has also had the ironic effect of preparing him, and his office, for this current fight. When he was first appointed, Mr. Starr was every Democrat's favorite Republican lawyer, the type who thought everyone played politics by Marquess of Queensbury rules. He's learned the hard way that this White House doesn't. If he's now a threat to the Clinton presidency, Mr. Clinton has made him so. interactive2.wsj.com