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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RJC2006 who wrote (2579)	8/22/1998 1:08:00 AM
From: Doughboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13994

<<BTW, I know the way to the finest law libraries in the country and I have spent considerable time reading court transcripts as well as Supreme Court decisions.>> BOB, this statement is so laughable on so many levels, I don't know where to start. First of all, we all have to wonder if this is time well-spent in light of the fact that in the message that followed you spelled independent counsel, "independent council" about three different times, and you spelled evidentiary, "evidenciary." Who was it that needed a dictionary? <<I suggest you try the same.>> No thanks, I have better things to do with my time than to sit in a law library reading court transcripts. I take it, that's your idea of fun? As for the substance of your message, I don't know why you're arguing with me over the report that Starr is sending to Congress. I said that he is detailing high crimes and misdemeanors that he thinks may have been committed by the President. You want to argue semantics over whether Starr will also be even-handed and exonerate the POTUS. But then you say it's all "academic" since he won't be exonerated. Don't we both end up in the same place? Why are you insisting on carrying on this pointless debate. You're only showing everyone else on the thread about how insecure you are and how little you actually know about the law. As Mark Twain said (I'm paraphrasing here) better to look foolish keeping your mouth shut, then to open it and leave no doubt. <<Oh and by the way, could you and the Democrats decide what the investigation has cost so far? One minute it is 30 million, ten minutes later it is 40, five minutes before that it is 60 million then one minute later it is 55.643.>> I should have made it clear to a simpleton like you that when I was doing a PARODY of Ken Starr's report, I was not giving an actual, verifiable number for the cost of his investigation. But since you asked, it's clear that it's somewhere in the $55 million ballpark. The last figure I saw was the last IC report which was current to about 6 mos. ago, and that was $40 million. Since then, I think it's very fair guess that the IC has spent over 15 million dollars. And we're still not counting the House's costs for the impeachment investigation, and then there's the Senate banking hearing costs which were another couple million (but you can never really tell with Congress, their reported figures don't count the salaries of staff who were detailed to the hearings). When it's all over, and all the Clinton's aides' legal bills are paid off by the US, you'll be looking at a bill to the American taxpayer well in excess of 100 million dollars, and that doesn't include the billions of dollars in lost opportunity costs because our government is at a standstill while this all happens. I think this is important because the law is and should be concerned with proportionality. Is it worth it to society to spend more than 100 million to investigate the actions of a President that occurred more than 10 years before he took office? I know we probably disagree on the answer to that question, but let's think of it this way, the defaulted loan that was found to be illegal in Whitewater and was the impetus for the IC's investigation was $200,000. That's it. (People always throw around figures in the tens of millions of dollars paid by the RTC but that was for the entire bailout of that S&L; the McDougal's Castle Grande loan was only 200k.) It was already investigated by the RTC and the Clintons were cleared. It was examined exhaustively by Fiske and Starr for the last 6 years, and they apparently have not found anything to nail the Clintons on yet and, IMO, it will not be pursued further in a meaningful way. (As I said earlier, Starr has announced that he will not include Whitewater matters in his interim report to Congress). So, when this is all over, we will have a report from Starr (that can't be made public) about the Lewinsky matter, two reports from Starr and Fiske that SHOCKINGLY Vince Foster was not murdered, and a long, long report from Starr about Whitewater, the gist of which will be, "we came thiiiiis close to getting the Clintons." And oh yeah, we'll have a impeachment hearing that will fizzle. That -- history will tell us -- resulted in the eventual downfall of the GOP control of the House and the Millenium election of Albert Gore Jr. A final question: how does it feel to be have someone a fraction of your age run circles around you? Doughboy