The Salon Report on Kenneth Starr salonmagazine.com
We now know more than we ever wanted to about the president's private life. Here's what the public should know about the prosecutor who may drive him from office.
Sorry, I know I said I was leaving this august forum to the kind of high minded discussion Mr. Vaughn and the dittoheads prefer. Truth is, though, I really haven't been following the mystical Whitewater trail since the Monica bimbogate erupted. Otherwise, I might have known about this apparently substantial source of information on the non-partisan paragon of justice Ken Starr. I'm sure Mr. Vaughn will be able to dismiss this easily, commie liberal partisan hatred and all that.
What these carefully documented investigative stories underline is essentially this: In his zealous pursuit of the president, Kenneth Starr defiled "the temple of justice," to use his own righteous rhetoric. Lacking a fundamental sense of fairness and judicial proportion, Starr sought first to build his Whitewater real estate case against Clinton using irredeemably corrupt testimony, and then, when this failed, he latched onto Paula Jones' ill-fated civil suit, and then when that failed, he wired Linda Tripp and finally snared Clinton on adultery -- a crime that if aggressively pursued in Washington would depopulate our capital as thoroughly as the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh.
For more details, go on to salonmagazine.com
1. After successful lobbying by staunch conservatives such as North Carolina Sen. Lauch Faircloth, a three-judge panel dominated by Republicans replaced moderate Whitewater prosecutor Robert Fiske with Kenneth Starr in August 1994. Starr, former chief of staff to Reagan Attorney General William French Smith and a member of an ambitious circle of activist conservative attorneys, accepted the job despite the fact that he had opposed the independent counsel law when he was a Reagan official and helped prepare a brief arguing it was unconstitutional, vesting too much power in one unaccountable person.
Hey, no fair! They left out Jessie Helms, who went to see the Judge with Lauch, the story goes. Get on the stick, guys.
2. At the time of his appointment as Whitewater independent counsel, Starr, a $1 million-a-year Washington attorney with the high-powered firm of Kirkland & Ellis, was advising the Paula Jones camp on her sexual harassment suit against Clinton and offered to write a friend-of-the-court brief on her behalf. He was also representing the tobacco industry, an ardent foe of the Clinton administration. Later, Iran-contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh would comment that, considering Starr's conflicts of interest, he should have felt obligated to turn down the job of investigating Clinton.
But impeccable non-partisan that he is, Ken Starr stayed on the job. Don't worry, there's only 9 more points after those two, each more insubstantial than the previous one. Bunch of in-depth articles over the past years, too, on the whole sordid affair. I have to thank Henry Hyde and Tom Delay for putting me on to Salon, along with all the non-partisan dittohead types who put Salon in the news again for hacking their site. I had no idea.
Stupid idiot that I am, I'll also link an article from the Sunday NYT:
Clinton and Starr, a Mutual Admonition Society nytimes.com
This one is not kind to Clinton, I promise. It's not like I ever said that Clinton wasn't stupid on all this. But Starr's got his problems too, you know.
Starr's defenders admit that he, too, has been blinded by his distaste for Clinton and has committed excesses in his desire to hold the president accountable.
The independent counsel's 445-page report to Congress, packed with almost pornographic sexual detail and damning commentary on the president's motives, is the most glaring example of prosecutorial overkill, some of Starr's associates say.
But there have been others -- the parading of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton past a phalanx of cameras into the federal courthouse in Washington in January 1996; the threat, leaked to reporters, to name Bruce Lindsey, the president's closest confidant, an unindicted co-conspirator in a trial that ended in speedy acquittals; the ostentatious display of the 36 boxes of impeachment evidence on the steps of the Capitol the week before last; the harsh treatment of the president in his Aug. 17 videotaped grand jury testimony.
"I thought from day one, as I think today, that this was bad for the country," said one of Starr's defenders who now questions his tactics. "Sometimes you have to exercise prosecutorial discretion." Even though this defender of Starr said he believed the president was guilty of significant misconduct, he said, "the cost to the country far outweighs the value of proving it."
Not among the pompously self righteous crowd here, though.
A spokesman for Starr denied that he or his office was motivated by animosity toward the president.
No, no. Just an impartial, non-partisan quest for "justice". Just like Newt's doing on the Hill. Here's the conclusion to that piece, note the Times always goes for somewhat subtle irony.
For his part, Starr has expressed no apologies for any of his treatment of the president and little explanation for the contents of his report to Congress.
But Bakaly said: "The statute provides no guidance to what form or manner the referral should take. But we made every effort to be fair and complete."
In a news conference outside his Virginia home in April, Starr made his most extensive remarks on the Lewinsky scandal, saying that he was not influenced by politics or by his personal feelings about the president.
He said that like Joe Friday on the television series "Dragnet," he was interested in "just the facts" and was certain that they would lead him to the truth.
Or, the TRUTH, as dittoheads everywhere would say. The kind of TRUTH you get from Matt Drudge and Rush. The TRUTH that will set you free. I've been given the "just the facts" lecture here, of course. Somehow, I think the context is relevant too.
And finally, for those who find the WSJ more "objective", you can check out Monday's paper for a page 1 story on why resignation isn't the right solution. Probably some pinko commie reporter slipped that in, I'm sure the pompous editorial page will right that wrong soon enough.
So, once again, I leave Mr. Vaugh, Mr. Know-it-all, and the other sanctimonious minions of the right to discuss the relevant "issues" here, and inform us stupid idiots how moronic we are to look at it from anything but the narrowest legalistic perspective. After all, the DOJ gets 3 perjury convictions a year! To quote that Starr defender again,
"I thought from day one, as I think today, that this was bad for the country," said one of Starr's defenders who now questions his tactics. "Sometimes you have to exercise prosecutorial discretion." Even though this defender of Starr said he believed the president was guilty of significant misconduct, he said, "the cost to the country far outweighs the value of proving it."
Just unsubstantiated rumor, innuendo, and partisan hatred, that. Totally unlike the kind of impartial, objective news you get from Matt Drudge, Rush, and the WSJ editorial page. Ken Starr really wants what's good for the country, and that other guy is confused.
Cheers, Dan, your sorry clown, teeming with hate and ignorance, idiotically signing off, leaving the perfectly legitimate conversation to those better suited to this level of dialog.
P.S. If Daddycool is right, take all my comments here as a joke too. I can be as irony impaired as the next guy, but this all seems a bit unsubtle to me. I hear Rush used to be funny, too. |
