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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: alan w who wrote (5270)	9/24/1998 11:16:00 PM
From: wonk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Alan: ...Who can lie the most accurately. Is this a great country, or what. That's an exceedingly perjorative spin. Remember, the Jones case was an adversarial civil proceeding. The President, same as any other private citizen, had the right to use every legal means at his disposal to win the case. You may not like the fact, in this instance, that grammatical "parsing" of questions is legal under case law handled down by the Supreme Court, but you certainly would if you were being, in your opinion, unfairly sued. I have had the distinct displeasure of providing a number of depositions. In every instance, Counsel has reiterated over and over again to ONLY answer the question asked, ONLY answer in accordance with the literal, i.e., grammatical meaning of the question, and never volunteer. Moreover, they advise that questions will be deliberately asked which are misleading or mischaracterize one's answers in order to put you on record as being inconsistent or present the appearance of being untruthful. Therefore, do not answer quickly and do not hesitate to correct the spin of opposing Counsel's questions. Depositions are not trials. Counsel has far greater latitude to "badger" a witness. The aforementioned Supreme Court decision just happens to level the playing field a trifle. ww

To: alan w who wrote (5270)	9/24/1998 11:19:00 PM
From: dougjn	Respond to of 67261

Alan, recall the circumstances. This was a frivolous lawsuit, dismissed by the Federal Judge for failure to make any plausible showing of damages, funded and directed, and perhaps fully invented, by Clinton's zealous political enemies, for the purpose of politically damaging him by it's very existence, and then further used to conduct a broad dragnet into his personal life, given the utter lack of limitations for such inquiry in the of sexual harassment laws (which are a better vehicle for abusive misuse at the moment than anything else in American jurisprudence).. On that basis Jones's lawyers hoodwinked the Judge into preliminarily allowing the Lewinsky line of questioning to proceed after arguing it could conceivably reveal evidence of harassment (which it never did), with the "safeguard" [sic] of sealing the testimony against leaking. Of course as the President knew they would Jones lawyers immediately leaked the lot. So with that background the President should not have acted in an adversarial and misleading way? Get real. He was fully morally justified in doing so. I'm an independent, not a Democrat. The facts of this case deeply offend me. This country is currently unhinged, and caught up in a mania. It looks very different abroad, all over. The countries I focus on are others that are thoroughly democratic, and also view the rule of law as sacrosanct. The whole of Scandinavia, for example. Holland, Ireland, modern Germany. Even most of Great Britain (though as our closest soul mate outside of North America = Canada, they are also closest to our ambivalence.) Doug