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

To: Dwight E. Karlsen who wrote (5855)	9/28/1998 1:16:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Dwight, are you asking me those questions in order to "put me on the spot," or are you really interested in my opinion? And if I give you my opinion, will you promise not to jump all over me if I don't agree with you? I will give you the benefit of the doubt, so here goes. 1) As I have already said, I have only recently begun to inform myself on the issues involved. Generally speaking, it is nauseating work. And on many matters, I am still withholding judgment, because I do not feel I know enough. 2) Paula Jones. a) I think the Supreme Court made a mistake in not postponing the Paula Jones case, that is, in concluding that the case would not materially interfere with the President's handling of the duties of his office. That may be because Clinton's lawyer did not employ the right arguments; he should have perhaps argued that holding the trial while Clinton was still President was not in the public interest. b) But after the Supreme Court ruling, I believe Clinton should have ignored the advice of his lawyer, and should have settled out of court, whether or not he was guilty. That would probably have spared us all this mess. (Although it might conceivably have inspired scores of other women to bring charges, justified or not, against him too.) c) I don't know whether Jones was "in it for the money"; I am not a mind reader. But I do think her case for sexual harassment had little, if any merit. As I understand it (and I am no lawyer), propositioning someone is not in itself sexual harassment. I believe there has to be some evidence that the "harassee" was discriminated against, job-wise, for failing to "put out." In Paula Jones' case, there is nothing of the sort -- that bit about Secretary's Day was a ludicrous afterthought, IMO. d) I am not comfortable with the role played in the Jones case by the Rutherford people. I think they had their own axe(s) to grind, and were using Jones in order to do so. e) On the perjury issue. As you point out, courts do not always come up with the "right" decision, from the moral point of view. Cases are often decided not on moral grounds, but on what you or I might think of as technicalities. I have heard legal experts argue the pros as well as the cons on such questions as 1) whether Clinton actually did commit perjury, 2) and if he did, just how important was that perjury (was the lying on a central or peripheral point, did it affect the outcome of the case,etc.) and 3) was the perjury serious enough to fall into the "high crimes and misdemeanors" category? I think I would like to hear some more arguments before I make up my mind definitively on these points. It is not enough to say that the President is a sleazebag. The question is whether he CAN be impeached for being a sleazebag (not the same thing as whether he OUGHT to be). jbe

To: Dwight E. Karlsen who wrote (5855)	9/28/1998 4:24:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 67261

Oh I'm sure that you think Jones is just "out for the money", etc., and so you may believe that the Jones suit is frivolous. But nevertheless, life is not always fair, and the courts we know often make judgements that we consider to be "not right". For example, many were incredulous that our court system would allow O.J. Simpson to walk, when there was a "mountain of evidence", including very conclusive DNA evidence, the pointed to O.J. as the killer. Yet, we had to accept the outcome of the trial. Wow, non-sequitor city from the good Christian Dwight. O.J. getting away with murder means that the Paula Jones case is non-political and "fair" in some "Christian" sense of the word. Are we now going to make exceptions for permitting perjury, if we think the case against us is "politically motivated" and orchestrated "by our political enemies"? Is this the new concept of Justice, where all we have to do is attack the prosecution and the accusers? Well, there's this old common law jurisprudence thing about the right to confront your accusers. You ever hear of that one? The plague be upon our President, and the new ethical lows he has set for the White House. Yeah yeah, I know the President says that he told the truth to the Jones court, but the evidence is overwhelming that says he, and not Monica, is the one suffering delusions. And he's our President. Scary. Oh, I don't know, I have my own opinions on who's delusional here, and what's scary. Judge not lest thee be judged, and you seem to be might judgmental on the matter, my good Christian brother. Or are you just doing the Lord's work here? Cheers, Dan.