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

To: jlallen who wrote (17434)	12/5/1998 5:13:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 67261

The chairman, Rep. Henry Hyde, unwittingly set the stage for the exchange on Tuesday, in his solemn and seemingly uncompromising remarks about the evils of lying under oath. "If citizens are allowed to lie with impunity -- or encourage others to tell false stories or hide evidence -- judges and juries cannot reach just results," said Hyde, R-Ill. "At that point, the courtroom becomes an arena for artful liars and the jury a mere focus group choosing between alternative fictions." . . . But some people recalled what Hyde said in 1987, in Congress' inquiry into the Iran-contra affair. Defending the Reagan administration, Hyde said condemnation of all lying "just seems to me too simplistic." "In the murkier grayness of the real world, choices must often be made," Hyde said of the Reagan administration's covert aid to anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua. Hypocrite or not, adulterous papal knight Hyde sure doesn't suffer from the hobgoblin of small minds, eh, JLA? . . . Republicans on the Judiciary Committee replied Friday night, "Context does matter, and the facts of the Iran-contra affair and President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky could not be more different." "No one lied under oath, after swearing to tell the truth, and no one ever lied for personal gain," said the Republicans' statement, issued by their spokesman, Paul McNulty. Saying no one lied under oath in Iran-contra is a bit dubious, if you hold with the legal standard of proof. There was a bit of profiteering among the back channel arms merchants too, as I recall. Then there was the drug running, but everyone knows that Mena airport thing was all Clinton's fault, and CIA drug running for the contras had nothing to do with it. Plus Iran-contra had some real Constitutional issues involved, like war powers. Secret wars, arms for hostages, so trivial compared to BJ's in the oval office, evasive testimony in an inadmissible deposition in a politically motivated civil case later settled out of court, and insufficient cooperation with the Starr inquisition. Of course, McNulty left out the most important element of context, Reagan and Co. were Republicans and Clinton's a Democrat. It's all politics.

To: jlallen who wrote (17434)	12/5/1998 10:31:00 PM
From: Borzou Daragahi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

????For someone to sit there on his high horse and wax philosophical about the dangers of perjury when he had earlier said that that lying under oath, as his chum North did, was no big deal is the definition of hypocrisy. I'll grant you that Clinton is a two-bit liar, adulterer, and hustler--and a hypocrite. But all the crap that Hyde is some sober, fair-minded, and non-partisan paragon of virtue--as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune have reported--has to go. He is a rabid, partisan political operative with a mindset just like John Conyers. Anyone who believes otherwise is either blinded by their own partisan stupor or just a plain old-fashioned sucker.