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

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (18060)	12/10/1998 12:57:00 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 67261

NEWS ANALYSIS White House witnesses damage defense by conceding perjury By Bill Sammon THE WASHINGTON TIMES he White House winced yesterday as its own attorney conceded that "reasonable people" could conclude President Clinton gave false testimony, its own witness acknowledged the president committed perjury and a Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said Mr. Clinton "lied under oath." In what was supposed to be a strong finish to the president's defense, the White House instead found itself ceding significant ground to Republicans, who had long been stymied in their attempts to wrest concessions from Mr. Clinton's defenders. The strategy was to win credibility by allowing a point here and throwing the opposition a bone there, but the cumulative effect was to acknowledge much more culpability on the part of the president than the White House was willing to grant just a few weeks ago. "We clearly did not script," White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said of the witnesses who were hastily assembled to defend the president. "And I'm not going to be critical of anybody expressing views. These are serious, qualified people who, I think, have a right to be heard." The White House insisted it was as unprepared as everyone else for William F. Weld's words. The former Massachusetts governor, whose membership in the Republican Party was touted as a badge of bipartisan -- Continued from Front Page -- credibility, told the hushed committee room he "assumed perjury" had been committed by Mr. Clinton. The concession seemed to wipe out any points the White House had hoped to score by showcasing Mr. Weld's opinion that such perjury is not impeachable. Mr. Weld, the White House's surprise witness, pooh-poohed what he characterized as Mr. Clinton's perjurious denial that he intimately touched White House intern Monica Lewinsky during their sexual encounters just outside the Oval Office. "We had no specific knowledge of how he would testify," said Mr. Lockhart, who explained that Mr. Weld sprung part of his testimony on White House attorneys "as they walked into the committee room and sat down." He added that calling Mr. Weld "part of our defense team can be a misleading statement." Even more damning were the remarks of Rep. Howard L. Berman, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "I hate to say it," the Californian declared during an exchange with White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff. "I think the president lied." Mr. Ruff, who is desperately trying to save his boss from becoming just the second president in history to be impeached, also made startling concessions about the president's trouble telling the truth. The wheelchair-bound lawyer was asked point blank by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, whether Mr. Clinton had lied under oath. "I have no doubt that he walked up to a line that he thought he understood," Mr. Ruff said. "Reasonable people ... could determine that he crossed over that line and that what for him was truthful --and misleading or nonresponsive and misleading or evasive -- was, in fact, false. "But in his mind -- and that's the heart and soul of perjury -- he thought and he believed that what he was doing was being evasive, but truthful," Mr. Ruff said. While considered a sound argument from a strictly legal standpoint, the "in-his-mind" defense is invoked only as a last resort by the White House, which is wary of projecting the image of a president whose concept of reality is fundamentally different from that of "reasonable people" on a matter of such importance. Moreover, such legalistic hairsplitting infuriates both Democrats and Republicans and is often turned against the president by the press. Yesterday, Mr. Lockhart was asked by a reporter if Mr. Clinton -- whose defense includes an assertion that dictionary definitions of "sex" do not encompass "oral sex" -- felt the same way about the dictionary definition of "alone." The president swore under oath he did not remember being alone with Miss Lewinsky, even though he later acknowledged numerous trysts in the White House. "I'm not interested in playing semantics games," Mr. Lockhart replied. "There is a very serious presentation of facts here." But Republicans complained that facts were the one thing in short supply in the president's two-day defense before the committee that ended yesterday. GOP panel members used this theme to repeatedly hammer the White House, whose ability to lash back was circumscribed by the president's latest orders that his attorneys refrain from confrontation. Mr. Clinton imparted that message to Mr. Ruff during an hour-long meeting Tuesday. "He wanted to make sure that people who speak for him are very clear on the level of contrition that he feels," Mr. Lockhart said. "And he wanted to make sure that we presented our information, our legal arguments, in a way that was strong and factual, but avoided a confrontational tone." Mr. Lockhart's acknowledgment of the president's direct involvement in his own defense was a departure from White House attempts to project Mr. Clinton as maintaining an air of busied detachment from the proceedings. Yesterday, while his attorneys wrapped up their final arguments against impeachment, the president presided over the annual lighting of the Christmas tree on the Ellipse. Showing no signs of distress over the crisis down the street that threatens his very presidency, Mr. Clinton joined blind singer Jose Feliciano and other entertainers in a round of "Joy to the World."

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (18060)	12/10/1998 1:02:00 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 67261

Hey, as recently as Monday, Clinton was talking about "people who work hard and play by the rules". He surely couldn't talking about anyone in his family. Lying in bombing the Sudanese drug factory is probably more comparable to Gulf of Tonkin incident, what do yo think? How come politicians are held to a much lower standard than 17 year old black kids who want to play college basketball? It seems ridiculous the amount of restrictions on recruiting high school seniors when compared to the myriad ways the politicians and their special interest groups work around the laws. This compounded when the politicians also get matching funds and then subvert the rules. We need to end welfare for politicians.

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (18060)	12/10/1998 1:06:00 PM
From: sea_biscuit	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 67261

Lying in Iran-contra was quite different on the moral order front there, wasn't it? Well, they supposedly lied for the country there! Or so they want us to believe. The fact that those lies resulted in lost human lives didn't matter. Just as the religious Republicans believe that only humans have souls and animals do not (thereby justifying their eating bacon everyday!), the racist Republicans believe that unless a human life belongs to Americans ("real" Americans, to be precise), it is expendable.