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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Catfish who wrote (10478)	1/25/1999 6:26:00 AM
From: jimpit	Respond to of 13994

Darrell, Great series of posts. Thanks. jim ------------------------------------- THE WASHINGTON TIMES January 25, 1999 OPINION EDITORIAL The trial must go on Quite fascinating, the argument being made by Senate Democrats: There is no chance of getting the two-thirds vote required to convict President Clinton, so the case should be dismissed. Fascinating, because this Democratic argument is an indictment of Democratic senators. No matter what the evidence, no matter how compelling the case, no matter how obvious Mr. Clinton's guilt, there aren't enough honest Democrats in the Senate to make conviction even a possibility. What a sad commentary on the president's party. Yes, the president's lawyers presented a lucid defense of their client, but it was a defense that required senators to believe a half-dozen impossible things before breakfast. Frankly, the Senate trial to date has been a lawyer's dream. Since the fix is in, the president's attorneys have had the luxury of making arguments of palpable absurdity. Consider this whopper offered up by obstruction-of-justice expert Cheryl Mills: Mr. Clinton didn't interfere with Betty Currie's testimony, she claimed, because he neither threatened nor intimidated her. A normal jury would have laughed the White House lawyers' client all the way to the clink. But as Sen. Tom "pile of dung" Harkin was so correct to point out, the Senate is no mere jury. Compare the questions asked by grand jurors last summer: They pressed Monica Lewinsky for make-or-break details; they demanded of Mr. Clinton straight answers. By contrast, the questions senators passed to the Chief Justice betray a telling lack of interest in the facts. The president's infuriating performance before the grand jury clearly had those jurors ready to indict, if only they had the opportunity. The president's lawyers' infuriating performance before the Senate merely had Mr. Clinton's partisans in that body declaring victory. Here is the argument made by the president's lawyers: Take the mountain of evidence against Mr. Clinton and break it into hundreds of little molehills. Consider each molehill separately, and ask poignantly, "You wouldn't kick a president out of office for such a trifle, would you?" Then deny that the molehill even exists. To make such a denial, the lawyers seize upon some disparity or inconsistency in the shape of the molehill, and demand that any uncertainty be resolved by denying the existence of the molehill. This has always been the last line of defense for this president: Never mind that he has been caught in one bald-faced lie after another; never mind that he never admits a lie unless the forensic evidence has him dead to rights -- for all that we must maintain a prima facie belief in the testimony of William Jefferson Clinton. We must cling to that belief even if it means disbelieving the testimony of dozens of others. Such a defense would never work with an impartial jury. The Democrats' unwillingness to keep their sworn oath of impartiality is no reason to truncate the trial. The majority is in a position to demand witnesses, and demand they should. The president's defense has argued that it is only fair for every blurry occurance to be resolved in his favor. Perhaps. But that doesn't mean there isn't a better way to resolve blurry occurances: the Senate might try to achieve clarity instead. Betty Currie knows for a certainty whether the president asked her to retrieve the gifts given to Monica. Betty Currie knows for a certainty whether she called Monica or vice versa to arrange the present drop. She can, and should be asked to make the record complete and clear. The president's lawyers, after all, have been debriefing Mrs. Currie, so why shouldn't the Senate? Then there is Ms. Lewinsky. Mr. Clinton's lawyers say she is 1) the best witness in the president's defense ("No one ever told me to lie.") and 2) a pathological liar whose word can't be trusted because it conflicts with Mr. Clinton's (i.e., on the matter of who touched whom, when and where). Well, which is it? Bring Monica forward, and let's find out. Perhaps, as the Democrats have assured one and all, it is all over. Perhaps even divine revelation would be insufficient to convince Senate Democrats of their man's guilt. Even so, the Senate can get to the truth and has an obligation to do so. The obstinate refusal of the minority to live up to their constitutional responsibilities is no reason for the majority to abandon theirs. Copyright © 1999 News World Communications, Inc. -------------------------------------------- washtimes.com

To: Catfish who wrote (10478)	1/25/1999 9:15:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13994

January 25, 1999 That Was a Trial? Solons and pundits have recently spent a lot of time plumbing the Constitutional phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors." It seems they should instead have been trying to discern how the Founding Fathers understood the verb "to try," as in Article I, Section 3, which gives the Senate "sole Power to try all Impeachments." The proceedings that have so far taken place in the Senate have been theatrical and sometimes illuminating, but have had only a passing resemblance to a trial. When in the two centuries since Blackstone, in particular, has anyone held a trial with rules that outlaw witnesses? The World's Greatest Deliberative Body is now bending itself out of shape debating whether it's kosher for prosecutors even to talk to witnesses. The Democrats are transparently disingenuous, while Republicans as usual cower behind their majority. At least we have Henry Hyde (see alongside) to point out that the emperor has no clothes. The issue of the moment is whether Trent Lott, Orrin Hatch and the rest can summon themselves to do what the Constitution, universal practice and common sense make obvious. It is of course equally obvious that the President is guilty as charged. White House lawyers headed by Counsel Charles Ruff have been skillful in their nit-picking. They complain that the prosecution keeps changing its mind about which of the President's manifold perjuries it wants to discuss. They invent serial excuses for a pattern of obstruction. In the alternative reality they have constructed false affidavits appear by immaculate conception, and the President "refreshes his memory" by repeating a series of self-serving lies to Betty Currie. And somehow the President discussed gifts with Monica Lewinsky, but never enlisted in the conspiracy that led her and Betty Currie to hide subpoenaed evidence under a bed. It is mere happenstance that the sole beneficiary of all this obstruction was Bill Clinton. Article One of the impeachment resolution charges President Clinton with lying to the grand jury about "the nature and details" of his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. For openers, in his prepared statement, he testified, "I regret that what began as a friendship came to include this conduct." Some friendship. By Ms. Lewinsky's testimony, it was only a matter of hours after their first encounter that the President of the United States had the 21-year-old intern in the Oval Office performing a sexual act on him. Months into their "friendship," Ms. Lewinsky was still uncertain if he even knew her name. Article Two charges the President with obstructing justice. Of course he did not explicitly tell Ms. Lewinsky to lie. He only encouraged her to file a false affidavit and give false testimony in the Jones suit, and supported the scheme to conceal the subpoenaed gifts. He allowed his attorney to make a false and misleading statement to a Federal judge characterizing an affidavit. Clearly he secured job assistance for Ms. Lewinsky to prevent her truthful testimony; how many job-seeking twenty-somethings meet with the U.N. ambassador at his suite at the Watergate for a job interview ? After his own deposition in the Jones case, Mr. Clinton summoned Betty Currie to an unusual Sunday session at the White House, asking her rhetorical questions: "I was never really alone with Monica, right?" and "Monica came on to me and I never touched her, right?" The repetition of what the President knew to be falsehoods can have no other purpose than tampering with a witness. For all the haggling over details, Mr. Clinton, like Richard Nixon before him, was at the heart of a concerted effort to obstruct justice. The remaining issue, of course, is what to do about this. There is indeed a sense in which witnesses are not needed. The logical procedure would be to enter a summary judgment that the President is guilty of perjury and obstruction, and proceed to the debate over whether Presidential felonies are grounds for "overturning" an election now as we did in 1974. The need for witnesses arises only because the President continues to dispute each charge; Mr. Ruff was hilarious arguing that the payment of $850,000 to Paula Jones does not allow us to infer that the President indeed tried to do with her precisely what he admits he did with Ms. Lewinsky. If the President continues to assert his innocence on perjury and obstruction, let him come personally to assert it before 100 Senators. Summary judgment against the President, however, is far from what anyone has in mind. Instead we get Senator Robert Byrd's uncharacteristically slimy motion to end the proceedings without ever taking a stand on the merits. It is not Bobby Byrd who wants to let the President off, it's all those other guys who will never convict him, so forget it. Position and power without responsibility or accountability--the essence of what passes for politics today. Senator Byrd's motion at least puts to the test whether his Republican colleagues are serious. Senator Byrd, like others, professes to believe that dismissal would "promptly end this sad and sorry time for our country" and begin a "process of healing." What planet have such people been living on these past six years? This is not a matter of a President happening to fall for a 21-year-old temptress, but an ingrained habit of lying. Bill Clinton conducts politics at the level he does because it has never occurred to him to do otherwise--lying to Colonel Holmes to launch his career and lying to the American people to save it. His entire Presidency has been bent to obstructing justice, from barring Justice lawyers from Vincent Foster's office after his death to resisting, as droves of witnesses flee the country or hide behind the Fifth Amendment, an independent counsel on using illegal Chinese money to win the last Presidential election. The notion of mutual healing is nowhere in sight. It is not as if the President were joining Senator Byrd's own call to follow the law with regard to the Vacancies Act, or offering to put the Justice Department in the hands of some clearly impartial trustee for the next two years. Instead, Mr. Clinton would spin dismissal as a vindication and move brazenly on to new heights of arrogance. He would beat his bongo drums and, say, turn the Justice Department over to the tort lawyers. Judiciary Chairman Hatch would mumble a few words of opposition and cave as he repeatedly has. Even Republicans such as Senator Sam Brownback are saying, "the biggest comment I get from people in Kansas is: 'Get it over with!'" This goal is of course laudable, but the Senate will end nothing by sweeping the current mess under the rug. It has to go to the source of the problem, which is not the House managers or Kenneth Starr or a "vast right-wing conspiracy." The source lies in the psyche and personality of William Jefferson Clinton; there is only one way the Senate can promptly put "it" behind us. To wit, render an impeachment conviction and hope that President Gore will abide by our laws. wsj.com