A caller offered her a counterexample re the Foley case, i.e., that the Senate didn't even bother, during the impeachment trial of bill clinton, to review the 'Ford building' evidence that supported the charge clinton had indeed raped Juanita Broaddrick and had, over the decades, similarly abused other women. 1 Kiely was totally unaware that the senators had shirked their responsibility. And now we suffer the consequences of senatorial and media malfeasance: It should have been patently obvious to the senators and the media alike--irrespective of Lieberman and Shays 2 --that a rapist is not a fit president. What could they have been thinking? About the contents of the 900 raw FBI files, in the case of the senators? About access to the president, in the case of the media? |
the logic of pathologic self-interest
In '98, when there was still time to stop bin Laden... The failure to remove the clintons in '98 was a monumental error and is directly traceable to the logic of pathologic self-interest.
THE LIEBERMAN PARADIGM Senator Joseph Lieberman's bifurcated Monicagate speech in 1998 on the floor of the Senate was almost universally misperceived as an act of honesty and courage. In reality, it was neither. Reduced to its essence, Lieberman's argument was this: clinton is an unfit president; I have called this argument "The Lieberman Paradigm." Lieberman's argument that sorry day was rightly headed toward clinton's certain ouster when it suddenly made a swift, hairpin 180, as if clinton hacks took over the wheel.... Which they probably did. What was Joe promised? A place on the 2000 ticket, perhaps? To be fair, it was not the Lieberman speech but rather a New York Times apologia that institutionalized this shameless scheme to protect a thoroughly corrupt and repugnant--and--as everyone except The New York Times now knows-- dangerous -- Democrat regime. The Lieberman Paradigm made its debut in the Times' utterly loony 1996 endorsement of clinton. The Times actually argued--I kid you not--that although bill clinton was a "corrupt," "dysfunctional personality [with] delusions" -- the Times' own words -- we need not--we must not--remove bill clinton; we need only remove.the character lobe of bill clinton's brain. THE SHAYS SYNDROME Not an aberration, the Shays Syndrome was quickly adopted by the entire Senate as its impeachment show trial deus ex machina of choice. Shays, you may recall, examined the evidence in the Ford Building, concluded that clinton did, indeed, rape Broaddrick -- "VICIOUSLY!" AND "TWICE!" he declared at the time-- and was planning to vote to impeach; he changed his mind, however, after a tete a tete with the rapist. Any cognitive dissonance Shays may have experienced rendering that verdict was no doubt assuaged by the political plum clinton had given Mrs. (Betsi) Shays... Each of the 50 senators, on the other hand, cured the cognitive dissonance problem pre-emptively by making certain not to examine the damning Ford Building evidence in the first place.
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The alleged brain trust, Quayle-Sununu The underlying theory, I suppose, is that But what assurances are there After all, You will recall that, in 1996, its endorsement of clinton was predicated clinton assured us immediately (if tacitly) Perhaps our approach to the problem Voters would be wise to heed the old Don't lose |
by Mia T
Hypocrisy abounds in this Age of clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife with constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual surreality polymarked by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case of Jefferson, posthumously misappropriated. Shameless pharisees in stark relief crowd the Capitol frieze: Baucus, Biden, Bingaman, Breaux, Bryan, Byrd, Cohen, Conrad, Daschle, Dodd, Gore, Graham, Harkin, Hollings, Inouye, Kennedy, Kerrey, Kerry, Kohl, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Lieberman, Mikulski, Moynihan, Reid, Robb, Rockefeller, Sarbanes, Schumer. These are the 28 sitting Democratic senators, the current Vice President and Secretary of Defense -- clinton defenders all -- who, in 1989, voted to oust U.S. District Judge Walter Nixon for making "false or misleading statements to a grand jury." In 1989 each and every one of these men insisted that perjury was an impeachable offense. (What a difference a decade and a decadent Democrat make.) Senator Herb Kohl (November 7, 1989): "The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself," observed the philosopher Hannah Arendt. "What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core." If hypocrisy is the vice of vices, then perjury is the crime of crimes, for perjury provides the necessary cover for all other crimes. David Lowenthal, professor emeritus of political science at Boston College makes the novel and compelling argument that perjury is "bribery consummate, using false words instead of money or other things of value to pervert the course of justice" and, thus, perjury is a constitutionally enumerated high crime. The Democrats' defense of clinton's perjury -- and their own hypocrisy -- is three-pronged. ONE: clinton's perjuries were "just about sex" and therefore "do not rise to the level of an impeachable offense." This argument is spurious. The courts make no distinction between perjuries. Perjury is perjury. Perjury attacks the very essence of democracy. Perjury is bribery consummate. Moreover, (the clinton spinners notwithstanding), clinton's perjury was not "just about sex." clinton's perjury was about clinton denying a citizen justice by lying in a civil rights-sexual harassment case about his sexual history with subordinates. TWO: Presidents and judges are held to different standards under the Constitution. clinton's defenders ignore Federalist No. 57, and Hillary Rodham's constitutional treatise on impeachable acts -- written in 1974 when she wanted to impeach a president; both mention "bad conduct" as grounds for impeachment. "Impeachment," wrote Rodham, "did not have to be for criminal offenses -- but only for a 'course of conduct' that suggested an abuse of power or a disregard for the office of the President of the United States...A person's 'course of conduct' while not particularly criminal could be of such a nature that it destroys trust, discourages allegiance, and demands action by the Congress...The office of the President is such that it calls for a higher level of conduct than the average citizen in the United States." Hamilton (or Madison) discussed the importance of wisdom and virtue in Federalist 57. "The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." (Contrast this with clinton, who recklessly, reflexively and feloniously subordinates the common good to his personal appetites.) Because the Framers did not anticipate the demagogic efficiency of the electronic bully pulpit, they ruled out the possibility of an MTV mis-leader (and impeachment-thwarter!) like clinton. In Federalist No. 64, John Jay said: "There is reason to presume" the president would fall only to those "who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue." He imagined that the electorate would not "be deceived by those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle." (If the clinton debacle teaches us anything, it is this: If we are to retain our democracy in this age of the electronic demagogue, we must recalibrate the constitutional balance of power.) THREE: The president can be prosecuted for his alleged felonies after he leaves office. (Nota bene ROBERT RAY.) This clinton-created censure contrivance -- borne out of what I have come to call the "Lieberman Paradigm" (clinton is an unfit president; therefore clinton must remain president) -- is nothing less than a postmodern deconstruction in which the Oval Office would serve for two years as a holding cell for the perjurer-obstructor. Such indecorous, dual-purpose architectonics not only threatens the delicate constitutional framework -- it disturbs the cultural aesthetic. The senators must, therefore, roundly reject this elliptic scheme. In this postmodern Age of clinton, we may, from time to time, selectively stomach corruption. But we must never abide ugliness. Never.
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And now we suffer the consequences of senatorial and media malfeasance: It should have been patently obvious to the senators and the media alike--irrespective of Lieberman and Shays 2 --that a rapist is not a fit president.--Mia T
Could it be the Connecticut water?
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