Posted on 03/12/2002 9:12:23 AM PST by LiberteeBell
Students grill Janet Reno before her ODU lecture By TONY GERMANOTTA, The Virginian-Pilot © March 12, 2002
NORFOLK -- The questions were tough, the answers thoughtful. Sixteen students turned up during Old Dominion's spring break to grill former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno a couple hours before she delivered a lecture at the school.
They asked her about terrorism, civil liberties and the children who died in the operation against the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993.
And they asked her about her former boss, President Clinton, and how she felt when she learned of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Reno, who interrupted her campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Florida, didn't duck.
Later that evening, she spoke before an overflow crowd as part of the Old Dominion University President's Lecture Series.
She described Clinton as ``one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. He has a prodigious knowledge of government. He has an understanding of the human spirit that was remarkable. He could talk to people in a remarkable way.''
Her analysis of the affair: ``He made a terrible mistake.''
She said she agreed with Kenneth Starr's successor as independent counsel, Robert Ray, who declined to prosecute Clinton.
Ray cut a deal with Clinton's lawyers in which the president admitted that he made false statements. It spared him from criminal prosecution in exchange for a $25,000 fine and a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law license.
The affair, she said, affected the country.
``I don't know how America will ultimately react to it,'' she said, adding after a brief pause, ``but I sure wish he had told the truth.''
Reno told the students that she came to politics through a love of law and the guidance of her parents, both newspaper reporters who believed in the power of government and the responsibility of citizens to make sure it was used wisely. At age 13, she spent a year with an uncle who was a judge in postwar Germany. She saw the concentration camps and asked her German friends how it could happen.
``We just stood by,'' she said they told her. ``We just stood by.''
She said she has since refused to just stand by.
Asked to describe her legacy as attorney general, Reno declined, but said she felt most comfortable with the fact ``that I tried to use the law the right way, to make America safer and freer, and to give more people equal opportunity. And crime went down the entire time I was in office.''
What she wished she could change, she said, was the Branch Davidian standoff and subsequent deaths.
``That wlll always be with me,'' she said. ``and I will never know what the right answer was. Because that went to the grave with David Koresh, who set the fires and who created the armageddon.''
On the current war against terrorism, Reno said she supports President Bush but has some concerns.
``I have trouble with the war that has no ending. I have trouble with the war that generates so many concerns about individual liberties.''
She breaks with the current administration -- and with President Clinton -- on support of the death penalty.
Reno said recent advances in testing of DNA evidence has shown how arbitrary the ultimate punishment can be.
``I think the only justification for the death penalty is vengeance,'' she said, adding, ``the horror of putting a man to death for a crime he did not commit is just appalling to me.''
At the end, she congratulated the students, saying she does such question and answer sessions frequently and ``this was one of the best. It was just superb.''
Ha ha ha, Janet begins her career as a stand-up comedian.
The horror of seeing kids burn to death as a direct, or indirect result of her foolish 'gung ho' law enforcement tatics at Waco are far more palatable to Reno. After all, they had it comming, didn't they?
Does deceit = intelligence?
I think not. Sure Clinton was an accomplished liar, spinner of yarns, teller of half truths. Able to talk himself out of lots of trouble. Then there was that rather shady bunch always available to handle the stuff his gift of gab could not overcome.
Intelligence per Webster: The ability to learn and understand or to deal with new or trying situations. Somehow BJs and bombing aspirin factories do not come to mind when comtemplating just how an intelligent individual would cope with stressful situations. Hiding behind your wife's pants suit is not what an intelligent person would do as per Webster. Certainly intelligent people would have a complete and probably narrowly defined meaning for the word "is". The bottom line is that this man is a lot of things. Intelligent is not one of them.
So if there are any of you Clinton loving shallow media types lurking, please... Don't ever again refer to the expanse of Clinton's brain. We all know he too ofter thought with another part of his anotomy. Jennifer said there wasn't much to it either.
What? No "Barf Alert!?!"
How convenient, to place all the blame on Vernon Howell, who is dead and cannot defend himself. How convenient that the evidence was bulldozed and crutial bits destroyed. How convenient that the OldDominantLiberalMedia fails to report that the one of the Davidian's main concerns, right from the start, was the preserving of evidence. They were always asking for guarantees that the evidence would be preserved.
I consider Reno to be guilty of murder.
Need anymore evidence of media bias? "...didn't duck" (the questions, presumably)? Riiight. Her answers are just more lame, "I'm so great. "Blame David Koresh for everything, including Hillary's wide hips." and other non-answers. The woman(?) is in denial about her(?) past.
Naah, she's just whining because she didn't get to be the one to implement the elements of the unPatriot act on her watch.
She said she has since refused to just stand by...and decided that she would embrace the Nazi values and become a grand participant.
The more I learn about the clintons, the more I think bill was just a front for furthering hitlery's marxist agenda.
I knew something was missing when I did the preview. Sorry for the oversight!
"Pulling it all together, what we have right here in our own country are all of the ingredients necessary for a totalitarian police state. We have a federal government that nobody in his right mind would trust, which lies to us incessantly, uses illegal force against its citizens with impunity, and collaborates with totalitarian dictators under cover of a massive propaganda campaign conducted by our supposedly free press. Our major information media are dominated by closet totalitarians who pay lip service to democracy while covertly promoting the interests of communist despots. The political opposition is made up largely of cowards who are so intimidated by our totalitarian propaganda media they are unable to offer effective resistance to even the most egregious violations of civil liberties by the corrupt Clinton regime. They have become, in the fullest sense of the term, Weimar Republicans. And finally, we have that which makes it all possible, a listless, docile, dumbed-down public who gape mindlessly at all of the above phenomena without the slightest glimmer of comprehension, and prattle the latest propaganda cliches dumped into their empty heads by the mainstream media."
"The Elian affair has truly given us a glimpse into the abyss of tyranny. The message that comes through loud and clear is that the system isn't working. The question that remains to be answered is whether we still possess the intelligence and fortitude necessary to fix it."
Edward Zehr(deceased...Nov---2001) can(not) be reached at ezehr@capaccess.org
Published in the May. 22, 2000 issue of The Washington Weekly
Copyright 2000 The Washington Weekly(defunct).
Now Free Access to All Stories at http://www.federal.com
Well, it worked for her boss, didn't it?
WE WERE ONLY FOLLLOWING ORDERS!!!!!!
would be PROUD of JANET WACO!!!!
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