(Important information, originally posted by Howlin under the Weekly Standard's title, which may not have caught enough attention.)
Lowering the Bar
May was a bad month for presidential historians of the James Carville school. By majority vote, a six-member committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court -- at least three of whom appear to be Democrats -- recommended that Bill Clinton be disbarred for his various violations of legal ethics during the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky matters. This decision went rather far to explode the standard Carvillean thesis: that the president did nothing wrong enough to warrant any official sanction.
Less noticed was a similar and nearly as significant event. A federal judge demolished practically every complaint or allegation Carville and Co. ever made against Kenneth Starr and the Office of Independent Counsel. Dismissing three well-coordinated nuisance suits against Starr -- filed by convicted Whitewater defendant Stephen Smith, indicted Kathleen Willey witness Julie Hiatt Steele, and Francis T. Mandanici, an apparently obsessed, Starr-hating Connecticut lawyer -- district judge John F. Nangle used unusually brutal language.
The charge that Starr pressured Steele and Susan McDougal to lie and falsely implicate the president? "There's not one shred of support [for that claim] in the hundreds of pages of documents submitted" to him, Judge Nangle wrote.
The contention that Starr violated the independent counsel statute by testifying before the House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry? "Ridiculous."
The allegation that Starr abused his power by continuing to represent tobacco companies during his supervision of the Whitewater investigation? "Nonsense...absolutely ridiculous."
The argument that some conflict of interest tainted Starr's aborted acceptance of a deanship at Pepperdine University? "Very dubious." And "the stuff that dreams are made of."
And "this Court has never heard a more absurd argument." And it is "totally illogical" and there is "no evidence" to substantiate it.
Nangle called Stephen Smith's complaints that he had been asked to lie by Starr "meritless" and "completely frivolous." And then Nangle announced that he was considering holding Mandanici in contempt of court.
We hear, by the way, that Jeffrey Toobin, the most respected scholar of the Carvillean school, is busy revising his recent book on the Lewinsky affair so as to remove a number of falsehoods about Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. Given Toobin's central thesis (that Clinton was the "good guy in this struggle"), maybe he should save some time and just remainder the thing to the fiction bins.
And then Nangle announced that he was considering holding Mandanici in contempt of court. What is paramount is not whether or not Nangle followed through with contempt, but the emotional showdown Mandanici suffered. Beautiful! BTW, last I heard Julie Hiatt Steele was in dire financial straits. Where the heck did she get $$ to bring suit against Judge Starr?