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I don't know how I missed seeing this before -- pretty amazing in a twisted way ...Did I actually understand Gore to be saying...it's okay if a President does horrible things (in his private life) as long as he does a good job for the American people ??

khaps, more amazing by Gore's statement is that he regards RAPE "a private matter."

Now, either the fellow can't think on his feet, or he is a self-serving coward, or he is an utter idiot...or all of the above, which I suspect is the case...

THE CLINTONS--AMERICA'S BIGGEST BLUNDER
Hear Bush41 Warn Us--October 19, 1992*

hear

*Thanx to Cloud William for text and audio

LEHRER: President Bush, your closing statement, sir.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Three weeks from now--two weeks from tomorrow, America goes to the polls and you're going to have to decide who you want to lead this country ...

On foreign affairs, some think it's irrelevant. I believe it's not. We're living in an interconnected world...And if a crisis comes up, ask who has the judgment and the experience and, yes, the character to make the right decision?

And, lastly, the other night on character Governor Clinton said it's not the character of the president but the character of the presidency. I couldn't disagree more. Horace Greeley said the only thing that endures is character. And I think it was Justice Black who talked about great nations, like great men, must keep their word.

And so the question is, who will safeguard this nation, who will safeguard our people and our children? I need your support, I ask for your support. And may God bless the United States of America.

(Applause)

"Well, of course," she said. "But what is character? The sum total of who you are. The color of your skin and how you deal with it is part of your character."
hillary clinton, King Day 'A Call to Arms'

YOO-HOO Mrs. clinton!
The color of: and how YOU dealt with it is part of YOUR character.


play tape

The color of your rapist husband's face when he rapes. . .

and how you have dealt with it is part of YOUR character.

The color of Ron Brown's skin

and how YOU have 'dealt' with him is part of YOUR character.

There was a third chance to get rid of the co-rapists. In '98 when there was still time to stop bin Laden...

The failure to remove the clintons in '98 was a monumental failure and is directly traceable to the logic of pathologic self-interest. Recall in particular:

THE LIEBERMAN PARADIGM: (clinton is an unfit president; therefore clinton must remain president)
THE SHAYS SYNDROME (clinton is a rapist; therefore clinton is a fit president)

The Lieberman Paradigm debuted during Joe's misconstrued and erroneously lauded Monicagate speech.

The Shays Syndrome was borne of the impeachment trial fully formed, like a breech presenting humunculus.

Shays, you may recall, examined the evidence in the Ford Building, concluded that clinton did, indeed, rape Broaddrick -- "VICIOUSLY!" AND "TWICE!" he declared-- and was going to vote to impeach, but changed his mind 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...

Well, with the help of the 100 corrupt and cowardly cullions, clinton walked. The senators' justification for their acquittal votes requires the suspension of rational thought (and, in the curious case of Arlen Specter, national jurisdiction).

--Mia T, Musings: Senatorial Courtesy Perverted

THE OTHER NIXON

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):
"But Judge Nixon took an oath to tell the truth and the whole truth. As a grand jury witness, it was not for him to decide what would be material. That was for the grand jury to decide. Of all people, Federal Judge Walter Nixon certainly knew this.
"So I am going to vote 'guilty' on articles one and two. Judge Nixon lied to the grand jury. He misled the grand jury. These acts are indisputably criminal and warrant impeachment."

Senator Tom Daschle (November 3, 1989):
"This morning we impeached a judge from Mississippi for failing to tell the truth. Those decisions are always very difficult and certainly, in this case, it came after a great deal of concern and thoughtful analysis of the facts."

Congressman Charles Schumer (May 10, 1989):
"Perjury, of course, is a very difficult, difficult thing to decide; but as we looked and examined all of the records and in fact found many things that were not in the record it became very clear to us that this impeachment was meritorious."

Senator Carl Levin (November 3, 1989):
"The record amply supports the finding in the criminal trial that Judge Nixon's statements to the grand jury were false and misleading and constituted perjury. Those are the statements cited in articles I and II, and it is on those articles that I vote to convict Judge Nixon and remove him from office."

* * * * *

"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.
Because the Constitution stipulates that federal judges, who are appointed for life, "shall hold their offices during good behavior,'' and because there is no similar language concerning the popularly elected, term-limited president, it must have been perfectly agreeable to the Framers, so the (implicit) argument goes, to have a perjurious, justice-obstructing reprobate as president.

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.