Well i guess that i must be wrong to not care about his sex life and only care about his political results.
Where he did it was irrelevent to the fact, i said i don't approve of adultery, why would i be more shocked because he did it in the whitehouse? he was president..
Again you state he was a perjurer, yet he was found not guilty.... again i state that the finger of accusation is not proof of guilt.
Below is an essay about the impeachment. i don't need to debate it because he was aquitted which means the statement that he was a perjurer is false in the eyes of the law ( which is what counts).
Many people don't realize this, but President Clinton was not impeached for his statements to the Paula Jones grand jury. He was impeached for his statements to Kenneth Starr about what he said to the Paula Jones grand jury.
source
This essay, written for Usenet in December 1998 -- after the House impeachment vote, but before the Senate's vote -- tried to explain that notion.
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An Examination of Clinton's impeachment charges
Lis Riba, December 1998
People keep using the President's actions in the Paula Jones case as examples of why he should be impeached. However, the House did not find enough evidence to impeach Clinton on those charges. Therefore, they are moot for the time being.
Instead, let's look at the first charge he was actually impeached for.
Excerpt from Article I
"On August 17, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth before a Federal grand jury of the United States. Contrary to that oath, William Jefferson Clinton willfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury concerning one or more of the following: (1) the nature and details of his relationship with a subordinate Government employee; (2) prior perjurious, false and misleading testimony he gave in a Federal civil rights ac tion brought against him; (3) prior false and misleading statements he allowed his attorney to make to a Federal judge in that civil rights action; and (4) his corrupt efforts to influence the testimony of witnesses and to impede the discovery of evidence in that civil rights action."
Keep in mind that Clinton was not impeached over his testimony in the Paula Jones case. This is his interview with the Office of Independent Counsel we're talking about (the videotape which was aired in September) and not his testimony in the Paula Jones case.
Now, the first thing you may notice in this charge is that nowhere does it say *which* statements are considered perjurious. Makes it a bit harder to defend when the charges are so vague. Normally, perjury convictions point to specific testimony which are lies.
Instead, we have to look at the Starr Report [2] and the Judiciary Committee Report [3] to get some idea of what statements they claim are lies.
1. The nature and details of his relationship:
a. In Clinton's testimony, he claimed that his relationship with Lewinsky began in early 1996; she claimed it started in late 1995. By the federal definition of perjury[4], the testimony has to be relevant to be perjurious. He's already admitted that they did have a relationship. Does it make any difference when the relationship began?
In addition, sometimes it can be a matter of judgement in determining when a relationship started. Technically, my relationship with my fiance began in October, 1994, when I asked him if he wanted to start "going out." However, we usually mark our anniversary as December, 1994, when we had our first date. So, when did our relationship start? When I first asked him out or when we had our first date? Is either one *wrong*? If I said our relationship began in October, and he says it started in December, would one of us be lying?
When people say that the issue is perjury, not sex, Michael Moore likes to answer by eliminating sex from the equation. Let's substitute the word golf for sex. The president is accused of lying about playing golf with Lewinsky. "She says they first played golf in November, 1995. He claims they didn't start until early 1996." Mind you, he's answering these questions in 1998 -- over two years after the events in question -- so how clearly can you recall exact dates?
b. The Judiciary Committee also counts as perjury the fact that Clinton claimed he was alone with Lewinsky "on certain occasions" and they had "occasional" telephone sex. They call use of the word "occasion" an intentional lie and claim 20 sexual encounters and 17 phone conversations in more than a year are greater than "occasional." Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines "occasional" as an event "occurring at irregular or infrequent intervals." So how often is something that's "occasional"?
Again with the golf analogy. "He's lying when he said they played golf on occasion, because they actually played golf twenty times."
c. In his OIC testimony, Clinton said he believed that the definition of sexual relations in the Paula Jones case did not include oral sex. The Judiciary Committee thinks that's a lie.
During the Judiciary hearings, they played some videotape at the start of the Paula Jones trial. There was a lot of debate over the definition of sexual relations. At one point, the judge commented that "I'm not sure Mr. Clinton knows all these definitions, anyway."
So the question is whether Clinton "understood" that the definition of sex included oral sex and lied about it, or whether he honestly thought the definition only meant intercourse. Now, how do you prove that in a court of law? How can you prove what a person thought?
Golf: "He testified that they never played golf. In fact, they did play miniature golf several times. He says he thought that when they asked about golf, miniature golf wasn't included. He's lying because he knew golf meant miniature golf as well."
d. Other issues involving the "nature and details of his relationship" fall under the question of whether he touched her and where. Since there were no witnesses to their sexual encounters, this is purely his word versus hers. The best you could do here is have them both reveal every last detail of their sexual encounters and then compare the blow by blow detail. But it still comes down to whose words you believe with no way to prove them.
2. Prior perjurious, false and misleading testimony he gave in a Federal civil rights action brought against him:
The President was not impeached over his testimony in the Paula Jones case, but for what he said to the OIC *about* his Paula Jones testimony. Apparently, they didn't believe his explanations for why he said what he said. Again, there's no specifics about which statements fall into this category, but it seems to be more of the same.
3. Prior false and misleading statements he allowed his attorney to make to a Federal judge:
Again, he's accused of lying in his explanations of what happened during the Paula Jones case, not for lying in the Paula Jones case itself. According to most reports, at the time of the Paula Jones trial, the President's lawyer did not know that there actually had been a relationship. So the lawyer held up Monica Lewinsky's affidavit, in which she said there had been no sexual relationship, and said that meant "there is no absolutely no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form." The grand jury thought Clinton should have corrected his lawyers comments and asked Clinton why he didn't speak up about it. Clinton said he wasn't paying attention.
That's the lie they're charging him with here. He claimed he wasn't following all the exchanges between his lawyer and the other lawyers, while the Judiciary Committee said he was paying attention. How do you prove whether someone is paying attention. The Judiciary Committee report says that Clinton was looking at his lawyer at the time, so he must have been paying attention. But there have been many times when I have sat and stared at a lecturer, and my eyes glaze over, my mind wanders elsewhere, and I lose all track of the outside world. I'm still looking straight at the person, and outside observers may think I'm absorbing every word, but I'm thinking of something else entirely. And again, the standard of perjury is relevance. Is this really relevant?
Interestingly enough, this charge is repeated in Article III (the other article that was approved by the House) Article III, [5] "On January 17, 1998, at his deposition in a Federal civil rights action brought against him, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly allowed his attorney to make false and misleading statements to a Federal judge characterizing an affidavit, in order to prevent questioning deemed relevant by the judge." This is the same allegation. Should this be considered double jeopardy?
4. His corrupt efforts to influence the testimony of witnesses and to impede the discovery of evidence:
The president was charged with obstruction of justice in Article III. This accuses him of committing perjury in covering up the obstruction of justice. Again, this sounds like double jeopardy. Not only is he charged with obstruction of justice (and Article III includes charges of perjury) but he's separately charged with committing perjury about the alleged obstruction of justice.
So that's what I see when I look at Article I. Now, I don't think the President is above the law, but I am willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt. The Judiciary Committee is making some pretty picayune charges (when the relationship started, how often is occasional) that are near impossible to prove (what he believed about the definition, whether he paid attention). Therefore, I just don't think they rise to the level of impeachable crimes.
Mind you, there are other issues as well. Frankly, I don't think Clinton should ever have been asked about his sex life in the first place, making everything that stems from that revelation suspect. I also have a lot of problems with the independent counsel and how he conducted the case. When the foundation is built on shaky ground (illegal evidence about something irrelevant) then it's harder to trust anything based on that. However, most of that is covered in David Chase's excellent post of December 24.
Understand?
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It is a simple idea so it would never happen.
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