From: To: Subject: RMA Starr Report Date: Monday, September 14, 1998 8:53 PM Subject: The Starr Report Date: Mon, Sep 14, 1998 14:59 EDT From: RonDMoore Okay, I've read the report. "All the President's Men" it ain't. It is a lurid tale. A story of stolen moments in White House hallways, hurried encounters in bathrooms and serio-comic moments of sexual gratification taking place just out of sight from somber civil servants. But this melodramatic story of forbidden sex in the highest office in the land belongs in the Romance/Bodice-Ripper section of the bookstore, not True Crime. Read the tale of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and you will learn a great deal about an affair between a married man and a young woman and their effort to hide it. You will not learn much about criminal activity or abuse of power. Take away the steamy details, take away the prurient interest in having a peek into another man's sex life and what do you have left? Not much. Certainly Clinton lied about the affair. To his wife, his family, his aides, and to the public. Score one for Starr. But there are lies and then there are lies. Surely we can all agree that there's a difference between lying about accepting a bribe and lying about your weight. We must decide whether the lie in question here is sufficiently grave to trigger the impeachment clause of the Constitution. Starr himself makes no attempt to argue that this is a serious lie about a serious matter. He instead relies on citing Supreme Court decisions about how all lying under oath is serious and cannot be tolerated. Well, okay. I suppose you could make the same argument about how letting speeders go with only a warning corrupts the spirit of the legal system as well, but let's leave the judicial ivory tower for a moment and have a look around. Would anyone reading this message ever, under any concievable circumstances, be prosecuting for the following transgression: During a deposition in a civil case, you lie about an affair with another consenting adult. The judge rules the subject is probably not admissable in court, and then the suit is dismissed as being without legal merit. Who does get prosecuted for this "serious crime"? Not you or I. Not anyone we even know. But let's say for the sake of argument that it's still a crime by the strict definition of the law and it should not be tolerated. What is the appropriate punishment? If, by some bizarre chance, you or I were actually charged here, we would get off with a fine or probation at the most. To put it another way, we'd probably draw the same penalty as a graffiti conviction. But back to the report. Starr's absurdly detailed narrative of the Clinton/Lewinsky sexual encounters is presented as a necessary rebuttal to the President's stated belief of how "sexual relations" were defined in the Jones case. But, in fact, Starr's point is easily and quickly made early on: Clinton used a tortured legal theory to defend his denial of a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. It's a simple idea and is rather easily conveyed by the use of only one example. It hardly seemed necessary to describe each and every sexual encounter and describe it, er... blow by blow. Starr also defends his level of sexual detail by claiming that Clinton lied again to the grand jury on Aug 17, when he continued to deny that he touched Lewinsky in certain ways. Clinton's ridiculous squirming and tortured legal reasoning here are matched only by Starr's absurd notion that we should care whether his hand actually did touch her breast (among other things). Does the Independent Counsel really suggest that we hold impeachment hearings to determine exactly where the President's hand was placed during a rendezvous? Let's cut to the chase -- Clinton admitted the relationship before the grand jury, admitted it was wrong, and admitted that he mislead people. Let's move on, Mr. Starr. Did the President suborn perjury? Lewinsky herself never once makes this charge. Time and again, in her own words, she describes "understandings" "knowing looks" "mutual acknowledgements." Nowhere in the report is even the suggestion that Clinton intimidated her into lying, or promised her a reward for doing so, or even convinced her it was necessary. Lewinsky never wanted the story to come out either. (It's ironic that it was Lewinsky's own lack of discretion ultimately led to the very thing she wanted to avoid -- public exposure.) And by the way, Lewinsky is most definitely not a victim. The first sexual encounter is prompted by her (and I'm paraphrasing here) "showing the President the straps of her thong underwear." This is not an innocent waif cast adrift in the evil waters of the White House and then plundered by a predatory Bill Clinton. She's a willing, even eager participant in the entire affair. In fact, she refuses to accept the cut-off of the relationship on several occasions. Over and over she describes the President trying to stop their illicit activities, and over and over she describes her efforts to engage him once again. Pity not Monica Lewinsky. This is not to imply that Clinton is the victim of Lewinsky, far from it. Clinton himself is seen continually refusing to let her go and lets himself fall back into the relationship far too easily. No, neither of these two was a victim. They were both adults, and they both went into this with their eyes wide open and they each accepted the risks that came along with the thrills. In a somewhat disturbing section of the report, we see Starr's fanciful notion that Clinton's assertion of his legal rights in fighting the Office of Independent Counsel is somehow an obstruction of justice. He cites Clinton's refusal to testify "voluntarily", his filing of legal motions, and he adversarial relationship with the OIC as somehow being criminal. It's a chilling thought to believe that one can do nothing to defend one's self against a prosecutor lest a charge of obstruction be filed. Clinton didn't want to testify. No kidding. He's the defendant. That's supposed to be his right. However, since asserting the 5th amendment protections afforded the rest of us were determined to be "political suicide" by the media pundits, he had virtually no protection from Starr. Who wants to get in front of a grand jury without a lawyer and without any legal protections at all? Not me. So when all is said and done, what do we have here? As I said earlier, it's not "All the President's Men." One is a story of how a president permitted and encouraged various illegal activities by his aides against his political enemies and then attempted to cover it up by manipulating the investigations. The other is the story of an illicit affair and the desperate attempt not to get caught. (One interesting side note -- Several hundred hours of Nixon's tapes were recently destroyed because they were ruled "too personal" even after Nixon's death, but Ken Starr and the House Judiciary Committtee feel just fine about publishing Bill Clinton's sex life on the internet while's alive.) At the root of the case against Clinton is a moral, not a legal transgression (in contrast to Watergate, which was rooted in actual crimes, i.e. breaking and entering, illegal surveillance, etc.) Clinton had an adulterous affair. That's wrong and he should pay a price. However, I submit that his is paying and will continue to pay an appropriate price -- public scorn. He will be scorned for the rest of his life and any history of his presidency will prominently feature his broken marriage vows. A moral crime deserves a moral punishment. What about the legal crime of lying under oath? Surely he deserves to pay some price for this, but the question becomes what is a just punishment. Impeachment is the Constitutional equivalent of capital punishment and as such it should be imposed only in the most grave of circumstances. The Constitution says that a president may be impeached for "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors," (emphasis added). So we must ask outselves, whether lying under oath about an affair in a civil deposition in a dismissed case is a high crime or a misdemeanor that can be mentioned in the same breath as treason or bribery? Certainly not. Therefore, congressional censure seems an appropriate and just punishment for the level of crime committed. The combination of public scorn and congressional censure seem more than an adequate response to what has happened. Bill Clinton has already brought enough shame and discredit on himself, let us not now shame ourselves and our nation by overturning the results of a free and democratic election for what is, in the final analysis, a peccadillo.