One Big winner in CIA leak case - Bill Clinton......

[HardWorkingDem]

Now he can run around slamming the right without having his own perjury mount to anything when compared to this comparison to this.

[stepnw1f]

1. You Are Right...

Heh Heh... I like.

[CatWoman]

2. huh?

:shrug:

[wake.up.america]

4. If I remember correctly, Clinton was never convicted of perjury.

I do beleive he was skirting the issue.

[unblock]

9. never even charged. there simply is no case for perjury.

which is why all they could do to him was (a) the judge found him in contempt, (b) the arkansas bar suspended his license, and (c) the house impeached him.

all of which are within some very broad discretions of the parties who took punitive action.

[valerief]

3. To those on the right, lying about sex is a big deal.

Lying about "job titles" is not apparently.

[Arkana]

5. Wha...?

[unblock]

6. clinton did not commit perjury. that's a rw talking point, and it's false

he did paint an inaccurate picture of his relationship with monica, but (a) he did so with a series of strictly truthful statements and (b) none of his so-called lies materially affected the jones v. clinton case.

as to (a), no one has ever been able to point to a single false statement, though in the context of the entire line of questioning, the omission is obvious. but you can't nail someone for perjury for that.

as to (b), jones's case was dismissed as frivolous. it's virtually impossible to prove that any statement made in a frivolous case rises to the standard needed for perjury. it is NOT perjury to lie under oath, about immaterial matters. for instance, if you claim to be 39 when in fact you're 40ish, that's not perjury unless your specific age was somehow significant to the case at hand.

the worst you can say is that clinton was deliberately, grossly misleading. but that's not perjury.

[Mend]

7. agree....in my day, and I am a contemporary of Pres. Clinton,

what they did was not called "having sex". What they did was called "heavy petting" and without birth control pills available, we sure knew the difference.

[unblock]

8. beyond that, the term "sexual relations" was carefully defined

and jones's lawyers agreed to a carefully constructed definition that specifically did NOT include oral sex.

the failure to include oral sex in the definition was striking. it convinced me that jones's lawyers were NOT trying to get at the truth and NOT trying to find out about, or even get clinton to admit to, an affair.

rather, they were trying to trap him in a lie, or something they could portray as a lie. clinton was a smart enough lawyer to doge the perjury trap, so they settled for the p.r. campaign of calling it a lie anyway, because it could be passed off as such to a public that doesn't understand the precise nature of the questions, definitions, and answers in the deposition.

[bigbrother05]

10. Think you give credit to the wrong lawyers

That whole line of questioning and entrapment most definitely came from Ken Starr's office. Any lawyer trying to win a case for their client would have gone for anything beyond a handshake. Only someone like Starr would put together such a convoluted definition and leave out oral sex.

[unblock]

11. could be, but i don't think jones's lawyers were really representing HER

jones certainly wasn't paying them. jones herself probably knew she was being used as a way for powerful clinton-haters to try to "get" clinton.

remember that clinton supposedly offered to settle and the jones team refused. of course, we have no way of knowing the proposed terms, but surely clinton would have been happy to give them plenty of $$ to make that whole thing go away. the fact that they refused suggests that they weren't interested in the money, when money was pretty much all jones herself could legally hope for.

i also had a chance to meet with one of the jones lawyers, shortly prior to the impeachment charade. i heard a presentation and had a lengthy q&a session. i even asked some questions myself. what impressed me the most was how TOTALLY focused he was on clinton, monica, whitewater, lying, etc. he barely mentioned jones or what her complaint was about in the first place, or what they were supposedly trying to achieve. it was 99.44% clinton bashing.

[bigbrother05]

12. Great inside view, thanks.

Only trying to point out the difference between a real civil case and what the Jones v. Clinton circus was. Think more than one report surfaced on how closely the Jones team and their backers coordinated with the Starr team. My recollection was that Scaife, etc. funded all manner of witch hunts to harrass BC.

[FreedomAngel82]

14. Very telling

Why wouldn't they want that involved? :shrug: I think they were just apart of the anti-Clinton team with the Akransas project.

[HardWorkingDem]

18. Jones' case was NOT dismissed....Clinton settled...

though many legal scholars I read wrote that eventually it would have probably been overturned.

[unblock]

33. it WAS dismissed; clinton then settled to avoid appeals

http://www.ishipress.com/opinion.htm

Decision Dismissing Jones vs. Clinton case
Judge Wright's Opinion
Released on Wednesday, April 1, 1998

Following is the complete text of U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright's 39-page ruling dismissing Paula Jones's sexual harassment case against President Clinton.




Judge Susan Webber Wright
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS
WESTERN DIVISION

PAULA CORBIN JONES,
Plaintiff,

vs.


No. LR-C-94-290
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON
and DANNY FERGUSON,
Defendants.


MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

[HardWorkingDem]

36. This case was dismissed because it was settled.....

.it was not outright dismissed....


here are a couple of lines from it.....

"this Court granted in part and denied in part the President's motion"

and....

"The Court dismissed plaintiff's defamation claim against the President, dismissed her due process claim for deprivation of a property interest in her State employment, and dismissed her due process claims for deprivation of a liberty interest based on false imprisonment and injury to reputation, but concluded that the remaining claims in plaintiff's complaint stated viable causes of action."

[unblock]

38. no, it was dismissed, then appealed, and settled during the appeal process

note that the settlement was announces 11/13/98; the dismissal was 4/1/98.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/11/13/jones/

Jones v. Clinton finally settled
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, November 13) -- After fighting Paula Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit for four years, President Bill Clinton agreed Friday to pay Jones $850,000 to drop the case. But the deal includes no apology from the president.

The deal was struck after weeks of off-and-on-again negotiations, a lawyer intimately involved in the situation told CNN.

...

There was also some pressure on Jones recently to settle as her attorneys had threatened to withdraw from the case once the appeals court rules on her case. Also, the Rutherford Institute, which has been financing Jones' lawsuit against the president, told Jones that at the end of the appeal it plans to stop paying the her legal bills.

...

[HardWorkingDem]

45. Go back and read your own link...(the actual decision)....

parts of the case were dismissed and other parts were not. It is in your own link.

Clinton settled when the entire thing was not thrown out as expected and allowed to go on if desired.

Besides, if it was outright dismissed, then why pay a settlement?


(Though as I early typed, the legal scholars I read believed eventually any type of negative decision against Clinton would have been overturned because Paula Jones really didn't have true action against Clinton - her action really was against the American Spectator magazine and oddly, David Brock.)

[unblock]

46. there was indeed an EARLIER dismissal of part of the case

that was jones v. clinton, 974 f.supp. 712 (e.d.ark. 1997), as cited in the link.

however, that was at an earlier stage in the process. the decision in the link itself (on 4/1/98) was the court's final summary judgement and dismissal of the rest of the case.

from the very bottom of that same link, "there being no remaining issues, the court will enter judgment dismissing this case."


http://www.ishipress.com/opinion.htm

In sum, plaintiff's allegations fall far short of the rigorous standards for establishing a claim of outrage under Arkansas law and the Court therefore grants the President's motion for summary judgment on this claim.

III.

One final matter concerns alleged suppression of pattern and practice evidence. Whatever relevance such evidence may have to prove other elements of plaintiff's case, it does not have anything to do with the issues presented by the President's and Ferguson's motions for summary judgment, i.e., whether plaintiff herself was the victim of alleged quid pro quo or hostile work environment sexual harassment, whether the President and Ferguson conspired to deprive her of her civil rights, or whether she suffered emotional distress so severe in nature that no reasonable person could be expected to endure it. Whether other women may have been subjected to workplace harassment, and whether such evidence has allegedly been suppressed, does not change the fact that plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that she has a case worthy of submitting to a jury. Reduced to its essence, the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party and the Court therefore finds that there are no genuine issues for trial in this case.

IV.

For the foregoing reasons, the Court finds that the President's and Ferguson's motions for summary judgment should both be and hereby are granted. There being no remaining issues, the Court will enter judgment dismissing this case.


IT IS SO ORDERED this 1st day of April 1998.
/s/ Susan Webber Wright

______________________________
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

[FreedomAngel82]

13. Yep

If they don't take this seriously it shows how they in reality don't care about anything unless they can make money. Bill Clinton was about lying about sex and this is about national security and putting all of us in danger. Clinton didn't put any of us in danger.

[HardWorkingDem]

15. My point is....and let's be honest here.....

My point is this......one of the reasons Gore could not use Clinton effectively at the time was because Clinton was perceived as "dirty" and harmful to the Gore campaign.

This current issue with the CIA case now washes Clinton's sins away - what Clinton did is no where near to what the outing of a CIA is.

HOWEVER, let us be honest here - Clinton was playing games with the GJ and in contemporary standards oral sex is "sexual relations". If you don't believe me just ask a spouse or significant other if getting or receiving oral sex is sex or not.

I am not going to go back and examine the transcripts to what Clinton did or did not tell the grand jury, but let's not get in the game of playing "my team" politics (excusing the bad behavior of one's political party just because he or she plays for "our" team).

Whether one wants to believe it or not, Clinton, though not convicted, committed perjury. Let's get over that because denying it only makes us look just like the GOP.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

20. the major difference between Clinton and Bush. . .

(because you seem so fixated on Clinton). . . is that Clinton was a successful leader who understood the value of a hard work ethic and often spent sleepless nights worrying about our nation.

by contrast. . .

Bush is the worst president ever, who has never had to work for anything and goes to sleep at 8 every night without a care in the world because he is ignorant.

Clinton was never at any risk for having a tarnished legacy, so your concern is misplaced to say the least.

[MADem]

22. Yeah, let's just throw that pesky "rule of law" out the window, while we

are at it!! Never mind that there was no conviction, the RW says it is so, so let us all roll over and buy their horseshit argument.

I'm no kid, but all the kids I've asked say oral sex is NOT sex--it's more intimate than a grope, but sex is what sex has always been, by their standards--the 'bumping uglies' standard.

But the real bottom line here is this: CLINTON does not have a damn thing to do with this. Bringing him up in the context of this case, which involves serious breaches of national security and a scheme to deceive the nation into going to war, is rather curious, IMO.

If you are going to reference a President who screwed the country to further his own ends, Nixon's Watergate is a closer match.

I have to wonder why you didn't do that, frankly.

[HardWorkingDem]

24. Missing the ENTIRE point...

My point was that with the Bushies outing this CIA agent, there is nothing that can be held over Clinton's head now! He is free to run out and campaign wholeheartedly for the Dems!

In the words of Al Gore, he can now be his own man because the Rethuglicans have done much, much worse with the outing of a CIA agent than Clinton did when it comes to lying about oral sex.

And you can't ask kids of today of what a blowjob is - to them it is not the same. BUT ask YOUR significant other and listen to what the reply is.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

27. yes but you do realize that the only people who

were holding it over clinton's head (HAHAHAHAH HEAD GET IT BLOWJOB HAHAHAH!!!) were Right Wingers. you realize that right?

[MADem]

32. Now THAT is an EXCELLENT point!!!!!

GEE!!!

Well said, S+B, WELL SAID!!!!!

[MADem]

29. He could have done that anyway

In fact, if you recall, he was set to do a huge push for Kerry when his heart got in the way, and he had to go under the knife. Even at that, he got out of a recovery bed while still quite ill to do what he could.

The only people concerned, nowadays, about Clinton's role in a Democratic campaign are the GOP. The Democrats are not in angst over it, and have not been since 00.

[HardWorkingDem]

30. That was 2004, not 2000, this goes all the way back to 2000...

I am a life long Democrat and I am in "angst" over it. Especially when I keep opening the daily paper and reading of another American killed in Iraq.

Clinton put his selfish interests above the party and the Democratic future. It's that simple.

[MADem]

31. Well.....yeah, of course it was

And 04 came AFTER 00. Which suggests that most people had moved on and gotten over that little personal peccadillo.

I am sorry if you are "in angst" about Clinton's personal life, and an error he made nearly a decade ago, but I suspect you do not represent the vast majority of "lifelong Democrats." In fact, I think I am safe in saying your views are in the distinct minority.

[HardWorkingDem]

37. and this is why we keep losing elections...

we keep playing the "my team" politics game like everyone else instead of standing for something.

We keep excusing Clinton's behavior because he is a Dem and empathetic and a sterling politician.

Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but all along we should have been fighting like hell to get through voter integrity and other issues.

And then we get lectured by Bill Clinton to fight for something when he was the biggest "triangulator" in our history.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

41. Let me ask you this.

When you think of Clinton's presidency does the blowjob negate all the great things he did? When you think of Clinton is he the "president who got the blowjob"?

[HardWorkingDem]

43. When I think of Clinton....

I think of the wasted talent and wasted opportunities, but accept that he would not have been as great as he was without these type of flaws.

But one thing I won't agree to is that he made all of this fortune on his own. He was a great benefactor of luck and opportune times.

Then I think of the great mystery of life and great irony of life of how little things come into play and come back to haunt us all the time. People seem to want to dismiss the Clinton blowjob Butterfly Effect on the 2000 election, but it did have a profound influence on the results.

"Little" things do matter. For example, how the loss of almost 20 soldiers in Somalia played a role in the loss of almost a million lives in Rwanda. (And if you think I am exaggerating about this, read some of Clinton's own words about Rwanda and how he did not want to have another Somalia on his hands.)

So little things do matter a great deal from time to time.

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

16. we are all losers in the CIA leak case. Nobody's a winner. This isn't

a celebration.

And Clinton has nothing to fucking do with it, period.

[HardWorkingDem]

25. Yes, he does have something to do with it...

Clinton's selfish acts are partly the reason we are here today.

Certainly we do not want to play the "what if" game, but if Clinton had not tarnished himself, Gore would have used him more than he did. Instead, because of the mood of the country back in 2000, Gore had no choice but to select someone like Joementum for a running mate. Gore had to find someone squeaky clean.

And let's not hear about the stealing of the election in 2000, yes it happened, but if Clinton could have helped in the Gore campaign, Florida would have been a moot point.

If Gore had won, I have no doubt in my mind that we would not be in Iraq right now; 9/11 probably would have still happened, but I would think by now in a Gore Whitehouse, Bin Laden's nasty head would be resting on a spit somewhere.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

26. "And let's not hear about the stealing of the election in 2000"

no, instead, let's leave this fact out so that the rest of the argument makes sense.

[HardWorkingDem]

28. the meaning is....it would have been moot if....

Clinton could have ran full bore with Gore.....the Dems would not have needed Florida, or at the least, Clinton could have campaigned harder in Florida and removed the issue of the close vote.

My point is - because of the mood of the country toward Clinton and his behavior, he could not be used effectively in the 2000 campaign.

And again, be honest here - quit absolving Clinton's behavior because he is a Dem - I have daughters myself and his behavior was utterly disgusting. And I'm not even a prude.

[Der Blaue Engel]

35. Don't assume that everyone who doesn't think it was disgusting

is just favoring him because he's a Democrat. Some of us really don't care.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

40. thank you.

well put.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

39. absolving Clinton's behavior? i have completely absolved him.

In fact, I think in the future all of our Presidents should be getting head in the oval office from interns. They should create a special internship for it, they can call it "Head Intern". That's how absolved Clinton is in my book.

To even compare the two presidents is an insult to Clinton. The only president you can compare the chimp to is Grant, and even then hey at least Grant wasn't a chickenhawk and could hold his liquor.

[Egalitariat]

44. Not a celebration? You're kidding? I had Fitzmas Turkey for dinner...

tonight. If you're not celebrating, you're the only one here.

[kentuck]

17. Bill Clinton does not win anything by bringing up a blowjob.

end of message.

[MADem]

19. Certainly, and even more to the point, he doesn't need to "win"

Eight years of peace, prosperity, jobs and a sense that America was a fair, just, and involved superpower are the elements of his legacy. He is already a winner.

Skyrocketing energy prices, failure to protect our nation against terrorist attack, mystery anthrax, poor response to natural disasters, a cheating, crony administration, and of course that "little matter" of our best and brightest dying for oil...well, that is the Monkey legacy. Certainly nothing there to be proud of.

[kentuck]

21. Well said...

Why would he remind people of a blowjob with his record that he is very proud of out there?

[MADem]

23. I know several elderly ladies

Sweet ladies, they are too. Church going, gardening, hat-wearing ladies, who never wear white after Labor Day and volunteer for various local charitable causes. I came upon them the other day having a chat in a coffee shop, laughing uproariously. I, of course, wanted to know the joke.

After a good deal of cajoling, I finally got out of them that if only Bill Clinton could return to office, they would happily volunteer to smoke his sausage every day, and twice on weekends!

If senior citizens do not seem to be at all bothered about Clinton's personal indiscretion, I really do have to wonder why some people just cannot "move on" from it, as it were!!!!

[Gold Metal Flake]

34. Let's consult the Big Dog >>Sat Oct 29, 8:29 PM

Clinton to Dems: Don't Fear Tough Issues

http://www.comcast.net/news/politics/index.jsp?cat=POLITICS&fn=/2005/10/29/253079.html

"You can't say, 'Please don't be mean to me. Please let me win sometimes.' Give me a break here," Clinton said. "If you don't want to fight for the future and you can't figure out how to beat these people then find something else to do."

[msongs]

42. despite the kerry bashing I wish Bill could run for president again Nt