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Jewish World Review Sept. 5, 2000 / 4 Elul, 5760

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter
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Bubba protects and serves

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- In the disbarment proceeding of William Jefferson Clinton, his lawyers have argued that taking away Clinton's law license would be "excessively harsh, impermissibly punitive and unprecedented." More amusingly, they also claim that he engaged in the conduct prompting the disbarment proceeding merely out of "a desire to protect himself and others from embarrassment." Let's take that last one first -- Clinton was trying to "protect himself and others."

Forget how Clinton treacherously sucked his secretary Betty Currie into the eye of his obstruction hurricane -- to save himself. Forget how he slandered the various Jane Does, including longtime girlfriend Gennifer Flowers, ingenuous Paula Jones and besotted White House volunteer Kathleen Willey -- to save himself. Forget how he used his own daughter as a prop no different from the 5-pound Bible he carries during his Sunday walk-to-church photo ops -- to save himself.

Consider only this: While Clinton's sex toy, one Monica Lewinsky, was lunging toward imprisonment to protect him, he was hard at work smearing her as a sex-crazed stalker. He had suggested as much to Betty Currie, as well as to his hatchet man, Sidney Blumenthal -- causing both of these blindly loyal lieutenants no end of legal trouble themselves.

Sid Vicious was putting the word out to seemingly sympathetic journalists, and some of the more obedient members of the watchdog press already had begun to repeat the slander on the cable TV shows. Eventually, former Blumenthal friends Christopher Hitchens and Carol Blue signed affidavits attesting to Blumenthal's claims that Clinton himself had suggested that Monica was a stalker.

Clinton used Monica like a Kleenex, encouraging her to perform oral sex on him while he chatted with congressmen about Bosnia, not knowing her name after their third sexual encounter, and hinting that he would marry her when he was out of office. In a seamless transition, the moment she became inconvenient, he eagerly set about destroying her. Good thing she kept that dress.

Yet the president has the audacity to describe his Herculean efforts to obstruct justice as an attempt to protect "others." Apart from "Willard," it's hard to figure who those others might be.

Even in a disbarment proceeding premised on the president's prodigious lies, he lies.

Some people are starting to detect a pattern here. The Clinton Kool-Aid drinkers obstinately refuse to consider more than one lie at a time, insisting that any attempt to draw a line from Clinton's lie No. 1 through lie No. 2 and all the way to lie No. 1,023,543 is a fool's errand. People who can remember what happened yesterday ("Clinton-haters") are treated like lunatics who see patterns in wheat fields.

As for whether the sanction of disbarment is "unprecedented," it is indubitably true that it is difficult to come up with an analogous precedent to Bill Clinton. With the help of DNA evidence, tapes and a score of witnesses, the man was caught lying under oath and encouraging others to lie under oath (those "others" he was so eager to protect, no doubt).

Moreover, Clinton is not an obscure lawyer in Arkansas, but president of the United States. If nothing else, committing crimes while president does have the effect of calling attention to oneself.

The state bar considering President Nixon's disbarment certainly thought that being president made a difference. Like Clinton, Nixon had not been indicted for any crime; unlike Clinton, Nixon could not have been charged with perjury since he had not given any sworn statements throughout the Watergate investigation. He merely stood accused of obstruction of justice, a debatable charge that was not supported by, say, DNA evidence.

Still, the New York Bar was in such a frenzy of indignation about Nixon that it refused his tendered resignation, so that he could be disbarred.

The court opinion disbarring Nixon noted that obstruction of justice is "a most serious offense," an offense that was "rendered even more grievous" because Nixon was president -- "the holder of the highest public office of this country and in a position of public trust."

Foreshadowing another Clinton argument, the court explicitly acknowledged that Nixon was not acting in his capacity as a lawyer during his alleged offenses, but said the power to discipline attorneys extends to nonprofessional conduct that "reflects adversely upon the legal profession and is not in accordance with the high standards imposed upon members of the bar."

Clinton can't even meet the high standards imposed on Boy Scouts. Though the U.S. president is honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America, after receiving complaints from kazillions of parents, the Boy Scouts have finally removed Clinton's signature from the certificate presented to Eagle Scouts. Maybe that's why it means something different to be called a "Boy Scout" than to be called a "lawyer."


JWR contributor Ann Coulter is the author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. You may visit the Ann Coulter Fan Club by clicking here.


Up

09/01/00: AlGore's 'going out of business!' tax plan
08/29/00: Bush's compassionate conservatism
08/25/00: Space alien tells funny jokes in bathtub
08/22/00: Dems view world only in black and white, not in color
08/18/00: Another Damascus Road conversion
08/15/00: The viagra cotillion
08/11/00: The hand-wringing Hamlet from Hartford
08/07/00: The Democratic party's white face
08/04/00: Hillary's potty mouth
08/01/00: The hole in the story
07/28/00: Cheney's detractors can't get their story straight
07/25/00: AlGore: Elmer Blandry
07/21/00: The tyranny of non-objectivity
07/18/00: The state's religion
07/14/00: Reform it back
07/11/00: Keating for veep
07/07/00: Gore invented 'Clueless'
07/04/00: The stupidity litmus test
06/30/00: O.J. was 'proved innocent' too
06/27/00: The last guys 'proved innocent'
06/23/00: Serious Republican candidates don't get serious press
06/19/00: They weren't overzealous this time
06/16/00: Evolution of the strumpet
06/13/00: Actual journalistic malpractice
06/09/00: I did not have sexual
relations with that ... man!
06/06/00: IRS turns Bubba's screw
05/30/00: Too corrupt to be an Arkansas lawyer
05/26/00: Choose liberalism
05/24/00: Violence against coherence
05/22/00: Developmentally disabled Republicans
05/16/00: For womb the bell tolls
05/12/00: Asylum from Georgetown
05/10/00: The truth is out there, even for the clueless
05/08/00: Barbie is a liberal Democrat
05/02/00: Moving the goalpost
04/28/00: The bastardization of justice
04/25/00: How Monica Lewinsky saved the constitution
04/24/00: It's sunny today, so we need gun control
04/19/00: No shadow of a doubt -- liberal women are worthless
04/14/00: It takes a Communist dictator to raise a child
04/11/00: The verdict is in on Hillary
04/07/00: Vast Concoctions III
04/04/00: 'Horrifying' free speech in New York
03/31/00: Campaign finance reform brings out worst in senators
03/28/00: All the news that fits -- we print!
03/24/00: Net losses all around
03/20/00: To protect, serve --- and be spat on
03/16/00: Thank Heaven for the consigliere
03/13/00: Vast concoctions II
03/09/00: The bluebloods voted against you
03/07/00: The Tower of Babble
03/03/00: Vast concoction
03/02/00: Hillary's sartorial lies
02/28/00: You have to break a few eggs to make a joke
02/22/00: I've seen enough killing to support abortion
02/18/00: A liberal lynching
02/15/00: McCain and the flag
02/11/00: The Shakedown Express
02/08/00: To mock a mockingbird
02/05/00: Summing up Campaign 2000: 'Oh, puh-leeze!'
02/01/00: A Confederacy of Dunces
01/28/00: Dollar Bill's racist smear
01/24/00: How high is your freedom quotient?
01/21/00: Numismadness
01/18/00: How dare you attack my wife!
01/14/00: The Gore Buggernaut
01/10/00: The paradox of discrimination law

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