Lindsey Graham doesn't get it
May. 13th, 2009 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumThis quotation sums up what's wrong with a lot of the pundit class, which is bad enough:
"Here's what I think happened [after Sept. 11, 2001]: the nation was rattled. The administration went on the offensive and they looked at some statutes on the book as a way I wouldn't have looked at. They were very aggressive. They were going to make sure this didn't happen again, and they tried to come up with interrogation techniques, evaluating the law in a way I disagree with their evaluation. But there is not one iota of doubt in my mind they were trying to protect the nation.
"But they made mistakes. They saw the law, many times, as a nicety that we couldn't afford.
"So, they took a very aggressive interpretation of what the law would allow, and that came back to bite us. It always does.
"But that's not a crime. What we have to understand as a nation, is the fact that we embrace the rule of law is a strength, not a weakness."
I'll remember that the next time a cop pulls me over for making a left when it's prohibited (that's the last moving violation I got. I didn't see the sign). I'll just explain that I was rattled, and needed to make the turn, and the law was a nicety I couldn't afford.
I'm sure he'll understand.
It's bad enough when the pundit-class is spouting this nonesene, but this is a Senator. This is one of the people who has a job to see to it the rule of law he sees as such a strength, is upheld. He was so enamoured of the rule of law that he helped manage the impeachment trial of Clinton.
We aren't talking something he did out of a sense of duty, after the trial he kept it going.
''It's a time for the country as a whole to understand what went on here and where we're going to go,'' Mr. Graham said. ''What are the consequences of this case? What do you do with the next Federal judge who has got wandering hands in the office and someone's got the courage to say, 'No, you shouldn't treat me that way,' and he starts hiding evidence and getting others to lie for him -- what do we do with that case?''
...for Mr. Graham, 43, one of the 1994 class of Republican revolutionaries, it was a chance to demonstrate a down-home folksiness that stood in sharp contrast to the dour scowls and legal mumbo jumbo of many of his fellow managers. He became an instant hit on the all-Monica-all-the-time cable channels.
Was the Lewinsky scandal Watergate or Peyton Place? he mused out loud. What, after all, is a high crime, he asked. ''How about if an important person hurts somebody of low means?''
So a non-perjurious lie = a major crisis. A thing to impeach a president for, and then to keep in the public eye, because of the damage that fib is supposed to have done to the fabric of the law.
But illegal wiretaps, tortures, wars on false pretenses (some of which were based on the false confessions gained from torture. i.e. lies, to the nation, on which matters of policy were determined), those are things to put behind us. Forgive and forget.
I think the real difference is, Bill Clinton was a member of the Democratic Party, and Bush was a member of the Republican Party. It's not about laws, it's about who belongs to which club.
"Here's what I think happened [after Sept. 11, 2001]: the nation was rattled. The administration went on the offensive and they looked at some statutes on the book as a way I wouldn't have looked at. They were very aggressive. They were going to make sure this didn't happen again, and they tried to come up with interrogation techniques, evaluating the law in a way I disagree with their evaluation. But there is not one iota of doubt in my mind they were trying to protect the nation.
"But they made mistakes. They saw the law, many times, as a nicety that we couldn't afford.
"So, they took a very aggressive interpretation of what the law would allow, and that came back to bite us. It always does.
"But that's not a crime. What we have to understand as a nation, is the fact that we embrace the rule of law is a strength, not a weakness."
I'll remember that the next time a cop pulls me over for making a left when it's prohibited (that's the last moving violation I got. I didn't see the sign). I'll just explain that I was rattled, and needed to make the turn, and the law was a nicety I couldn't afford.
I'm sure he'll understand.
It's bad enough when the pundit-class is spouting this nonesene, but this is a Senator. This is one of the people who has a job to see to it the rule of law he sees as such a strength, is upheld. He was so enamoured of the rule of law that he helped manage the impeachment trial of Clinton.
We aren't talking something he did out of a sense of duty, after the trial he kept it going.
''It's a time for the country as a whole to understand what went on here and where we're going to go,'' Mr. Graham said. ''What are the consequences of this case? What do you do with the next Federal judge who has got wandering hands in the office and someone's got the courage to say, 'No, you shouldn't treat me that way,' and he starts hiding evidence and getting others to lie for him -- what do we do with that case?''
...for Mr. Graham, 43, one of the 1994 class of Republican revolutionaries, it was a chance to demonstrate a down-home folksiness that stood in sharp contrast to the dour scowls and legal mumbo jumbo of many of his fellow managers. He became an instant hit on the all-Monica-all-the-time cable channels.
Was the Lewinsky scandal Watergate or Peyton Place? he mused out loud. What, after all, is a high crime, he asked. ''How about if an important person hurts somebody of low means?''
So a non-perjurious lie = a major crisis. A thing to impeach a president for, and then to keep in the public eye, because of the damage that fib is supposed to have done to the fabric of the law.
But illegal wiretaps, tortures, wars on false pretenses (some of which were based on the false confessions gained from torture. i.e. lies, to the nation, on which matters of policy were determined), those are things to put behind us. Forgive and forget.
I think the real difference is, Bill Clinton was a member of the Democratic Party, and Bush was a member of the Republican Party. It's not about laws, it's about who belongs to which club.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-14 06:22 am (UTC)- Most people who liked Clinton a week earlier said it wasn't.
- Most people who disliked Clinton a week earlier said that it was.
Now, we could try to come up with a theory of personality styles that shows that people who are less uptight about sex also approve of more liberal economic policies, yadda yadda. I think the reason for those answers is that (1) we are pack animals at heart, and (2) we're not all that rational. I often pretend to myself that I am rational, and support my loved ones in their illusions, but no matter how hard we try, we're not automatons.
That said, I'm pretty sure that I'd damn well want to go after anyone who sanctioned torture, whether he's on my team or not.
*Is there any record of a politician being asked about non-socially-sanctioned sex who didn't lie about it? I guess that the present NY Governor might count, except that he volunteered information about his misbehavior before he was asked.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-14 06:46 am (UTC)Henry Cisneros. What tripped him up wasn't the sex, but that he'd been paying support to his mistress, and the numbers didn't add up.
I'd also make the question specific to the US. Old joke about diplomats discussing the Lewinsky thing:
* The French want to know why there's only one mistress.
* The Africans want to know why she isn't pregnant.
* The Russians want to know why she isn't dead.