Parsing The Eye Of The Needle
Media Matters spends an inordinate amount of time splitting hairs. Their gyrations to "prove" things have reached the point of the ridiculous, though. Because they are attempting to attack Neal Boortz for saying that Bill Clinton was convicted of perjury by dancing about screeching that Clinton was never convicted. Strictly speaking, they are correct, mind you.
Because rather than being "convicted", Bill Clinton directly admitted in a sworn plea agreement that he had lied under oath. Period. No "conviction", per se, although the typical media shorthand calls that a conviction. No, this was a flat-out admission of guilt to avoid the conviction that would have occurred had the matter gone to court - which even Media Matters must know - otherwise why would Clinton have made the plea bargain?. Clinton admitted his guilt, in public, with no parsing and with no tortured reasoning trying to push an elephant or a camel through the eye of a needle.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Clinton will leave office free of the prospect of criminal charges after he admitted Friday that he knowingly gave misleading testimony about his affair with Monica Lewinsky in a 1998 lawsuit.
Under an agreement with Independent Counsel Robert Ray, Clinton's law license will be suspended for five years and he will pay a $25,000 fine to Arkansas bar officials. He also gave up any claim to repayment of his legal fees in the matter. In return, Ray will end the 7-year-old Whitewater probe that has shadowed most of Clinton's two terms.
"I tried to walk a fine line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish this goal and am certain my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false," Clinton said in a written statement released Friday by the White House.
The admission, which came on the president's last full day in office, stems from the same allegations that led to Clinton's 1998 impeachment by the House of Representatives, and the later acquittal by the Senate.
Clinton surrendered his law license and paid a fine because of his direct admission that he had lied under oath. Which is what perjury is.
Next up, how many Media Matters posts can dance on the head of a pin.
By Ed, Friday, 6 July , 2007 @ 8:12 am
Boortz said that Clinton was convicted in a criminal case. When challenged on that, he repeated it, insisted he was right and that Clinton was convicted criminally of perjury.
That is wrong. Flat out, historically wrong. And wrong is not “…splitting hairs.” And unfortunately, there are listeners that will believe that Boortz was right, spreading yet more historical illiteracy.
He was impeached in the House but acquitted in the Senate and he gave up his law license to be, in the article you cite, “…free of the prospect of criminal charges.”
What’s wrong with being accurate?
By Gaius, Friday, 6 July , 2007 @ 8:29 am
As was pointed out in the post, Ed. But it is a distinction with no difference. Yes he avoided a trial - but he admitted, in public, that he had committed perjury.