The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #74447 Message #1299994
Posted By: Nerd
18-Oct-04 - 04:39 PM
Thread Name: BS: Bill O'Reilly--Shame on you!!
Subject: RE: BS: Bill O'Reilly--Shame on you!!
Also, BB,
Lying to a grand jury is a felony.
It actually isn't. Perjury is a felony, but perjury has more features than simply "lying." In particular, it is not perjury if the lie is wholly immaterial to the case being investigated. Since, theoretically, the case being investigated was Whitewater, there is a good legal argument to be made that all of the sexual stuff was wholly immaterial.
Beyond this, the specific allegations of perjury do not stand up anyway. It is true that the reasons for this are fairly legalistic, but a decision as to whether he committed perjury must necessarily be legalistic.
For example, his claim that he did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky was legally true, because Paula Jones's Lawyers crafted a stupid definition of sexual relations that required that Clinton be touching certain specific body parts of another person (not the mouth) with parts of his own body, with the intention of giving pleasure. This was not Clinton's defintion, but the prosecution's. All he has to be is an asshole who didn't want her to enjoy the sex, and he could have full intercourse and have it not be sex BY THE DEFINITION HE WAS INSTRUCTED BY THE COURT TO OBSERVE. Beyond that, the two sex acts he is accused of specifically don't qualify even if he wanted her to have an orgasm, receiving oral sex because her mouth doesn't count as one of the defined body parts, the cigar thing because that's not his own body touching her.
Each of the serious perjury accusations falls apart under this kind of scrutiny, which is why Clinton WAS NOT CONVICTED by the Senate. Note, HE IS NOT A PERJURER because he was ACQUITTED of the charges. Forgot that part, BB?
In addition, there are other perjury accusations made in the House (such as, Clinton advised Monica to lie in an affadavit), for which there was never any evidence, and plenty of contradictory evidence. These, I do not think, were even made into formal charges--but House republicans clucked and moaned a lot in the congressional proceedings about them.
BB, I think people are amused by Bill O'Reilly is not that they hate this particular crime so much, it's because he spends all his time being so judgmental. Clinton never judged anyone else's sex life, but O'Reilly does it all the time. This makes O'Reilly's predicament funny. He'll just have to suck it up for a while, but his audience is probably as hypocritical as he is, so they will gladly keep watching him jusge others by standards he himself cannot meet. I predict no long-term repercussions for Ol' BO.