I’ve wondered from the beginning why the prosecution was so stupid as to attempt to convict him of first-degree murder. They never had a case (and probably not even for a manslaughter charge, though they could maybe get him for negligent or reckless homicide, but I’m not familiar with CA law about that).
Anyway, Sarah Rumpf explains the ways they screwed up. And as many have noted, the real issue was that he should never have been in the country to do this
Andy McCarthy writes that (despite media hysteria this morning), there’s still no “there” there, at least with regard to “collusion with the Russians” (which isn’t a crime).
Iain Murray writes that it’s unconstitutional, and should be abolished.
He’s right.
Her thoughts on the reassessing of Bill Clinton by the Democrats. She was the only person in that whole sorry episode who told the truth.
But the Democrats still refuse to admit that it wasn’t about the sex, or sexual harassment, or sexual assault. It was about the corruption, and obstruction of justice to prevent an innocent woman he’d sexually harassed from getting a fair trial.
Those protesting the decision are going after the wrong targets:
Fifteen years ago, when I started blogging, it was common to hear that “the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” You don’t hear that so often anymore, because it’s not true. China has proven very effective at censoring the internet, and as market power has consolidated in the tech industry, so have private firms.
Meanwhile, our experience of the internet is increasingly controlled by a handful of firms, most especially Google and Facebook. The argument for regulating these companies as public utilities is arguably at least as strong as the argument for thus regulating ISPs, and very possibly much stronger; while cable monopolies may have local dominance, none of them has the ability that Google and Facebook have to unilaterally shape what Americans see, hear, and read.
In other words, we already live in the walled garden that activists worry about, and the walls are getting higher every day. Is this a problem? I think it is.
Yes, it is.
Gorsuch may be poised to deal it a huge blow, beyond what Scalia would have. Let’s hope.
…are threatened by a litigious climate. It’s almost as though some “scientists” would rather sue people than discuss science. [Paywalled]
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here‘s a non-paywalled link.
Sessions is considering appointing a second special counsel to (finally) actually investigate them:
The list of matters he wanted probed was wide ranging but included the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, various dealings of the Clinton Foundation and several matters connected to the purchase of the Canadian mining company Uranium One by Russia’s nuclear energy agency. Goodlatte took particular aim at former FBI director James B. Comey, asking for the second special counsel to evaluate the leaks he directed about his conversations with President Trump, among other things.
I hope so.
It is unjust for it not to be an excuse:
If the government cannot even count all of the criminal laws it has enacted, how on earth can citizens be expected to obey them?
Good question.
Well, this is refreshing. Caitlin Flanagan excoriates feminists for letting him off the hook for decades for his sexual abuse. I wonder if this also means that the truth will finally come out about all their other corruption and crimes, now that they seem to have been defenestrated?
It takes some serious gall to spend 20 years pimping Bill and Hillary Clinton like they're the last prostitutes in town, and finally admit he's a sexual predator only after they're most useful as a cudgel against Republicans.
— Mo Mo (@molratty) November 14, 2017
[Update mid-morning]
Hell has frozen over. The NYT has defended Juanita Broaddrick.
[Update at noon]
“The thing is, going after him now — when they don’t need him anymore, and when they’re trying to hustle Hillary off the political stage for 2020 — doesn’t make up for what they did then. Rather, it underscores it.”
[Wednesday-morning update]
The dam seems to be bursting. Now Democrats are saying that the years of defending Bill Clinton were morally indefensible. Gee, ya think? That’s why I swore never to support another Democrat two decades ago. Even Matt Yglesias now realizes he was wrong, and that Clinton should have resigned. But he still has this wrong:
In the midst of the very same public statement in which he confessed the error, Clinton also mounted the defense that would see him through to victory — portraying the issue as fundamentally a private family matter rather than a topic of urgent public concern.
“I intend to reclaim my family life for my family,” he said. “It’s nobody’s business but ours. Even presidents have private lives. It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life.”
To this line of argument, Republicans offered what was fundamentally the wrong countercharge. They argued that in the effort to spare himself from the personal and marital embarrassment entailed by having the affair exposed, Clinton committed perjury when testifying about the matter in a deposition related to Paula Jones’s lawsuit against him.
What they should have argued was something simpler: A president who uses the power of the Oval Office to seduce a 20-something subordinate is morally bankrupt and contributing, in a meaningful way, to a serious social problem that disadvantages millions of women throughout their lives.
But by and large, they didn’t. So Clinton countered with the now-famous defense: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Ultimately, most Americans embraced the larger argument that perjury in a civil lawsuit unrelated to the president’s official duties did not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.
It’s wrong on two levels. First, both things were terrible (and as Flanagan notes above, the behavior with Lewinsky destroyed the credibility of the feminist argument against relationships in the workplace of disparate power). Second, he (as do and did most Democrats) continues to minimize what Clinton did legally. No, he didn’t merely “commit perjury.” He suborned perjury from others, including Betty Currie, Monica Lewinsky, and Linda Tripp, via bribes, and physical threats to the family of the latter. This was a major obstruction of justice in order to prevent another woman upon whom he had predated with the power of the state, from getting a fair trial. And he did this after having taken an oath to see that the laws were faithfully executed. As George Will wrote at the time, Bill Clinton may not have been the worst president, but he was probably one of the worst men to ever be president.
I’m glad that the scales are finally falling from some eyes over this, but some of the blindness persists.
[Update a while later]
If Roy Moore wins, it will be because of Democrats.
[Update a few minutes later]
Michelle Goldberg struggles to figure out what to say.
That can be a problem when you’ve been a lying hypocrite for decades.
[Update late morning]
Flash from the past: Democrats standing and applauding Bill Clinton after his impeachment in 1998. They had no shame. Most of them still don’t.
And “liberals'” sudden condemnation of Bill Clinton is cynical and self serving. No kidding.