Ari Melber on MSNBC shows Bill Clinton saying he did not have sex

[wasupaloopa]

Blow jobs don't equal treason

[greymattermom]

1. I always thought that this whole thing was somehow bogus

because he asked what the definition of "sex" was before he answered, and they said it had to be vaginal penetration, so he answered correctly. Am I wrong about that?

[wasupaloopa]

2. It had to do with what is is

[WinkyDink]

24. Clinton was asked a question about Monica, with the interrogator using the present-tense verb

"is."

Since the liaison was in the PAST, Bill correctly responded with an implied request for clarification:

"It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."

Because it did!

[Eliot Rosewater]

51. Bill is smarter than everybody else in any room he is in unless his wife is there.

[WinkyDink]

61. :-)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. He was parsing his words.

Everybody knows a BJ is sex (if it isn't, wtf is it?) but that wasn't the point.

[DURHAM D]

6. Ken Starr screwed up the question.

Blame him.

[Major Nikon]

10. Actually it was Ann Coulter

Clinton was asked the question during a deposition after the terms were defined by Paula Jones' lawyers, of which notably Coulter was a member.

[pangaia]

52. Coulter....had.a ......JOB ??

[Major Nikon]

55. She became famous for being a lawyer who couldn't legally define a blowjob

[pangaia]

56. Well, I can understand why should might not know what a blow job is..

[Major Nikon]

11. It isn't sex, at least as it's legally, medically, and literally defined

[misanthrope]

17. So it's cool if your significant other gives the neighbor a blow job?

If another person intentionally stimulates you with the intention of arousal to orgasm, what would you call that?

[NYC Liberal]

19. I would call that a blowjob.

Most people in monogamous relationships don’t believe sex is the only way to cheat.

[Major Nikon]

35. ...or a handjob

...or a footjob

[Warren DeMontague]

44. Ear Job

what? I've got big ears!

[Major Nikon]

49. Not sure I could see a happy ending there

But I've known one or two that had some pretty impressive skills.

[WinkyDink]

21. Where is your question coming from? This isn't about us here. We are

discussing the very legalistic language of this case.

Maybe nobody but lawyers anymore grasp the importance of Every. Single. Word. When it comes to the law.

[Demonaut]

32. good point

[xmas74]

47. High School and college debater here

College debate during the whole Clinton affair. I was impressed. It was a trick I pulled during cross ex regularly:demanding the definition of each and every single word. If "a" was included in the resolution, I wanted a definition. If "the", definition.

I once had someone constantly say "umm" during their debate so I demanded a definition of the word. He pulled me aside after the round and called me a bitch. My response? I stared him in the eye and said "Define the word for me, Black's definition preferred."

Debaters will force a definition of nearly anything, including the usage of punctuation if they thought it could add a few points to the ballot.

[Major Nikon]

38. About $200

Prolly more if you want the GFE.

[Shrike47]

30. In my state, it's sodomy. I used to have to explain it to clients.

As one client said to me, 'how could they charge me with sodomy, there wasn't even a dog in the room!'

[Warren DeMontague]

45. Too bad for the puritans, the Lawrence decision rendered that "sodomy law" shit moot.

Too bad, so sad, Ken Cuccinelli.

[sarah FAILIN]

33. It's sodomy in my state, lol

They didn't ask if he committed sodomy with her.

Legal definitions are what they rely on in court and he did what is expected.

[Fozzledick]

12. He was too clever a lawyer for his own good.

He knew that "sexual relations" as defined by Federal law only refers to penis in vagina intercourse. Oral or anal intercourse would be defined as "sodomy", which he wasn't asked about, but not "sexual relations". Legally his testimony was truthful and not perjurious, but politically that technical legal definition was irrelevant.

[Major Nikon]

15. Those terms were also further defined by Jones' lawyers

Clinton was sanctioned by the judge because she found his answers misleading and as an officer of the court he was held to a higher standard. The reality was he was under no obligation to make his opposition's case for them. They had the responsibility of asking more specific questions.

[WinkyDink]

22. He was "too clever"? You will note that Bill Clinton was not removed from office.

[WinkyDink]

26. Fortunes and freedoms have depended on precise legal language.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

31. Yes. But sometimes it backfires.

Maybe a BJ isn't included in the legal definition of "sexual relations," but it's pretty universally considered a form of sex (What the hell else could it be? Merely a friendly gesture? Carefully checking for cooties?), so Clinton's careful, lawyerly parsing just made him look dishonest.

[WinkyDink]

36. 1. He remained in office. 2. Check his current popularity. 3. WHY THE HELL IS THIS A TOPIC, ANYWAY?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

40. As to #3: Damned if I know.

[DURHAM D]

5. No. You are correct.

[planetc]

13. If I remember, he said "I did ot have sexual relations with that woman."

The definition he was using was the one supplied by the guidelines sent by the judge in the Paula Jones case of what constituted sexual relations, and those guidelines required vaginal penetration. Mr. Clinton followed the directions given him by the judge. So Mr. Clinton was telling the truth while misleading people. There was a sexual relationship, but no "sexual relations." At the time, many of us felt that he and Ms Lewinski had every right to keep their relationship private. But by the time the "secret" grand jury had evidence that Mr. Clinton's and Ms Lewinsky's affidavits contradicted each other, the media were in full feeding frenzy, and so to this day, nobody quite knows why he was impeached. Just as they don't quite know how the Whitewater investigation came out.

[Major Nikon]

16. He was impeached for getting a blowjob in the WH

It's really no more complicated. They knew he was going to be embarrassed regardless of his defense and they hoped it would ruin his popularity. The problem was it completely backfired. During the impeachment Clinton's approval ratings were higher than Saint Ronnie's ever were.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

27. Technically, he was impeached for lying about it.

It was stupid for him to have done the thing in the first place, and then to have lied about it, but it was monumentally stupid to have impeached him for it.

[Major Nikon]

34. He was never so much as criminally indicted for lying about anything

So there was no "high crime or misdemeanor" committed.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

39. But they impeached him anyway.

Impeachment is a political act; there doesn't have to be a statutory crime involved. "High crimes and misdemeanors" can be whatever Congress wants it to be. The articles of impeachment cited perjury and obstruction of justice. He didn't have to have been criminally charged.

[Major Nikon]

41. Which simply proved the process could be used contrary to the intent

They could have just as equally said Clinton was drowning kittens in the Lincoln bath as there was the same amount of proof.

[onenote]

57. The intent of the impeachment clause

was to address a wide range of actions/inactions by government official, some of which might be crimes, but others might not. It was, as been pointed out, specifically understood to be a remedy that was political in nature. As Federalist Paper 65 explained,

"A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt."

[Major Nikon]

58. Political, yes. Partisan political, no

That was the intent.

[ElementaryPenguin]

59. You're right! He was handed a doc defining "sexual relations" - after the judge had stricken

oral sex from the list.

So - given those parameters - the question that was put to him - he answered truthfully.

(His lawyer even protested the list - saying that his client was willing to tell the truth - but the judge insisted on narrowly defining "sexual relations." )

I always thought that was a ploy to entrap the President into committing perjury.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Clinton lied about a sexual dalliance, which isn't quite the same

as maybe conspiring with a hostile foreign government to influence an election.

However, Ari's point might have been that if a president can be impeached for lying about a private extramarital relationship, certainly another one could be impeached for playing footsie with the Russians (not to mention money laundering).

[loyalsister]

7. We shouldn't forget that there was no question as to whether or not it happened

They had DNA evidence and the argument came down to semantics. I think it is in our interest for evidence and what it means to be unquestionable and any charges to be inarguable.

[WinkyDink]

28. Uh....AS IF you need to "remind" anyone. Geez. We aren't demented like Trump.

[loyalsister]

42. The point is

Our assessments and assumptions have not reached a point where questions about legality or degree of illegality are so clear and concrete that they are inarguable.
I think there is evidence' that our conclusions may be true. However I am reserving judgement at this point.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. None of us were dumb enough to say there was no there there.

We just disputed the fact it warranted removal from office.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. Exactly. A married guy is asked whether he had sex with some other woman

and he lies. Quelle surprise.

[misanthrope]

20. When he's an attorney and he does it under oath while realizing

the kind of jeopardy he faced from the long knives drawn against him, then it will understandably undercut the faith many have in his judgement. He came off looking like a weasel and stupidly endangering himself.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

23. Of course; it was really stupid and he should have known better.

He painted a big target on his own back. But it wasn't the first time a guy stupidly lied about a sexual misadventure despite being in the spotlight, and despite the certainty that the affair and the lie would be discovered - and it won't be the last.

[misanthrope]

25. The second sentence is immaterial

What Clinton did was idiotic. Did he deserve to be impeached for extramarital sex? Of course not but he wasn't. He was impeached for what he did on the stand.

It still angers me because of the row of dominoes it toppled which led to bad things for the nation.

[stevenleser]

53. It's not immaterial, it's all that really matters. And no, he wasnt impeached for what he did on the

stand.

He was impeached because he was a successful Democratic president and hurt the GOP argument that a Democrat could not lead the country that they were using all the time after Carter. It's the same reason they went after Hillary. That's the vendetta they have against the Clintons, they had the temerity to be successful.

[misanthrope]

62. I must have missed that portion of the legal code

The guy's arrogance caused him to make a dumb mistake, one that affected the following presidential election and yet people clamor to defend it. I wish I could say I'm surprised but I've seen politics and its tribalism for too long to be shocked.

[stevenleser]

64. No, you missed that we are talking about politics on a political site

And that an impeachment is a political act not a legal one.

[misanthrope]

65. Article 2, Section 4

"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

[WinkyDink]

18. The precise, legally-savvy words BC used were "sexual relations"; i.e., defined as

"sexual intercourse."

You may choose to believe him or not!

[TexasBushwhacker]

63. Well, there are men who don't consider oral sex to be cheating

[left-of-center2012]

29. Why are we still talking about Bill Clinton and sex?

[WinkyDink]

37. PLENTY OF ATTEMPTS AT DISTRACTION on DU. Warnings. Lectures. Admonitions. C.O.N.C.E.R.N.S.

We must be vewwy, vewwy caweful about what we bewieve about Twump!

[Skittles]

43. STOP IT WINKYDINK

YER KILLING ME

[fescuerescue]

50. I suspect that it will still be discussed 100 years from now

or however long this country lasts.

Lots of legal precedent was set during that event.

[Warren DeMontague]

46. Ken Starr had no business in Clinton's underwear drawer in the first place.

[WinkyDink]

48. Puritans gotta peek; "it's what they do" (tm GEICO).

[Docreed2003]

54. They do seem to like peeking and sniffing drawers!

[oberliner]

60. That was a sad moment

I was disappointed.