The Clintons, Forever Demanding Their Party Defend the Indefensible

[Valin]

National Review/The Corner:

Jim Geraghty

October 31, 2016

 

Ah, now I remember that feeling – the combination of incredulity, disgust and embarrassment for another person that comes watching seemingly bright people tie themselves into knots in order to defend the indefensible and justify the unjustifiable in order to defend the Clintons.

 

This was a fine vintage of that feeling, from 1998:

Some Clinton defenders have stopped pretending he was truthful in favor of portraying dishonesty as not just a forgivable flaw but a positive virtue: a mark, in fact, of his noble character. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who knows something about presidential sex from working in the Kennedy White House, wrote in The New York Times this week, “Gentlemen always lie about their sex lives. Only a cad will tell the truth about his sexual affairs.”

 

Oh, really? I didn’t remember that part in the federal perjury statute. Wait, let me double check…. “any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true…” Yeah, I don’t see any footnotes declaring that lying under oath is okay as long as it’s a “gentleman” discussing sex. The oath is traditionally, “Do you solemnly (swear/affirm) that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, (so help you God/under pains and penalties of perjury)?” Have you ever heard any “as long as the topic isn’t sex”? I must have missed that episode of Law & Order.

 

Perjury, as in the sort of charge a person faces usually faces when she signs an official U.S. State Department document saying she has been briefed on the rules and laws for classified material and then tells the FBI that she cannot recall “any briefing or training by State related to the retention of federal records of handling of classified information.” Either she lied on the form or lied to the FBI, pick one.

 

(Snip)

 

 

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I recall reading an article from late 2007-early 2008 putting out the idea that one reason Barack Obama was doing so well was many many Democrats did not what to go through another Clinton Presidency with one scandal after another.