Word: lies
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Bill Clinton did something ordinary: he had an affair and lied about it. Ken Starr did something extraordinary: he took the President's low-life behavior and called it a high crime. Clinton argued that privacy is so sacred that it included a right to lie so long as he did it very, very carefully. Starr argued that justice is so blind that once he saw a crime being committed, he had no choice but to pursue the bad guy through the Oval Office, down the hall to the private study, whatever the damage, no matter the cost...
...instead his allies defended what was worst in him by appealing to what is best in us. How could we not be generous and forgive him? Has he done anything that many of us have not done ourselves? Are these not private matters? Any gentleman would, of course, lie about his mistress. Judge...
...Starr, they think that it is long past time for Clinton to be held accountable for his actions; like the voters, they have strong personal feelings about the President. Unfortunately for Clinton, the feelings on Capitol Hill can be poisonous. In a country where everyone assumes that all politicians lie, politicians themselves regard a certain kind of lying as a special kind of sin. A President who breaks his word makes it impossible to do business when the doors are closed and the hands are played and the hard trading begins. Time and again, Bill Clinton made solemn, cross...
...easy ones. I don't covet anyone's spouse; I don't want to kill anybody. A day of rest? No problem. But I'm in a constant struggle with the commandment Republicans have chosen as the one needing the full force of government sanction: Thou shalt not lie. I know honesty is the best policy, but I've been known to try the second-best policy when I have to justify the fact that the Christmas tree isn't up or that I haven't watched every minute of the historic debate TIME magazine pays me to cover...
...that's me. Republicans apparently never, ever tell a lie. Moreover, they don't count the other sins as sins unless compounded with a lie. Mother Marita Joseph didn't see it that way. Who would have thought the family-values party would be saying, in the interest of distinguishing Clinton's behavior from its own, "It's not the adultery, stupid; it's the lying." When it seemed last Thursday that the world couldn't spin any further out of control--bombs falling in eerie green light, members of Congress starring in a morality play without the morality--here...