No, he was impeached because the Republicans wanted to impeach him. By any means necessary. Whitewater didn't work. Vince Foster didn't work. So they settled on the excuse of a manufactured perjury charge:
During the Paula Jones deposition, President Clinton was asked if he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. But before the questioning began, the Jones' lawyers produced the following legal definition of sexual relations:
"For the purposes of this deposition, a person engages in sexual relations when the person knowingly engages in or causes:
1. Contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person;
2. Contact between any part of the person's body or an object and the genitals or anus of another person; or
3. Contact between the genitals or anus of the person and any part of another person's body.
Contact means intentional touching, either directly or through clothing."
A lengthy debate followed between the two teams of lawyers. It turned out points 2 and 3 were too broad: anyone accidentally brushing their hips against another person could be accused of having "sex." Judge Susan Webber Wright therefore eliminated points 2 and 3. However, notice that point 3 would have clearly included oral sex performed on Clinton. Its removal set the stage for the controversy to follow.
The Jones' lawyers then asked Clinton if he had sex with Monica Lewinsky based on the remaining definition.
Unfortunately, the definition still contained ambiguities. Who are the "persons" mentioned in the definition? Clinton interpreted it this way:
"For the purposes of this deposition, a person [the deponent, in this case, Clinton] engages in sexual relations when the person [Clinton] knowingly engages in or causes:
1. Contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person [that is, any other person, in this case, Monica Lewinsky] with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person [Lewinsky];
Contact means intentional touching, either directly or through clothing."
Given that understanding, the definition clearly does not include oral sex performed on Clinton. Why? Because oral sex is performed with the mouth, and "mouth" is not listed among the other body parts in point 1. Furthermore, a man receiving oral sex is generally considered to be receiving pleasure rather than giving it, and so fails the criterion "to arouse or gratify the sexual desire" of Ms. Lewinsky. Which may make Clinton sexually selfish, but that is not illegal.
Some have argued that Clinton's interpretation of "person" is wrong, and that makes him guilty of perjury. But his interpretation is reasonable at most, and arguable at least. Even if Clinton did misinterpret the most obvious meaning, it is up to prosecutors to prove that he intended to lie about it rather than he was mistaken, something that is impossible to prove. And in any case, it is up the to the prosecution to agree to definitions that are not ambiguous. The Jones' lawyers could have easily eliminated any confusion by replacing the term "person" with "deponent and any second party," but they did not. They could have also asked follow-up questions to clarify anything - indeed, they were invited to by Clinton's lawyers - but they did not. The whole incident is a classic case of prosecutorial incompetence.
Three teenagers have been found guilty of murdering a man who was kicked to death outside his home in Cheshire. Garry Newlove, 47, died two days after being "kicked like a football" when he confronted a gang in Warrington in August 2007, Chester Crown Court heard.
"This is a technological device, and you can't outlaw it !", right ? It's a "hack", and cool. Only it affects many people who read this site, as opposed to (mostly) rich people, like authors.
If I was a total, complete fuckwit. Trebuchets are "cool", but I bet you'd take a dim view if I used one to throw boulders weighing 200 kilos into your house.
In other words: yes the tech might be cool, but there are very uncool uses for said tech. Which is the point of the article - fuckwit.
Notice how he carefully avoids saying anything about how people might need this device? England is becoming more like the nightmare dystopia of Clockwork Orange every day. But let's not say anything about how why a business might want to protect itself from negroes, instead let's attack those who have the temerity to try and defend themselves.
Substitute the demographic group of your choice - you're either trolling or a hateful jackass. There is no functional difference between those who hate other races and those who hate people under a certain age: you're both hateful bigots.
If you are sticking up for the rights of Britain's feral children - the chavs - then you have obviously not lived amongst them.
No, you're just a hateful jackass suffering from confrimation bias. Old farts have been complaining about kids as long as there have been old farts and kids. Toughen up.
And mine is lower than yours, and no nothing has changed: Republicans like to trash others for having a victim mentality while engaging in their party-mandated hypocrisy: whining about affirmative action, unions keeping hard workers from earning more money, you can't say anything bad about Islam but anyone can trash Christianity all they want (need to be introduced to Bill Donohue), etc.
On the contrary, it is entirely appropriate to go there. In this country, the Nazis (rightly) face a good deal of demonization for the concentration camps they set up for Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, dissidents, and other "undesirable" people. But the U.S. had concentration camps of it's own, only they are euphemistically referred to as "Japanese internment". The U.S. only had to take one more step - starve the prisoners and put them in gas chambers - and we would have been in the same boat as the Nazis.
Right wing talk radio is the same way - only one step away from those radio stations in Rwanda that called for genocide. And if there was another major terrorist in attack, I would be surprised if Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or especially Michael Savage didn't call for violence against Muslims. Their base sure as hell would.
You think so, Mr. Pot? Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own set of facts. Rush is the personification of the Republican parties penchant for making up their own facts - anytime he opens his mouth he is very likely to be 100% full of crap.
And that's before you get to the massive hypocrisy on the subject of drugs and drug addicts.
And the fact that teleco lines run across public and private land, and that they were given large subsidies to lay those lines in the first place. If the telecos don't like regulation, they can pay back those subsidies and start paying rent on land that those lines run across.
Just give the dorms a slow connection then. My local university had a lot of handwringing over the subject of bandwidth - they didn't want to implement filters because it might interfere with academic use. Easy answer: just make a slow uplink for low priority connections, like for students living in dorms.
I think that punishing the telco's for it is a BAD thing.
So, by necessity, you must also think that letting corporations get away with massive lawbreaking is a GOOD thing? AT&T's market cap is nearly 230 billion dollars! That a company that rich should get away with breaking the law is asinine, pure and simple.
The only thing worse than giving telecoms immunity over warrantless wiretapping is failing to impeach Bush and Cheney for starting it in the first place. Which they did before 911.
Amazon as a seller caught their mistake and they had every right to cancel the transactions before, they shipped the product. Saying they don't is ludicrous and an attempt at immoral behavior.
Oh, do get off your high horse. It's called due diligence: if you make a mistake in the basic running of your business, it's your own damn fault and no one else's.
Your example of the buyer making a mistake and paying over 10 times the price falls under equal terms. The buyers can also cancel their orders before shipping.
Too bad merchants are held to a higher standard than customers: of course they can cancel before an item is shipped. False advertising laws apply to businesses, not customers.
If you RTFA, you see that is says:
Amazon secretly canceled orders...
string customers along for over a month after they placed their orders
Hmmmmmmm. As opposed to publicly canceling the order?
That word doesn't mean what you think it means. Methinks you need to take a break from preaching an read up on the definition of "secretly".
Why do you think Amazon should swallow thousands of dollars worth of losses over a typo?
Why do you think Amazon should be allowed to pull a bait and switch, even if it's an unintentional one?
Wow, is the idea of screwing the corporations so tempting to you that any shred of morals is lost?
Wow, if you weren't so busy moralizing, you'd have noticed the part where I said if a consumer failed to do a price check before completing a transaction, it's their own damn fault. It's called due diligence.
It's a little ridiculous to expect Amazon to eat thousands of dollars in losses over an error on their website.
Then they should take as a lesson and improve their site.
Maybe it's just common sense, or being raised right, but when you think somebody is making a mistake and you profit from it, that is just WRONG.
No, THEY MADE A MISTAKE. Nothing wrong about it, and the converse is equally true: if you buy a cd set from Amazon priced at $400 when another site has it priced at $30, it's your own damn fault for not checking the price.
And while we're on the subject of right and wrong, Ms. Manners, what about the retailer trying to sweep their mistake under the rug instead of manning up and admitting their mistake?
That said, reality cannot be ignored or distorted, McCain will be the nominee.
Not necessarily. It looks like today's primaries were a sweep for Huckabee. If Romney throws his support to Huck, McCain could be in serious trouble, as the GOP base doesn't like him. If Huck managed to take the nomination from McCain like the Giants took away the Patriot's perfect season, that would be awesome.
I don't really see that happening though, as Romney seems to be much more of a corporate Republican than a fundie Republican, and he already endorsed McCain.
Re:Last consolation prize possible
on
Has Ron Paul Quit?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've donated $600, knowing that Ron Paul would not win due to electronic voting and biased media
And the fact that his economic policies would be a disaster for this country, but who's counting? It has been nice having him the GOP debates, however, since he is the most sane Republican running. It was great seeing him saying WTF to Romney when Mittens said he'd leave the question of launching a nuclear strike without authority from Congress.
And perhaps if that happens, some of the "limited government" planks of pre-2000 Republican party platforms can be reinserted.
"Limited government" was only ever a marketing slogan to the GOP, nothing more. What it really means is that they cut industry regulation and social spending, but baby bring on those pork barrel projects, bring on your social restrictions (abortion, gay marriage), bring on your War on Drugs. Democrats also regulate the things they don't like and spend on things they do, but at least they aren't two-faced hypocrites about it - and they don't add trillions to the national debt in the process.
Speaking of being two-faced, Paul talks about limited government power, but has no problems being against abortion and defining life as beginning at conception*. He's also introduced legislation to prevent courts from hearing cases on abortion, and most egregiously, first amendment cases. Your state government mandates school prayer? Too damned bad for you.
*The next step is to pretend that defining life as begining at conception is a reasonable arbitrary position. Problem with that is that defining life as beginning at birth is just as valid.
Holy shit, I didn't read most of that and I don't much care.
Yes, if you bothered to let facts enter your worldview you might have your wingnut merit badge revoked.
What I care about is that they can't be "out to get us" without murdering innocent people.
Tell it to the U.S. military when it fires on civilian planes. Tell it to Blackwater who's mercenaries fire on innocent people on Iraqi streets on a regular basis.
There's this thing called "diplomacy" that grown-up adults do, it's a way of resolving problems without randomly bombing yourself and others.
So what are you doing to ensure the demise of the Republican party, since grown-diplomacy is anathema to them?
The position from people like you seems to be "well there's a valid history as to why we're attacked, therefore we shouldn't bother to defend ourselves because we 'deserve' it."
Yawn. Let me make it simple for you: don't fuck with other peoples lives, and they wont feel compelled to return the favor.
No, it was a red herring, and I wont give you a break as you've come out with some new ones.
And if you really believe that the government did not assist Microsoft in becoming a near-monopoly, or keeping it there, then you ARE naive.
And what did the government do, exactly, other than be a large customer? Put up or shut up.
Apparently you don't remember the history, or the court cases. You don't remember the major antitrust lawsuit the Federal government had against Microsoft, which Microsoft was losing pitifully... and which mysteriously disappeared on darned near the very day that George Bush took office.
Red herring. Failing to stop the Microsoft monopoly is a completely separate issue from said monopoly's creation.
And what impact did that have on the running of the numerous federal and state agencies?
If you can't think if the differences a Gore Administration would have had with the Bush Administration, I can't help you.
In fact, incompetence and waste is inherent to government, for simple reasons of economics and perverse incentives.
And what would those be, exactly. What is is, exactly, that makes a group of individuals incompetent and wasteful in a government agency, whereas a group of individuals in a business setting are competent and efficient.
Last I checked, we were still in Iraq, and the government is still wasteful and incompetent.
And last time I checked, real change takes time. The right wing didn't take over the Republican party overnight, and the Democratic wing of the Democratic party wont take back control from the corporate sellout Democrats overnight.
Slashdot Mirror
No, he was impeached because the Republicans wanted to impeach him. By any means necessary. Whitewater didn't work. Vince Foster didn't work. So they settled on the excuse of a manufactured perjury charge:
The only way to prove that Clinton lied, much les
Three teenagers have been found guilty of murdering a man who was kicked to death outside his home in Cheshire. Garry Newlove, 47, died two days after being "kicked like a football" when he confronted a gang in Warrington in August 2007, Chester Crown Court heard.
Depends. If the man confronted those kids like this cop confronted some skateboarders, he had it coming.
"This is a technological device, and you can't outlaw it !", right ? It's a "hack", and cool. Only it affects many people who read this site, as opposed to (mostly) rich people, like authors.
If I was a total, complete fuckwit. Trebuchets are "cool", but I bet you'd take a dim view if I used one to throw boulders weighing 200 kilos into your house.
In other words: yes the tech might be cool, but there are very uncool uses for said tech. Which is the point of the article - fuckwit.
Come on, the noise is annoying. It doesn't hurt.
Just because it doesn't hurt you doesn't mean it doesn't hurt others.
If you are sticking up for the rights of Britain's feral children - the chavs - then you have obviously not lived amongst them.
No, you're just a hateful jackass suffering from confrimation bias. Old farts have been complaining about kids as long as there have been old farts and kids. Toughen up.
And mine is lower than yours, and no nothing has changed: Republicans like to trash others for having a victim mentality while engaging in their party-mandated hypocrisy: whining about affirmative action, unions keeping hard workers from earning more money, you can't say anything bad about Islam but anyone can trash Christianity all they want (need to be introduced to Bill Donohue), etc.
Slashdot is much like the rest of the population: Kool-Aid drinking wingnuts might be in the minority, but they frequently make the most noise.
It's hard to imagine a more asinine allusion.
On the contrary, it is entirely appropriate to go there. In this country, the Nazis (rightly) face a good deal of demonization for the concentration camps they set up for Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, dissidents, and other "undesirable" people. But the U.S. had concentration camps of it's own, only they are euphemistically referred to as "Japanese internment". The U.S. only had to take one more step - starve the prisoners and put them in gas chambers - and we would have been in the same boat as the Nazis.
Right wing talk radio is the same way - only one step away from those radio stations in Rwanda that called for genocide. And if there was another major terrorist in attack, I would be surprised if Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or especially Michael Savage didn't call for violence against Muslims. Their base sure as hell would.
Man you're crazy.
You think so, Mr. Pot? Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own set of facts. Rush is the personification of the Republican parties penchant for making up their own facts - anytime he opens his mouth he is very likely to be 100% full of crap.
And that's before you get to the massive hypocrisy on the subject of drugs and drug addicts.
And the fact that teleco lines run across public and private land, and that they were given large subsidies to lay those lines in the first place. If the telecos don't like regulation, they can pay back those subsidies and start paying rent on land that those lines run across.
Just give the dorms a slow connection then. My local university had a lot of handwringing over the subject of bandwidth - they didn't want to implement filters because it might interfere with academic use. Easy answer: just make a slow uplink for low priority connections, like for students living in dorms.
If you can't get a Mac to work, you're too stupid to own a computer.
I think that punishing the telco's for it is a BAD thing.
So, by necessity, you must also think that letting corporations get away with massive lawbreaking is a GOOD thing? AT&T's market cap is nearly 230 billion dollars! That a company that rich should get away with breaking the law is asinine, pure and simple.
The only thing worse than giving telecoms immunity over warrantless wiretapping is failing to impeach Bush and Cheney for starting it in the first place. Which they did before 911.
Darwin explicitly advocated those ideas:
Sounds more like he was talking about animals, and you are talking out of your ass.
Talk about missing the point.
No, I didn't, Mr. Pot.
Amazon as a seller caught their mistake and they had every right to cancel the transactions before, they shipped the product. Saying they don't is ludicrous and an attempt at immoral behavior.
Oh, do get off your high horse. It's called due diligence: if you make a mistake in the basic running of your business, it's your own damn fault and no one else's.
Your example of the buyer making a mistake and paying over 10 times the price falls under equal terms. The buyers can also cancel their orders before shipping.
Too bad merchants are held to a higher standard than customers: of course they can cancel before an item is shipped. False advertising laws apply to businesses, not customers.
If you RTFA, you see that is says:
Amazon secretly canceled orders...
string customers along for over a month after they placed their orders
Hmmmmmmm. As opposed to publicly canceling the order?
That word doesn't mean what you think it means. Methinks you need to take a break from preaching an read up on the definition of "secretly".
Why do you think Amazon should swallow thousands of dollars worth of losses over a typo?
Why do you think Amazon should be allowed to pull a bait and switch, even if it's an unintentional one?
Wow, is the idea of screwing the corporations so tempting to you that any shred of morals is lost?
Wow, if you weren't so busy moralizing, you'd have noticed the part where I said if a consumer failed to do a price check before completing a transaction, it's their own damn fault. It's called due diligence.
It's a little ridiculous to expect Amazon to eat thousands of dollars in losses over an error on their website.
Then they should take as a lesson and improve their site.
Maybe it's just common sense, or being raised right, but when you think somebody is making a mistake and you profit from it, that is just WRONG.
No, THEY MADE A MISTAKE. Nothing wrong about it, and the converse is equally true: if you buy a cd set from Amazon priced at $400 when another site has it priced at $30, it's your own damn fault for not checking the price.
And while we're on the subject of right and wrong, Ms. Manners, what about the retailer trying to sweep their mistake under the rug instead of manning up and admitting their mistake?
That said, reality cannot be ignored or distorted, McCain will be the nominee.
Not necessarily. It looks like today's primaries were a sweep for Huckabee. If Romney throws his support to Huck, McCain could be in serious trouble, as the GOP base doesn't like him. If Huck managed to take the nomination from McCain like the Giants took away the Patriot's perfect season, that would be awesome.
I don't really see that happening though, as Romney seems to be much more of a corporate Republican than a fundie Republican, and he already endorsed McCain.
I've donated $600, knowing that Ron Paul would not win due to electronic voting and biased media
And the fact that his economic policies would be a disaster for this country, but who's counting? It has been nice having him the GOP debates, however, since he is the most sane Republican running. It was great seeing him saying WTF to Romney when Mittens said he'd leave the question of launching a nuclear strike without authority from Congress.
And perhaps if that happens, some of the "limited government" planks of pre-2000 Republican party platforms can be reinserted.
"Limited government" was only ever a marketing slogan to the GOP, nothing more. What it really means is that they cut industry regulation and social spending, but baby bring on those pork barrel projects, bring on your social restrictions (abortion, gay marriage), bring on your War on Drugs. Democrats also regulate the things they don't like and spend on things they do, but at least they aren't two-faced hypocrites about it - and they don't add trillions to the national debt in the process.
Speaking of being two-faced, Paul talks about limited government power, but has no problems being against abortion and defining life as beginning at conception*. He's also introduced legislation to prevent courts from hearing cases on abortion, and most egregiously, first amendment cases. Your state government mandates school prayer? Too damned bad for you.
*The next step is to pretend that defining life as begining at conception is a reasonable arbitrary position. Problem with that is that defining life as beginning at birth is just as valid.
Holy shit, I didn't read most of that and I don't much care.
Yes, if you bothered to let facts enter your worldview you might have your wingnut merit badge revoked.
What I care about is that they can't be "out to get us" without murdering innocent people.
Tell it to the U.S. military when it fires on civilian planes. Tell it to Blackwater who's mercenaries fire on innocent people on Iraqi streets on a regular basis.
There's this thing called "diplomacy" that grown-up adults do, it's a way of resolving problems without randomly bombing yourself and others.
So what are you doing to ensure the demise of the Republican party, since grown-diplomacy is anathema to them?
The position from people like you seems to be "well there's a valid history as to why we're attacked, therefore we shouldn't bother to defend ourselves because we 'deserve' it."
Yawn. Let me make it simple for you: don't fuck with other peoples lives, and they wont feel compelled to return the favor.
Red herring?? Give me a break.
No, it was a red herring, and I wont give you a break as you've come out with some new ones.
And if you really believe that the government did not assist Microsoft in becoming a near-monopoly, or keeping it there, then you ARE naive.
And what did the government do, exactly, other than be a large customer? Put up or shut up.
Apparently you don't remember the history, or the court cases. You don't remember the major antitrust lawsuit the Federal government had against Microsoft, which Microsoft was losing pitifully... and which mysteriously disappeared on darned near the very day that George Bush took office.
Red herring. Failing to stop the Microsoft monopoly is a completely separate issue from said monopoly's creation.
And what impact did that have on the running of the numerous federal and state agencies?
If you can't think if the differences a Gore Administration would have had with the Bush Administration, I can't help you.
In fact, incompetence and waste is inherent to government, for simple reasons of economics and perverse incentives.
And what would those be, exactly. What is is, exactly, that makes a group of individuals incompetent and wasteful in a government agency, whereas a group of individuals in a business setting are competent and efficient.
Last I checked, we were still in Iraq, and the government is still wasteful and incompetent.
And last time I checked, real change takes time. The right wing didn't take over the Republican party overnight, and the Democratic wing of the Democratic party wont take back control from the corporate sellout Democrats overnight.
No... that's Ron Paul in a "completely unsubstantiated ad hominem"
It's not an ad hominem if it's true.
If you know of a specific Ron Paul policy that is "nuts" then please present it
Gold standard (yes, gold standard), pollution, climate change, just about any of Paul's economic policies...
since you've already falsely claimed that he wants to go back to the gold standard
Don't call me a liar, liar.
and then provide evidence that the policy is such a proven failure
1) we were on the gold standard in the twenties 2) it didn't do a thing to prevent economic collapse in this country.
I'll see your Wiki page and raise you a speech before Congress where he says "gold standard" 11 times and "gold" 45 times.