Re: Enough!

Nelson Minar (nelson@media.mit.edu)
Sun, 13 Sep 1998 08:56:48 -0400


>Privacy is a fuzzy legal issue, but there is ample precedent to
>expect that one's sexual activities --- within legal bounds --- are a
>private matter.

There's only a legal right to privacy if the sexual activity is
heterosexual. Bowers v. Hardwick set that precedent in a very ugly
decision in 1988. Even so, that precedent is very shaky, and probably
wouldn't protect Clinton here.

There's a new criterion for presidents now: they can't screw around.
It's a lot like the new criterion for attorneys general that was
established a few years ago: you can't put anyone in that office who
forgot to pay social security for a maid. In both cases, hypocritical
American moralism is being exploited to political end. It's ugly.

Clinton's mistake was to think that he could get away with it, that
they were still playing by the old rules where the old boy network
would protect each other's diginity and avoid releasing details like
cigars. I mean my *god*, can you believe that was published? The rules
have changed.

The funniest thing about all this is the wave of congresscritters
confessing their own extramarital sins. Someone should keep a scoreboard.

The most depressing thing about this is that presidents can still
continue to commit real crimes against the national interest, that
there is no reconciliation for those mistakes. Others have talked
about the last major OIC investigation, Iran-Contra, and the near-zero
that resulted. That's just one example. But Clinton falling asleep
during phone sex is more interesting than Reagan going nappies staff
meetings, and "not recalling" direct decisions to violate US policy.

Nelson, waiting for the remix of the Starr report.