"There is no way that she did not know what was going on, that women were being abused and accosted by her husband."

"She knew what was happening and just to ignore it. It was a political relationship and suited them both. The Clintons don't care what they do, who they run over to get to the top. It is all about political status."

Said Paula Jones, who was run over so long ago that many young voters have never heard of her.

"Did this have something to do with Monica Lewinsky?" a student asked last month when we read Clinton v. Jones. I wondered whether the Supreme Court's statement of the facts in that case came as a strange surprise to the young people in the class:

Those allegations principally describe events that are said to have occurred on the afternoon of May 8, 1991, during an official conference held at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Governor delivered a speech at the conference; respondent--working as a state employee--staffed the registration desk. She alleges that Ferguson persuaded her to leave her desk and to visit the Governor in a business suite at the hotel, where he made "abhorrent" sexual advances that she vehemently rejected. She further claims that her superiors at work subsequently dealt with her in a hostile and rude manner, and changed her duties to punish her for rejecting those advances. Finally, she alleges that after petitioner was elected President, Ferguson defamed her by making a statement to a reporter that implied she had accepted petitioner's alleged overtures, and that various persons authorized to speak for the President publicly branded her a liar by denying that the incident had occurred.

"Just Google it: knowingly inappropriate Clinton."

Says Meade, after I say "Send me that link," as I often do, when he's talking about something he's read on line and sets off my blogging instinct. In this case, he's already closed that tab, and he'd have to Google it and then IM the link, a 2-step process, and if I just Google "knowingly inappropriate Clinton," he's says, "it'll come right up."*

He's right. Here: "There is no doubt in my mind that we have never done anything knowingly inappropriate in terms of taking money to influence any kind of American government policy."

Oh, he never did anything knowingly inappropriate. Knowingly. That's the key word. Whatever he did, he's telling us, if anything's wrong, he's got a plan to say he didn't know it was wrong.

And so it is time once again to roll out the famous "Was that wrong?" scene from "Seinfeld":



Why it was only just about exactly one year ago that I went looking for that because it was the perfect paraphrase of something some prominent American political figure was saying. (In the scene, George had sex on his desk with the office cleaning woman and, confronted by his boss, says: "Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you I gotta plead ignorance on this thing because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frouned upon, you know, cause I've worked in a lot of offices and I tell you people do that all the time."

That old post ends without revealing which American political figure got me thinking about the old "Was that wrong?" defense, but I did say the context provided a humorously useful clue. So it must have been Bill Clinton, right?
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* I read this paragraph out loud to Meade, to get his okay to use those quotes. He suggests an additional sentence: "And he's already onto the next thing, which is 'Arlene, I'm sorry for what I've done....'" I play that and say, "That goes well with Bill Clinton. Hillary, I'm sorry for what I've done..." And Meade says "He's a sexual predator." The guy in the song is a flat-out murderer.

"Since Hillary never gave us 'closure' by braining the big boy with a frying pan, it was delicious to see another brainy lawyer ding him with a 32-page order and fine."

"The judge dryly mocked Mr. Clinton's tortured definition of his tryst. 'It appears,' she wrote, 'the President is asserting that Ms. Lewinsky could be having sex with him while, at the same time, he was not having sex with her.'"

I'm just reading an old Maureen Dowd column. Clinton v. Jones comes up today in the Conlaw1 readings, and I was looking for something.

Notice the old violent-females-are-funny meme, replete with a frying pan as the weapon. I wonder if younger people today even remember all the ancient humor involving wives hitting their husband with a frying pan.

"So yes, we made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do."

When really big organizations make mistakes, the rules are different. You can't expect them to attend to the sort of details that would get you in trouble in your puny little affairs.

The quote in the post title is from the acting chief executive of the Clinton Foundation. It reminded me of something I heard Lanny Davis say in an interview with Chris Wallace yesterday.
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"The 23-year-old Australian bullshitted the entire world about having terminal brain cancer..."

"... and profited from her completely fictional story via her 'natural wellness' app, The Whole Pantry."

On her blog, she claims she cured her terminal brain cancer by avoiding gluten and sugar. Shocking, I know, but: this is not how cancer works. You know what stopped the progression of my cancer? Chemo (derived from exotic plants and fungi, for real!), surgery, drugs, and a shitload of all-natural radiation, delivered via a linear particle accelerator that is even more powerful than my beloved kale juicer....

Why is Hillary Clinton misstating checkable facts about her life?

Buzzfeed reports: "Speaking in Iowa Wednesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that all her grandparents had immigrated to the United States, a story that conflicts with public census and other records related to her maternal and paternal grandparents."

Meanwhile, Chelsea Clinton expects people to believe that her very curly hair on its own changed into glossily sleek, slightly curved straight hair:

"My curls, in my early twenties, just fell into waves. I don't know if they got tired of me, but the curls slowly subsided, and so now it's naturally a little bit wavy but... I miss my curls."

Why lie about things you don't even need to lie about, things that can be checked? Why lie so badly?

"Jackie lied, Erdely lied, Rolling Stone lied, Teresa Sullivan � at best � went along with a lie. All should face more consequences than they have so far experienced."

Writes Instapundit in what might be the longest ever Instapundit post � with excerpts from Ashe Schow ("Why the Rolling Stone gang-rape story will never be labeled a hoax") and Cathy Young ("The UVA Case and Rape-Hoax Denial").

My question is: Why "more consequences" and not the usual and classic free-speech-loving remedy more speech? It seems as though more speech is working out well enough, or is the complaint that anti-rape activists are still going to use Rolling Stone story to maintain the feeling that something terrible is happening out there? That complaint is a concession of the weakness of your side of the debate. Improve your debate. Your more speech needs to be better. The grim call for consequences is chilling.

ALSO: This post was down for a short time, not because I intentionally took it down, but because I mishandled an open window.

AND: Instapundit responded to this, saying:

Yes, �more speech� is a remedy for opinions one doesn�t like. When speech falls into the category of actions � which false accusations certainly do � it calls for more than simple talk as a response. (But note that Jackie was smart enough not to file a police report, though that should have been a tip-off). And I should note that the fraternity in question was the victim of violent mob action that was ginned up in part by the University of Virginia itself. Is the only remedy for officially-inspired thuggery �more speech?� No. That�s one remedy, but it�s not the only remedy, nor should it be.

I strongly disagree with the proposition that if free-speech law permits negative consequences to be imposed that we ought to want these consequences. I am promoting the more speech approach where the First Amendment would permit negative consequences.

Instapundit quotes a commenter of mine who says "The proper remedy for slander is not 'more speech.' The proper remedy... are [sic]  'consequences.'"

Proper remedy? I'm not purporting to be the arbiter of propriety here. I'm saying what I think is the better policy and the better approach to this political discourse. I called for more and better speech and rejected the "grim call for consequences" as "chilling."