A rchive Date
[ 29-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[Liars shouldn't be lawyers
By R. CORT KIRKWOOD-- Ottawa Sun
May 28, 2000
Well, the President of the United States is facing censure again, and again the punishment may come from a group of his peers. A disciplinary committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court has recommended giving the boot to the state bar's most famous member.
Seeing that Slick Willie escaped punishment from another group of peers, the professional politicians in Washington, it would be no surprise to see him wriggle free again. Whatever happens, the panel's action showed one thing: Clinton is tenaciously consistent in denying that lies are not lies, although he has told one lie after another since becoming president. Of course, for Clinton, that truth depends on your definition of lying.
Anyway, the lies that moved the panel to recommend disbarment were those Clinton told under oath, as a defendant in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, about his "affair" with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton denied his role in the Cigar Chronicles. Judge Susan Weber Wright nailed him with a $90,000 contempt citation, and now, the Arkansas Supreme Court would administer the coup de grace.
As with most other states, Arkansas is clear about lying lawyers.
As reported in the Washington Post, disbarment is "generally appropriate" when "a lawyer engages in serious criminal conduct ... which includes intentional interference with the administration of justice, false swearing, misrepresentation ... or any other intentional conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation that seriously adversely reflects on the lawyer's fitness to practise."
Judge Wright found that Clinton gave "false, misleading and evasive answers ... to obstruct the judicial process," but the state's long, hard definition of misconduct is like so much clay for Clinton and the verbal sculptors who defend him.
He didn't do anything wrong, but if he did, his wrongdoing does not "rise to the level" of disbarment, just as his wrongdoing in the White House did not "rise to the level" of impeachment.
His answers were not "legally false," but even if they were, a different standard for telling the truth should apply because he was a litigant in the case and not an attorney. He didn't lie, and even if he did, it wasn't a real lie.
That's what you call tenacious consistency, and that is why Clinton should be disbarred, just as his predecessor Richard Nixon was disbarred when the New York bar determined he obstructed justice, among other things.
Clinton must be disbarred because he is a complete disgrace to his profession, notwithstanding the low regard in which it is already held. Even as lawyers go, Clinton's mendacity and behaviour is sickening: Whitewater, Filegate, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Red Chinese campaign contributions, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick and other women who allege rape.
Clinton didn't just lie about Lewinsky. He lied about it all, beginning with the famous interview on 60 Minutes and continuing to that memorable day when he announced, "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."
The lie in the Paula Jones cased is merely the lie the Arkansas Supreme Court may hang him with. But Clinton has built a brick wall of lies to buffer himself from a record of misconduct that easily exceeds anything conceivable in Nixon, the most notorious politician the country has ever known.
Bill Clinton, a lawyer, is incapable of telling the truth. And that is why his jury of peers in Arkansas must punish him, even though his jury of peers in Washington did not. Courts of law can function rightly only when lawyers are men and women of rectitude and honesty. All lawyers know the primordial rule in court: Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Clinton tells lies, all lies, and nothing but lies.
Kirkwood writes on U.S. affairs for the Sun. Letters to the editor should be sent to oped@sunpub.com.
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