The Crime of the Millenium (Part I)

The crime of the millennium was so insidious and somehow anodyne that not a drop of blood was directly shed during its commission, owing in large part to the fact that it was perpetrated by the types of cowards who kill through surrogates so as not to sully their self-righteousness. The types of cowards who would lock up a man for stealing a car but would not think twice about stealing the votes and voices of 50 million of their fellow citizens or the very dignity of their nation and its highest offices. You know, "white-collar" criminals. Like Woody Guthrie said, "ramblin' through this world / I seen lots of crazy men / some would rob you with a six-gun / and some with a fountain pen."

One of the mantras of the right-wing in America today is that the nation has fallen under that sway of "activist judges", who seek to impose their worldview via judicial rulings, rather than deferring to local and national legislatures as the only legitimate law-making bodies. There is some truth to this critique, as there is to most critiques, but keep this in mind: without "activist judges", de jure racial segregation would have continued indefinitely in the American south, since segregation "laws" were promulgated by legislatures, the elected representatives of the people.

In other words, "activist judges" reversed the greatest of American sins, and does anyone argue that their activism was wrong? Are those judges deemed tyrannical for "legislating from the bench"? The courts are the ultimate check on the tyranny of the majority. Absent the courts' activism in the 1950's and 1960's, segregation would have continued until southern legislatures took it upon themselves to integrate their communities. Would this eventually have happened? Would it have been acceptable to wait another twenty years or twenty minutes? The answers are, respectively, probably not and absolutely not.

So while we are correct to be suspicious of "judicial activism" which serves to overturn decisions taken by the elected representatives of the people, we must also bear in mind that the representatives of the people have taken several unconstitutional and indefensible actions, both locally and nationally. The crime of the millennium, which was carried out in two separate but intertwined decisions, was a case of "judicial activism" which would have made any genuine conservative apoplectic. At the culmination of the crime, the judicial activists did not simply overturn an action taken by the elected representatives of the people; they overturned the peoples' right to elect their own representatives in the first place.

It is a profoundly depressing commentary on our society that the way one feels about the Supreme Court's rulings in Clinton v. Jones and Gore v. Bush depend so heavily on one's political affiliation. To be a Republican who supports those decisions is to support one's political party over one's country, pure and simple. It is analogous to the O.J. Simpson verdict, in which black people were exponentially more likely than whites to assert Simpson's innocence. Those folks supported a member of their race over the self- evident truth and the integrity of the criminal justice system and the rights of the victims to live.

This loyalty to party, to race, to any sub-national group above the national interest, the rule of law, and the pursuit of disinterested justice is the very definition of anti-Americanism.

II

First, for Clinton v. Jones. Paula Jones brought a civil suit against Bill Clinton alleging that Clinton had sexually harassed her, and I would like to make two points pertaining to Clinton's conduct in this matter. Firstly, I have no doubt that Clinton is an adulterer. Secondly, I reject the argument that such behavior has no impact on his fitness to serve as president. Clinton is reckless and self-destructive and narcissistic. Such traits can not simply be compartmentalized and only directed toward sexual pursuits; this man proved that he lacked the judgement to be the most powerful man alive.

Those are only my opinions, however; the two most pertinent facts of the law, which seemed absent during the ruling and during the reaction to said ruling, are as follows: Firstly, any civil case must weigh the rights of the individual against the rights of the group. Secondly, military personnel are immune from all civil suits while they are in uniform.

The Supreme Court was tasked with deciding whether President Clinton would have to answer to Paula Jones' civil suit while he was in office. In other words, did Paula Jones' right to a speedy trial take precedence over the right of 270 million Americans to have a full-time president? What type of logic could be employed to argue that this is even debatable?

How did this happen? Well, the red herring offered at the time was that the Supreme Court had to decide whether or not Clinton was "above the law". He was not above the law, of course, and he never argued that he was. He simply argued that, in the interest of the rights of the many (the entire nation), the rights of the one (Paula Jones) must be put on hold until the end of his term. Clinton never said he was above the law; he said that he should be allowed to subject himself to the law only when he was done running the country in two years. He was right, of course.

Here's an experiment: what if someone sued George W. Bush, alleging that he owed him money from an investment gone bad in Texas years ago? Does anyone seriously think that the president of the United States in such a situation should go down to Houston for a month, a week, an hour, to testify in such a case? Of course not. Why? Because the president is above the law? No, because the nation is above a civil suit brought by a single citizen. Said citizen would simply have to wait until the president was relieved of the awesome responsibilities of his office to answer the charges against him.

So, not only did the Supreme Court literally imply that Paula Jones was more important than anything else in the world, or at least in the country, it simultaneously ruled that, effectively, the president is not a member of the military. The commander-in-chief, in other words, is not afforded the same protections of a private first class. A private first class, as noted above, is immune from civil suits while in uniform, since his role in defending the nation supersedes a plaintiff's right to a speedy redress of his grievances. The court held that a private first class must be spared from distractions that the commander-in-chief must answer to as they arise. Again, what form of logic...

It is clear that there was no logic at work here; there was only self-interest. The majority of Supreme Court justices had an interest in seeing Clinton distracted, persecuted, and humiliated due to their political allegiances. And that, clearly, is all that was at work in Jones v. Clinton. How clear is it? Well, after it was decided that the president of the United States deserved less consideration than Paula Jones or an 18 year old sailor, it was further decided that Clinton could be asked, under oath, about Monica Lewinsky. Since the Paula Jones suit involved allegations of sexual harassment, and since nobody had ever, or has ever, implied that the Clinton-Lewinsky affair was anything but consensual, it had no relevance to the Paula Jones case. But, again, common sense and the law took a back seat here.

So it came to pass that a sitting President was asked, under oath testifying about a totally unconnected matter, whether he had done something that is not against the law (consensual sexual contact with Monica Lewinsky). And it came to pass that the President was impeached and tried for the crime of lying about an unrelated non-crime in the course of a civil suit which was deemed to be more important than the rest of the nation's business. More important than Al-Qaeda. More important than Middle East peace talks. More important than America's image. More important than everything was that Bill Clinton be forced to testify about a consensual sexual affair in the investigation of an alleged non-consensual sexual advance that had taken place years prior and simply could not wait another 2 years for redress.

We know how the impeachment farce, which must be understood as an attempted coup d'etat, nominally concluded. We also know, however, that without this absurd and despicably self-interested charade by the Republican party, George W. Bush would not have had a chance at the presidency. Or, to be more precise, the Supreme Court would not have had a chance to give the presidency to George W. Bush.