The Sanford SagaFollow

No it's not. Monica was a consenting adult, not a coerced child.

edit - I'm not condoning his actions. The affair DID take place right at the white house - that's pretty crude. But it is where the pres lives. His affair, however, had no connection to his governance - which wasn't half bad (specially considering his predecessor).



Edited, Jul 2nd 2009 7:18pm by Elinda

hahahaha. no. Unless you define many as over 10.

Edited, Jul 2nd 2009 3:26pm by Xsarus

There is no reason for President Obama to produce his birth certificate. There is no credible doubt that he was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. It was reported in the local paper, for fUCk's sake.

Student, not child. While there's no statutory rape issue if the student is over 18, we tend to frown on it anyway (especially in the public school system). It has to do with abuse of authority, and is applicable regardless of the ages of the two involved.

It's more or less the same reason why fraternization is not allowed in the military. You can't involve yourself sexually with someone within your own command chain (up or down).

By having a sexual affair with a member of his staff, while on the job, in the office portion of the White House (not the residence), Clinton was at the very least showing incredibly poor judgment, and certainly violating the principle's we tend to hold as a society regarding behavior of someone in authority over someone else. Obviously, that's not an impeachable offense, and I absolutely agree that the circumstances under which he "lied" were pretty obviously contrived to force that exact response. My issue with the whole thing was that it distracted the investigation from the legitimate issues surrounding the whole Whitewater scandal. As soon as sex entered the picture, it was like the investigators just kinda forgot all about the reason they were actually investigating...


As for Sanford's change of mind. I wouldn't read much into it (although I'm sure it wont stop most of you anyway). Sanford probably had about half of Congress (both parties) quietly contact him and suggest that if he turns over such documents without any form of subpoena first, it'll make the media and the public think that anyone who doesn't do the same must be hiding something. And both sides will be inundated with calls for this document and that document, etc... Nobody wants that. I'm all for transparency, but it's like an anecdote my Aunt related about top secret documents. She noted that when she worked for various government agencies, they'd dump *everything* into various classified documents and files. Even stuff like the cleaning bill. The idea was that if you only ever make the top secret stuff hard to find or obtain, then it's pretty easy to know all the secrets. Just keep asking for stuff until someone says "no". Same deal here...