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The original e-mail:

Subject: Clinton  

He signed Gramm, Leach Blilley into law. 
He signed NAFTA into law. 
He got rid of welfare as we know it not for corporate America, but for poor, struggling people. 
He let sanctions continue to slaughter hundreds of thousand of Iraqi children during his two terms. 
He rushed back to Arkansas to watch Ricky Rector be put to death. 
He was watched like a hawk by the right wing crazies yet he had sex with "that woman" which got 
him impeached and destroyed what was left of his presidency. 
He was so weakened he could barely campaign for that wimp Al Gore and the rest  
is the sad, pathetic history of the last decade. 
If he would have stood up to the lunatics who beat him up for nominating Kimba Wood  
and not caving he might have shown them that he had a spine...but n-o-o-o-o!  
He's a Dem and a wimp. 
Hillary has much more testosterone than he ever had! 
 Jacob 
  

You're missing the point. 
Until you can point to a more successsful modern Democrat, he's the best. 

You want a president who does everything the way you'd do it. 
That's not going to happen. 
 

Subject: complaints about Clinton

Hey, Bart,

Jacob wrote some pretty damning things about Clinton, some of which have some truth to them. 
However, of the eight items he cites, three are just plain wrong. 
I'm answering those three Bartcop-style: first Jacob's statement in quotes, then my response.

"He rushed back to Arkansas to watch Ricky Rector be put to death."

The Ricky Ray Rector case has been thrown into Clinton's face ever since Christopher Hitchens first floated that canard in 1992. 
Here are the facts: Rector was a violent felon who had, in one night in 1981, wounded two men and murdered a third, apparently 
over a disputed cover charge at a dance hall, an altercation in which none of the three men were even involved. He then agreed to 
surrender to a police officer, Robert Martin, whom he had known since childhood. When Officer Martin arrived at Rector's mother's 
house to accept his surrender, Rector shot him in the back and killed him. He then went outside and fired a bullet into his own head, 
causing almost complete brain damage. Rector was subsequently sentenced to death, after a judge ruled him competent to stand trial. 
Despite appeals of the death sentence, the courts upheld the sentence, and Rector was executed during the 1992 presidential campaign.

During the 1980s, when Rector was tried, the law on a brain damage exception for convicted murderers was not yet settled, largely 
because the science had not yet advanced to the point where a definitive corollary could be established for brain damage and violent 
behavior. Further, there is (or should be) no dispute that, at the time the crimes in question were committed, Rector was in full possession 
of his faculties, a fact conveniently omitted by Clinton critics. (See "Damaged brains and the dealth penalty" from the New York Times 
of July 21, 2001 for a typically disingenuous discussion of the case, available here 

Similar claims of present illness being used to give murderers a "get out of jail free" card have been raised in other notorious cases 
involving the crime of murder committed by formerly healthy perpetrators, most notably Augusto Pinochet of Chile, who while dictator 
ordered the deaths of thousands of political opponents; and John Demjanjuk, accused of participating in the Holocaust and personally 
murdering inmates of the Sobibor death camp.

The Rector case was used to smear Clinton as a ruthless opportunist willing to execute a "brain-damaged" man to win the presidency. 
What those raising that claim never make clear is that, during his tenure as governor of Arkansas, Clinton would routinely commute 
death sentences. So why did he not commute Rector's sentence? One possible answer: there were simply no mitigating factors in this case, 
other than the post-homicide self-inflicted gunshot wound to Rector's head. Compassion for Rector's condition at the time of his execution 
should not beget forgetfulness of the injury he caused to two persons, and the deaths of two more.

"He was watched like a hawk by the right wing crazies yet he had sex with "that woman" which got him impeached 
and destroyed what was left of his presidency."

By her own testimony in the grand jury hearings, testimony corroborated by Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky claimed she had never had sex 
with Clinton, describing what they did together as "fooling around." Further, President Clinton was not impeached because he "had sex"; 
he was impeached for allegedly lying about having sex with Ms. Lewinsky in his deposition given in the Paula Jones case. Any fair-minded 
reading of the transcript of the deposition shows that the tortured definition of sex the judge imposed on the proceedings, a definition designed 
by Kenneth Starr, meant that, no matter what he answered, he would be crucified. The fact that any questions about the Lewinsky matter 
were not material to the Jones case and should have been ruled inadmissable by the judge, hardly seems to matter to those looking to cast 
aspersions on Clinton; in fact the judge later ruled that the whole line of questioning was immaterial, but by then the damage was done.

"He was so weakened he could barely campaign for that wimp Al Gore and the rest is the sad, pathetic history of the last decade."

Partly wrong and partly right. He could have campaigned for Al Gore; in fact he wanted to, but Al Gore's VP candidate was guess who? 
Joe Lieberman, whose sole qualification for the post seemed to be that he got up on the Senate floor and denounced Clinton for being a 
bad, bad boy, when the rest of the party, not to mention most of the country, was saying MYOB to Starr and the whole right-wing cabal 
that tried to turn the sad little Lewinsky affair into a matter of state. The "sad, pathetic history of the last decade" was caused by a 
well-coordinated right-wing orchestration of the destruction of the Clinton presidency, a project that Jacob seems only too willing to buy into; 
his post seems eerily similar to most anti-Clinton screeds I have read over the years: a few meritorious points on various policy issues 
followed by the same vicious ad hominem attacks used by the right-wing noise machine. 

Funny how, at the end of the day, the lefties and the neocons all begin to sound the same.

Ann in Philly
a.k.a The Original Ninjalibrarian
 

I've found that people, left and right, don't care about the facts when it comes to hating the Clintons.
Thanks for clearing up that Rector case - I didn't know those facts until today.

Funny, we "had a right to know" when it came to Clinton's sex life, but 9-11?
That was "none of our concern" - no need to investigate anything there - and the Demopcrats agreed with that horseshit.

And yes, Gore would've won if he hadn't been so incredibly stupid.
He chose Kissyface over the best president since FDR and it cost him everything.

...and to this day, I've never run into anyone who can explain NAFTA.
All everybody knows is it was bad so that makes Clinton bad.

People who are very angry and can't say why should wear a teabagger shirt.
 

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