Woah woah woah, this is getting out of hand.

[Peace Patriot]

71. "the fallout from their relationship brought us the Lewinsky craziness"--no, Ken Starr did.

The Clintons' private life was NEVER the alleged point of that "Star Chamber" proceeding, and should never have been invaded, and held up to exposure and ridicule. That should NOT be the price of public service.

Whatever you think of that public service--support their policies or don't--NO public servant should be subjected to that. It makes every public servant blackmailable and controllable by dark forces if they stray even a little bit from a completely outdated and quite vicious PURITAN idea of marriage.

Gawd, people were laughing at us all over the world! "He had a mistress...and you're doing THAT to him, and you're spending a half a billion dollars on it? Are you crazy?"

We need a new pact among us and our leaders and the media. We really do. Consenting sex among adults inside or outside of marriage HAS NOTHING TO DO with fitness for PUBLIC SERVICE.

Where did this Puritanism come from? It is sick. I really believe that. And, politically, I don't like the Clintons at all. Not one bit. But that's not my point. If they'd done this to, oh, I don't know, say John Kerry or Barack Obama, or to arch-villains Bush or Reagan, I would NOT have approved. In fact, they did do it to John Edwards--a very good liberal--who was drummed out of public life, and to...who was that Latino who headed HUD or one of those agencies--drummed out of public life for having a mistress, with whom he had a long term relationship including support. A very good public servant, as I recall. Damn, can't think of his name. A Clinton appointee, and "presidential material," as I recall. That was disgraceful!

As for Hillary Clinton, she may have "ridden" Bill's fame and fortune to a position of power, but I don't judge her for that. I know a lot of women in that position. (I'm 70--some of us didn't have a lot of choices.) Hillary needs to be judged on her own terms. She supports very damaging policies of Bill's, for instance, and she championed some of them during his presidency. I don't care if she's famous because of who she's married to. She could have opposed those policies, and she could have disavowed them later, and even stay married to him if she wanted to (and he wanted to). But she did not oppose those policies when she became a senator, a prez candidate and sec of state.

Oh, she's trying to, on a few of them now, but I don't believe her. She's a thorough "neo-liberal" and is responsible for the disasters in Libya, Syria and Honduras, where many innocent lives have been lost. But, to me, it has nothing to do with her marriage. And I feel for her, as a human being, for all the filthy muck she had to endure at the hands of that righteous prick, Ken Starr, and all his minions and promoters. THEY damaged our government, in that regard, NOT Bill, Hillary or the other women involved.