populist.org column on Sullivan and Judicial Nominations

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Jun 7 09:15:07 PDT 2001


Nathan Newman wrote:


>I was against the trolling in Clinton's personal life for consensual sexual
>relations and thought they should have been out of bounds for discovery even
>in court proceedings, since private non-public consensual sex had nothing to
>do with sexual harassment charges by Paula Jones. (Publicly flaunted sex on
>the job is another matter that could have legal implications but Clinton,
>however reckless, did not engage in that.)

Chris Caldwell wrote in his current NY Press column:


>Almost anyone who thinks for a second about Jenna's predicament will
>find himself pulled in opposite directions. The dual sympathies that
>result resemble those of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. At least they
>resemble mine. On the one hand, there was simply no way that the
>American people should have had their constitutional right to choose
>their president nullified because moralists objected to that
>president's having had an affair. On the other hand, the President
>was in danger of impeachment because he himself had signed a
>Violence Against Women Act that was an outrage to freedom worthy of
>the Khmer Rouge. And not just signed it-crowed about it, and
>belittled those who raised libertarian objections to it. Under the
>act's feminist-dictated terms, any woman suing a man for the
>nebulous "crime" of sexual harassment was entitled to demand under
>oath his entire sexual curriculum vitae. And that's just what Paula
>Jones did.

Is Caldwell right about this?

Doug



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