Since his election to the Senate in 2000, Ensign has been a leading conservative voice who demanded the resignation of former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig in September 2007. Ensign called Craig a “disgrace” after he was arrested in June 2007 in an airport men’s restroom on disorderly conduct charges. But when Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) acknowledged having an affair, Ensign didn’t call on him to resign.

Ensign has also been an ardent opponent of gay marriage. In Feb. 2004, Ensign announced his support for an amendment to the Constitution that would have defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Ensign said the amendment, which ultimately failed, was necessary to protect “the institution of marriage“:

“Sadly, the effort to redefine marriage against the wishes of a majority of the people is, with help from activist judges, succeeding,” Ensign said. “In order to defend the institution of marriage, uphold the rights of individual states, and maintain the will of the people, I believe we are compelled to amend our country’s constitution.”

“The effort to pass a constitutional amendment reaffirming marriage as being between a man and a woman only is being undertaken strictly as a defense of marriage against the attempt to redefine it and, in the process, weaken it,” Ensign said. “Marriage is an extremely important institution in this country and protecting it is, in my mind, worth the extraordinary step of amending our constitution.”

In 1998, while running for Nevada’s Senate seat against Harry Reid, Ensign called on President Clinton to resign in light of his admitted affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky:

“I came to that conclusion recently, and frankly it’s because of what he put his whole Cabinet through and what he has put the country through,” Ensign said Thursday, becoming the first member of the Nevada delegation to call for Clinton to quit. “He has no credibility left.”

How much “credibility” does Ensign have left?

Vitter said that Burris “clearly, at a minimum, misled the Illinois Legislature and the voters of the Illinois” by giving incomplete answers about his contacts with and fundraising efforts for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) as Blagojevich was considering appointing Burris to the state’s Senate seat.

“Obviously there are even more serious charges of perjury, but I guess that will sort itself out in terms of legal proceedings,” Vitter said.

After Vitter admitted his links with the DC Madam in 2007, right-wing pundit Sean Hannity said, “I think Senator Vitter should probably live by the line that he put out for Bill Clinton back in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.” Vitter adamantly refused to resign. Now, it seems, the old Vitter is back and demanding that public officials be held to account.

– Emily Aden

Fox News has decided which story is worthy of more coverage. Today, host Gregg Jarrett interviewed PBS’s Bonnie Erbe. “We have these huge stories going on like the one you’re reporting in Georgia,” Erbe noted when asked about Edwards. Jarrett, however, completely ignored Erbe’s comment on Georgia and continued to talk about Edwards, offering praise for the National Enquirer:

JARRETT: You know, his excuse for lying is absolutely stunning. He claims he denied the affair because the reporting by the National Enquirer was “99 percent wrong.” Well, so far, they’ve been about 100 percent right.

Throughout the segment, Jarrett refused to talk about anything except for Edwards’s affair:

ERBE: The American public have told pollsters, this political season they want substance. Both these candidates have expressed support for allowing Georgia into NATO. … We could have been on the verge of nuclear war. Those are the kinds of the things that the American public wants to see discussed.

JARRETT: Right. You know, but getting back to Edwards, during the Monica Lewinsky affair, Edwards absolutely ripped into Bill Clinton.

Erbe called the Edwards story “water cooler talk,” noting again that Edwards’s affair is “not the stuff the American public wants to hear about in this election cycle.” Again, Jarrett wholly ignored her, responding with more Edwards talk:

JARRETT: Well it’s amazing, he thought could get away with it, and if he had become the Democratic nominee, my goodness.

Watch it:

Of course, this is nothing new for Fox, which has a history of covering tabloid issues more than wars.

UPDATE: In a letter, Jarrett informs ThinkProgress:

Ms. Erbe was invited as a guest on our Saturday newscast to discuss John Edwards’ admission late Friday night that he had been lying to voters during his campaign for the presidency. She was not invited to discuss the Russian-Georgian conflict. And yet, she persisted in turning every question about Mr. Edwards into a discourse on Georgia and NATO. I tried repeatedly to steer the conversation back to Mr. Edwards, but Ms. Erbe seemed determined to hijack the interview to talk about Georgia. […]

The story posted by “Think Progress” states that Fox News decided the Edwards story “is worthy of more coverage” than Georgia. That is untrue. In our 90 minute newscast, we aired two “live” reports from our war correspondent in Tblisi, another “live” report from our correspondent in Moscow, and a lengthy interview with an international relations expert, Douglas Paal, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Georgia story was covered thoroughly before Ms. Erbe appeared on our air.

“Someone should have to pay in some way for the decisions that they made to mislead the American people,” said Clarke. He suggested that “some sort of truth and reconciliation commission” might be appropriate because, he said, we can’t “let these people back into polite society”:

CLARKE: Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that’s been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you’re forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way.

Now, I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grieviously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives.

Watch it:

Unfortunately, as Clarke hints, most of the architects of the Iraq war are still fully embraced by “polite society.”

Some, like President Bush and Vice President Cheney, are still working in the White House. But for many of those who left, “the neocon welfare system” has been generous:

- Last fall, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was named a “distinguished visiting fellow” at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he focuses on “issues pertaining to ideology and terror.”

- After a controversial tenure as the president of the World Bank, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

- Richard Perle, the chairman of Defense Policy Board during the run up to the Iraq war, also landed on the payroll of the American Enterprise Institute, where he is a resident fellow.

Despite their re-emergence into “polite society,” these war architects have largely refused to admit that they lied. In fact, some, like former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, insist that the American people only feel misled about Iraq because “they misremember a lot.”

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Transcript:

OLBERMANN: Democrats, prominent Democrats said today that impeachment was not a remedy to this, but can anyone argue with a straight face, post-Lewinsky that these lies, the blood and treasure that they cost us, don’t deserve some kind of remedy. And is there some other kind of remedy?

CLARKE: Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that’s been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you’re forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way. Now, I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grieviously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives. Someone should have to pay in some way for the decisions that they made to mislead the American people.

OLBERMANN: Speaking of coming forward, I was wondering if there would be an opportunity to raise this issue with you because he’s so, he was so connected to you in a different context when your first criticisms became known around 2004 before the election, what — in a weird way, is Scott McClellan’s book kind of the passage way from this being a theoretical discussion to almost a text book saying how they managed to sell us this garbage?

CLARKE: Well, Scott McClellan’s book is further proof. It sort of the other end of this big Senate Intelligence report. But Scott, also, is asking for forgiveness. You know, he asked me, after he left your program and I bumped into him, literally coming through the revolving door in a hotel. Metaphorically, no really, he was coming through a revolving door and he asked me to forgive him and I think we do have to forgive people who ask for forgiveness. You know, the 9/11 families forgave me my inadequacies in dealing with al Qaeda and I greatly appreciated that. We do need to forgive people, but first they have to admit they lied.

Well, look at the lede! It’s about sex! It’s about John McCain had an affair! That’s what this story is about, which is actually a pretty outrageous nail upon which to hang a story, it seems to me, in 2008, at a time when we’ve all sort of agreed that true or not, it’s none of our business. I mean that is the contract in journalism we all sort of signed after Monica.

Taking the moral highground, Tucker said as a reporter, he shies away from exploring people’s private lives:

I’m not flacking for McCain. I instinctively jump to the defense of anyone whose private life is violated.

Watch it:

Similarly, when Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) was revealed to have solicited escort services, Carlson accused a guest of “holding up this guy’s sex life to public ridicule.”

But in reality, Carlson only “jumps to the defense” of fellow conservatives subject to allegations of impropriety. When President Clinton came under such allegations, Carlson beat the drums incessantly. Some lowlights:

– Bill Clinton…took advantage of her. [CNN, 12/29/98]

– There it is. There’s his legacy, Monica Lewinsky. [CNN, 3/9/01]

– MATTHEWS: I see we’re changing the subject again. Is the question of their [the Clintons'] marriage an issue or not in this campaign?
CARLSON: Of course it’s an issue. [MSNBC, 5/26/06]

Contrary to what Carlson thinks, the Times’ story is important for revealing McCain’s close ties and favors to lobbyists, whom he repeatedly admonishes on the campaign trail. “He’s been in bed with lobbyists for quite some time,” notes Christy Hardin Smith.

“I think Livingston’s stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess,” he said. [Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 12/20/98]

Calling Vitter a “hypocrite-in-chief,” TriCities.com writes today, “If U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., were one-quarter the man he claims to be, he would resign his office over links to a D.C. escort service.” The op-ed continues, “Vitter is a bigger hypocrite than most,” noting his prior criticisms of Clinton. “Vitter is the worst kind of a politician: A man who hoists himself upon a family-values pedestal and condemns others who don’t ascend with him.”

Even right-wing pundit Sean Hannity is getting into the act. Last night on Fox, Hannity said that Vitter should heed his own advice and resign:

I think Senator Vitter should probably live by the line that he put out for Bill Clinton back in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Watch it:

Earlier this week, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said the Vitter scandal should have “a full airing” and noted that there is an open criminal investigation into the escort service that Vitter acknowledged calling.

Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said yesterday, “Senator Vitter’s solicitation of at least one prostitute was not merely, as he has stated, ‘a serious sin,’ it was a violation of criminal law.”

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UPDATE: KLo weighs in: “I think he’s probably should resign.”

Yesterday on ABC’s Good Morning America, Coulter said, “[I]f I’m gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.” She has previously called Edwards a “faggot.” In 2003, she wrote a column claiming that John Edwards drove around with a bumper sticker saying “Ask me about my son’s death in a horrific car accident.”

During an hour-long interview with Coulter today on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews announced that Elizabeth Edwards was on the line. Edwards referenced the attacks above, saying, “I’m the mother of that boy who died. These young people behind you…you’re asking them to participate in a dialogue that is based on hatefulness and ugliness instead of on the issues, and I don’t think that’s serving them or this country very well.” The live audience cheered. Watch it:

Responding to Edwards, Coulter first inexplicably claimed that she “didn’t say anything about [Edwards]” on the previous day. Then Coulter tried to claim that Edwards just wanted her to “stop speaking” and stop writing books, but Matthews rebutted her, saying, “No, she said you should stop being so negative to people individually.”

When her first two attempts to spin the situation faulted, Coulter then launched into another baseless, personal attack, accusing John Edwards of “bankrupting doctors by giving a shyster Las Vegas routine in front of juries…doing these psychic routines in front of illiterate juries to bankrupt doctors who now can’t deliver babies.”

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Transcript:

MATTHEWS: You know who’s on the line? Someone to respond to what you said about Edwards yesterday morning. Elizabeth Edwards. She wanted to call in today, we said she could. Elizabeth Edwards, go on the line. You’re on the line with Ann Coulter.

E: Hello Chris.

M: Do you want to say something directly to the person who’s with me?

E: I’m calling — you know, in the south, when someone does something that displeases us, we want to ask them politely to stop doing it. I would like to ask Ann Coulter to — if she wants to debate on issues, on positions — we certainly disagree with nearly everything she said on your show today — but it is quite another matter for these personal attacks. The things that she has said over the years, not just about John but about other candidates, lowers our political dialogue precisely at the time that we need to raise it. So I want to use the opportunity, which I don’t get much because Ann and I don’t hang out with the same people…

C: I don’t have enough money.

E: …to ask her politely stop the personal attacks.

C: Okay, so I made a joke, let’s see, six months ago, and as you point out, they have been raising money off of it for six months since then.

M: But this is yesterday morning, what you said about him.

C: I didn’t say anything about him, actually, either time.

E: But that — Ann, Ann, you know that’s not true, and once more, this has been going on for some time.

C: And I don’t mind you trying to raise money. It’s better this than giving $50,000 speeches to the poor just to use my name on the webpages. But as for a debate with me, yeah, sure. Yeah, we’ll have a debate.

E: I’m asking you politely to stop, to stop personal attacks –

C: How about you stop raising money on your web page then? No, you don’t have to because I don’t mind.

E: I did not start with that. You had a column a number of years ago where you suggested — wait till I finish talking please…

C: Okay, the wife of a presidential candidate is calling in asking me to stop speaking.

M: Let her finish the point. Let her finish the point.

C: You’re asking me to stop speaking? “Stop writing your columns. Stop writing your books.”

M: Ann, please.

E: You had a column several years ago which made fun of the moment of Charlie Dean’s death and suggested that my husband had a bumper sticker on the back of his car saying, “Ask me about my dead son.” This is not legitimate political dialogue.

C: This is now three years ago.

E: It debases political dialogue. It drives people away from the process. We can’t have a debate about the issues.

C: Yeah, why isn’t John Edwards making this call?

M: Well, do you want to respond? We’ll end the conversation.

E: I haven’t talked to John about this call. I’m making the call as a mother. I’m the mother of that boy who died. My children participate — these young people behind you are the age of my children. You’re asking them to participate in a dialogue that is based on hatefulness and ugliness instead of on the issues, and I don’t think that’s serving them or this country very well.

[Applause]

M: Thank you very much Elizabeth. You wanna respond? You have all the time in the world to respond.

C: I think we heard all we need to hear. The wife of a presidential candidate is asking me to stop speaking. No.

M: No, she asked you to stop being so negative to people individually.

C: Right, as opposed to bankrupting doctors by giving a schyster Las Vegas routine in front of juries based on science — wait, you said I’d have as long as I would have, then you instantly interrupt me.

M: Go ahead, go ahead.

C: As I was saying, doing these psychic routines in front of illiterate juries to bankrupt doctors who now can’t deliver babies, and to charge a poverty group $50,000 for a speech. Don’t talk to me about how to use language.

M: Elizabeth?

E: …the language of hate, and I’m going to ask you again to politely stop using personal attacks as part of your dialogue.

C: Okay, I’ll stop writing books.

E: If you can’t write them without them, that is fine.

M: Why do you call out Hillary’s chubby legs in your book? Why do you — this may fall under the category of personal attacks, I don’t know, but why do you do that? Why do you talkabout Monica Lewinsky’s chubbiness? If she were skinny, would it have been okay?

C: Um, I don’t know, read the sentence.

E: I read the whole sentence. I couldn’t feel the context.

C: Well you have to give it to me and I could explain.

E: Why do you make fun of Hillary’s chubby legs?

C: I don’t know, you’re going to have to give me the sentence.

M: It’s in the afterword of your book, I just read it this morning.

C: Then read the sentence.

M: We’ll be back and read the entire sentence. We’ll come right back. I don’t know why we’re reading — the full intellectual context will be coming in just a moment.

LOTT: The question is are the Democrats in the Senate interested in information or confrontation. In my mind, I think if the president would agree for his close advisers in the White House to testify before Congress under oath, he’d be making a huge mistake. There is a thing called executive privilege.

Watch it:

A vigorous defender of executive privilege today, Lott — like Tony Snow — has flip-flopped on executive privilege. Lott led the charge against President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky saga, seeking out everything from tapes to sworn testimony from the White House. In March 1998, Lott appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and lambasted the Clinton White House for invoking executive privilege:

LOTT: I think they’ve made a mistake by [invoking executive privilege]. I think it will damage the credibility. It looks like they are hiding something, so I think they shouldn’t have done it. I think it’s an improper use, and the courts will have to decide whether or not that’s a proper use. And it may wind up in the Supreme Court, like it did in the Watergate matter.

As Think Progress has noted, Clinton was far more transparent than Bush when Congress requested that his aides testify, allowing 31 of his top aides to appear in sworn testimony in front of Congress compared to Bush’s one.

Lott was exactly right — invoking executive privilege makes the Bush White House “look like they are hiding something.”

UPDATE: More at Media Matters.

But as Glenn Greenwald first noted, Snow had a much different view of executive privilege in 1998, when President Clinton was using it to resist having his aides testify in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky saga. On 3/29/98, Snow published an op-ed titled, “Executive Privilege is a Dodge“:

Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.

During today’s press briefing, a reporter asked Snow about the inconsistencies between his flip-flop. Snow said that “this is not an entirely analogous situation” and that he would “let others do the legal arguing.” Watch it:

Wondering how the reporter heard about his 1998 op-ed, Snow snidely asked the reporter, “Is it making its way through the left-wing blogs?”

Transcript:

REPORTER: Tony, back when President Clinton was citing executive privilege to keep internal deliberations in that White House from being talked about in Congress, you wrote — now famously — that taken

SNOW: I didn’t know it was famous. It didn’t that kind of coverage at the time.

REPORTER: It’s become more famous.

SNOW: Is it making its way through the left-wing blogs?

REPORTER: But you wrote quite eloquently about this. You said, “Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.” So why were you wrong then and right now?

SNOW: Because you’re — this is not an entirely analogous situation. I just told you what we have in fact offered to make available to Members of Congress. What we’re doing is we are holding apart confidential communications between advisers and the President. And that is pretty standard practice in the White House.

REPORTER: But in the Clinton administration –

SNOW: I’m not so sure. I’ll let others do the legal arguing on that.

I asked whether the president was perhaps overly confrontational at this stage of the game. “I don’t think it’s confrontational,” Snow said. “We feel pretty comfortable with the constitutional argument.” …

The White House, Snow said, is determined to avoid “hearings or the trappings of hearings” when White House officials talk to Congress. “They’re looking for hands up, cameras on,” Snow said of Democrats. “They’re talking about a show trial.”

How times have changed. As Glenn Greenwald first noted, Snow had a much different view of executive privilege in 1998, when President Clinton was using it to resist having his aides testify in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky saga. On 3/29/98, Snow published an op-ed titled, “Executive Privilege is a Dodge”:

Evidently, Mr. Clinton wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration. Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.

Chances are that the courts will hurl such a claim out, but it will take time.

One gets the impression that Team Clinton values its survival more than most people want justice and thus will delay without qualm. But as the clock ticks, the public’s faith in Mr. Clinton will ebb away for a simple reason: Most of us want no part of a president who is cynical enough to use the majesty of his office to evade the one thing he is sworn to uphold — the rule of law.

Snow shouldn’t feel “pretty comfortable with the constitutional argument” because it’s pretty clear there isn’t one. The leading case on executive privilege is United States v. Nixon, where the Supreme Court found that executive privilege is sharply limited:

The President’s need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts. However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises. Absent a claim of need to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets, we find it difficult to accept the argument that even the very important interest in confidentiality of Presidential communications is significantly diminished by production of such material for in camera inspection with all the protection that a district court will be obliged to provide.

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He has called Clinton’s sex life the “800-pound gorilla stalking behind” Hillary Clinton, and suggested it would sink her presidential campaign. Earlier this month, Matthews asked about Bill Clinton’s “personal behavior” 10 separate times in a single interview.

Watch a video compilation:

Matthews’ baseless speculation has the effect of turning President Clinton into a liability for progressives, and Matthews isn’t alone. In December, the Washington Post questioned whether Bill Clinton will be the “biggest issue” in Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy.

But as Media Matters documented, “nowhere does the article offer any concrete evidence that Bill Clinton is anything but an asset to his wife or that the public sees in him the ‘massive and messy distraction’ the article suggests the ‘media-industrial complex’ sees.” A Feb. 15 Gallup report found that Bill Clinton’s approval rating, “more than six years after leaving office, is near an all-time high.”

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Quotes:

MATTHEWS: I love the way you smile. I’m just thinking, is Bill Clinton going to stop trying to play Holly Golightly up in New York. I’m just wondering when he stops that, if he’s doing it, she’ll be better off.

2/26/2007

MATTHEWS: Here to dig into all are the HARDBALLers, the Washingtonpost.com’s Chris Cilizza and Lynn Sweet of “The Chicago Sun-Times.” Lynn, “The Washington Post’s” Ann Kornblut is on this program a lot, wrote this big piece this weekend about, once again, Bill Clinton’s the target of conversation. Is this going to go away, or does he have to issue a statement of some kind, I’m not going to be a problem for my wife’s campaign? How’s this going to end, this buzz?

2/25/2007

MATTHEWS: Tuesday, and then Maureen Dowd of The New York Times published Geffen’s piercing critique of Hillary and husband Bill. Quote, “‘I don’t think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden, Bill Clinton has become a different person’…

MATTHEWS: After The New York Times, Michelle, a couple of–couple of months ago wrote that big front page piece saying the Democrats are worried about Bill Clinton’s personal behavior right now, not ‘98. The Clinton response to that, the campaign response is ‘That’s personal, that’s private.’ That’s a fallback position from ‘There’s no trouble there.’ It’s like saying, ‘Don’t talk about that stuff, whatever it is.’

Ms. NORRIS: Well, you…

MATTHEWS: Is that going to work?

2/23/2007

MATTHEWS: Mike Barnicle, I didn’t think the Bill and Hillary issue would get — the husband issue would get so hot so fast, and now you got this guy, David Geffen, a liberal money-raising guy out in California, Hollywood, in Tinseltown, raising the issue of Bill Clinton’s personal behavior so early in the campaign.

2/23/2007

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Below the belt? Is it wrong for a Democrat like Barack Obama to say Bill Clinton’s personal behavior could be a great Republican issue in 2008? …

MATTHEWS: Does your side, the Clinton side, believe it’s a foul for any shot against Bill Clinton, the fact that he was impeached or anything to do with his personal behavior? You believe that’s a foul? …

MATTHEWS: Has anyone in the campaign, you or John — does Ann Lewis or Howard Wolfson — Howard Wolfson — does anybody have the status to walk up to Hillary and say, you have got to get Bill together on this; he could distract from this campaign; let’s make sure a winning campaign doesn’t become a losing campaign because of personal behavior?

2/15/2007:

MATTHEWS: It’s like she didn’t know anything about Bill and his behavior? How many times is she going to be confused by men?

2/8/2007

MATTHEWS: Is your friend Bill going to be in this campaign? Going to be busy with the campaign, not get any distractions going with other things?

MCAULIFFE: He`s going to be very busy.

MATTHEWS: No distractions? He`s writing a book.

MCAULIFFE: He`s got a distraction right now. He`s writing a book for the next two months.

MATTHEWS: Will he distract our attention from his wife by misbehavior?

MCAULIFFE: No sir.

MATTHEWS: He won’t? He’s going to be a good boy?

MCAULIFFE: His wife is running for president. He`s going to do everything — he`s the most popular man in the world today.

MATTHEWS: It doesn’t kill me if he does distract from this campaign. We do not want to go back to 1998. Some people do.

2/2/2007

MATTHEWS: Is Bill Clinton going to be a problem in this campaign?

LEWIS: Absolutely not.

MATTHEWS: Is he going to behave himself?

LEWIS: Bill Clinton has been around — in the first place, he’s been around the world saving lives.

MATTHEWS: Is he going to behave himself?

LEWIS: He’s going to do what he does best.

MATTHEWS: Is he going to behave himself…

LEWIS: Yes, he is.

MATTHEWS: … not cause a publicity that gets her embarrassed? …

LEWIS: There’s no there there. No. I think Bill Clinton is going to continue doing his work, going around the world, saving lives.

MATTHEWS: So he’s going to behave himself.

LEWIS: He’s going to be out on the campaign trail…

MATTHEWS: And he’s going to behave himself so Hillary can be the first woman president.

LEWIS: You’re all going to be applauding…

MATTHEWS: I think it’d be great for the country … if we were not once again distracted…

LEWIS: So do I.

MATTHEWS: … by what you call private life. And I think the way to avoid getting distracted is to have nothing there to distract us.

LEWIS: Well, I agree with that. But we just spent how many minutes of this segment, three minutes, talking about there should be nothing to distract us? Why don’t we stop talking about it and talk about the issues?

MATTHEWS: Well, because I want to have some assurances from people that I trust and like to spread the word that…

LEWIS: Why don’t you watch…

MATTHEWS: … he better watch it …

LEWIS: … what he’s been doing? Why not see what he’s done for the last…

MATTHEWS: I am watching, unfortunately. Anyway, thank you, Ann Lewis

1/29/2007

MATTHEWS: …So we don’t know what she was thinking. That audience, though, was keyed to laugh, thinking she was kidding about her husband’s philandering, Monica Lewinsky and all that. What I’m asking is, is she that unaware of that 800-pound gorilla stalking behind her, the baggage of her husband?

EXCUSE #1: Foley’s initial e-mails seemed harmless, “over friendly”.

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) said he dropped the matter when Foley told them, “When I was a young person, an adult (who) became my mentor inspired me to be a congressman, and that’s all I’m doing.” Foley said if he was guilty of anything, Shimkus said, it was of being “overly friendly.” [St. Louis Tribune, 10/1/06]

“[T]he actual notes were relatively innocuous — there was nothing sexual in those notes.” [Newt Gingrich, Fox News Sunday, 10/1/06]

FACT: At least 11 House members and staff, all Republicans, knew of the inappropriate emails sent by Foley to a page in 2005. In the e-mails, Foley asked the page to “send me a pic of you” and said about another young page, “he’s in really good shape.” The boy told House officials that Foley’s messages “freaked him out” and were “sick, sick, sick, sick, sick.” Dr. Timothy M. Osberg, a psychologist and professor of psychology at Niagara University, said that the e-mail, coupled with the boy’s reaction to it, “should send up red flags.”

……

EXCUSE #2: The parents didn’t want the matter pursued.

Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) said Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) “told him that he had spoken with the page’s parents. They didn’t want the matter pursued, he said, ’so I thought it had to be pretty well satisfied.’” [Buffalo News, 10/1/06]

FACT: The House leadership had an obligation to protect the dozens of pages who are under their care. At the very least, Foley’s emails should have been passed on law authorities, and the full House page board should have been informed.

……

EXCUSE #3: Democrats are exploiting this issue for political gain right before the November elections.

Reynolds called his critics’ reactions to his negligence in the Foley case “as crass as anything I have seen.” “I’m certainly not going to react to some campaign rhetoric…on a tragic incident of a page,” he said. [Buffalo News, 10/1/06]

“I don’t believe in coincidence, and apparently neither does Hastert. The timing of this revelation has more to do about helping Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats than protecting teenagers with whom Foley was communicating.” [Mark Levin, National Review, 10/1/06]

FACT: The House leadership consistently hid this case from the public for partisan purposes. In late 2005, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), chairman of the House Page Board, “was notified by the then Clerk of the House, who manages the Page Program, that he had been told by Congressman Rodney Alexander (R-LA) about an email exchange between Congressman Foley and a former House Page.” Shimkus interviewed Foley and told him “to cease all contact with this former house page.” But Shimkus never informed Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI), the only Democrat on the House page board. Today, Hastert held a meeting “to review ways to protect pages,” but once again, Kildee was not invited.

……

EXCUSE #4: Former President Bill Clinton wasn’t harshly penalized for his relations with Monica Lewinsky.

“Nor did inappropriate behavior toward a subordinate even cost Bill Clinton his standing within the Democratic Party, even though indirectly he was impeached for it.” [Fox News host Brit Hume, 10/1/06]

FACT: Foley made unwanted advances toward underage boys, which one page described as “sick” and reported to authorities. Clinton had a consensual relationship with an adult. The fact that it was an extramarital affair was virtually unanimously condemned by members of both parties.

……

EXCUSE #5: This scandal is minor compared to other scandals on Capitol Hill.

“I hate to tell you, but it’s not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill. And there have been other scandals, as you know, that have been more than simply naughty e-mails.” [White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, 10/2/06]

FACT: The emails were not “simply naughty.” They were predatory, extremely inappropriate, and potentially in violation of federal law.

……

EXCUSE #6: House leaders would have been accused of “gay bashing” if they had pursued the case.

“Well, you could have second thoughts about it, but I think had they overly aggressively reacted to the initial round, they would have also been accused of gay bashing.” [Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 10/1/06]

FACT: The issue here is not homosexuality. The issue is sexual harrassment of minors.

There is zero comparison between Foley’s behavior and Clinton’s. Foley made unwanted advances towards underage boys which one page described as “sick” and reported to authorities. The leadership of Foley’s party covered up his behavior for months.

President Clinton had a consensual relationship with an adult. The fact that it was an extramarital affair was virtually unanimously condemned by members of both parties.

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Full transcript:

HUME: It is very serious misbehavior on the part of Congressman Foley, whether it stems from arrogance or just weakness of the human flesh is another question. It’s probably worth noting that there’s a difference between the two parties on these issues. Inappropriate behavior towards subordinates didn’t cost Gerry Studds his Democratic seat in Massachussetts, nor Barney Frank his. Nor did inappropriate behavior toward a subordinate even cost Bill Clinton his standing within the Democratic Party, even though indirectly he was impeached for it. Mark Foley found out about this, was found out to have done this, and he’s out of office and in total disgrace in his party.

WILLIAMS: It took him long enough, don’t you think?

HUME: What do you mean?

WILLIAMS: Well, gee, they knew about it way back. No action was taken. That’s the question.

HUME: What we don’t know —

LIASON: Barney Frank was not with a subordinate. We should correct that. We should correct that.

WALLACE: Yeah, I think we should point that out. I don’t think Barney Frank was involved with a page.

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

HUME: It is worth noting that we don’t yet know exactly what they knew and when they knew it. This — obviously, we’ll find out this week.

WILLIAMS: Well, it’s an argument among Republicans who have a very different time record here for what Hastert is saying.

WALLACE: Alright, guys. You can take it outside afterwards.

The people on my political right who say I didn’t do enough spent the whole time I was president saying, Why is he so obsessed with bin Laden? That was wag the dog when he tried to kill him.

Originating from a 1997 movie, Wag the Dog was a phrase used by the right to suggest Clinton’s airstrikes were driven by ulterior motives in an effort to distract the public. Some examples below:

Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV):

“‘Look at the movie Wag the Dog. I think this has all the elements of that movie,’ Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said. ‘Our reaction to the embassy bombings should be based on sound credible evidence, not a knee-jerk reaction to try to direct public attention away from his personal problems.’” [Ottawa Citizen, 8/21/98]

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA):

“There’s an obvious issue which will be raised internationally about the response here as to whether there is any diversionary motive involved. … I have deliberated consciously any references to Ms. Monica Lewinsky, but when you ask the question in very blunt terms, the president’s current problems have to be on the minds of many people.” [CNN, 8/20/98]

Former Sen. John Ashcroft (R-MO):

“‘We support the president out of a sense of duty whenever he deploys military forces, but we’re not sure – were these forces sent at this time because he needed to divert our attention from his personal problems?‘ Ashcroft said during the taping of a TV program in Manchester, N.H.” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8/21/98]

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX):

“I’m very supportive of the strike that has happened, but I will tell you that the timing is very questionable. This was the day that Monica Lewinsky has gone back to the grand jury, evidently enraged. Certainly that information will be overshadowed.” [Dallas Morning News, 8/21/98]

Former Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN):

“Coats (R-IN), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement, ‘While there is clearly much more we need to learn about this attack and why it was ordered today, given the president’s personal difficulties this week, it is legitimate to question the timing of this action.‘” [CNN, 8/20/98]

Former Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL):

“Although most in Congress rallied around Clinton on Thursday, two Republican U.S. senators and one Central Florida congressman broke with the tradition of standing behind a president during a foreign crisis.Sen. Daniel Coats, R-Ind., Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Palm Bay, publicly questioned Clinton’s motives in launching the attacks so soon after his public admission of a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. … ‘The president has, indeed, broken the trust of the American people, and these are legitimate questions that must be answered.’” [Orlando Sentinel, 8/21/98]

Former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA):

“All I’m saying is if factors other than good intelligence, military necessity, being prepared for the consequences entered into it, then it is wrong, and it appears that one of those factors that may have entered into it is to take something that could have been done a week ago and do it today in an effort to divert some attention.” [Fox News, 8/20/98]

Much more at Salon’s War Room.

The Sept. 11 commission concluded that the sex scandal distracted the Clinton administration from the terrorist threat.

What the 9/11 Commission actually says (pg. 118):

Everyone involved in the decision had, of course, been aware of President Clinton’s problems. He told them to ignore them. Berger recalled the President saying to him “that they are going to get crap either way, so they should do the right thing.” All his aides testified to us that they based their advice solely on national security considerations. We have found no reason to question their statements.

This is what happens when people learn about the 9/11 Commission by watching Path to 9/11.

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