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Vote Democratic in November

dncgop.gif - 3.75 K Hey guys! Coming up in November is an election. You must all vote in this election and you must vote for Democrats…I don't care if you're Republicans or Democrats you must vote and vote Democratic. Because of all the recent controversy of late regarding the President, the Republicans are poised to gain even more seats in the Congress. We cannot let this happen.

Think about it! If they gain any more seats in the Congress, the Republicans are going to roll back every bit of progress we have made over the last six years with President Clinton.

Think about this:less AIDS funding; no more protection against discrimination for homosexual federal workers; no chance of ever getting employment discrimination protection for homosexuals; no more right to choose.

Also think about the Christian Coalition and the agenda they could push through with greater Republican control in Congress. It should scare you to death. No---it should scare you to vote and scare your friends to vote. Please vote Democratic this upcoming November. It truly is a matter of life and death: yours!

From Badpuppy's Forums

Republican Style Justice:
We'll Soon Pay the Price!

I am no big fan of President Clinton and certainly do not share many of his views, but I am very concerned about how recent events have brought terrifying changes in the system of American justice.

CLINTONWAVE.GIF - 25.33 K Is this goodbye for the president and our civil liberties? In pursuit of the President, men and women with varying degrees of governmental power have used new rulings and reinterpreted laws, turning a blind eye to the precedents they have set and the negative repercussions their actions will have on citizens in the near future. If the American people understood how their constitutional rights were forever being redefined and eroded for the sake of nailing an immoral President, they would be appalled.

Here are a few examples:

The Grand Jury system was initiated to protect the reputations of the accused, who were to be considered innocent until "if and when" found guilty by a subsequent court. Its only real imperative is to determine if a specific crime had been committed and if there was enough evidence that the crime had indeed been committed by the accused to warrant a trial.

Recently, there has been a frightening evolution in the process, which has come to a head with Ken Starr's Grand Jury probe. In this case, lacking evidence that the specific crime which he was charged to investigate had been perpetrated by the defendant (the President), Ken Starr, combination Prosecutor and Judge, expanded his probe, for years looking for anything he could find that would undermine the defendant's credibility.

The thought being that if a defendant can be shown to have done anything wrong or questionable, the jury would believe that he must have committed the original crime for which he was accused, despite the lack of any evidence. That sets a new precedent: Grand Juries that can prosecute until they can eventually find a crime, even if that crime turns out to be a mis-truth told to the court years into the trial for the theretofore unidentified crime. Circular accusation/evidence is nothing new. It is the basis for most mock trials.

The court determines that it will find the defendant guilty, then looks for any crime or contempt of court to justify its position. Is that really justice? Is that what America wants? And now that there's a precedent, it could happen to you or a member of your family. How? Anyone who tries to implement a change in the political power base would be at risk. Indeed, anyone who becomes a threat to the political agenda of any group with political power would be at risk.

Courts have always had the power to imprison witnesses who did not tell the truth or who refused to testify. But once again, the law was reinterpreted to facilitate the probe into the life of the President. Prosecutor/Judge Starr and his team interviewed witnesses to determine for themselves, without the jury being present, what a witness may have had knowledge of.

KENSTARR2.JPG - 13.04 K Then, Prosecutor/Judge Starr told the witnesses how they would testify. If and when any witness refused to testify the way Ken Starr wanted, then that witness was harassed through character assassination, sent to prison or both. This is clearly witness tampering by a judge.

Witnesses whose accounts would not support the opinions of the combination Prosecutor/Judge were not allowed to tell their whole story to the court; and because there are no defense attorneys allowed in Grand Jury Courtrooms, those witnesses could not be cross examined. In Grand Jury cases where the goal of the Prosecutor is as much harassment and humiliation as gathering evidence, this type of trial where no defense arguments are permitted is an abomination to anyone who has thought it through.

The American justice system is supposedly blind to the social status of defendants outside the courtroom. Now we have a precedent for a court to change the social status of a defendant through leaks to the press in an effort for the court to justify itself. That sounds a clear warning bell. The very purpose of a Grand Jury is supposed to be to protect all reputations, because supposedly the accused will not be convicted unless found guilty by another subsequent court.

And what about this new precedent of creating public documents carefully written and timed to do the most amount of damage to the reputation of the unconvicted defendant? Is "Justice" that goes the extra mile to publicly humiliate an unconvicted defendant really blind?

In order for Prosecutor/Judge Starr to obtain confidential information from the President's attorney, a ruling was made that if the attorney is provided by the government, that attorney must reveal any and all information obtained from the defendant to the prosecutors.

This sets a very bad precedent for any attorneys provided for any reason to any person, company, municipality, or government project, not the least of which is court appointed attorneys for people who cannot afford to pay for one on their own. This adds new importance to the phrase, "How much justice can you afford?" As a nonelected government official said privately as a threat to a Florida citizen who wished to challenge his agency's decision, "The government can afford more and better attorneys than you can. And I promise you, we'll drag it out until you're broke."

These points which can affect all U.S. citizens, when combined with other tactics used by Ken Starr and his team (such as driving a wedge between future Presidents and the men and women who will guard them) angers all who understand the ramifications. Granted, the President's morals are not as high as many of his foes.

Granted, the President did not want Ken Starr's Grand Jury to know the whole truth. But what about the years of abuse of the justice system against him before the fact? Does the end justify the means? What about the changes made to the justice system just to show the President and another person touched each other with the intent of making each other feel good?

What about those who from now on, may not receive justice because of how one Prosecutor/Judge, one man (spending tens of millions of our dollars and years disrupting the lives of hundreds of families), believed he needed to redefine our laws to take down his target?

Whether you like or dislike the President, his politics, or his morals is a mute point. Like it or not, in order to get at the President, the American justice system has been changed for the worse and we will soon begin paying the price.

It is not any longer a simple matter of forgiveness or justice. Orin Hatch and Trent Lott said that if the President admitted the truth, the whole matter would end and they would be satisfied. Then they said that if the President would just ask for forgiveness, Congress would take that into account and America could begin to heal.

lott.gif - 15.49 K Sen. Trent Lott Now Trent Lott threatens that if the President's attorneys continue to refute the opinions expressed Prosecutor/Judge Starr's needlessly explicit report, they will have no choice but to impeach the President -- which has been the expressed goal of Ken Starr since the President of the United States was elected the first time.

It's a real shame on America that our leaders have allowed our system of justice to be changed in order to "bring to justice" a President who, under the laws as they were, would have had no Prosecutor/Judge to lie to in the first place. It's enough to make you regret being a Republican. Steven

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