The Tripp injustice

Will there be no end to the injustices visited upon us during the
Clinton era? How much more of this upside down world can we tolerate?

Good guys have been tarnished and bad guys varnished.

Heroes are hated while villains have skated.

Any government that would indict Linda Tripp because she secretly
taped conversations to protect herself from the chief law enforcement
officer of that government is a government we should fear. This is the
very type of government our founders sought to protect against when they
incorporated the right to bear arms into the Constitution.

Hold on, you might say. You are talking about two different
governments here: the federal government and the State of Maryland.
True, but political pressure was brought to bear on the State’s
Attorney’s office in Howard County, Md., to make sure this monumental
act of whistle-blowing did not go unpunished. Maryland legislator Robert
L. Flanagan, called the indictment “an extension of the White House
apparatus trying to destroy Linda Tripp.”

Prosecutors said that prosecution was imperative when there was an
alleged violation of Maryland law in such a high-profile incident. “It
would be a terrible message to send to the public.”

So a bad precedent would have been set if Maryland had declined to
prosecute a lowly White House staff employee for committing an act that
is legal in 38 states, the District of Columbia and under federal law?
Yes, that should certainly teach the next White House employee the
president is trying to pressure into committing a felony to obediently
comply.

But allowing perjury, subornation of perjury, and obstruction of
justice by the Chief Executive to go unpunished sets a commendable
precedent?

Just as it also must be good public policy to permit the White House
with impunity to:

1. Purloin FBI files on their political enemies

2. Defame and wrongfully fire civil servants in the WH travel office
   for the purpose of replacing them with their Arkansas cronies

3. Permit the transfer of satellite technology to China to allow
   certain major corporate contributors to realize a profit

4. Block the investigation of security leaks in our nuclear labs so
   as not to jeopardize the unctuous flow of Chinese campaign contributions

Prosecutors are not being candid with us. It is common knowledge that
violations of this Maryland wiretapping statute are rarely prosecuted. A
former Maryland prosecutor could recall no prosecutions under the
statute during his decade in office.

Where is the justice? Tripp is the only person in this sex scandal to
have consistently told the truth, yet she is the only one to be
criminally charged. Where are the plaintive cries of Democrats: “isn’t
it time we just move on?”

Clinton sympathizers cite the right to privacy as the driving
principle behind the prosecution. But what expectation of privacy did
Monica Lewinsky have when she had told a dozen other people essentially
what she told Tripp?

These same hypocritical people were conspicuously silent when the
White House invaded people’s privacy by hiring thugs to dig up dirt on
office holders pressing for impeachment (Hyde, Gingrich, DeLay, Burton,
Armey, Chenoweth) and various women positioned to testify against the
president (Willey, Jones, Flowers, Browning, Broaddrick).

The damage that this president and his enablers have done to the
Presidency, American justice and the rule of law during the last six
years is immeasurable.

It is very telling that Clinton’s friends have deified John Dean for
ratting on President Nixon — despite Dean’s undeniable criminal
complicity — while demonizing Tripp for ratting on Lewinsky (who was
acting as Clinton’s dupe to suborn Tripp’s perjury).

Despite their phony protests, it is not the “betrayal” that bothers
these liberals; it’s who was being betrayed. It’s sublime to betray
their nemesis, Nixon, but unspeakably evil to betray their savior,
Clinton.

Linda Tripp is not a criminal, nor a betrayer of a friend. Friends
don’t pressure friends to commit felonies, especially on behalf of the
President of the United States.

Tripp did exactly what any of us would have done if the most powerful
man in the world were trying to frame us and his lawyer had falsely
accused us of lying on national TV. Can we even comprehend the horror
she must have felt? Where is our outrage?

Bill Clinton’s politics of personal destruction must end. If it
hadn’t been for Linda Tripp, Clinton would never have been impeached.
For that alone, this nation owes Linda Tripp a medal, not an indictment.