CLINTON'S DEFENDERS SHOULD APOLOGIZE

Though I may be tempted to apologize for again discussing the perpetual-motion machine known as the Clinton scandals, I refuse on the grounds that everyone else is doing it. And, under liberal mores, one cannot be guilty of something if everyone else is doing it. So back off.

Besides, I'm really not going to talk about the incessant Clinton perfidy for purposes of slamming the Clintons. Everyone knows they are just downright sleazy as a matter of law. So columns about Clinton chicanery purely to demonstrate that they are ne'er-do-wells are as superfluous as columns about the antics of Jeffrey Dahmer to prove he didn't exercise sound dietary habits.

I'm also not going to talk about Hillary Clinton and her obvious innocence of any wrongdoing in all matters pertaining to the perpetual-motion machine, including the $100,000 cattle futures, the missing billing records, the travel-office firings, the FALN clemencies, the various other pardons and whatever else Webster Hubbell may have on her. No, she's a victim, and an upstanding U.S. senator.

I do want to talk ever so tangentially about the Clinton scandals, however, for the limited purpose of examining the runaway hypocrisy of that amazing conglomerate of people known as the Clinton defenders, enablers, supporters, apostles, disciples, enthusiasts, apologists, groupies, Clintonoids and 99.9 percent of Hollywood.

Instead of getting upset with people like me for even peripherally hitting on the Clinton scandals again, you should be outraged at the audacity of the Clintonoids for their belated empty and disingenuous denunciations of the Clintons. They all have scandal blood on their pseudo-indignant hands. Give me a break.

The truth is these people -- the Al Hunts, the Chuck Schumers and the Joe Liebermans -- have no standing to criticize the Clintons for their misdeeds any more than Dr. Frankenstein had to condemn that mindless monster he created for killing innocent people. They all helped to create the Clinton monster.

I want to go further. Not only have they no moral right to criticize the Clintons eight years after the fact (actually nine, counting the Genifer Flowers revelations during the 1992 campaign), they owe the rest of us boatloads of apologies.

Beyond apologizing to us -- we enlightened beings known as the vast right-wing conspiracy, who had the perspicacity to know long ago that the Clintons were criminals -- they need to specifically apologize to the people deliberately destroyed by the Clinton smear machine. They aided and abetted those smears as surely as if they were part of a grand conspiracy. They should start with Kenneth Starr, that most unfairly maligned of public servants in modern history, bar none.

Just last week the Supreme Court refused to revive an ethics complaint against Starr by attorney Frank Mandanici and others that was previously dismissed by a federal district judge and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Do you remember some of the colorful language U.S. District Judge John Nangle used in refusing to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the allegations?

"There is not one shred of support in the hundreds of pages of documents submitted by Mandanici to support these subjective opinions," wrote Nangle. The abuse of power claims against Starr were "nonsense ... absolutely ridiculous." The conflict of interest charges against Starr were "very dubious ... the stuff that dreams were made of ... . This court has never heard a more absurd argument ... . It is totally illogical ... . There is no evidence to support it." As to the contemptuous assertion by Julie Hiatt Steele that Starr pressured her to lie, Nangle said that Steele presented "absolutely no evidence that the OIC ever directly or impliedly asked her to lie."

You didn't read anything in the major papers about Judge Nangle's ruling, did you?

And what about Clinton attorney David Kendall's repeated defamatory claims that Starr had illegally leaked grand jury information? Did you know that Starr was exonerated on every one of those charges by various federal judges? Did you ever read about it in the mainstream media? Huh?

Where is the sense of fairness among the Clinton defenders? Perhaps when they have the decency to come forward and apologize for participating in Clinton's character assassinations of his many patriotic accusers, they will have earned the right to join in condemning our disgraced former president. Until then, in my most humble opinion, they have zero credibility and even less moral authority.

~David Limbaugh is a Cape Girardeau lawyer and nationally syndicated columnist.