Tony won’t give it up.

The word “immaterial” appears nowhere in any of the documents he cites. The best he can do is to quote Judge Wright as saying that it “might…be inadmissable.” From this, he somehow reverses the meaning to be that it “might be relevant.” But that’s good enough for me. Something that might be relevant can hardly be said to be definitely immaterial.

And the fact remains that Clinton couldn’t know before his testimony whether or not it was material. Witnesses are not allowed to decide for themselves whether or not their lies are material–their oath is to “tell the truth, the whole truth, so help them God.”

Even if it was ruled immaterial after the fact (it was not), that doesn’t in any way mitigate the potential penalties for the behavior–it was certainly attempted perjury, if not actual, and flies in the face of his duty as both a citizen and the chief executive officer of the nation, bound by oath to follow and enforce the Constitution and see that laws are faithfully executed.

As to why Clinton hasn’t been indicted, only Mr. Ray can answer that question. My interpretation of it is that 1) after the Susan McDougal experience, he figured that there would be no way to get a conviction–there will always be at least one juror who refuses to consider the evidence when it comes to the poor charismatic ex-President, and hangs the jury, and 2) there are rumors that a deal was cut with the Democrats in Congress at the beginning of the Bush Administration–no Clinton (either of them) prosecutions in exchange for allowing nominations to go through. I wouldn’t be shocked (though I remain saddened at the ongoing corruption of the Democratic Party, if such rumors be true).

However, there is this interesting little bit of news along that line.

The FBI raid may also be a sign that the reported no-prosecution deal for the Clintons, demanded by Democrat leaders as the price for President Bush getting some of his legislative agenda implemented, is beginning to unravel – since Democrats seem to have kept little if any of their part of the bargain.

Anyone know why about half the entries on Blogdex today are Persian sites?

Den Beste is having trouble coming up with an explanation for Arafat’s sanguine reaction to Bush’s speech yesterday. I suspect that the most likely explanation is also the simplest one, backed up by a lot of other data–he really is senile.

[Afternoon update]

He is delusional. I just heard an interview on Fox News in which he expressed surprise when asked what he thought about Bush’s speech. “He wasn’t talking about me,” he said.

Andrew Sullivan points out Steve Sailer’s column about how the liberals have suddenly embraced IQ as being meaningful, after denigrating it for years as a useless and racist social construct.

Why? Because now, thanks to the recent flawed Supreme Court decision, they can use it to get folks off death row.

But Andrew also uses the occasion to take a poke at Bill Clinton, which, for once, is not justified. Clinton, many may recall, took time off from campaigning in 1992 to make sure that he could preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector in Arkansas, no doubt to burnish his anti-crime credentials. Mr. Rector has been repeatedly characterized as “retarded,” and thus even many of his erstwhile supporters were upset at Clinton’s cynical use of this hapless creature for political gain.

But the reality is that he was not retarded. He was brain damaged, as a result of a self-administered lobotomy–he shot himself in the frontal lobe right after murdering his two victims.

To my mind, even if one believes that people of reduced intelligence shouldn’t be executed, that should only apply if the intelligence was low prior to their crime (thus offering some mitigating circumstances). I see no reason, however, to show mercy to someone who happened to reduce their intelligence after the crime was committed.

For all you robosexuals out there, these artificial partners are getting ever more sophisticated.

Be sure to read the testimonials.

The banner ads are a hoot, too.

Guess the speech was better than we thought. Considering the source, you can’t get a finer endorsement than that. It’s Grade A Prime certified.

Guess the speech was better than we thought. Considering the source, you can’t get a finer endorsement than that. It’s Grade A Prime certified.

Guess the speech was better than we thought. Considering the source, you can’t get a finer endorsement than that. It’s Grade A Prime certified.

Magaw won’t let pilots have guns in the cockpits, but at least he has palatial new digs from which to hand down his idiotic edicts.

I won’t believe that Bush is serious about “Homeland Security” until he cans Mineta, and reassigns Magaw to head up security in Thule, Greenland.

Joe Katzman sent me this link about how Scotland has become the UFO capital of the world. There are apparently more sightings there per square mile (or square kilometer, or square furlong, or square whatever units they use in Scotland), than in any other country. I heard the story on the radio this morning. Maybe they’re there for the haggis.

Oh, actually, on reading the post, I see they already mentioned that. He has a bunch of amusing comments from Slashdot, including “Come for the Haggis, stay for the anal probes.”

But that’s not really the subject of this post. While I appreciate links on all kinds of stories, I always get a little irritated at UFO links (though of course there would be no way for Joe to know, and this one doesn’t bother me, because it’s amusing, not serious).

I do so because there seems to be this linkage in many peoples’ minds between interest in space and interest in the grays. I am a fanatic about the former, and have zero interest in the latter. I’ve spent much of my life trying to get people to take space and space technology and policy seriously, and it’s immensely frustrating when you’re being interviewed on some radio talk show, and you get the call from the inevitable caller wanting to know if They Are Out There, and if the Government Is Really Covering It Up, as though that has anything to do with space, or you could be expected to have useful answers.

UFOs may or may not be visitors from another planet, or dimension, but in my humble (and not particularly informed) opinion, they are not.

But what they certainly are is irrelevant to my (and many others’) desire to get humanity off the planet in a big way. They are primarily a distraction, because many people, who know little about both subjects, seem to throw space activists in the same straightjacket with the UFOlogists, and make no distinction between them, and don’t recognize that they are two separate subjects.

The latter are looking for the Truth That Is Out There, whereas we are looking to get out there ourselves, sometime before we shuffle off this mortal coil. One is about engineering and reality, and the other is about fantasy and hysteria and conspiracy. So until one of them shows up at my front door, and offers me a ride, with or without the anal probes (if it’s the former, I’ll have to think about that one real hard, unless she’s really hot), I have almost zero interest in the subject.