Stephen Colbert Kindly Gives Clinton a Second Chance at His "Apology" Answer; Does Not Ask About White House's Smear Campaign Against Lewinsky, Nor His Alleged Rape of Juanita Broaddrick

Let it be noted again that while Clinton may have had consent to use a 22-year-old intern as a humidor, he definitely did not have her consent to send out Sid "Vicious" Blumenthal to start a whispering campaign to reporters that she was a deranged stalker.

A journalist has named the senior White House aide Sydney Blumenthal as the source of press reports last year that Monica Lewinsky was a predatory 'stalker' obsessed with Bill Clinton, contradicting Mr Blumenthal's testimony to the Senate. Republicans said the new twist towards the end of the impeachment drama strengthened the charge that President Clinton sought to obstruct justice by spreading false rumours about the former White House intern. Senators on both sides of the aisle said Mr Blumenthal could be investigated for perjury. But as the Republican prosecutors prepared their closing statements, due to begin today, there was little sign that either the controversy over Mr Blumenthal or the broadcast of video testimony by Ms Lewinsky and other witnesses would generate the two-thirds Senate majority needed to remove the president.

Christopher Hitchens, a US-based British reporter for Vanity Fair and the Nation, issued an affidavit saying that Mr Blumenthal had made the remarks at a Washington lunch last March. Mr Hitchens said that Mr Blumenthal claimed Ms Lewinsky 'had been a stalker' and that the president was 'the victim of a predatory and unstable sexually demanding young woman'.

The affidavit came hours after excerpts of Mr Blumenthal's video testimony were shown to the Senate. He denied having repeated Mr Clinton's derogatory descriptions of Ms Lewinsky. Asked how the claim that Ms Lewinsky was a stalker came to be attributed to White House sources, Mr Blumenthal said: 'I have no idea how anything came to be attributed to a White House source.' At the weekend Mr Blumenthal issued a statement saying: 'My testimony to the Senate was truthful. If someone is saying it's not, they are mistaken.'

As usual, the left only asks its leftwing champions only about the easiest-to-defend parts of their misbehavior. Call it The Jake Tapper Method (TM).

Clinton is being questioned about having sex with a girl about his daughter's age, a girl he was in a supervisory capacity towards. That's an HR nightmare, but it's not vicious.

Sending out his smear-vendor Blumenthal to put out the word that she was a deranged stalker who had hallucinated a sexual relationship was the president was, in the words of Lindsey Graham, "mean."

No one asks about that. Like so much else in American Political Life, it has become a HateFact, a fact which only someone filled with Non-Approved Hatred would mention.

So Stephen Colbert asks Clinton about apologizing to Lewinsky for the very-power-imbalanced sexual relationship (oh wait, it wasn't sex or something), but doesn't ask about the smear campaign his minions conducted to save his fat ass.

And obviously he wouldn't ask about the HateFact of the alleged rape:

posted by Ace of Spades at 08:25 PM

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