A President should NEVER have to be "under oath"

[SoCalDem]

His WHOLE JOB IS AN OATH to serve the country.. ALL of it!...Not just "his base" or his "party".

I have heard many times this week, about how this person or that, and yes..even *² "weren't under oath", so they cannot be held liable for a crime. This is pure nonsense of the nth magnitude.

When people reach the highest office in the land, we should be able to take their word as factual, and they should not have to be under oath for us to feel that "well..NOW they are telling the truth".

We have learned recently, that one need not even BE under oath, to suffer legal ramifications. Martha Stewart "gave false answers to FBI/SEC investigators" and was not under oath, and yet she actually was sentenced to prison.

Crimes are always tempered by degree.

A guy/any guy steals food and could end up in prison, doing hard time because he may have committed other crimes previously, and those crimes put him into "3-strikes" territory, so off he goes to the slammer..

A woman steals merchandise many times, but her family connections get her a pass, and she does no time...(Until she makes news by bailing out on her wedding, very few people even KNOW about her crimes)..

The ONE person in our country who literally has the power of life and death over ALL of us (and the rest of the world) should not have to be under oath. We should be able to accept his word as truth..

We all know that presidents do not always tell us the whole truth, and all are prone to parsing the truth, but bold, ugly lies are never acceptable. They should never be "above the law".

Presidents should always be WILLING and READY to go under oath though, so they can give the public the little extra confidence.

They should be ready to testify in public, since they owe their position and their power to US. We have a RIGHT to know what they do in our name, and whenever they have appeared to stumble, we have a RIGHT and a NEED to know.

When they take that oath on January 20, every 4 years, we are not giving them a free pass, but we can safely assume that THAT oath they take gives us the right to know that they are doing, and to be able to get answers from them, when necessary.

There is something particularly vile about a president who consults his attorneys in advance to find out just how far he can go with something and not be committing a crime. (The Geneva Convention issues with Gonzalez). The very fact that he knew it was wrong, and he was willing and eager to go right up to the line, told me just how vile he was. He was perfectly willing to unravel a hard-won safety feature for our own soldiers, just so he could torture others.

There is every reason to believe that Gonzales was consulted in the Plame issue too, and the carefully worded statements probably provided by him.

He's a thief..a liar..a traitor..and it takes no special oath to trip him up. The one he took on that January day (both of them) and then went on to break ...many times, told me all I needed to know about this evil little man.

[KitchenWitch]

1. A very provacative argument

:wow:

[redqueen]

2. Oooooh wouldn't it be nice

if they subpoenaed all correspondence with Gonzalez re: Plame?

[anarch]

3. Alternatively: A President should always be considered "under oath"

since, as you mention, a President swears an oath when taking office. It's not supposed to be just for show....

[liberal N proud]

5. BINGO!

They took the OAT OF OFFICE and therefore should always be considered as Under Oath.
Nothing is off the record, not even what they say to the First Lady.

They wanted to be the leader of the nation, they should be able to live up to that kind of heat.

[Lindsay]

4. Very well said.

Although wasn't Ashcroft still AG when Plame was outed? But certainly Gonzales is in on the current spin job.

[SoCalDem]

6. Gonzales was deep inside the inner sanctum.. He was his "personal counsel"

which makes it even MORE likely that he was consulted..

[Snotcicles]

7. This one should be under polygraph every time he speaks n/t

[tubbacheez]

8. Excellent vent. Love the spirit of it. But there are many types of oaths

Lying while under oath is the crime of perjury. So to be convicted of perjury (not all crimes in general) it must be shown you lied under oath.

The President's Oath of Office is a separate oath entirely. Breaking this oath is morally heinous, but carries no legal penalties.

And although I suspect Shrub treats his Oath of Office as purely ceremonial, you are correct that any good-faith President would be constantly mindful of it and take it very seriously.

Lying in general daily speech is also morally corrupt. And doing so in certain contexts (like fraud) will open you up for criminal prosecution. But the law spells out what factors go into each crime. And there's no blanket law that specifies a crime for simply lying.

It's an overstatement to say, "not being under oath will absolve you of a crime." Only the one crime of perjury fits that description.

[TahitiNut]

9. Yes, and a violation of public trust should be regarded as a "hate crime"

All penalties should be amplified when a person in a position of public trust (elected or appointed public official, executive of publicly-traded company, priest or minister, et. al.) commits a civil fraud or a felony. Civil frauds should carry criminal penalties in such cases.

The specious rationales that argue that such celebrated (i.e. with cult followings) individuals should be pardoned or cut some slack carry no weight whatsoever with me. The bar should be raised, not lowered. These people have an affirmative duty and a failure in that duty should itself be prosecutable.

Clearly, as well, it should be unpardonable to violate a public trust.

The furor over firing Rove is too late and too little. That Rove continued to occupy a position of public trust even one day beyond the CIA's investigation requesting a grand jury is evidence of administration complicity. At this point, firing him and removing his access to any classified information is so long overdue that it doesn't come close to even 1% of what must be done.