*January 19, 1999 Day Four. Clinton defense lawyers begin their opening statements.*

Counsel Charles Ruff began Bill Clinton's defense against his removal from office by the Senate with declaring Clinton not guilty of everything, with " The ( House ) managers have not shown any evidence supporting the two chargers of impeachment ". He continued with attacks on the Paula Jones lawyers as only looking for dirt on the President to leak to the media? Is this a defense? He characterized Linda Tripp's taping as done " illegally "? Isn't this sort of weird, from a lawyer who wants you to remain open as to guilt or innocence? He also talked of the House not having the " requisite neutrality " to decide this matter. I wonder if we are to find any of this ' neutrality ' he talks about in the minds of Senate Democrats?

On a list of Constitutional scholars that the Whitehouse had sign a letter declaring Clinton's actions were not impeachable, Ruff said, " they cared that the Consitutional process not be displaced ". What he doesn't tell you, is the fraction of scholars this letter represents!

He called the articles of impeachment " Constitutionally deficient " and " empty vessels to be filled with a witch's brew of charges ". I suppose he just had to continue the partisan witch hunt, himself?

After a break, Ruff went on again. He played fast and loose with the truth some more. He defended the legalese parsing of words as standard lawyerlt procedure? He especially mislead, as he tried to debunk what he said to George Sensenbrenner in House Judiciary Committee Hearings about " reasonable people may conclude the President lied " ( See: Alan Dershowitz calls George Sensenbrenner a liar? ( 1-15-99 ) .

He actually had a moment of defense lawyer action, when he attempted to discredit the cell-phone record of Betty Currie in calling Monica Lewinsky to pick up the Clinton given gifts to hide under her bed. He showed the recently found record of the call as being at 3:30PM, and three different places she testified that it was 2PM when she gave the gifts to Currie. To bad for Ruff that it was very obvious that Lewinsky wasn't trying to exactly pin-point the time ( and the phone record was not available to refresh her memory ), " I think it was 2PM or so, around 2 in the afternoon " was Lewinsky's testimony.

Oh yeah, he also tried to suggest that Clinton wasn't paying attention in the deposition when he affirmed Bennett's characterization of Monica Lewinsky's false affidavit. Who is he trying to fool? I have seen it myself; Clinton was paying extremely close attention to every single word said by all the parties at that moment! He finished with the old, ' nobody ever told me to lie ' line from Monica Lewinsky's Grand Jury testimony and a point by point denial of each charge. These were empty denials only, devoid of any contesting evidence. This was just " Jabba The Ruff's " version of Clintonese lawyer speak! He played the part of Vernon Jordan in a mock questioning of himself to debunk the idea that Jordan has looking for a job for Lewinsky as a payback for expected false testimony in the Paula Jones lawsuit. This fictitious rendering did nothing to debunk the Managers case.

He did end on a rather disturbing note, with a contrived emtional out burst about his father and D-Day. I was just starting to think that Ruff was only doing his lawyerly duty to his client/President, but his grand finale was really demeaning just to watch. This was a really sorry excuse for a defense.

- Bongo ( Don't lawyers take an oath of ethics? )