Can someone please email Jim Newton and explain to him why this article with video is so offensive....Jim.Newton@latimes.com
I mean Starr made a mockery out of the role of the "independent counsel." Read this LA Times opinion piece in amazement:
To meet Kenneth Starr is to question the anger of his most partisan critics and the ardor of his most ideological admirers. As few have forgotten, Starr's pursuit of President Clinton endeared him to Clinton's enemies but also made him, for some, a modern Inspector Javert, sneeringly derided in one publication as a "pious lawman."
And yet, here Starr is, atop the law school at Pepperdine University, cheerfully imagining a culture of engaged and conscientious young lawyers, wistfully harking to a time when the nation was less divided and acrimonious.
His critics might be surprised, but Starr is neither monster nor prude. He is genial, reflective and easygoing, lighthearted even. Committed to public service, he speaks most eloquently on the notions of service and compassion. .
OK, it gets much worse.
So, this is Los Angeles' Kenneth Starr -- not the pursuer of a president but rather the educator and public servant, the lawyer guided by faith, leading from a hilltop in Malibu. And yet he struggles to shed his polarizing past, trying his best to claim an old mantle of centrism despite those who still are angry at him...read on
Newton would have you believe that he's just a simple man now, smoking a pipe in his rocking chair and gazing out into the Pacific ocean on a sunny day with a bible in his hand. Salon paints a much darker picture . And what type of faith would lead a man to do this?
Prosecutors: Ex-independent counsel fabricated letters on inmate’s behalf. Lawyers for a death row inmate, including former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr, sent fake letters from jurors asking California’s governor to spare the man’s life, prosecutors said Friday.
I guess Newton forgot to tell his readers that he was hired to defend Blackwater too.
Blackwater USA, the private military contractor in the Bush Administration's "war on terror," has a new lawyer working to defend it against a ground-breaking wrongful death lawsuit brought by the families of four of its contractors killed in Iraq. The new "counsel of record" for the North Carolina-based company is none other than former Whitewater investigator Kenneth Starr--the independent counsel in the 1999 impeachment of President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.
I'm still trying to figure out why Newton would write an almost revisionist piece about Kenneth Starr at this time. Is there some ulterior motive behind it or just blind ignorance?
UPDATE: And I forgot to mention that Starr:
...argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that an Alaska school had the right to suspend a student for unfurling a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner.
and...
BILLIONAIRE money manager Jeffrey Epstein has brought in a hired gun to help defend charges brought against him in Palm Beach, Fla., of soliciting prostitutes for sex---"Epstein is worried he could be targeted by federal prosecutors, and Starr is still very well-connected with Republicans," said one source.
That's some "educator and public servant guided by faith," wouldn't you say?
