That was how the special prosecutor authorized to investigate Whitewater moved from there to Paula Jones, at which point he asked about Monica Lewinsky and wound up investigating THAT. The whole first six years of Clintons presidency was the mother of all fishing trips. The best part? When the dust cleared Clinton was still there, but the Speaker of the House and several other House Republicans resigned after half a dozen of them were revealed to be guilty of the same adultery they declared so inexcusable. I guess the good news is they accomplished their goal of paralyzing the federal government for six years to bring down a senior member of it.

All that said, lying to the American public WAS inexcusable, even though 1) it seems to come with the job, 2) he was not under oath at the time and 3) under the definition of "sex" used at the trial he did not lie then. When he made his statement to the country from the Oval Office he did not have the luxury of parsing the definition of "sex" or "is;" he knew what we understood "sex" to mean and that he was lying to us. He did it anyway, which is unacceptable (just ask Gore or Stephanopoulus.)