MAKING CRIMINALS OF US ALL

Feet stomp. Fists pound. Fingers point.

But whom should we blame for our popular President's unpopular impeachment
and impending Senate trial? Mr. Clinton and the Democrats blame Kenneth
Starr and the Republicans, who in turn blame the President and the
Democrats, who blame Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky, Lucianne Goldberg, Paula
Jones, her lawyers or a host of others.

But the root of the scandal lies elsewhere: in the surfeit of intrusive laws
that would make criminals of almost anyone the Government decides to
investigate. When Kenneth Starr, a by-the-book prosecutor, wound up his
presentation before the House Judiciary Committee with a paean to his
calling in life as a "Man of the Law," he spoke the truth.

Were it not for the independent counsel statute and expanded interpretations
of the sexual harassment laws, Mr. Starr would have had no authority to
interrogate the President about his private sexual behavior.

If Mr. Starr were sent back in a time capsule to 1962, he could have done
nothing about President Kennedy's sexual indiscretions: independent
prosecutors and lawyers trained to imagine new sexual harassment theories
had not been invented yet.

Without these laws run amok, the scandal that has gripped the nation for the
last year, and the constitutional crisis it created, would be the stuff of
an Orwell novel.

At what point do the evils of intrusive, well-meaning laws outweigh their
benefits? When does a law's reach exceed its grasp? Answer: Now. Any male
supervisor who has consensual sex with another employee in any American
workplace could be sued and deposed in the way Mr. Clinton was.

Thanks to ever-expanding theories about what constitutes harassment, even
private, consensual sex is fair game for questioning.

What if, instead of punishing women who decline his unwanted advances, a
powerful male employer simply rewards women who do consent to have sex with
him? Does that violate Title VII sexual harassment laws? Probably.

Let's question him under oath about his sexual relationships and let the
jury decide.

If he lies about sex to protect his family, it's perjury.

If we are to be a nation of laws and not men, then perhaps we should pause
before we attack yet another social malady or human weakness by passing yet
another unenforceable law.

Otherwise, it's a matter of selective enforcement, and anybody who can't
afford to hire Johnnie Cochran or David Kendall will pay the price.

Ulysses S. Grant once said, "I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or
obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution." The nation has
witnessed the merciless, stringent execution of its sexual harassment laws
on President Clinton. Should we remove him from office or repeal the odious
laws? It should be one or the other. If we let him off the hook but keep the
laws on the books, then the Greek statesman Solon was right when he said,
"Laws are like spiders' webs which, if anything small falls into them they
ensnare it, but large things break through and escape."

Richard Dooling is the author, most recently, of ``Brain Storm,'' a novel.

Checked-by: Don Beck