President Clinton's impeachment trial was more of a political maneuver than an attempt at justice. I hated it.

When the Senate acquitted Clinton three weeks ago of perjury and obstruction of justice, I was relieved. However, it took me some time to understand why. I don't support Clinton's conduct but the method Republicans used to try to remove him from office troubled me a lot more than anything Clinton actually did. My problem was with how Republicans used the crime of perjury.

Despite the months of Independent Counsel Ken Starr investigating Whitewater, Filegate and all the other potential Clinton scandals, he found nothing that could be used to impeach the president. Then the story about Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky broke. He now had the conditions to set a perjury trap.

Perjury traps have a colorful history in the United States. Their most infamous use was in the 1950s by the House Committee for Un-American Activities. In the '50s, America was paranoid about communism. The Red Scare was full blown. The committee was formed to expose communists and prevent them from influencing "true" Americans. What the committee actually did was trample on individual rights and ruin people's lives.

Suspected communists were asked to name other suspected communists. Remember that being a communist wasn't illegal - it was just unpopular. It was like getting caught cheating on your wife. You couldn't be thrown in jail, but it wasn't looked well upon by others. People the committee exposed as communists often were fired and then blacklisted so they were unable to work again.

If a person wouldn't "name names," then the committee maneuvered him or her into a perjury trap. They could either disrupt their lives by admitting they were - or were once - a member of a communist party, or they could lie. Justifiably, many people lied and many people were tried for perjury.

A few weeks ago, the same thing happened to Clinton.

When Rep. James Sensenbrenner presented the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate a month ago, he said, "the truth is the truth, and a lie is a lie." Sensenbrenner's comment shows the general ignorance about perjury. Perjury is not simply lying under oath in a court of law. For a lie to be considered perjury it must meet two conditions: It must be both intentional and material.

Clearly Clinton's lie about his sexual relationship with Lewinsky was intentional. However, determining whether his lie was material is not so simple. For a lie to be material, it must be relevant to some crime. Telling a prosecutor my favorite color is red when it is really blue is not perjury.

Perjury is essentially a form of obstructing a justice. Justice is dependent on truth. When a person lies to cover up the truth about a crime, then it's perjury because it hinders justice from being done. This is why perjury is, and should be, a crime.

But what justice was Clinton obstructing? Receiving oral sex from a consenting 21-year-old is not a crime. It's just taboo.

It is true that the deposition Clinton originally lied in was material to the civil lawsuit Paula Jones brought against him. Jones' lawyers tried to prove Clinton had a history of rewarding women who submitted to his advances. This premise had so little evidence to support it that the judge threw the case out of court. Staff would have had to prove this case to the Senate to show Clinton's lie was material, and they weren't more likely to accept it than the judge.

Clinton's lie can not be considered material to any criminal case. Thus, it can not be considered perjury. Yet, Clinton still was put on trial. House prosecutors attacked Clinton with the same zealotry that the House Committee for Un-American Activities hounded communists.

That is the problem with perjury: it can be used to condemn people who committed an act that is not illegal, but is immoral or unpopular. It allowed communists to be put on trial for their unpopular political views. Now it has been used to put the president on trial for having oral sex. Still, for Republicans it probably seemed like a good way to get Clinton out of office.

Bellart, a junior interpersonal communication major, can be reached at mb369497.