Of all the rotten things that have been said about Ken Starr, none has been molowdown than that he concealed perjury while representing General Motors in truck-fire cases. The ever-reliable James Carville said on Larry King Live that Starr was guilty of "encouraging perjury . . . when a tank blew up and killed a child." The equally reliable Joe Conason, columnist for the New York Observer, asked, "Is it worse to commit perjury about sex with an intern, or about the cause of automobile fuel-tank fires that have killed hundreds of men, women and children ?"
Starr was vindicated last week, not that you'd know it from reading the newspapers or watching television. The Justice Department refused a request for a criminal investigation of the matter, saying that there was no "sufficient basis" for such an investigation. The week before, a circuit judge in South Carolina had denied another effort to have Starr punished for the same fictitious offense.
It is plainly too much to ask Carville or Conason to apologize or even merely malarkey. But maybe next time, they'll have the decency to leave burnt kids out of it.