Ranger Rick and Army Bob will have a field day with this, but I want to make one thing perfectly clear — I do not like Bill Clinton. Three huge reasons: The Telecommunications Act of 1996, NAFTA and repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, all three policy disasters we must still endure today.

But my keen sense of fairness and never-ending quest for truth has compelled me to defend the rascal.

I sincerely believe Clinton, for all of his personal failings, is innocent of two of the most famous charges of lying made against him — one about marijuana use and the other about having sex with a White House intern.

I can hear the guffaws already, but allow me to explain.

Clinton really took a lot of gas early in his first campaign for president by admitting he tried marijuana back in the 1960s. He qualified the confession by insisting he didn’t inhale. I believe him, based on my extensive personal experience smoking illegal weed back in the day.

Clinton didn’t smoke cigarettes, which presented him with a handicap. Those who did not know how to inhale had to be taught how to do it. As a marijuana and cigarette smoker in those heady days, I noticed it was difficult to teach some of my friends how to inhale the smoke from pot. The vast majority I dealt with did not get high for the first or second times they tried it because they hadn’t yet mastered the skill of inhaling. So Bill’s explanation, which was greeted by hails of derisive laughter, actually made perfect sense to me. His answers were better than George W. Bush’s silence or changing the subject when asked about ingesting cocaine.

Now for Monica and sex. Bill will go down in infamy as lying when he stepped to the podium and looked into the camera to declare, “I never had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

Back in the ‘60s, whenever guys would talk frankly about how far they had gotten with a woman, the common belief was that if you hadn’t had vaginal sex with her, you hadn’t had sex. If you had done everything else possible with her, you still hadn’t hit a home run yet.

Monica testified under oath that she and Bill did not have what is regarded as sexual intercourse while acknowledging the oral sex. Bill and I come from the same era that insisted you didn’t have sexual relations unless your Johnson penetrated inside her.

So his statement that he didn’t have sexual relations with Monica was accurate, was not a lie, despite the fact a Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives was hell bent on impeaching him, an entirely political process.

Congressman Vern Ehlers of Grand Rapids told me he didn’t vote to impeach Bill because he had sex with Monica, but because he lied about it under oath. But I believe he didn’t lie. He told the truth as he understood it, but it didn’t fit with the GOP narrative, that ironically was led by corrupt House Speakers Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert and Congressman Dan Burton, who had their own tawdry peccadillos.

Don’t get me wrong. At the heart of Bill’s personal problems, I believe, is that he really wanted oral sex and Hillary refused. So, with the morals of an alley cat, he attempted to get it elsewhere.

If you insist Bill Clinton was unfaithful to his wife, I agree, but so were other presidents. If you insist he lied about it, I think you continue to be flim-flammed by the well orchestrated lies machine from Fox News and even the “liberal” mainstream media.

Bill Clinton indeed was a scoundrel and a mediocre president. But he wasn’t the liar he was accused of being by his enemies.