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Scrapps, you are correct! He never got 50% of the vote!!! Of the voters that chose to go to the polls, over 50% voted AGAINST him!
Impeachment Inquiry Vote Expected
By DAVID ESPO Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House of Representatives is increasingly likely to vote for a
formal impeachment inquiry in the next few weeks, congressional officials said Sunday, a
step that could ratchet up the political jeopardy confronting President Clinton.
Republicans, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if it takes such a step, the
House would not necessarily limit its inquiry to Kenneth Starr's review of Clinton's sexual
relationship with Monica Lewinsky and his attempts to deny it under oath.
Instead, these officials said, the House Judiciary Committee might be empowered to range
over numerous other issues, from Whitewater to Clinton's involvement in questionable
campaign fund-raising in 1996.
Democrats would vigorously oppose any expansion beyond Starr's report, one aide said
Sunday night.
Attorney General Janet Reno has steadfastly refused to appoint an indpendent counsel to
review campaign fund-raising, but the Justice Department has been conducting its own
investigation, and Republican committees in Congress have investigated the issue for more
than a year.
These officials spoke as several Democrats, joined by a top Republican senator, talked
publicly about a punishment short of impeachment for Clinton and demanded his lawyers
end ''legal hairsplitting'' as they rebut Starr's report.
''There's going to be some sort of sanction here,'' said Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee. ''The question is what -- from impeachment to censure to
rebuke to condemnation or what,'' the Utah Republican said.
Added Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, the second-ranking House Democrat: ''I think in
the days and months ahead you will find people talking about the middle option, that of a
public rebuke for his personal behavior.''
One lawmaker, Rep. Vic Fazio, D-Calif., addressed the issue of a formal impeachment
inquiry during the day in an appearance on ABC. ''Ultimately, if the president and the
Congress want to have the due process that they are both allowed in this instance, we may
end up going to that next level,'' said the California Democrat, third-ranking member of his
party in the House.
A second lawmaker, Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., a member of the Judiciary
Committee, said in a telephone interview, ''It would be very hard to avoid an
impeachment inquiry with the seriousness of the allegations and the review that we're going
through now.''
Such a vote, if it occurs in the next few weeks, would take place in the shadow of the
mid-term elections. As a result, it would leave Democrats in the position of having to
choose between a deeper investigation of Clinton on the one hand, or laying themselves
open to campaign charges of attempting to cover up his alleged wrongdoings on the other.
Clinton skipped church services during the day, remaining out of the public eye in the
White House.
But with his presidency clearly in peril, his lawyers and aides fanned out across the Sunday
television talk shows to declare that whatever his transgressions, Clinton committed no
impeachable offenses.
Starr's report, released Friday, cites 11 potentially impeachable offenses, all stemming
from Clinton's sexual relationship with former intern Monica Lewinsky -- described in
explicit detail -- and his later denials under oath.
The White House issued a blistering rebuttal Saturday that accused Starr of a ''hit-and-run
smear campaign'' without legal merit.
Clinton's lead attorney, David Kendall, argued in the same vein in an appearance on
ABC's ''This Week'' program: ''The president did not commit perjury. Starr's report is
full of graphic and unnecessarily salacious material. It is not relevant.''
That type of lawyerly defense drew dismissive reaction from Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb.
''The president's going to lose if they continue to do that,'' Kerrey said, appearing
alongside Hatch on CBS' ''Face the Nation.''
''He is being very badly served with this legal hairsplitting,'' agreed Hatch. ''I think the
president has a chance of getting through this, if he'll quit splitting legal hairs, if he'll quit
playing this legal game.''
At the same time, the White House's counterattack against Starr was achieving success
among the public. A CBS poll, taken Saturday, found 60 percent of those responding
believed Starr included numerous lurid sexual details in his report to embarrass the
president. Only 33 percent believed it was to prove perjury.
Clinton's political fate will begin to come into clearer focus at the beginning of the week,
when lawmakers return to Washington from a weekend of campaigning and testing public
opinion in their home districts.
Even before Judiciary Committee members have a chance to complete their review of
Starr's evidence, officials expressed a growing belief that the House is likely to take the
next step and vote a formal impeachment inquiry.
It would be up to the panel to recommend such a step, and the entire House would have
to approve it.
It is not clear whether such a vote would be preceded by a public hearing. Republicans
have talked for months about the possibility of convening a hearing, possibly to permit
Starr to lay out his evidence, and for a representative of the president to offer a rebuttal.
Still, the Judiciary Committee would presumably be free to call any witness it chooses --
ranging from Starr to Kendall to Ms. Lewinsky to Linda Tripp, the woman who
tape-recorded her conversations with Ms. Lewinsky and later notified Starr's office of the
existence of such recordings.
A Judiciary Committee aide said no decision about a hearing has been made.
A few committee members have begun looking through the 17 boxes of material that Starr
submitted as backup to the report that has been made public.
Lawmakers also will pay attention to public opinion in the weeks just before an election.
The first few polls taken in the wake of Starr's report suggested the public continues to
give Clinton high marks for job performance, yet wants to see him punished in some way.
A narrow majority in an ABC News poll, 53 percent, said they favor impeachment
hearings. A majority in a CBS News poll, 56 percent, and the CNN poll, 59 percent, said
they favor censure for the president.
The ABC phone survey of 508 adults on Saturday had a margin of error of plus or minus
4.5 percentage points. The CBS phone survey of 680 adults and the CNN phone survey
of 902 adults, both on Saturday, had margins of error of plus or minus 4 percentage
points.
AP-NY-09-13-98 1903EDT
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