Tuesday, October 06, 1998
A President who dishonors the dead
David Schippers, the lead counsel for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, got personal when he closed out his presentation on the need for Bill Clinton's impeachment Monday.
''And now, I would like, if I may, to make a brief personal statement," Shippers said. "I am speaking no longer as a chief investigative counsel, but rather as a citizen of the United States who happens to be a father and a grandfather. To paraphrase St. Thomas More in Robert Bolt's excellent play, A Man for All Seasons, the laws of this country are the great barriers that protect the citizens from the winds of evil and tyranny. If we permit one of those laws to fall, who will be able to stand in the winds that follow?
''Members of the committee, you're not being watched only by the individuals in this room or even by the immense television audience throughout the world," he added. "Fifteen generations of Americans, our fellow Americans, many of whom are reposing in military cemeteries throughout the world, are looking down on and judging what you do today."
Schippers' remarks upset some of the Democrats on the committee and chairman Henry Hyde caved in and ordered the personal remarks stricken from the record.
But Schippers said what should bother anyone who ever put on a uniform and took up a weapon in defense of this country. Bill Clinton not only disgraced himself because of his lies to cover up sexual antics in the Oval Office, he is also a disgrace because refused to serve his country 30 years ago and then lied about it.
Clinton was, is, and always shall be, a draft dodger -- a coward who lied his way out of military service and then compounded that lie with more falsehoods when confronted with the facts as a Presidential candidate.
What makes Schippers' remarks all the more extraordinary is the fact that he is not now, nor has he ever been, part of the great "right-wing" conspiracy that Clinton and his left wingnuts claim are trying to bring him down.
Schippers is, in fact, a lifelong Democrat who admits voting for Clinton in both 1992 and 1996. Yet his disgust over the slime of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was obvious, and justified, during his closing remarks.
Perhaps, as the Democratic loyalists claim, Bill Clinton should not be impeached because he allowed a young White House intern to service his perverted sexual desires.
And perhaps he shouldn't be impeached because he cheated on his wife and tried to hide it.
But he should be impeached because the men and women who died defending this country deserve better than a lying, cowardly draft dodger named William Jefferson Clinton. |
