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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scrapps who wrote (5522)	9/13/1998 8:05:00 PM
From: Who, me?	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13994

9/13/98 -- 4:44 PM Editorials: Calls for Clinton resignation, congressional Excerpts from editorials in Sunday editions on the Starr report and President Clinton: ^San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News: For the good of the country, President Bill Clinton should resign. That is not an easy thing for us to say. We endorsed him with enthusiasm in 1992, and less enthusiastically, but with hope, in 1996.... His sworn duty is to protect and lead the United States. Instead he has dragged it into a crisis born of his personal fallibilities. He has behaved scandalously. He has shattered the dignity of the office of the presidency. He has broken the law. An honorable man would leave of his own volition. --- ^The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: What's the proper response to Clinton's offenses? House Speaker Newt Gingrich offered this sound advice: Fair judgment of the charges against Bill Clinton must wait ''until you have given the president a chance to respond and given the Judiciary Committee a chance to do its job.'' Nobody will mistake the highly partisan speaker as a defender of President Clinton. Indeed, most people will think his words as political as anything coming from the White House. But the point is worth taking. The charges and rebuttals are voluminous. The issues are large. There is a process for handling all this. As we said Saturday, there is no impending crisis that demands quick action. Deliberation is required, not speed-reading. --- ^The Herald-Sun of Durham, N.C.: The president has been on the sawdust trail lately, apologizing hither and yon (even to Monica Lewinsky's family), turning public contrition into performance art, talking about forgiveness and pastoral counseling. A compelling mixture of sadness and sleaze, it all is too little, too late for an ill-Starred president reduced to reaping what he has so blithely and so selfishly sown. The last public service Bill Clinton now owes the American public is his resignation. The sooner he sends it to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the better for everyone. --- ^The Record of Troy, N.Y.: The House Judicial Committee must now pledge to determine the case on its merits, not the sleaze factor. And it's about time. Our elected officials - with the complicity, even the urging, of the media, it must be admitted - have in large part wallowed in the mud ... We do not mean to defend Clinton for action he has called 'indefensible.' We do hope, however, that now that (Independent Counsel Kenneth) Starr - who doesn't measure very high on the responsibility scale himself - has dropped the other shoe, Congress, the media and the public will weigh the case on its merits, not its seediness. --- ^The Tennessean, Nashville, Tenn.: As this nation heads into the constitutional process that could lead to the impeachment of a president, Congress and the American people must keep in mind two important distinctions. The first major distinction is between what is morally wrong and what is legally wrong. The second major distinction is between a partisan process and a political process. It is Congress that must define high crimes and misdemeanors. Members of Congress must make their determination with honesty, in a manner truly representative of the American people, and with great care. --- ^Des Moines (Iowa) Sunday Register: It's difficult to sort out which is more disgusting - the president's sexual behavior spelled out graphically in the independent counsel's report, or the behavior of the independent counsel in concocting a case that seems primarily calculated to embarrass the president. Despite the sensational disclosures and reams of paper submitted to the House of Representatives, Kenneth Starr has presented a weak case for impeachment. President Clinton clearly disgraced his office by his behavior with a White House intern and betrayed the trust of the American people by lying to them. This editorial page has said he should resign. Voluntary resignation is one thing; impeachment is quite another.... Starr stretched to ridiculous extremes when he accused Clinton of abuse of power for claiming executive privilege, attorney-client privilege and using other tactics that delayed the investigation. To say that a president who asserts his rights or who tries to preserve the prerogatives of the presidency is guilty of abuse of power is downright bizarre. --- ^Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal: The totality of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's sex saga makes a marginal case for impeachment - but it leaves in its wake a president exposed as morally unfit to continue in office. President Clinton should resign the presidency.... Nowhere in the narrative of the report does one find one shred of moral concern by Clinton unlinked to concern about his political or legal future. ... It's time for Clinton to do the only decent thing left: Step down so that his successor can undertake to salvage the dignity and prerogatives of that high office that Clinton has so thoroughly compromised and disgraced. --- ^The Orange County (Calif.) Register: A president with more respect for the presidency and for the people who elevated him to the nation's top office would resign in the face of the report Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr presented to the nation on Friday. But throughout his political career, and especially in recent months, Bill Clinton has shown few, if any, signs of being that kind of man.... If Bill Clinton won't ... step aside, then Americans must insist that Congress proceed carefully, solemnly and in the most public way in the impeachment of the president. It's a troubling course, but a duty Americans reluctantly will stand up for and honorably exercise, conducting themselves in all the many ways that Mr. Clinton has not. --- ^Los Angeles Daily News: Finally, almost eight months after the affair with a young White House intern was first disclosed publicly and nearly a month after he confessed the truth about it to the nation, he appeared Friday to finally understand what his personal weaknesses have wrought - not only on his family, but on a nation. He began apologizing profusely, to anyone and everyone who would listen. His remorse seemed genuine. It should be. His time in office teeters on extinction.... That he may have lied under oath before a grand jury is a matter for Congress to weigh and judge. But the question of whether he committed high crimes and misdemeanors right now seems secondary to the loss of faith we feel in his ability to lead.... Now it's up to the nation to be the judge. --- ^Chattanooga (Tenn.) Free Press: We do not have a virtuous president. But we can have the kind of America most of us should desire if we insist upon being a virtuous people. Creating a nation of virtuous people does not begin with the president, though he could help. It begins with us - each individually. How great the results could be for us all - and especially for our children - if we sought to become a truly virtuous people. tampabayonline.net