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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (2960)	9/15/1998 7:58:00 PM
From: dougjn	Respond to of 67261

That Johnson was impeached by the House, though acquitted by the Senate, is I think universally viewed as a low point of Congressional adherence to the Constitution. And the Constitution certainly did not leave the standards for impeachment to be "defined by the whims of the time." Here you are utterly, fully, and most fundamentally wrong. Completely. The Constitution's most fundamental purpose is to establish standards which are not "defined by the whims of the time". There are many, many things it does not prescribe. Those things are indeed left to the debates and views of the moment. For the most part the Constitution only establishes an institutional framework within which decisions are to be made, according to the views of the moment. But in a few places, notably in the Bill of Rights (without whose protections the Constitution proper would never have been ratified), and also in the standards for impeachment, the Constitution establishes not only a mechanism for decision, but also standards that MUST be met. Doug