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

To: jbe who wrote (7388)	10/6/1998 1:54:00 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Hi jbe; About the partisanship of today's vote in the judiciary committee... As is usual in Congress, there really isn't a dime's difference between the two parties. The Democrats want a series of (?) limited inquires, the Republicans want a single one. Not much difference here. Real partisanshipness (I, too, should go to sleep) would be if the Democrats felt no inquiry were needed, and the Republicans felt that the impeachment should be sent to the senate without the need for an inquiry. I've been reading Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon, and have reached the fascinating description of Alboin, the Lombard who conquered Lombardy. He had the head of the king of the Gepidae made into a drinking cup, after defeating his army and killing him in battle. Then he married that king's daughter. One night, at a somewhat drunken state dinner, he took a celebration drink from his victory cup. Then he said "Fill it again with wine, fill it to the brim; carry this goblet to the queen, and request, in my name, that she would rejoice with her father." This got his wife a little upset, so she switched places at night with an attendants and seduced one of the king's fighting men. Then letting him discover that he had slept with the queen, she forced him to kill the king. Much more interesting than anything Monica and Bill did. And a good example of a real partisan conflict... We is peaceful animals compared to what we looked like long ago... -- Carl

To: jbe who wrote (7388)	10/6/1998 1:56:00 AM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Yes, I had read the part you quoted, where Hamilton again returns to the partisan nature that impeachments were likely to lean towards. His letter largely was an argument in support of dividing the duties of impeachment among the House firstly, to "prefer the charges", and to the Senate to decide the conclusion of the matter. All in all, Hamilton had a clear knowledge of impeachments. I thought it was also interesting that they looked to the country which they had just fought a war of independence with for the model of the impeachment proceedings to follow in the U.S. Constitution.

To: jbe who wrote (7388)	10/6/1998 2:11:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 67261

New York Times October 5, 1998 Let the Process Go Forward By LOWELL WEICKER CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- The House Judiciary Committee did the right thing Monday in voting for an investigation of President Clinton that could lead to impeachment hearings. Saying this does not mean I'm a partisan -- far from it. I often parted company with my Republican colleagues when I was in the Senate. In 1990, I left the party. I voted for, and publicly endorsed, Clinton twice. Still, I believe the committee is acting properly. It is too early to say whether the President should be impeached. It is not too early to say that the alternative -- censure -- would be a grave mistake. Having sat on the Senate Select Committee that investigated Richard Nixon 25 years ago, I fully appreciate the difficult decisions ahead. But censure is not an answer. It belongs to the autocratic nature of parliamentary government. In our democracy, issues -- including the fitness of candidates to serve -- are decided at election time. Overturning this electoral verdict should require the most extraordinary of precautions. That is precisely what the impeachment process in the Constitution demands. The Founding Fathers purposely set forth a complex procedure to determine the fitness of a President to continue in office. The Constitution requires decisions to be made first in the House and then in the Senate, with any Senate vote to impeach requiring a two-thirds majority. The Founders wanted to filter emotional or irrational considerations out of deliberations of a President's fitness to remain in office. That is why reason prevailed on the only two occasions when Presidents seriously faced removal by impeachment. In 1868, the House voted articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson, but the Senate failed to convict him -- by one vote. In our own time, the threat of impeachment forced the resignation of Richard Nixon, who realized that the legislative and constitutional processes had established that he had violated the laws of the land. Censure, on the other hand, has no constitutional basis. The threshold for passing a censure resolution is far lower than that required for impeachment. Legally it resembles any other nonbinding Congressional resolution and therefore requires only a simple majority in one or both houses. The one time a President was censured -- Andrew Jackson in 1834 -- the resolution was passed by a vote of only 28 to 18. The vote had none of the authority of an impeachment vote. Censure also carries no enforceable sanction. On 1837, after Jackson's Democrats had won the Senate, they ordered black lines drawn around the resolution in the official record, with "Expunged by order of the Senate" superimposed. Thus did censure prove to be an empty, meaningless gesture. At the same time, in a highly charged political climate, censure could become a volatile new political instrument. Since it requires only a bare majority of votes, it could amount to an open invitation for political mischief to be visited on future Presidents whenever Congress disagrees with their policies. It could also backfire. What if Nixon's supporters in Congress had proposed letting him plea bargain for a censure? The imperial Presidency would have been here to stay. What if a President retaliated by issuing an executive order censuring a member of the House or Senate? For too long, Americans and their elected representatives have opted for soft landings on the toughest problems. And whenever a tough call has been required, it has been supplanted by a symbolic gesture. Censuring Clinton would be a gesture of this kind. What exactly would it mean? What sanctions would follow? What message would be sent? There is no choice now but to push ahead with impeachment hearings. Anything less will result in government by free-for-all. Lowell Weicker served as a Republican Senator from Connecticut from 1970 to 1988 and Independent Governor from 1990 to 1994. nytimes.com