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

To: Bill who wrote (27326)	1/12/1999 2:41:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Before the Trial, Ask the Pivotal Question nytimes.com I sure don't want them to follow your personal interpretation of the constitution, Billy Boy. I'm not much worried about that problem, though. Anyway, if you look back at those polls, and read this article, the popular view is perfectly defensible on constitutional grounds. All of this seems consistent with the idea that "duty to the Constitution" and "the rule of law" require that the Senate proceed to trial, with or without witnesses. Yet a higher notion of constitutional duty should urge the Senate to consider the standard of impeachment separately, before it proceeds to the delicate matter of witnesses. With all due respect to Representative Henry Hyde, the true issue has never been whether the President is above the rule of law, for Kenneth Starr can always indict Clinton when he leaves office. It is, rather, whether impeachment is appropriate for the offenses alleged. The Senate is perfectly entitled to consider this question from the outset, and not simply as a matter of conscience when each member votes to convict or acquit. . . . Two of our three past impeachment proceedings (the abortive resolution against John Tyler and the actual trial of Andrew Johnson) arose when the electoral system exposed another flaw in the constitutional design by bringing to the White House Vice Presidents who did not truly owe their political loyalty to the parties (Whigs and Republicans) that elected them. Only the near impeachment of Richard Nixon threatened a genuine reversal of an electoral verdict, and that occurred only because the nature of the offense and the cumulative evidence of Presidential complicity brought even his own party to favor resignation. Those conditions are highly unlikely to obtain in the current proceedings, and that is why the Senate should not proceed to a full trial without first seriously judging the adequacy of the theory sustaining this impeachment. For even with an acquittal, we risk transforming an unwieldy and vestigial element of the Constitution into a potential loose cannon -- or canon -- of constitutional manipulation. So, who exactly appointed you supreme arbiter of what constitutes "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors"? On what authority does your interpretation of the Constitution rest? Why is your opinion infallible? Why is anybody who disagrees on the matter an idiot?