the sounds of cnn waft in from the living room.
The quote of the day:
As if to foreshadow Clinton's difficulties, Rehnquist explains that Johnson's conviction would have opened the door to frivolous impeachment attempts against subsequent presidents. "A specific violation of the law or breach of duty would ... not have to be a serious one involving moral culpability. And once such a dereliction had been found, other charges of a far more nebulous nature could be added [to an impeachment bill]."
Of course, on NPR there was a long discussion of the timing of this: is this bombing campaign solely to postpone "debate" of impeachment in the House? And currently such "debate" (a term used loosely in the extreme) has been postponed, and, depending on how long this Iraq thing lasts, may be postponed until the New Year, when the 106th Congress takes office.
You know, the Congress elected by popular disgust with the impeachment hearings. The Congress that got the message from the American people: enough is enough.
So I'm left here with a horrible feeling in my stomach: I hate what's happening to Iraq now (although how many times you can stomp on the feet of the biggest bully without retaliation is completely beyond me), but if it postpones impeachment until the 106th Congress...
Short, shameful confession: I often agree with feelings of remorse or sadness or compassion in situations like our bombing of Iraq, but I'm not entirely convinced I feel anything about it. To repeat a famous phrase badly: one dead child is a tragedy, one hundred thousand dead in China is a statistic. (Showing the same damn nightvision scene of Baghdad isn't helping.) I don't have a real visceral sense of what's going on over there, and I don't really care.
To recap:
- Impeachment is not the removal of the President from office; it is (in political cases such as this--and this is political, not legal) "to charge (a public official) before a competent tribunal with misconduct in office." When the President is impeached, the Senate then puts him on trial to determine whether he's guilty of misconduct, and if they convict him, they then remove the President from office. It's amazing how many people don't understand that.
- Exactly one President (Andrew Johnson) has faced impeachment so far in the Republic.
- Exactly one President (Andrew Jackson) has been censured...by a Congress ruled by the opposition. His censure was overturned the next time his party controlled Congress.
- Perjury is lying under oath about matters material to the case at hand. Saying you didn't kill those 45 people when you really did is perjury. Saying you're 25 when you're really 28 in a case about whether you killed 45 people is not perjury.
- The judge in the Paula Jones matter ruled the whole Lewinsky thing immaterial. Therefore, anything said about her, whether true or not (and we'll get to that), cannot, under any circumstances, be perjury.
- Lying under oath is simply telling a falsehood under oath. Saying you're 25 when you're really 28 is lying under oath.
- The Republicans refuse to say which statements the President made in either the PJ case or before the Starr grand jury constitute perjury. You'd think it'd be pretty easy to pick those out, considering they want to fucking impeach the President of the United States over them.
- There really are people who think oral sex is not sex. I am not one of them--I think holding hands constitutes foreplay, myself. (I think most everything constitutes foreplay, which is why I don't flirt much.) But honest to God: there are people who don't think giving someone a blowjob means that they're had sex.
- The lawyers in the Paula Jones case went out of their way to avoid asking the President a very simple and direct question. Instead, they asked a very legalistic question which, when you break it down, the President answered truthfully: he didn't engage in any sort of maneuver to bring sexual satisfaction to Monica Lewinsky. (So he's an asshole. I've dated worse.) It's pointless to speculate, but I bet if the lawyers had simply gotten over their embarrassment and asked, "So did Monica blow you?" I bet Bill would have said yes. But that's not what they asked. By any stretch of the imagination. They asked a bad question.
- The PJ lawyers also got needlessly specific with some questions. Instead of asking, "Were you ever alone with Monica?" they asked, "Were you ever alone with Monica in the Oval Office?" And Bill said he couldn't remember, which is probably true--any incidents that occurred when they definitely were alone didn't occur in the Oval Office. Ooopsy.
- You can only be sworn in in front of a Grand Jury by the jury foreman or the deputy jury foreman.
- Bill was sworn in by one of the Starr's lawyers the day he testified before the Grand Jury.
- Bill's answers to the 81 questions indicate he's aware of that, but he gave the best answers he could nonetheless. Which is more than they deserve.
- The Republicans have complained that the President's answers to the 81 questions were needlessly legalistic. I'm not even going to dignify that with a response.
- I'm going on record with the following two thoughts: there's going to be payback for this for the next 50 years, and every President from here on in is going to be terrified of a Congress of the other party.
- "Hyde and DeLay" sounds like a sinister law firm--or a really sick kid's game.
- Just remember: there is nothing else to stick on Clinton. Not Whitewater, not Filegate, not Travelgate, not even Watergate (and don't think the Republicans won't try to put that one on him). So whenever you think about how dirty he is, remember that his worst enemies couldn't find stuff to stick on him about that.
- And the stuff you could stick on him, like being so in favor of the death penalty he executed a murderer with the mind of a 6-year-old during the 1992 election campaign, and his repeated attempts to destroy several amendments (the 2nd, the 4th, the 5th, the 6th...) just make him a hero in many people's eyes. Damn him.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com