IMPEACHMENT IS FOREVER - HAPPY CLINTON IMPEACHMENT DAY! (2004)

November 2, 2004

"There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying."
-- Josh Billings (1815-1885), American humorist, lecturer

Americans Know The Meaning of "Is"

http://www.americasvoices.org/archives2004/PattonD/PattonD_110204.htm

by Doug Patton & America's Voices, Inc.

As I write this, our first presidential election since 9/11 is just hours away. Depending upon the number of dead Democrats who make it to the polls, and whether enough honest poll watchers can "intimidate" Mickey Mouse and Dick Tracy from committing voter fraud, momentum at this point seems to favor the reelection of George W. Bush.

In these waning hours before this crucial election seals the fate of the Republic for the next four years (and possibly forever), it is instructive to look at the damage done by our last Democrat president. In his new book, "The Meaning of 'Is' – The Squandered Impeachment and Wasted Legacy of William Jefferson Clinton" former U.S. Representative Bob Barr (R-GA), does just that.

Barr, a former U.S. Attorney who served on the House Judiciary Committee during his years in Congress (1995-2003), was one of the House Managers prosecuting Clinton during what turned out to be a sham of a trial in the United States Senate. Never one to pull his punches, Barr lays bare the truth about the incredible damage done to the presidency by the felon and his bride during their stay in the White House, and gives us a glimpse of where the nation may be headed in the future.

Barr writes of Bill Clinton, "If he had decided to lead a religious cult instead of a political campaign, I am sure he would have been one of the most successful cult leaders in history." Looking at Clinton's status among today's Democrats, one could argue that a cult has indeed arisen around him, one that now permeates the thinking of at least half the country.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich once said that growing up in a tourist trap (Hot Springs, Arkansas), Bill Clinton learned early in life how to hone his skills as a charming huckster who never had to remember a story for more than three or four days at a time. Bob Barr goes a step further:

"The great evil of Bill Clinton's presidency", Barr writes, "is that he always told us what he knew — or sometimes only what he thought he knew — we wanted to hear. Thus, he always found himself appealing to the base, cowardly, weak instincts of the American people and almost never brought out the higher, nobler traits that have made us great over the course of our history."

Not since former House Impeachment Committee Counsel David Schippers' book, "Sellout", has anyone so effectively exposed the treachery that allowed Clinton to escape conviction in the Senate. But Barr's book goes much deeper into the ramifications for America's future, as his telling chapter titles reveal:

» Preface to 9/11: Clinton and National Security
» Pimping Out the Presidency: Clinton and the White House
» Ripping Away at Our Rights: Clinton and the Constitution
» Investigating Clinton: What Went Wrong?
» On the Road to Impeachment
» Success in the House
» Failure in the Senate
» Liberalism, Conservatism and Clintonism
» Righting History: The Clinton Legacy

Bob Barr has written an important volume on the history of America in the 1990s. "The Meaning of 'Is'" will serve historians well in their quest for the full story of this dark chapter in the history of the presidency.

Barr has been an outspoken critic of more than a few Bush Administration policies (notably the Patriot Act). Yet his analysis of the destructive nature of our last Democrat presidency leads me to only two conclusions for America: If George W. Bush is reelected, we will have dodged a huge bullet. If John Kerry is elected, the cult will once again take up residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Bill Clinton didn't seem to know the meaning of "is". John Kerry has shown little evidence that he does, either. I believe the American people do.

The Death of Honor

David C. Stolinsky
Friday, Nov. 1, 2002

What is left when honor is lost? – Publius Syrus, 42 B.C.

Recently, bank robbers in Nebraska murdered five people in a horrible crime. One of the murderers had been stopped for a traffic violation by a state trooper. The man was found to be carrying a gun. The trooper entered the serial number of the gun incorrectly, so the computer did not identify the gun as stolen. As a result, the suspect was released, though the gun was confiscated.

Had be been in jail, his companions might have called off the robbery. Or they might have robbed another bank with equally tragic results. Who can say? But the tragedy deepened when the trooper, distraught over his error, shot himself. He left a wife and six children, aged 4 to 15.

We can sympathize with the trooper's feelings of guilt and worthlessness. Many of us have had similar feelings. At the same time, we can criticize his suicide on religious grounds, and because he abandoned a family dependent on him.

But beyond these factors, there is the question of honor. The trooper probably felt that he could die with honor if he could no longer live with honor.

The concept of honor is no longer taught to young people. Indeed, the word is rarely used. The only times I recall hearing it in years is in TV courtroom scenes, where the judge is addressed as "Your Honor."

But is it good to live in a nation where honor is merely a title for judges?

Have we lost something important – something we had in former years, when kids were taught not to commit dishonorable acts? Are we poorer because instead of thinking "Is this honorable?" people now ask themselves, "Is this legal?" That is, we lowered the bar from what is right to what is legal.

If we feel an act is dishonorable, we are reluctant to do it. True, we wouldn't want our friends to find out. Still, honor is largely internal – we monitor ourselves. But if we feel an act is illegal, we probably ask ourselves, "Will I get caught?"

Honor demands that we monitor ourselves; legality requires merely that we avoid detection. That's a key difference. A society where citizens monitor themselves needs fewer laws and fewer police than a society where citizens need others to monitor them.

But, you object, honor-based societies tend to be primitive and violent. In the Middle East and elsewhere, the concept of honor has become twisted. Fathers and brothers believe that "family honor" demands that they kill teenaged girls who have sex before marriage, or sometimes even if they are seen in the company of the "wrong" boy.

And, of course, we have the gang "culture" in our own country. Gang members commit murder because they feel "dissed." Clearly, murdering people whenever you feel disrespected is destructive to civilization.

Nevertheless, if an excess of something is bad, this does not mean that its absence is good. Overeating causes a variety of diseases. This does not prove that starvation is good for you. Too little of something can be as harmful as too much.

An excess of honor, or at least what is called honor, can be dangerous. But what about too little honor, or none at all? Can a civilization survive if its members, especially its men, have no concept of honor?

Can we believe what people say, if they no longer use the expression "My word of honor"? Can the family survive, if men no longer feel that honor requires them to stand by their wives and support their children? Can the nation survive, if citizens no longer feel that honor demands that they fight – and if need be die – to defend it?

Consider:

In the disaster at Waco, 84 people, including 26 children, were gassed and burned to death. Regardless of who was to blame, Attorney General Janet Reno was in charge. In testimony before Congress, she "took responsibility." Honor would have required her to resign, to retire from public life, and perhaps to devote herself to charity. "Taking responsibility" required her to do precisely nothing. The contrast is stark. But the concept of honor escaped her.

Over 3,000 innocent people were murdered by foreign terrorists on 9/11. As with Waco, one can argue endlessly about details. But CIA Director George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, was in charge of our intelligence-gathering apparatus. Tenet did not resign, nor was his resignation demanded. The concept of honor never came up.
Famous lawyers bamboozled the O.J. Simpson jurors by concocting far-fetched scenarios and making a mountain of hair, fiber, shoe print, blood group and DNA evidence "disappear." The jury packed its bags before deliberations began, and returned a not-guilty verdict in two hours. The concept that "verdict" means "to speak truly" escaped them.
President Bill Clinton lied under oath and disputed the meaning of "is" and "alone." But supporters dismissed his lies as amusing foibles. The concept that an oath to God means something escaped them.
Presidential candidate Al Gore claimed he "took the initiative in creating the Internet," "found" the Love Canal toxic site, and performed other fictitious exploits. But supporters dismissed his lies as amusing foibles. The concept of honesty escaped them.
Journalists depicted Gore as too smart for his own good, though he flunked out of divinity school and dropped out of law school. Meanwhile, they depicted George W. Bush as a drooling idiot. Many people remain unaware that he has an MBA from Harvard Business School. But journalists saw nothing wrong with distorting the facts, if it would further their agenda. The concept of truth escaped them.
Corporate accountants and auditors turned liabilities into assets, and losses into profits. The concept that signing one's name means something escaped them.
Corporate executives exited in "golden parachutes" while employees were left unemployed and shareholders were left holding worthless shares. The concept of responsibility escaped them.
Some clergymen forgot that "pastor" means shepherd and acted more like wolves than like sheep dogs. The concept of trust escaped them.
A senatorial candidate was behind in the polls. He was replaced with another candidate after the deadline had passed, but New Jersey Supreme Court justices saw nothing wrong with changing the rules in the middle of the game. The concept of fairness escaped them. It may be too late to send new ballots overseas, so military votes may not count. But the concept of gratitude also escaped them.
After enactment of harsh gun laws, homicide rates rose in Washington, D.C., and in Britain and Australia. Law-abiding citizens were disarmed, but street criminals and the Beltway Sniper were undeterred. Despite the evidence, liberals pressed for still more gun laws. Their political agenda was more important to them than public safety. The concept of duty escaped them.
Leftist teachers and self-anointed gurus taught some of our young people to hate America and admire anti-American tyrants and anti-democratic ideologies. But they felt no guilt when John Walker Lindh joined the Taliban, or when John Allen Muhammad reportedly approved of 9/11 and became the Beltway Sniper. The concept that words have consequences escaped them. The concept that they were incredibly lucky to live in a free country never occurred to them.
Three Democratic congressmen went to Iraq – a hostile country – and proclaimed that they trust Saddam Hussein – a homicidal dictator – more than they trust their own president. The concept of loyalty escaped them. The concept of honor was totally beyond them.
But here's what's really irritating. All these people who do not understand honor can live their selfish lives in safety, because they are protected by soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, police and firefighters – who understand honor quite well.
Yes, an excess of honor can be dangerous. But what will result if our enemies believe that honor requires them to fight to the death to destroy our civilization, eradicate our religion, cripple our nation, and murder our people – while we busy ourselves with making money and having fun?
One need not be a prophet to foresee what will happen if the other side has an excess of honor, while we have a deficiency, or none at all.
We can criticize the trooper who shot himself. But we also can sympathize with him. And we can use this tragedy to ponder the question of just how much honor is enough. Too much is dangerous, but so is too little.
For the sake of freedom, the signers of the Declaration of Independence pledged "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." If we aren't careful, we will raise a generation of citizens who care so little about freedom that they won't risk the first two, and don't know the meaning of the third.
Dr. Stolinsky is retired after 25 years of teaching in medical school .He writes on political and social issues. He may be contacted at dcstolinsky@prodigy.net.

The New York Times, December 20, 1998, p. A1, col. 6

CLINTON IMPEACHED

http://www.anncoulter.org/specials/today2.htm

HE FACES A SENATE TRIAL, 2D IN HISTORY; VOWS TO DO JOB TILL TERM'S 'LAST HOUR'

By ALISON MITCHELL

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - William Jefferson Clinton was impeached on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice today by a divided House of Representatives, which recommended virtually along party lines that the Senate remove the nation's 42d President from office.

A few hours after the vote, Mr. Clinton, surrounded by Democrats, walked onto the South Lawn of the White House, his wife, Hillary, on his arm, to pre-empt calls for his resignation. The man who in better days had debated where he would stand in the pantheon of American Presidents said

he would stay in office and vowed "to go on from here to rise above the rancor, to overcome the pain and division, to be a repairer of the breach." Later, Mr. Clinton called off the bombing in Iraq, declaring the mission accomplished. Mr. Clinton became only the second President in history to be impeached, in a stunning day that also brought the resignation of the incoming Speaker of the House, Robert L. Livingston.

At 1:22 P.M., the House of Representatives approved, 228 to 206, the first article of impeachment, accusing Mr. Clinton of perjury for misleading a Federal grand jury last Aug. 17 about the nature of his relationship with a White House intern, Monica S. Lewinsky. Roll call, page 36.

n the noisy House chamber, a lone Republican applauded. Five Republicans crossed party lines to vote against impeachment. Five Democrats broke with their party to support it.

The margin was enough to forestall charges that the President's fate might have been different if the vote had been delayed to the 106th Congress, which will have five more Democrats.

A second article of impeachment, charging Mr. Clinton with obstruction of justice, passed on a narrower vote of 221 to 212. It accused him of inducing others to lie in order to conceal his affair with Ms. Lewinsky. This time 12 Republicans voted no, while 5 Democrats voted yes.

" The President of the United States has committed a serious transgression," said Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader. "Among other things, he took an oath to God to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and then he failed to do so, not once, but several times." To ignore this, he said, is to "undermine the rule of law." Excerpts from the debate, pages 35-36.

Two more charges against Mr. Clinton were defeated. An article accusing the President of perjury in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit was rejected, 229 to 205, with 28 Republicans breaking ranks.

And the House overwhelmingly rejected, 285 to 148, an accusation of abuse of power stemming from Mr. Clinton's legalistic answers to 81 questions put to him by the House Judiciary Committee. Eighty-one Republicans defected from their party. Only one Democrat deserted his.

The Senate would conduct only the second impeachment trial of a President in the 209-year history of the Republic. Mr. Clinton will be the only elected President put on trial. Andrew Johnson, impeached and acquitted by one vote in 1868, had been elected Vice President and succeeded to the White House on Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865.

Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, announced just after the House vote that senators "will be prepared to fulfill their Constitutional obligations."

Mr. Lott said, "There are steps that precede the beginning of an impeachment trial. Once the Senate is organized as an impeachment proceeding, there will be pleadings and motions that come before the taking of evidence. That makes it difficult to determine at this time when an actual trial will begin."

The House acted on a crisp pre-Christmas Saturday when American politics seemed to be descending into the very cannibalism that Speaker Newt Gingrich had warned of when he was toppled a month ago.

Hours before Mr. Clinton was impeached for his efforts to cover up his affair with Ms. Lewinsky, Mr. Livingston, who had been chosen to succeed Mr. Gingrich, shocked the House by announcing he would leave Congress because of revelations of his own adulterous affairs.

Still, it was Mr. Livingston today who called for Mr. Clinton's resignation from the House floor. Charging that Mr. Clinton had undermined the rule of law and damaged the nation, Mr. Livingston said, "I say that you have the power to terminate that damage and heal the wounds that you have created. You, sir, may resign your post."

As some Democrats shouted back, "You resign," the Louisiana Republican said, "I was prepared to lead our narrow majority as Speaker and I believe I had it in me to do a fine job. But I cannot do that job or be the kind of leader that I would like to be under current circumstances. So I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow."

With a sex scandal now consuming one of their own, the House's impeachment debate turned more than ever into a discourse on sin and morality in politics.

Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority whip, who had helped make Mr. Livingston the Speaker-designate and has been one of the fiercest critics of Mr. Clinton, choked back tears as he praised Mr. Livingston. He said his friend "understood what this debate was all about."

" It was about honor and decency and integrity and the truth," Mr. DeLay said, his voice breaking, "everything that we honor in this country. It was also a debate about relativism versus absolute truth." He charged that the President's Democratic defenders would lower the standards of society.

Equally passionate, Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House minority leader, said that men were imperfect, and he asked Mr. Livingston not to resign, for a moment drawing a bipartisan standing ovation.

" Our founding fathers created a system of government of men, not of angels," Mr. Gephardt said, his face reddening with emotion as he spoke. "No one standing in this House today can pass a puritanical test of purity that some are demanding that our elected leaders take. If we demand that mere mortals live up to this standard, we will see our seats of government lay empty and we will see the best, most able people unfairly cast out of public service."

When he finished he walked slowly up the Democratic side of the aisle, Democrats applauding him and hugging him as he moved along. The Republicans remained fixed in their seats.

Today's votes were the penultimate step in the most serious conflict between Congress and a President since Richard M. Nixon resigned in the face of impeachment and certain conviction on Aug. 9, 1974.

But while that case spun out from a 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex, this began with a murky land deal in Arkansas in 1978. Through the efforts of Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel, under the law enacted in the wake of Watergate, the investigation spread to examine Mr. Clinton's affair with an intern.

Mr. Clinton, in a finger-wagging performance last January at the White House, told the nation he did not have sexual relations with "that woman," Ms. Lewinsky. He denied sexual relations with her in a

deposition in the sexual harassement case brought against him by Paula Corbin Jones.

Only in August, after it became known that Ms. Lewinsky had preserved a blue dress that provided evidence of their affair, did Mr. Clinton tell the nation and a grand jury that he had had an "inappropriate relationship" with her.

Republicans today took great pains to distinguish Mr. Clinton's case from Mr. Livingston's revelations that "on occasion I strayed from my marriage."

Representative Henry J. Hyde, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who himself saw a past affair come to light as he presided over the House's nine-week impeachment inquiry, said: "Infidelity, adultery is not a public act, it's a private act, and the Government, the Congress, has no business intruding into private acts."

But he said that Mr. Clinton had become a Commander in Chief who by lying in legal forums "trivializes, ignores, shreds, minimizes the sanctity" of his oath of office. Representative Nancy L. Johnson of Connecticut said "there can be no justice without the truth."

Democrats argued back that the President's actions were wrong and deserved censure but did not rise to the level of impeachment. Representative David E. Bonior of Michigan, the House minority whip, said Republicans were trying to "hijack an election and hound the President out of office."

Moments before the impeachment votes, Democrats tried to bring to the floor their own proposal to censure Mr. Clinton. But after some debate, their motion was held to be not germane to impeachment and ruled out of order by Representative Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican whom Speaker Gingrich named to preside over the impeachment proceedings.

The Democrats appealed the ruling, expecting to lose because such appeals are considered a challenge to the right of the majority party to run the House. Their motion failed, 230 to 204. Two Republicans, Constance A. Morella of Maryland and Peter T. King of Long Island, broke with precedent and crossed party lines to vote with the Democrats.

As their motion failed, the Democrats briefly marched out of the House chamber in protest. But they returned to vote on the four articles of impeachment.

For one year the Lewinsky scandal has preoccupied the capital despite an immense disconnection with public opinion. Since the scandal became public last January, polls have shown the public opposed impeachment and wanted the inquiry brought to an end. Even on Friday night, after a 13-hour debate, a CBS News Poll of 548 people showed only 38 percent wanted their representative to vote for impeachment; 58 percent wanted a no vote.

The conflict now enters uncharted seas. The Nixon resignation cut the matter short, and the Andrew Johnson trial occurred more than 100 years ago, in a different America, one without nuclear weapons or cable television or public opinion polls.

Despite Mr. Lott's recent assurances that he will move ahead, some wonder whether the Senate may yet flinch from a trial because of the popular will. But Republicans have steadfastly ignored the polls all year.

Representative J. C. Watts of Oklahoma, the newly elected chairman of the House Republican conference, said in debate today, "What's popular isn't always right. You say polls are against this. Polls measure changing feelings, not steadfast principle. Polls would have rejected the Ten Commandments. Polls would have embraced slavery and ridiculed women's rights.

"You say we must draw this to a close," Mr. Watts continued, "I say we must draw a line between right and wrong, not with a tiny fine line of an executive fountain pen, but with the big fat lead of a No. 2 pencil. And we must do it so every kid in America can see it. The point is not whether the President can prevail, but whether truth can prevail."

Yet, for all of the Democrats' charges of excessive partisanship today, enough Republicans did pick and choose among articles of impeachment to send only two of the four that had come out of the House Judiciary Committee on to the Senate.

A number of Republicans said they did not think a perjury charge in Ms. Jones's civil case warranted impeachment, particularly since Mr. Clinton's deposition had been held by a judge to be immaterial. Many of them also looked dimly at impeaching the President for abuse of power -- a term taken from the proceedings against Mr. Nixon in 1974 -- simply because his answers to 81 questions from the Judiciary Committee were legalistic and evasive.

Representative David Hobson, Republican of Ohio, said he supported impeachment of the President for lying to a grand jury but not in the Jones case. "Even if it's true, I worry whether it rises to the same threshold for impeachment," he said. "I didn't want to pile on."

Did you know if you changed the words : PRESIDENT CLINTON OF THE USA It can be rearranged (with no letters left over, and using each letter only once) into: TO COPULATE HE FINDS INTERNS

Every morning Clinton takes a jog around D.C. Each day he passes a hooker on a particular street corner and, as he goes by, she shouts out "fifty dollars," and he replies "no, five dollars!" This continues for several days. He runs by, she says "fifty dollars," and he says "no, five dollars!" One day Hillary decides that she wants to go jogging with Bill. As they are approaching the now infamous street corner, Bill suddenly realizes that the hooker will bark out her $50 offer and that he will have some explaining to do with the First Lady. As they turn the corner, Bill is still in a quandary as to what to do. Sure enough there is the hooker. The hooker looks up as Bill and Hillary jog by and yells to Bill, "See what you get for five dollars??"

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