-Caveat Lector-
Yahoo! NewsTop Stories Headlines Tuesday December 22 11:32 AM ET
Republican Congressmen Seek Clinton Compromise
<Picture: Reuters Photo>
Reuters Photo
By David Wiessler
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four Republican congressmen who voted to impeach
President Clinton joined with those seeking presidential censure Tuesday by
urging the Senate to consider options short of removal from office.
The Senate faces the prospect of only the second presidential trial in
history and since the last was 130 years ago there is little precedent.
Senators were debating how to go about trying Clinton on two articles of
impeachment.
The White House, where Clinton was going through the typical holiday
motions of Christmas parties coupled with presidential duties, was
preparing a trial defense while at the same time indicating a willingness
to compromise short of removal from office.
Adding to the compromise effort was the letter the four moderate
Republicans -- Reps. Michael Castle of Delaware, Jim Greenwood of
Pennsylvania and Sherwood Boehlert and Benjamin Gilman, both of New York --
sent to the Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott and released Tuesday.
The lawmakers said they did not want their votes Saturday to impeach
Clinton ``interpreted to mean that we view removal from office as the only
reasonable conclusion of this case.''
Instead, they said the Senate should consider options that included ``a
tough censure proposal, which would impose a fine and block any pardon.''
The House of Representatives approved by mostly party-line vote two
articles of impeachment, each of which ended by saying Clinton's actions
warrant ``removal from office.'' The articles allege perjury and
obstruction of justice in Clinton's handling of the Monica Lewinsky affair.
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said the letter showed that Republican
leaders had rammed impeachment through the House and if they had allowed a
vote on censure it would have passed.
``This letter is a positive sign that members on the Hill ... don't believe
that the president should be removed from office and want to find a
bipartisan way to put this behind us in a prompt manner,'' he said.
Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan was less charitable, telling CNN the
letter shows ``how partisan that process was.''
``I sure wish they had said that to their colleagues and to themselves
prior to their vote in the House,'' Levin said. ``It seems that would have
been a more timely place and time to make that point.''
The Senate would need a two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, to remove Clinton
from office and since there are only 55 Republicans it appears unlikely
that would happen.
Clinton has refused to resign, despite calls to do so from some
Republicans. His job approval ratings approach or exceed 70 percent in
several major public opinion surveys.
Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat admired for his 40 years of
service in the Senate and for his knowledge of its history and procedures,
left open the possibility of censure but said it must originate with the
senators.
``We are now navigating in previously uncharted waters, but one thing is
clear: For the good of our nation, there must be no 'deal' involving the
White House or any entity beyond the current membership of the U.S.
Senate,'' Byrd said Monday.
Lockhart said Tuesday the White House agreed the situation should be
resolved by the Senate and ``we look forward to that happening and finding
a bipartisan solution to end this quickly.''
The only other impeachment trial, in 1868, occurred in an entirely
different political and cultural climate after the Civil War. Andrew
Johnson was acquitted by one vote.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From Irish Times
Tuesday, December 22, 1998<Picture>Carter and Ford call for censure, not
impeachment
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spectre of McCarthy
haunts Zippergate
------------------------------------------------------------------------
At war with Iraq, the President and at odds with the country, the US
capital has begun to consume its own, writes Jonathan Freedland, in
Washington
The Washington Monument, that sharp needle that pops out of the skyline of
America's capital, is not looking so good just now. It's clad in
scaffolding from top to bottom, necessary for some mid-winter repairs. And
it makes an unsettling sight.
For one thing, it could be a cartoonist's depiction of Washington's 1998
obsession with sex. The bolt upright monument has always had a phallic
significance; now it looks as if it's sheathed in a condom. But there's a
less crude reading. The sight of a national landmark propped up by poles
and planks captures the current mood of the city: Washington is falling
down.
For in these dying days of 1998, the American capital has felt like a place
in drastic trouble. At war with Iraq, at war with its President and at odds
with the country, it has begun to consume its own. Washington has become
the town that ate itself.
The first victim is, of course, President Clinton, impeached on Saturday.
Republicans were effective on the floor of the House of Representatives
that day, arguing that Mr Clinton is guilty not of a sin, but a crime, not
a private offence but a public one. He lied under oath.
There is some logic to that case and Democrats may struggle to repel it in
the Senate, where a trial is due to be held next month - barring the kind
of cross-party deal being discussed behind the scenes at the weekend.
Still, logic can be deceptive.
For once the premise of an argument has been accepted, then all kinds of
apparently logical consequences can flow, even those that are plainly
absurd and dangerous.
It happened when Joe McCarthy was allowed to make mere belief in communism
a crime, and therefore to stamp out anything, and anyone, even vaguely
touched by it.
Zippergate began with a different premise - that probing into the sexual
lives of politicians is legitimate - so that Mr Clinton's failure to fall
into line became an impeachable high crime. When the cry came that private
lives should be off-limits, no one listened. It was too late.
And now they are paying the price. Mr Clinton had to share Sunday's
headlines with Mr Bob Livingston's resignation. After an investigation by
Hustler magazine, he was forced to admit to a string of extra-marital
affairs and he resigned rather than defend himself.
Democrats did not cheer his departure. "It is a surrender to a developing
sexual McCarthyism," cried New York's Mr Jerrold Nadler. "Are we going to
have a new test if someone wants to run for public office: are you now or
have you ever been an adulterer?"
The Democratic leader in the House put it even better. In a stirring,
career-defining speech, Mr Richard Gephardt implored his colleagues to put
aside "the politics of slash-and-burn" lest the dark forces of sexual
inquisition consume America's political system.
"Our founding fathers created a system of government of men, not of angels.
If we keep demanding standards of morality unobtainable by mere mortals, we
will see our seats of government lay empty."
This is a dire warning, and an urgent one. The US has now impeached a
president for only the second time in its history for an act that arose
from an embarrassing, paltry, unconsummated and consensual fling. This same
episode has also cost the Republicans two leaders: Mr Livingston and Mr
Newt Gingrich, who resigned after the poor Republican performance at last
month's Zippergate elections.
Three other Republicans have been outed as adulterers, partly thanks to the
enterprising work of Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, who is
offering cash-for-dirt on any politician who hypocritically espouses family
values.
A longer-range worry is what happens with the next president, perhaps a
Republican. Won't the Democrats be hungry for revenge? Won't impeachment,
once the nuclear-button of American politics, become not a last resort, but
a procedure?
How will Washington stop the insanity which, polls show, continues to
appall the rest of America?
That, along with the fate of Mr Clinton, is now in the hands of the 100
members of the US Senate. - (Guardian Service)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
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