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10-1 |
During
the Nixon impeachment proceeding, many argued that "lying to the
American people" was itself grounds for impeachment. I will argue
later in this book that the Senate has the Constitutional power to
try Articles of Impeachment on grounds of deceiving the American
people — even if no corresponding Judicial criminal trial is
possible. If President Clinton was at some point involved in staging
events that lead to his actual 1998 House impeachment with the
intent of doing this as a deliberate diversion — something to
obstruct any effective pursuit of other Clinton scandals that appear
to go directly to wide scale abuse of the office of President — such
an act of "stage managing" a diversionary impeachment would
itself be both impeachable, and may be a criminal obstruction of
justice. The effect would be to disrupt other investigations that
may have resulted in criminal charges, specifically regarding the
1996 Clinton campaign finance violations. |
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10-2 |
The Nixon-Clinton Impeachment Tragedy
The Clinton Presidency has been both hard on our
country, and devastating to the Clintons as a family. Many innocent
people have suffered terrible consequences from the actions of the
Clintons.
In the
face of these facts, I want to offer four suggestions. First,
obviously Bill Clinton comes from a broken home, and this must have
had a bad effect on him. Second, this fact has certainly influenced
Hillary Clinton, if only to be an enabler. Third, they are obviously
both very talented, and may have come over time to justify the
unjustifiable based on their answer to President Kennedy's
challenge: what they thought they could do for the
country. There are philosophical doctrines I’m sure they encountered
first as students, and later in their political careers, that they
probably see as justifying what they have done. Fourth, if the
Clintons hadn’t been taught by the apparent conclusion of our
government, our House Judiciary Committee, to think that
"private wrongdoing", if not egregious, was not serious
enough to prevent someone from serving as President, might none of
this have happened? A higher standard set at the time of the Nixon
impeachment proceeding could have been a check on the Clinton’s (and
many others) behavior and actions that might have prevented all of
this. At a minimum, the dangerous doctrine that ascended from the
Nixon impeachment proceedings, that even criminal wrongdoing is not
impeachable if it is "essentially private" and not egregious,
introduced an element of tragedy into the Clinton’s personal lives,
into the lives of their associates, and into our national life. |
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10-3 |
Looking
back on all this, it seems evident that both "family values" and
"the rule of law" are far more than slogans. Let me suggest
something further. There has always been a libertarian strain in our
national political thought, and it seems to have recently gained
strength. Could it also be that one of the lessons of this tragedy
is that a legitimate purpose of "the rule of law" is to guard us,
ourselves, against temptations that can lead us to become something
horrible? If our House Judiciary committee, in 1973 had
not taken the position that "private wrongdoing" is in some way
permissible, might the Clintons themselves have been better off? We
may think we know what harm they have done to our Republic. What
have "We the People", or post-Watergate "We the Enablers", done to
the Clintons? If you think this is far-fetched, consider this: much
of the legislation that Congress passes is referred to by the
semi-technical term: enabling legislation. |
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10-4 |
Power
corrupts. Can a Republic such as ours survive if we hold publicly
the doctrine: "private wrongdoing", including criminal wrongdoing,
is not a basis for impeaching and removing our President? The
next two chapters present the foundation and exposition of a new
Constitutional theory: if a President is impeached by the House for
alleged criminal violation of a Federal statute, both the
Senate and the Judiciary can independently remove the
President from office.
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