Assumes facts not in evidence. Honestly, I think the GOP in Congress would have kept going until they found SOMETHING they could reasonably expect to get out of committee. Like the person above says, an impeachable offense is whatever they can get the votes for.
The whole thing was an embarassment, an utter contradiction of the law’s spirit.
Oh, he coulda been impeached.
But, there is a big difference between just being impeached on something morally questionable and being impreached on something morally questionable topped off with something else decidely illegal that was used to try to cover up the morally questionable.
So why did they wait until he lied under oath? If they were that desperate, they should have found something he pulled before Lewinsky. God knows there was enough sleaze apart from his zipper problems.
The GOP in Congress waited until Clinton clearly violated the law. He was under oath, and he perjured himself.
Had he not perjured himself, he would not have been impeached. Yes, if he had admitted fucking with the hired help, there would have been another scandal, just like Travelgate and Filegate and Juanita Broaderrick and Kathleen Wiley and the pardons for money and all the rest of it. But there would not have been impeachment.
Regards,
Shodan
So what was your favorite example of that?
We’ve had enough discussions of that here that you know that not to be true.
Okay, tell us what exactly you think were the facts behind any of that (and “all the rest of” what, precisely?). Be prepared to discuss them.
Had there been no futile effort to find something to impeach him for, there would have been no trap set to create something.
I thought beaver traps were outlawed in most provinces…
The Senate found him not guilty of perjury. Judge Wright found him in civil contempt of misleading the Court. The State Bar suspended (disbarred?) him. It was bullshit from beginning to end.
He didn’t get impeached for his sex life. He got impeached…and cited for contempt…and his law license suspended…because he lied under oath. He has no one to blame but himself. Had he been able to refrain from adultery, he’d have had nothing to lie about. Once busted, if he’d told the truth under oath, he would not have been impeached. It is not a question of the GoP being mean, it’s a question of Clinton being foolish.
It it was so illegal, why were no criminal charges brought? Why wasn’t he convicted?
The fact remains the prevarications of that sort- even under oath- are almost never charged as perjury, but most often penalized by contempt of court. Which is what happened.
What he did was not perjury.
ahhh…let the nitpicking start.
He sure as hell didnt tell the gods honest truth…and thats what bit him in the ass. Oakminster summed it up quite nicely IMO.
And when it comes to our legal system…sure there is plenty of IMO legit debate about procedures, rights, what constitutes evidence and on and on and on.
But even a retard (much less an intelligent lawyer and president of the USA) understands there is ONE KEY THING that must not be allowed to happen. Lying on the stand. Once you have that happening, all the rest becomes a fricking waste of time, if not an actual travesty of justice.
And WHY did he lie (or at least greatly mislead) ? Not for some noble purpose. Not to save his life. Not for some higher principle. Not because there was any reasonable expectation that it was irrelevant to the case he was being questioned about.
Because he was embarrassed about getting a blow job. If it aint a big deal, don’t fricking lie/mislead about it in court. And if it IS a big deal, you really shouldnt lie about it in court in the first place.
On this issue, Clinton hung himself by his own petard.
No doubt it was at least a prevarication under oath, and certainly Contempt was reasonable given the circumstances. But that’s Contempt, not Perjury.
Maybe he lied to protect Monica. And, it was totally irrelevant to the case he was being questioned about.
Yeah, that was it. :rolleyes:
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
He absolutely got impeached for his sex life. I’m aware of the legal justification for the impeachment.
Clinton did wrong, and I have said so plenty of times. But that’s not the point: he was impeached because he did something scandalous (and yes, illegal) that his opponents could use against him. He’s responsible for his own behavior and I have not argued otherwise. But the Republicans did not have to impeach him, which you said before. They did it because they could, and because they wanted to. He gave them an excuse but he didn’t force them to do it. And that’s why I said earlier that they probably would have impeached him even if he had admitted what he did. The law isn’t what mattered. What was important was, they had an excuse.
What the hell kinda reasoning is this ?
In your opinion he did some thing " illegal". In your opinion he did something “scandalous”.
And yet, still, those bastards had the nerve to impeach him !
I am not sure whether you’d make a really good or a really bad defense attorney.
My reasoning is that he did something wrong, and the Republican response was far, far out of proportion to what he did. Make sense?
Plus the Reps get to show the hypocracy of the Senate Dems that convicted Judge Claibourne for the exact same thing just a couple years before yet acquit Clinton of.
Oh wait, the Reps failed at that part too. The Reps could have used this to utterly destroy the Democrats reputation and show them as adulterers, liars, hypocrites and protecting their own and giving the law the finger . . . but instead we have over 90% of the general population thinking that the Reps were the bad guys for impeaching him over a blowjob. My party is such a clusterfuck 
Clinton was examined by the repubs from the first day he took office. They wasted millions on the Starr commission. They investigated his entire life. It was a disgusting affair and they should have been ashamed of themselves.
It was a joke, all those congressmen and senators who were having affairs while they were standing up there and berating Clinton. They were hypocritical pricks.
Women are one of the fringe benefits for politicians and they have taken advantage of that forever. It was a setup.
No.
So, do have some kind of personal frat boy story wherre you are speeding and a frat brother has his ass hanging out the window…and you guys pass a state trooper…and you get all bent outa shape because he had the nerve to give you a speeding ticket ?
Sorry, my earlier reference was about Judge Claiborne. It should have been Judge Nixon. Look up his case and tell me if it was OK for him to be impeached? If so, then what was the difference between his case and Clinton’s? If not, then how come most of the Democrats in the Senate convicted him?