Bill Moyers: Welcome to the Journal.

Impeachment…the word feared and loathed by every sitting president is back. It’s in the air and on your computer screen, a growing clamor aimed at both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney.

This week’s news only agitated the clamor. The president acknowledged that someone in his administration did leak the name of a CIA agent to the press, but he said let’s move on – even as he refused to let his former White House counsel testify to Congress about political influence at the Justice Department.

So the talk in Washington was of executive arrogance. All the more so as the Democratic House voted to withdraw US troops from Iraq by next spring despite a threat of veto by President Bush. A public opinion poll from the American Research Group reports that more than four in ten Americans – 45 per cent-favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half -54 per cent – favor putting Vice President Cheney in the dock.

Are these the first tremors of a major shock wave…or just much ado about nothing? First, let’s take a look at the last time a president found himself fighting off an impeachment campaign. It happened less than a dozen years ago. And what was the issue:

President Bill Clinton: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky…

Bill Moyers: But he did. And even after that denial in early 1998, President Clinton lied again seven months later – this time under oath to a federal grand jury. But that very evening he had a change of heart.

President Bill Clinton: “Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong….I know that my public comments and my silence about this matter gave a false impression. I misled people, including even my wife. I deeply regret that.”

Bill Moyers: For one powerful Republican member of Congress, an apology wasn’t enough. Tom Delay, then the majority whip of the House, convinced speaker Newt Gingrich and Republican leaders that Clinton’s lie called for nothing less than removing the president from office – impeachment. Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr was commissioned to gather the evidence. Starr eventually sent 36 boxes of evidence to the capitol. They catalogued his investigation of Clinton’s finances, a sexual harassment suit filed by Paula Jones and sting operations mounted by the prosecutor to uncover the details of the Lewinsky affair. Nearly 500 pages summarizing the report were quickly posted on the internet. For the next month, the house judiciary committee waded through the report. What the case meant depended largely on party affiliation. Democrats insisted it all came down to lying about sex.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL): The president betrayed his wife …he did not betray his country

Bill Moyers: Republicans, who controlled the House, argued it was about something more important.

Rep. Bill McCollum (R-FL): Truthfullness is the glue that holds our justice system together

Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA): With his conduct and his arrogance…William Jefferson Clinton has thrown a gauntlet at the feet of the Congress.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI): This is not Watergate. This is an extramarital affair.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI): Even the president of the United States does not have the license to lie.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL): Wake up, America, they are about to impeach our president.

Bill Moyers: on october 5, 1998, the house judiciary committee authorized a full impeachment inquiry……only the third u.s. president in history to be seriously threatened with removal from office. The constitution says a president may be impeached for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors”. Experts were called to interpret those words:

Leon Higginbotham Jr., Former US Appeals Court Judge: There has never been, never been an impeachment proceeding on this miniscule level…

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., University of New York: All the independent counsel’s charges thus far derive from the president’s lies about his sex life. His attempts to hide personal misbehavior are certainly disgraceful. But if they are to be deemed impeachable, then we reject the standards laid down by the framers in the Constitution and trivialize the process of impeachment.

Prof. Alan Dershowitz, Harvard University: The only reason the majority of this committee cares about perjury is because they believe that President Clinton, their political opponent, is guilty of it.

Bill Moyers: The House Judiciary listened…and then drafted two articles of impeachment accusing Clinton of perjury…a third accusing him of obstruction of justice and yet a fourth, of making false statements. A week later, December 19, 1998, the full House met to consider the articles. They approved two of them…one for perjury…another for obstruction of justice. Republican leaders called for Clinton to resign. He didn’t, and now it was the Senate’s constitutional task to conduct the impeachment trial ordered by the House. The Senators met behind closed doors …and on Friday, February 12, 1999, the verdict was delivered to the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist: Is not guilty as charged in the second article of impeachment.

President Clinton: I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am for what I said and did to trigger these events and the great burden they have imposed on the Congress and on the American people.

Bill Moyers: One of the fellows you’re about to meet wrote the first article of impeachment against President Clinton. Bruce Fein did so because perjury is a legal crime. And Fein believed no one is above the law. A constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein served in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration and as general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission. Bruce Fein has been affiliated with conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation and now writes a weekly column for THE WASHINGTON TIMES and Politico.com.

He’s joined by John Nichols, the Washington correspondent for THE NATION and an associate editor of the CAPITOL TIMES. Among his many books is this most recent one, THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: THE FOUNDERS’ CURE FOR ROYALISM. Good to see you both. Bruce, you wrote that article of impeachment against Bill Clinton. Why did you think he should be impeached?

Bill Moyers: Bruce you wrote that article of impeachment against Bill Clinton. Why did you think he should be impeached?

Bruce Fein: I think he was setting a precedent that placed the president above the law. I did not believe that the initial perjury or misstatements – that came perhaps in a moment of embarrassment stemming from the Paula Jones lawsuit was justified impeachment if he apologized. Even his second perjury before the grand jury when Ken Starr’s staff was questioning him, as long as he expressed repentance, would not have set an example of saying every man, if you’re president, is entitled to be a law unto himself. I think Bush’s crimes are a little bit different. I think they’re a little bit more worrisome than Clinton’s. You don’t have to have -

Bill Moyers: More worrisome?

Bruce Fein: More worrisome than Clinton’s – because he is seeking

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/071407B.shtml

Turned tail and ran all the home.

Yup, that showed ‘em who’s boss.

Excuse me?

FDR and Truman finished out WW2 pretty damn nicely . . . of course, the A BOMB helped, but let’s not get into that now.

The Republicans did a helluva good job on Grenada. Wow! That was one to make Chesty Puller proud . . .

You will show your true colors while ignoring the issues America cares about the most.

You’ll be crying in your beer when Bushy gets impeached.

Mad, not me!

Pissed-off maybe.

Tired of the bitching for sure.

Madd Maxx!

Eg Korea (McArthur had it right, he would have whipped the Koreans, Chinese, and Russians, had Democratic President Truman not FIRED him!)Eg VietnamEg SomaliaEg Iraq

Are ALL you Democrats LOSERS!?!

NIKE baby. Just Frickin do it!

We’re tired of hearing your moaning and groaning, now get off your fat lazy liberal Government tit-sucking Socialist asses and DO something.

What in the hell are you waiting for?

Wake up.

Show American what you CAN do.

You CAN impeach the President if you put your money where your mouths are.

You can IMMEDIATELY defund the war in Iraq, if you put your ACTION where your Dem Boy’s promises were.

MAKE MY DAY!

Ignore:

1. Pending Social Insecurity Fiscal Crisis.

2. Energy Independence for America.

3. You want National Healthcare, then DO IT NOW! (I don’t, but that’s the next thing on your damn Socialist agenda.

4. Illegal immigration – solve that! No, you don’t want to! The Mexicans will vote the SOCIALISTS WAY!

SCREW U DEMOCRAT SOCIALIST ROBBERS OF HARD WORKING AMERICAN TAXPAYERS MONEY!

WE AIN’T GONNA KEEP YOUR GRAVY TRAIN GOING FOREVER!

PUSH YOUR AGENDA NOW, the sooner the better.

The sooner you push your TRUE agenda, the sooner America will discover your true Big Brother Socialist Control Freak Agenda!

And then your party will be dead and gone – forever.

Your strategy though, is to disguise your true progression to Socialism, so you don’t dare move so fast, do you?

Are they coming to take you away?

As far as I can see, we’re wading up to our necks in his mud.You’re kidding right?

HEHE HAHA

Some of you will be calling for impeachment in January of 2009.

Hope you are taking your Zantac, because all you are going to end up with is ULCERS!!

Come JEP, you have a lawyer family, all millionaires as I recall, and you can’t come up with any dirt that will stick?

HoHo HaHa HeHe

Again, I am suggesting that has already happened, and those charges especially the part about interfering in investigations, is no longer “non-specific.”

But as for the backbone of Congress, I posted earlier, until the Blue Dogs realize at primary time that their recent victories came from the center, not the right, that backbone will be mushy.

The Blue Dogs’ real opponents next time around won’t come from the Republicans, it will be from right-leaning centrists in their own party. They (bluedogs) missed a lot of very important cues, and they hamstrung Pelosi more than once…

The Republicans are growing more impotent every day. McCain knows it, too, and he’s giving them hell for it…

And the crime is even more egregious if the President follows through with the “firing” threat, when the appointee refuses to obey…

Or lets one of his lackeys do it for him…

IT IS BAD ENOUGH THEY ENCOURAGED POLITICAL PROSECUTION ON THE EVE OF AN ELECTION (Schlotzman) but even worse they (Goodling and Sampson, aka Rove) fired Iglesias for refusing to do the same…

Oh, I’m sorry, THE PRESIDENT is the only one who can legally fire a DOJ atty, huh?

The problem becomes assigning an arguably false reason for the action, when indeed no reason is needed.

Capn, if the President does indeed insist upon a political appointee to take an action which is unlawful, the appointee should resign, The reason for the resignation should be a matter of investigation by Congress, if it so desires, as then there might be grounds for considering a resolution for impeachment.

In the absence of applicable statutes or university policies, a professor who takes that stance has the right to so do. Not a good thing at all, but in a vacuum, the professor could take that action (which it is rumored, did happen on many a college campus in the past, but I’ve no links, etc., to substantiate the same).

I did not argue for or against the Nixon charges that you would like to put on Bush. You are right, I did not address them.

The “liar” post came from you consistently misrepresenting my posiiton. See my 2:25 post for a summary. It had nothing to do with your charges against BUSH.I have reread your 4 reasons from the Nixon era at your 1:43 post. If you think they apply to Bush, then by all means, get your representative to start an investigation. Perhaps he can find specific events to which he can apply those 4 items. If he won;t either he knows they don;t apply, or he has no backbone. He certainly can;t take the high moral ground. If those charges can be substantiated, then Bush should not only be impeached, but removed from office. For articles of impeachment to be drafted, the charges have to be specific. Bush did THIS, in violation of THIS.Any congressman can introduce a bill to impeach (at least I think so), then an investigation, then the impeachment hearing.
If you did not intentionally misrepresent my posiition, then I accept your apology, and offer my own. I should not have reduced to namecalling.

Here’s the crux of our problem, my perception of your post was that you are saying, “Prove it” and when I try to, instead of addressing my proof, you engage in name calling.

So my perception is that you might be a Bush protectionist, and I just like before, I have posed the possibility, not the accusation of that, read carefully.

And the only option you provide to my being a liar is to accuse me of not being able to read, maybe you are the one who needs to read a bit deeper…

Wait a minute, GMC. You’re saying that if the president tells a political appointee that “you must rob a bank at gunpoint or be fired,” and the appointee refuses to commit armed robbery, then yes indeed, the president has committed no crime and everything is just fine.

Nothing to see here.

You gotta be kidding me . . .

‘I asked what law specifically wsa broken, you get on my case”

“You have yet to give me one example.”

No I gave you 4 at 1:43, then qualified them at 1:51

I got on your case because you won’t respond to those 4 charges.

Tell me you don’t agree with them, but don’t just call me a liar for posting them…

Why no dialogue about that 1:51 post as yet?

If you had addressed that post, instead of calling me a liar for posting it, I might not have thought you a “troll.”

But you still have not addressed those 4 Nixon charges, that have valid applications to a Bush and/or Cheney impeachment, instead you took the argument to some personal level…

All you had to do was either dispute those 4 “charges” or agree with them, instead you have ignored them completely.

Unless I just missed your answer.

I am not trying to be adversarial, but it seems to me when you use phrases like “investigate all you want. or all the COngress wants. Or get a special prosecutor to do it.

I have no problem with that.

(I have no problem with that?)

If you come up with something, violaitons of actual statutes, (I did) then charge BUsh accordingly.

(OK I’ll go right out and do that)But before you call for impeachment, you need a charge of a violation of a specific law. You have yet to give me one example.”

I gave you 4…

Then you totally ignore the examples, and tellme I’m a liar.

I just wonder where you are going with your logic…

You seem quite animated that I questioned your motives. I may have misunderstood your objectives, call me wrong if that is the case, “I have no problem with that”

But I never called you a liar…

And, again I may be mistaklen, that “liar” post seems to be in lieu of an answer to my charges, you are much more concerned about how I address you personally than you are about the issue…

Sorry for offending you, I mean that. Especially if I was wrong.