The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton
Bork, Robert H.
BOOKS IN REVIEW Should He Be Impeached? The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton: A Political Docu-Drama R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. and 'Anonymous" Regnery / 275 pages / $24.95 REVIEWED...
...The real charge, as Tyrrell and Anonymous make clear, is abuse of power...
...44 The real charge is abuse of power...
...TransJordan renamed itself Jordan...
...He does not seem to have been bothered by most of the tricky questions created by the specificality and exigence of Catholic doctrine, but he admits to having been "arrested" by the need to reconcile divine omniscience and individual free will...
...Impeachment then and now had to do with standards of political morality...
...A further chapter examines the experiences and views of such prominent converts to Catholicism as Father John Neuhaus...
...The Riady-China connection...
...The second, Richard Nixon, aborted the process by resigning...
...A highly sophisticated man of my acquaintance opposes impeachment of Clinton, whom he despises, with the statement, "He is the president...
...And so, for most of our history, it has remained...
...Over one million Arabs live in Israel...
...Filegate...
...It is also common knowledge that he is a strong, practicing Catholic, and that his Catholicism informs every aspect of his public convictions...
...First Buckley describes the salient episodes of his childhood...
...How can 200,000 Jews living among one million Arabs be "an obstacle to peace...
...Why should the Arab countries and the 'West Bank' be the only places in the world where Jews are not allowed to live...
...newspaper articles and television news clips...
...Having said that, it seems to me less likely than it does to Tyrrell-Anonymous that an impeachment will actually occur...
...There had been no complaints from those organizations...
...On the same day, six Arab armies invaded the new-born state...
...The 1996 report of the Clinger committee's investigation demonstrated that the firings were done in order to give the business to Catherine Cornelius, who had handled transportation in the campaign, and to Harry Thomason, a partner in an air charter business and major supporter of the Clintons...
...Perhaps it is realistic...
...They didn't have the votes to block the process...
...would give us campaign spending "reform...
...Politicians who live by polls and focus groups are not likely to take on the arduous, unpleasant, and politically dangerous task of vindicating the honor of the presidential office...
...Many witnesses, rather than fleeing or taking the Fifth, repeatedly swore under oath to congressional committees that they could not recall obviously memorable events and conversations...
...The poem was new to me, and the extensive summary and quotations Buckley provides made a striking impression on my visual consciousness of the event...
...Why should the Arab countries and the "West Bank" be the only places in the whole world where Jews cannot live...
...conclusions of previous investigations...
...Jerusalem was to be internationalized...
...The main safeguard against that is public opinion...
...Egypt remained in possession of the Gaza Strip...
...The reader can easily guess the outcome, given the authors' predilections, but it will not be described here, which would spoil part of the impressive literary effect...
...Various sources gave the presumably unemployable Hubbell over $490,000 for no apparent legitimate reason...
...It is highly unlikely that impeachment and conviction will become merely another political weapon, particularly since a two-thirds vote in the Senate is required...
...The benefits of Clinton's removal from office, Tyrrell and Anonymous make clear, outweigh the risks...
...The Constitution says little enough about impeachment...
...Your tax-deductible sac contribution allows us to publish these important messages...
...A memorandum from David Watkins, while he was still on White House staff, to Mack McLarty, then White House chief of staff, said "there would be hell to pay if...we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady's wishes...
...Indeed, I am not sure it is a spiritual autobiography at all, in the sense that New-man's Apologia is...
...The next chapter is devoted to Malcolm Muggeridge, whom Buckley knew well, revered, and with whom he made a TV movie about the Vatican...
...and Anonymous draw: "[Alt least since Watergate most scholars agreed that the Founding Fathers considered it a 'high crime' for a president to fail to observe the moral standards expected of him...
...No Jews, regardless of citizenship were allowed into the "West Bank," eastern Jerusalem, the locale of the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism...
...But the Israelis utterly defeated the combined Arab might in the Six-Day War, one of the greatest military victories in history...
...Failing impeachment, however, it is all too likely that those who come after Clinton will absorb the lesson that almost any degree of corruption will be tolerated and will behave accordingly...
...Nor is this true merely of the hoi polloi, the credulous and uneducated...
...There is much to be said for that point of view...
...There is, on the one hand, the very real danger that a precedent will be set so that impeachment will become a regular part of the arsenal of partisan politics...
...The book picks up speed and urgency with the authors' depiction of the Senate trial, a trial that relies on the record made in the House...
...Much of it was spent just before World War II in England, where he attended the Jesuit school at Beaumont, near Windsor Castle, though he seems to have derived most of his religious ideas from his God-fearing parents (his mother took Holy Communion daily...
...Finally there is a detailed chapter on the ordination of a Catholic priest, which Buckley witnessed...
...The authors 74 December 1997 The American Spectator assume that it will be by mid-1998, though they can say only that the report concerns "the Whitewater cover-up...
...was now greatly confused: "Which 'it' was up for discussion...
...78 December r 9 9 7 • The American Spectator...
...Large numbers of Jews have been living in these territories since biblical times...
...He describes in some detail the conditions which have to be satisfied to authenticate a Lourdes miracle, making extensive use of a book, The Miracle of Lourdes, written by a convert, Ruth Cranston, in the 1950's and recently updated...
...All of the scenery is not in place, however, because a major factor, the Report of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, has not yet been submitted...
...This kind of oblique attack on Catholicism does not worry Buckley too much because he believes it evokes from Catholics valuable responses, just as Charles Kingley's crude and unfair attack on John Henry Newman produced his masterpiece, Apologia Pm Vita Sua...
...Now, we are invited for a third time to contemplate the removal of a president from office through the impeachment process...
...The authors' summation of the evidence is contained in the seven-count bill they posit Henry Hyde announcing: "abuse of power, solicitation and receipt of illegal campaign contributions, obstruction, and by his actions dishonoring the institution of the Presidency...
...William Clinger's questions, Hillary Clinton denied being behind the firings and said she "had no role in the decision to terminate the employees...
...He then discusses what he calls "the never-ending debate" about the existence of God and the role of religion in life, with particular reference to the demands on a person made by Catholicism and the "difPAUL JOHNSON'S latest book, A History of the American People, will be published by HarperCollins in March...
...What the Framers and Ratifiers meant by "high crimes and misdemeanors" is unclear...
...The only Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment according to Law...
...They are citizens, they have every civil right, and of course have nothing to fear from their Jewish fellow citizens...
...As Tyrrell-Anonymous demonstrate, that is only a very partial list...
...The Jews accepted the plan...
...Some thumbnail history may be in order...
...In Chapter Eleven, Buckley looks at the way Hollywood has dealt with religious subjects, and in particular its treatment of True Confessions, the novel by John Gregory Dunne (1977), which features the bad priest who visits brothels...
...Hyde muses that the old question from the Nixon hearings, "What did the President know and when did he know it...
...And there Hyde has the problem of an embarrassment of riches...
...Starr will go beyond that, whether he will indict subordinates, how he will phrase what he learns, and how soon the special court that appointed him will make all or part of his report public are matters of crucial importance that lie in the future...
...Tyrrell-Anonymous rely for their expectation of a successful impeachment not on a single dramatic event, though that is not to be ruled out, but on the steady, unremitting succession of scandals that gradually erode public support to the point where the removal of the president seemed inevitable...
...04 ficulties" that thereby arise...
...Though financial irregularities in the Travel Office were later claimed by the White House, the decision to fire was taken before an auditing firm was called in and the FBI was summoned to issue a statement that a criminal investigation was warranted...
...A new instance of misbehavior in office seems to surface every week...
...Certainly, nobody considers them an obstacle to peace...
...We ought not become a banana 76 December 1997 The American Spectator You deserve a factual look at...
...Then he passes on to the problem of evil, and the nature of a God who can allow to take place earthquakes and other natural disasters which kill innocent people, often cruelly...
...When the dust of war settled, the Israelis had not only retained their national territory, but had repossessed the territories of Judea/Sumaria (the "West Bank"), the eastern part of Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and had totally occupied Egypt's vast Sinai Peninsula...
...solicitation of funds from the Indonesian Lippo Group and Chinese sources...
...Buckley selects some of the curesexamined by Cranston for his own analysis, and relates them to his experiences at the shrine...
...When an armistice was finally secured, however, TransJordan remained in possession of Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank") and the eastern part of Jerusalem...
...Thus, the firings were not for the benefit of the public or of the news organizations...
...But sleaze is not the gravamen of the authors' case for impeachment...
...Nevertheless, that resignation was forced by the looming specter of impeachment: there was little doubt that Nixon lacked the votes in either the House or the Senate had he chosen to fight...
...And why shouldn't they...
...It is a close call whether Bill Clinton should be removed from office by conviction on impeachment...
...Once in possession of the "West Bank" and eastern Jerusalem, the Jordanians promptly proceeded to expel all Jews and systematically to desecrate and to destroy most Jewish sacred places, cemeteries and houses of worship...
...In the end, I come down where Tyrrell and Anonymous do...
...Appointments of wholly unqualified persons to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board were made in exchange for $19o,000 donations...
...B ut this raises real-world concerns...
...Still, it must be remembered that America paid a high price to see the back of Richard Nixon, perhaps too high a price...
...Then came Yale, and Buckley has illuminating things to say about the elements of Christianity to be found there in his time, and today...
...The suppression of the RTC investigation...
...In 1922, contrary to the Mandate of the League of Nations, the British severed the entire area east of the Jordan and gave it to the Hashemite Arabs for their assistance in World War I. Thus, fully 75% of Palestine, all of which under the Mandate and under the terms of the Balfour Declaration was meant to be a home for the Jewish people, was lost for that purpose...
...This episode illustrates the course the book follows through the serial political immoralities of the Clinton administration...
...When inquiries began, he promptly left the United States for China...
...The earlier materials are real while the later ones, carrying the story forward to its conclusion, are necessarily products of the authors' imagination...
...The "reform" legislation and expectations that immediately preceded or followed on, from the Federal Election Campaign Act to the Impounding Control Act to the War Powers Resolution have uniformly made matters worse...
...The firings and suggestions of criminality by the Travel Office personnel were unwarranted...
...Doubleday /313 pages /$x,4.95...
...Clinton enjoys high popularity figures...
...Clinton who sought to run the Travel Office...
...and 'Anonymous" Regnery / 275 pages / $24.95 REVIEWED BY Robert H. Bork W hen the effort of the Jeffersonians to remove Federalist judges from the bench culminated in the Senate's failure to convict Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, Thomas Jefferson called the impeachment procedure a "farce" and "not even a scare-crow...
...Paul's, and so on...
...Those "West Bank" Settlements Are they really the "greatest obstacle to peace...
...Buckley has at last decided to open up the windows to his soul, and it is of interest to show exactly how he sets about it...
...Travelgate...
...Whitewater...
...He did not attribute a mystic quality to the office but felt that, for prudential reasons, presidents ought not be deposed except under the most urgent and compelling circumstances...
...trial on the bill's charges in the Senate...
...The Six-Day War...
...The authors skillfully produce an aura of reality and immediacy, a vividness that can be produced only by the narrative form...
...It does not trace the evolution of Buckley's religious opinions systematically, from start to finish, nor identify the books and persons and events which God and Man and William F. Buckley, Jr...
...no charges were brought except against Billy Dale, who was found not guilty by a jury after only a brief examination of the prosecution's case...
...When reading a mystery, you may be sure the butler did it but not appreciate someone telling you in advance...
...Impeachment, which is only a charge analogous to a grand jury indictment, requires only a majority vote...
...Buckley is more exercised by such current Catholic problems as the arguments over women priests and birth-control, and the difficulties produced by divorce, remarriage and "living in sin" within Catholic families, all of which he deals with in Chapter Twelve...
...As the aphorism has it, if you strike at a king, you must kill him...
...Only the area west of the Jordan River was left for the Jewish homeland...
...There is an epilogue about the religion of his mother, to whom the book is dedicated, and some useful appendices, one of which lists in detail the current religious practices, such as they are, at various American schools—Groton, Brooks, Deerfield Academy, St...
...REVIEWED BY Paul Johnson B ill Buckley's place in the contemporary American political and media scene is secure and well-known, and he needs no introduction...
...But the nature and quality of his faith, and its history, have been personal matters up to now...
...This is a theory of death by drip-drip, a form of Chinese water torture...
...We see Clinton anxiously counting votes to see if he can win by retaining one-third plus one of the Senators...
...The drumbeat of television news, press headlines, stories, and editorials was overwhelmingly biased and hostile...
...I have provided this breakdown of the contents of Buckley's book because it is not an ordinary spiritual autobiography...
...Similarly, James Riady, an Indonesian billionaire, met with Clinton and, among other things, paid Webster Hubbell $ioo,000 for services neither man would describe...
...The grounds for conviction are stated somewhat vaguely in Article II, Section 4: The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors...
...Tyrrell and Anonymous present their case as a narrative of the ordeal that awaits Clinton: the House hearings and adoption of a bill of impeachment...
...The real past materials and the imagined future ones blend seamlessly because the authors know firsthand the cadences of political partisanship, its sonorities and its bickerings...
...Perhaps deposing Clinton Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith...
...Buckley's next move is to deal with miracles by describing a visit he paid to Lourdes, on the edge of the Pyrenees, which is the biggest place of pilgrimage in France and probably in Europe...
...The UN stepped in and proposed a partition plan under which the country (west of the River) was to be divided into respective Arab and Jewish areas...
...William F. Buckley, Jr...
...The second is William Kennedy III, a former associate White House counsel...
...In 1948, on the twice truncated territory allotted to them by the U.N., the Jews declared their independence and the state of Israel was born...
...Chapter Eight is devoted to the crucifixion, in which he makes impressive use of a work by the Italian poetess Maria Valtorta, The Poem ofthe Man-God, which describes the execution of Christ in horrific detail...
...Tyrrell-Anonymous direct the hearings to the White House aides, Craig Livingstone and Anthony Marceca, who took the Fifth concerning their acquisition of raw FBI files, the abominable Bernard Nussbaum's memo to the FBI claiming that Billy Dale's file was needed because he was being considered for a White House post, and Nussbaum's tampering with, and blocking Justice Department access to, Vincent Foster's papers after the latter's death, Hillary Clinton's false statement that she did not know Livingstone or have any role in his hiring, and the extensive and convoluted Clinton administration44 It is a close call whether Bill Clinton should be removed from office by impeachment...
...Because he is a big government man, despite his disingenuous protestations, Clinton has not faced anything like a campaign against him of such intensity...
...Clinton has worked overtime to justify Mark Helprin's judgment that he may be "the most corrupt, fraudulent and dishonest president we have ever known...
...Most of the Arabs living there are in fact relative newcomers...
...That there has been a Whitewater cover-up is, of course, obvious even now...
...he story T opens with a Committee of Six—three Democratic Senators and three Democratic Representatives—calling on the president, just as a committee of Republicans had called on President Nixon, to inform him that hearings are imminent and inevitable on a proposed bill of impeachment...
...Kennedy had called in the FBI with the remark that if the Bureau could not handle the Travel Office matter, perhaps the proper agency would be the IRS...
...Article I, Section 2., states in the most off-hand manner, midst a host of other details that "The House of Representatives...shall have the sole Power of Impeachment...
...Henry Hyde, a highly respected representative from Illinois, was to chair the hearings...
...Of that there is ample evidence...
...In this last matter, the main actor was John Huang, who was given wholly unnecessary access to classified national security and foreign policy information, and who telephoned Lippo frequently...
...He deals with the Spanish Inquisition, slavery, the doctrine of Hell, and even that old chestnut, Indulgences, and the sale thereof, quoting extensively from the defenses put up by such Catholic controversialists as Sir Arnold Lunn and Father Ronald Knox...
...Thus, the Clinton administration began as it has continued, abusing the powers of government and politicizing its branches...
...It originally also included the Golan Heights, which later, in an agreement between England and France, were ceded to France, and to Syria as the successor in possession...
...There follow further chapters on church and state and the national culture, on the uniqueness of Christ, and on what the author calls "the special blessings, and problems, of Catholics...
...the Arabs refused it out of hand...
...But Hubbell has refused to cooperate with the Starr investigation...
...In the context of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians that have now been going on for almost four years, it is often asserted that the Israeli towns and villages (usually and with some derogation referred to as "settlements") in Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank") are possibly the most serious obstacle to peace...
...Our institutions ought not be unsettled...
...This involved Princess Grace Kelly and an abortive "private audience" with Pope John Paul II, of which Buckley provides an entertaining account...
...Of that there is ample evidence — enough to make the Nixon administration seem merely, almost mildly, errant by comparison...
...The willingness to use impeachment is not symmetrical...
...The scandals of the two Clintons continue unendingly, from Arkansas to Washington...
...In Tyrrell and Anonymous's imagined scenario of the House impeachment hearings, the first subject is the firing of the Travel Office employees and the first witness is George Stephanopoulos...
...About 200,000 Jews now live in these territories...
...Clinton responded with a television address on June z4, 1998, claiming he had been subjected to "an unprecedented and mean-spirited campaign of lies, half-truths and vilification" from the first day of his presidency...
...If Nixon deserved impeachment, Clinton certainly does...
...Nixon earned the hatred of the press, intellectuals, and labor leaden...
...Hillary's missing papers...
...The first, Andrew Johnson, escaped conviction in the Senate, and hence removal from office, by a single vote...
...It is true that other presidents before Nixon (Lyndon Johnson springs to mind) abused the powers of the presidency, but those abuses were not fully known at the time and so cannot be said to have been ratified...
...As stated in Article I, Section 3, more is required for conviction in the Senate: When the President of the United States is tried the Chief justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present...
...republic where coups take the form of impeachments rather than firing squads...
...Though Nixon's poll numbers steadily declined, even at the end, when the evidence of wrongdoing was incontrovertible, about a quarter of the American electorate continued to support him...
...How the West Bank became "Arab country...
...What are the facts...
...In 1967, Egyptian president Abdel Nasser, joined by the same array of Arab armies that had unsuccessfully tried to destroy Israel at its birth in 1948, launched another war against Israel "to drive the Jews into the sea" and into oblivion, once and for all...
...Bill Clinton came to office promising the most ethical administration in our history and has instead given us the sleaziest...
...Whatever the legal meaning, Henry Hyde knows, in the Tyrrell-Anonymous scenario, that impeachment ultimately depends upon persuading the public of its necessity...
...ROBERT H. BORK is John M. Olin Scholar in Legal Studies at the American Enterprise Institute...
...That rule contains no exception for corrupt kings...
...The common sense of the matter supports the conclusion Tyrrell The American Spectator • December 1997 75 beneficiaries were friends of Mrs...
...In what can be described as an almost biblical miracle, the Jews defeated them...
...That has been and is being repeated so often that many have come to accept it as truth...
...Amnesia spread like a plague in the Clinton administration...
...and "Anonymous" make the case—and a powerful case it is — in The Impeachment ofWilliam Jefferson Clinton...
...It is the premise of Tyrrell and Anonymous's book, however, that a similar anti-Clinton fervor can be created by nationally televised impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives that make plainto the public the many abuses of power of this administration, abuses that could not have occurred without orchestration from the White House, whether from Hillary's East Wing or Bill's West Wing, or both...
...His most recent book is Slouching Towards Gomorrah (HarperCollins...
...Whether Mr...
...The stage is set...
...To recount every instance would require a multi-volume set...
...Box 590359 ^ San Francisco,CA 94159 FLAME is a 501(c)(3) educational institution...
...This attempt to overthrow the will of the people wasn't aimed at himself alone, he said, but was aimed at usurping the Constitution...
...That would be his revenge and his final degradation of American politics and the office he held...
...Tracing the firing decision to its source, Henry Hyde established that the funds involved in the Travel Office were not taxpayers' money but contributions from the news organizations whose transportation the Office handled...
...Only two presidents have been seriously threatened with impeachment...
...As he had seen twenty-four years earlier, respect for the institution of the presidency can sustain the man who holds the office long after respect for the man himself has diminished, or even disappeared...
...It is clear from this short history that Israel's claim to the "West Bank" is far stronger than that of the Arabs...
...They cannot use "misdemeanor" in the modem sense, for it would be senseless to specify treason, bribery, and high crimes if the misdemeanors of jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk would suffice for conviction...
...Palestine" is the entire area now covered by Israel including Judea/Samaria (the so-called "West Bank") and what is now the Kingdom of Jordan...
...In 1947, after decades of strife between Arabs and Jews, the British decided to relinquish the Mandate...
...This ad has been published and paid for by FL AME Fads and Logic about re Mod& East P.O...
...A recap of history...
...On the other hand, there is the very real danger that Bill Clinton's behavior, his abuse of power, if not his personal habits, will become a precedent if we accept it and, by our inaction, ratify it...
...It's only by constant repitition that the world has come to think of these territories as "occupied Arab land...
...Yet, in her written responses to Rep...
...Buckley goes on to discuss the Second Vatican Council and its mixed message: on the one hand it did some much-needed updating of the Catholic Church, but on the other it seemed to set it on a path of free-fall to liberalism...
Vol. 30 • December 1997 • No. 12
