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Weekly Newspaper and Tourism Guide for Ward County Trans Pecos, Big Bend of West Texas

Opinion

September 17, 1998

Monahan's Well


By Jerry Curry
This nation easily can survive the loss of a president. Presidents have
been coming and going for more than 200 years and the nation survives.
Abe Lincoln and George Washington, I am certain, constantly are amazed
at that fact but fact it is.

True, this nation has never fired a president but it looks like that is
a real possibility of course in the case of William Jefferson Blythe,
now William Jefferson Clinton. I wonder if it is true that
Blythe-Clinton changed his name from that of his real father to that of
his adoptive father to confuse the draft board. Probably not. If so it
didn't work, he still had to run to England and the Soviet Union to
avoid getting shot at in the unpleasantness some of us recall as The
Indochina War (older hands); and others remember as Vietnam.

Of course, President Richard M. Nixon would have been fired but he
chose to resign, thereby saving himself the costs, legally and
spiritually, of being tried in the Senate on charges of high crimes and
misdemeanors.

Andrew Johnson was tried by the Senate but acquitted because a
two-thirds vote is necessary to convict. The House brought him to the
Senate dock because Johnson fired Ed Stanton, Johnson and Lincoln's
secretary of war, in the midst of Reconstruction. Stanton and others
did not like the way in which Johnson was handling the just defeated
Southern states. Johnson preferred a helping hand to the defeated
Confederacy that would make them strong embers of the just saved union.
Stanton and his cronies figured the best thing to do with the old
Confederacy was to steal anything left after the war, a policy they
pretty much followed until about 1900.

Essentially history teaches us several things about the impeachment
process.

There has been only one. It didn't work. It is true that Johnson chose
not to seek the presidential office again so maybe, in the long run, it
did work.

High crimes and misdemeanors, despite all the screaming lawyers in the
universe, can be defined in the impeachment process anyway the House of
Representatives so chooses. For example, the House considered the firing
of Ed Stanton a high crime and misdemeanor and so proceeded to vote
articles of impeachment.

In the current case, there actually is evidence and an attempt at
something comparable to what might happen in a court of law. There are
charges of perjury (which the target acknowledges one day and denies the
next), witness tampering (which the target denies) and a host of other
charges too numerous to mention.

This is of interest because the impeachment process is not a judicial
process. It is a political process. There are no juries and no courts.
There are no constitutional grounds to appeal no matter what happens.
And if the target is found guilty, all the House of Representatives and
the U.S. Senate can do is remove the target from office.

Some have said they may be able to take his pension. But I believe that
is wishful thinking. There is no provision for taking his pension even
if he is fired under the statutes relating to the target's pension.

Either Clinton quits or he's fired


Bill Clinton must be removed as president of the United States, either
by resignation or the impeachment process. Bill Clinton must be
terminated as president of the United States - either he quits or we
fire him.

That is the bottom line of a presidency mired in self indulgence. That
is the bottom line in a presidency mired in moral decay comprised of
Chinese bribery, illegal campaign contributions and, yes, sexual
perversion. That is the bottom line of a presidency we now know was
founded on lies and which is perpetuated by lies.

Clinton's fate is with the House Judiciary Committee which would draft
the articles of impeachment if they are to be prepared.

If nothing else, the perjuries which Clinton acknowledges are more than
enough to remove him from office as quickly as would be judicious.
Clinton lied under oath in depositions on the Paula Jones Case and to
the Grand Jury investigating the White House Intern Affair.

For those who may actually believe the White House lawyers when they say
lies and perjuries are not synonyms. They are wrong. The legal
definition of perjury is simple - a falsehood made under oath in a
proceeding of the judicial system. Clinton lied under oath. If it had
been anyone else in this nation except the president, the perjurer
already would be serving time in a federal penitentiary.

Bill Clinton's sexual peccadilloes obviously are part of the events
that are combining to bring him down. In an attempt to keep his
appetites hidden, Clinton attempted to manipulate his staff, his victim
and the American people. He acknowledges this. He has apologized for it.
The latest perversions took place in the Oval Office of the White House,
the base of the business known as the federal government of the United
States.

Any one else who did at work what Clinton says he did at work would be
fired and should be.

The time has come to end this fiasco. Already the Democratic and
Republican leadership seem to agree that the process must proceed. This
removal of Clinton must be done. Democratic and Republican leaders know
it.

It is the Democrats who are most hurt by this man.

It is the Democrats who may be able to salvage something from the
November elections if they can remove the President before Election Day.
Republicans already control the U.S. Senate and the House of
Representatives. This is a nonpartisan issue.

Clinton should be removed from office because of what he has done. The
special prosecutor did not take an oath to tell the truth and then
proceed to violate that oath with a tapestry of lies.

Bill Clinton must be removed from office.



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