Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
The inexorable march towards the "unspeakable" concluded last week.
Despite the public opinion polls, despite the highly partisan nature of the controversy - despite the threat of a long, protracted Senate trial, The United States impeached a sitting president for only the second time in the nation's history.
To nearly two-thirds of the American people, the whole idea that President William Jefferson Clinton will be forced from office is unspeakable - something that borders on a surreal impossibility that is inching ever closer.
What is most disturbing to me is this is all so unnecessary. The president could have spared us all from the long and tortured process now under way. He could have done the honorable thing and resigned.
The facts of the case aren't in dispute, only their interpretation. Virtually everyone agrees the president lied under oath in his deposition given as the defendant in the sexual harassment lawsuit of Paula Jones and again in sworn testimony before the federal grand jury. They may not say "lied." No, they say "misled" or "wasn't candid,"or "was uncooperative." But when you boil it down to brass tacks, he was asked a series of direct, easily understood questions, and he lied each and every time.
OK, so what do we do about it?
Well, if it was me or you, and we lied about a material fact - when a pattern of behavior is needed to corroborate the typical "he said-she said" nature of the allegation - we would be prosecuted for perjury. Sexual relations with current and past employees under your charge is certainly material in a sexual harassment case, because the pattern they establish is strong corroborative evidence of the plaintiff's allegations.
But a perjury prosecution isn't likely to happen to the president, because he is the president. Even if it was, that fact was irrelevant to the question of impeachment to be debated on the floor of the House.
Impeachment is a political cleansing of a corrupt president. Any criminal ramifications are between private citizen William J. Clinton and the judicial branch he tried so hard to obstruct and subvert.
I've heard friends and colleagues urge censure as a substitute for impeachment, and how unfair it is of "those partisan Republicans" not to allow a censure vote to be considered by the House.
I understand their trepidation, but disagree with their premise. Censure of a president by the Congress, while not unconstitutional, is at the very least, "extra-constitutional." And it is a wholly insufficient means of holding a president to account for violating his oath and bringing disgrace upon his office.
Congressional censure has happened only once in the nation's history. In 1834, the Senate censured President Andrew Jackson for not turning over papers regarding the rechartering of the second Bank of the United States. The move had no effect on Jackson or his policies, and was it repealed two years later, when Jackson's party - ironically, the Democrats - regained control of the Senate and promptly removed the censure.
The House has never censured a president.
No, not allowing a vote on censure wasn't unfair. It simply didnot allow the attention of the Congress - the American people - to be swayed from the central issue. That being the president committed 11 counts of perjury, suborned perjury, obstructed justice and abused the power of his office, thereby violating his oath of office. Each of these charges, individually, are grounds for impeachment. Collectively, they demand - they scream - for impeachment.
Whatever happens to President Clinton in this current debacle won't be unfair. What's been unfair is what he did to Paula Jones, what he did to Monica Lewinsky, what he's done to Hillary and Chelsea - what he's done to all of us.
Impeachment wasn't unfair and it isn't unspeakable. The only thing that has been unspeakable in this whole matter has been the truth from the mouth of the president.
And, now it's time for Senate to restore the integrity of the Oval Office President Clinton so cavalierly discarded.
