Thread: Impeach Bush?
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Old 03-28-2007, 06:26 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2007
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Same old news from the first term.

Many Democratic partisans will, of course, regard this as tit-for-tat: a condign repayment for the Republicans' impeachment of Clinton. But no two impeachments are alike, and there are interesting differences between the cases of Clinton and Bush. Clinton had undeniably committed two felonies -- perjury and obstruction of justice -- in his desperate efforts to conceal his sexual misconduct. But his supporters argued that these offenses didn't rise to the level of the "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" for which the Constitution authorizes impeachment. In the case of Bush, the misdeeds of which he is accused seem more clearly of this type; it is whether they were indeed crimes, and whether Bush in fact committed them, that is disputed.

Bear in mind that, while it is the House that has the power to impeach a president, it is the Senate that would try him, and that could (by a two-thirds vote) remove him from office. Thus Clinton was impeached by the House, and tried by the Senate, but the vote to remove him failed when only 50 senators, instead of 67, voted to do so.
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