The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.38           October 26, 1998 
 
 
Clinton To Face Impeachment Inquiry  

BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution October 8 to "investigate fully and completely whether sufficient grounds exist" to impeach President William Clinton. The inquiry was authorized by a vote of 258 to 176. The investigator for the House Judiciary Committee outlined 15 possible impeachment counts that stem from the sex scandal involving former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. One of the charges asserted that Clinton "may have given false testimony under oath before the Federal grand jury" concerning the affair.

The independent counsel Kenneth Starr had previously delivered a 445-page report to Congress September 10, accusing Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice and urged that impeachment proceedings begin against him. That report, which consists mostly of lewd accounts of Clinton's alleged sexual activities, was immediately published in book form and on the Internet. A total of 70,000 pages of such "evidence" have been generated by Starr's "investigation." On September 21, the three major broadcast networks and four cable stations aired Clinton's four-hour testimony before the grand jury.

This lurid spectacle has fed into the "culture war" of the right wing. Patrick Buchanan seized on it to denounce the "Woodstock values" of the "elite." In a similar vein, columnist Joseph Sobran described the scandal as the result of a "Culture of Candor" in a September 22 commentary, coming to the defense of Starr as "an old-fashioned Christian gentleman."

Liberal figures remain divided over the proceedings. Congress made the right decision in "authorizing an open-ended inquiry," stated the editors of the Washington Post in an October 9 editorial. The same day the New York Times editors stated their position is to "advocate a censure conditioned on Mr. Clinton's admission of lying under oath."

 
 
 
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