Impeachment Process

WASHINGTON -- When House impeachment hearings opened, everyone was certain of one thing: Congress would never impeach President Clinton.Today, that prediction is very much in doubt. The House of Representatives seems ready to approve at least one article of impeachment next week, sending the matter to the Senate for trial.This represents a breathtaking reversal of fortune for Clinton, who looked to be home-free last month as hearings began.After all, the Republicans had failed to make gains in the midterm elections, and it was House Speaker Newt Gingrich, not the president, who was forced out.If Clinton is impeached, it wouldn't be the first time conventional wisdom was proved wrong this year.

WASHINGTON -- Judiciary Committee lawyers were formally drafting three articles of impeachment yesterday, accusing President Clinton of lying under oath, obstructing justice and, in the most aggressive charge, abusing the power of his office "to thwart the search for truth."As Republican aides decided to present the committee with the broadest possible case against the president, the White House unveiled a new defense strategy, deciding to directly rebut the specific charges as well as broadly attack the investigation and impeachment process.

ELMHURST, Ill. -- Rep. Henry J. Hyde sat Buddha-like at the local Elks Club as his -admirers in the Elmhurst Republican Women's Club gingerly approached to offer encouragement: "Good luck, Henry," they said, or "We're praying for you," or "You've got a big job ahead of you."But sitting quietly at a table with surprisingly few other guests, Hyde seemed more weary than confident -- almost as if he already knew, on that Thursday night before the election, that his life was about to go from difficult to nightmarish.

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans began searching yesterday for a way out of the impeachment process against President Clinton, even as the most conservative GOP members of the Judiciary Committee sounded as uncompromising as ever.Republican losses in last week's election and the resulting ouster of House Speaker Newt Gingrich have drastically altered the political landscape, leaving the Judiciary Committee stuck with a mission that some Republican members no longer want to undertake."There are clearly guys on this committee and in this [Republican]

WASHINGTON -- While it can't be said that last Tuesday's congressional elections were a referendum on impeaching President Clinton, the swiftness with which House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde now proposes to complete his committee's inquiry clearly is in harmony with the exit polls indicating voters want Mr. Clinton's fate decided posthaste.In interviews by Voter News Service with 7,855 voters in 250 randomly selected precincts as they left their polling places, 59 percent of those surveyed said Mr. Clinton was not a factor in how they voted.

IN DECIDING TO step down as Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich spared his party a period of agony from which it could only have emerged weaker.The Georgia Republican's announcement Friday came only three days after the GOP lost five House seats in midterm elections that became a referendum on his leadership and Republican conduct of the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.The embarrassing losses in the U.S. House contrasted with significant statehouse wins by moderate gubernatorial candidates who appealed to nontraditional GOP voters: George E. Pataki in New York, Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, George W. Bush in Texas, and his brother Jeb Bush in Florida.

WASHINGTON -- Even before the dimensions of their debacle were fully revealed Tuesday evening, Republican congressional leaders were responding with interesting insouciance. Displaying an inventiveness they might try applying to the development of an agenda, Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Majority Leader Dick Armey said essentially this:The president's party prospered because he enjoyed an unfair advantage. Which was? Monica. The sex scandal and impeachment proceedings obsessed the media (Mr. Gingrich)

WASHINGTON -- The operative question now is how far the Republicans are prepared to carry the investigation of President Clinton without achieving at least a semblance of bipartisanship.Simple arithmetic tells us that the president cannot be impeached on Republican votes alone. There are 55 Republicans in the Senate, and 67 votes would be required to remove the president from office after an impeachment trial there.But, arithmetic aside, it would be politically foolhardy for the Republicans to press a case that would be seen by the electorate as a totally partisan exercise.

WASHINGTON -- With Congress moving toward an impeachment inquiry of William Jefferson Clinton, the threshold question for lawmakers today is the same one House members faced nearly a quarter-century ago in considering the fate of President Richard M. Nixon: What should Congress deem an impeachable offense?Already, there is sharp disagreement about whether President Clinton's behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal rises to the level loosely defined by the framers of the Constitution as "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

WASHINGTON -- Congressional conservatives -- angered by suggestions that President Clinton could escape his troubles with a censure -- dug in their heels yesterday and demanded that the impeachment process move forward.Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma, the Senate's second-ranking Republican, said conservatives had approached him to express their chagrin that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch had suggested that Congress consider a punishment short of impeachment. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott had made similar overtures over the weekend.