Impeachment Trial

CHICAGO - Gov. Rod Blagojevich will go to Springfield, Ill., to make the closing argument in his impeachment trial today, state Senate President John Cullerton said yesterday. Blagojevich, who has boycotted the impeachment trial, will not take questions from senators, Cullerton said. Cullerton told the Senate the news as he was going over scheduling. The Senate had been expecting final witnesses yesterday and a single closing argument this morning from House prosecutor David Ellis. Now, they expect the governor to appear in front of the Senate.

CHICAGO - Gov. Rod Blagojevich will go to Springfield, Ill., to make the closing argument in his impeachment trial today, state Senate President John Cullerton said yesterday. Blagojevich, who has boycotted the impeachment trial, will not take questions from senators, Cullerton said. Cullerton told the Senate the news as he was going over scheduling. The Senate had been expecting final witnesses yesterday and a single closing argument this morning from House prosecutor David Ellis. Now, they expect the governor to appear in front of the Senate.

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Senate indefinitely adjourned the impeachment trial of President Joseph Estrada yesterday as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets to demand the president's resignation. The Senate, which had voted not to accept new evidence of alleged payoffs to the president, concluded that it could not continue the impeachment case after all 11 prosecutors resigned in protest of the Tuesday vote. The decision to suspend the hearing handed Estrada a significant victory as he fights to keep his job in the face of allegations that he accepted at least $74 million in illegal payments.

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Senate indefinitely adjourned the impeachment trial of President Joseph Estrada yesterday as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets to demand the president's resignation. The Senate, which had voted not to accept new evidence of alleged payoffs to the president, concluded that it could not continue the impeachment case after all 11 prosecutors resigned in protest of the Tuesday vote. The decision to suspend the hearing handed Estrada a significant victory as he fights to keep his job in the face of allegations that he accepted at least $74 million in illegal payments.

WASHINGTON -- Two days after the Senate struck an unexpected note of harmony with an agreement on how to conduct the impeachment trial of President Clinton, Republicans and Democrats disagreed anew yesterday over the one overriding question that threatens to cleave the two parties: whether to call witnesses. With the Senate poised to hear opening arguments in the trial Thursday, Senate Republicans spanning the ideological spectrum spoke forcefully yesterday for the need to hear from witnesses who could clarify factual disputes in the case against Clinton.

WASHINGTON -- In a move that could anger some on Capitol Hill, Vice President Al Gore has begun consulting with Senate Democrats about President Clinton's impeachment trial and is exploring a role for himself in the procedural disputes leading up to it.In an interview with the Los Angeles Times conducted Tuesday night but embargoed for release until today, Gore suggested that he might have to cast a tie-breaking vote in pretrial motions. Gore, whose only constitutional duty is to preside over the Senate, might be called on to break a tie vote, for instance, in such procedural matters as the admissibility of evidence.

PRESIDENT Clinton should deliver the State of the Union address to Congress on time Jan. 19. If members are too embarrassed to invite Mr. Clinton to the Capitol, he can send it on paper as did 19th century presidents. Then there's nothing to stop him from addressing the American public on television. The worst idea yet came from senators of both parties who said Mr. Clinton should delay his speech, so as not to mingle with them while under impeachment. Nonsense. President Clinton has been good about carrying out duties while under a cloud.

WASHINGTON -- The senators' first chance to shape President Clinton's impeachment trial -- their opportunity to ask questions -- opens today and continues tomorrow.The process is partly controlled by long-standing rules, but it may well change character -- several times -- as it unfolds.Lyle Denniston of The Sun's national staff provides answers about the history of that phase of the trial, and how it could work this time.Why are senators allowed to ask questions at all?That is a traditional right, dating to the earliest impeachment trials.

AMONG the ironies surrounding the Senate's impeachment trial of President Clinton is that this political trial of the century is presided over by one of the most partisan of Supreme Court chief justices, William H. Rehnquist. Because justices are supposed to be removed from politics, the fact that Mr. Rehnquist has hovered on the sidelines of this controversy all along is often overlooked.Yet, Mr. Rehnquist had a hand in numerous decisions now culminating in the Senate's trial. In 1988, he wrote the Supreme Court's opinion upholding the constitutionality of independent counsels.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, after a summer away from the constitutional drama that is preoccupying the other two branches of the government, will become involved itself this week on the eve of a new term.Starting tomorrow, the justices will add new cases to their docket for decisions over the next nine months, and among the first cases they will examine are two coming out of the White House sex scandal. The selection of new cases precedes the formal opening of the term Oct. 5.And, out of public view, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist will be doing some thinking, if not some actual preparations, for a historic role that could await him: presiding over a possible Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton.

WASHINGTON -- Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist went back across the street yesterday to his day job at the Supreme Court. Along with a plaque and the memory of a standing ovation from an appreciative Senate, Rehnquist took with him fresh insights into the way Congress works.The final six minutes of the five weeks that Rehnquist spent in the Senate chamber presiding over Clinton's impeachment trial, were, in fact, the chief justice's moment, unlike anything a judge would experience at the end of a normal court trial.

THE ONE sure outcome of the impeachment trial is that the rule of law has been diminished as much by Republicans as by Democrats. And, to the chagrin of many of his constituents, House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde has become its chief detractor.According to a recent Chicago Tribune poll of Mr. Hyde's conservative Illinois district, 35 percent of the respondents said their opinion of the congressman had dropped because of his handling of the impeachment proceedings.In his opening statement to the Senate, Mr. Hyde cited the case of Sir Thomas More, a former lord chancellor who was executed in 1535 for refusing to swear an oath that the king of England was supreme over the pope.

NOW that President Clinton's spokesman has promised that his boss won't throw a victory party when the impeachment trial is over -- now that the White House has been declared a "gloat-free zone" -- maybe the Senate will finally find a way to call a halt to this futile exhibition of political tap-dancing.After much talk about a plan to approve a "finding of fact" that would enable the Senate to pronounce Mr. Clinton guilty of impeachable offenses without actually convicting him, it is now obvious that the proposal was primarily a product of certain senators' preoccupation with Mr. Clinton's penchant for dancing in the end zone.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate hears final arguments today in President Clinton's impeachment trial, amid fresh signs of trouble for proponents of a toughly worded measure condemning Clinton for his behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.A group of Democratic and Republican senators is eager to have a Senate vote on a resolution censuring the president this week, immediately after his expected acquittal on impeachment charges. But chances appear to be fading for quick action.One leading opponent of the idea, Republican Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, warns that he will do everything he can to block a censure vote after the trial ends.

Down in South Houston, Texas, there are some indelible truths: Chicken fried steak is best cooked well-done, seafood better be fresh from the Gulf of Mexico and whoever is elected mayor will probably be impeached.This town scoffs at Congress' meager record of two impeached presidents in 131 years. South Houston's City Council has impeached and removed two mayors in the past five, the most recent in November. One of the mayors who served between those beleaguered administrations survived an impeachment attempt, and the other, battle-fatigued, quit.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate's agonizing over whether and how to interrogate witnesses as part of the impeachment trial is much ado about nothing.The witnesses are being summoned for depositions not because of the testimony they may give but instead because the Senate Republicans yielded to the insistence of the House prosecutors making the case against President Clinton.To do otherwise, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott decided, would be to show contempt for fellow Republicans already in political hot water.

There's a sure way to speed up the impeachment trial. Omit the defense. Actual snow and ice are not required to paralyze Bawlamer and Washington. The very thought suffices. Delaware has its own quarter. It always was a two-bit state. Madeleine told Peter the O's may play in Havana, but somebody better check it out with Fidel. Pub Date: 1/06/99

I am so proud to be a Republican these days because they are doing what is right for this country regardless of their political futures. How dare the Democrats accuse them of acting partisan? The Democrats are the ones who have acted totally partisan from the beginning in their defense of this embarrassment of a president.During the voting on the impeachment articles, six times as many Republicans as Democrats crossed the aisle and voted with their conscience and sworn oath. Now we need 12 Senate Democrats to truly listen to the overabundance of evidence and vote their common sense.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland is recovering in a Baltimore hospital after surgery yesterday morning to remove her inflamed gallbladder. She is expected to be released sometime today."She is doing fine, resting comfortably," said Mona Miller, Mikulski's spokeswoman. "Her doctors recommended that she stay in the hospital overnight for rest and observation."Mikulski, a 62-year-old Democrat who won her third term in November, checked herself into Mercy Medical Center on Tuesday, complaining of severe flu-like symptoms.