Impeachment Trial

WASHINGTON -- In one of the stranger episodes of the impeachment trial, Sen. Tom Harkin raced through the hallways of the Capitol last evening in hot pursuit of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist."

WASHINGTON -- The world's greatest deliberative body, as the Senate likes to call itself, isn't likely to deliberate in public on whether to convict President Clinton -- or on any other issue in his Senate impeachment trial.A Democratic plan to scrap the 19th-century rule that requires the senators to deliberate on impeachment in private, as regular trial jurors do, got a cool reception yesterday at a meeting of Republican senators."I think the sense was that you get a franker exchange when senators know they aren't going to see everything they say in the press," said Republican Sen. John H. Chafee of Rhode Island.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's impeachment trial will formally open in the Senate tomorrow, and though details on its timing and format are uncertain, White House lawyers are preparing a vigorous defense.The opening of the trial promises to be a momentous piece of political theater. William H. Rehnquist, the chief justice of the United States, will be sworn in to preside over the first presidential impeachment trial since that of Andrew Johnson in 1868. Rehnquist will, in turn, swear in the 100 senators as jurors.

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.

ON NOV. 10, 1982, the day Leonid Brezhnev died, as all the sages of Congress and media thumbsuckers were speculating on the Kremlin succession, Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey sent a CIA assessment to President Reagan.The last sentence of that memo concluded with the director's personal judgment: "As for me, I bet Andropov on the nose and Gorbachev across the board."Horseplayers know that on the nose means "to win," and across the board is a hedged bet to come in among the first three.

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.

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 -- Politicians who get themselves elected to the Senate often begin to take themselves pretty seriously. There are, after all, only 100 of them, so it's easy to get puffed up with self-importance. But this Senate's decision to conduct talks concerning President Clinton's impeachment trial behind closed doors shows how out of touch its members are with the real world. The political insularity of the Republicans -- they were the ones who made the decision -- boggles the mind.

WASHINGTON -- Too torn by partisanship to agree on a grand plan for concluding President Clinton's impeachment trial, the Senate is trying to inch toward the goal of a mid-February finale one step at a time.In the wake of the almost strictly party-line votes they had hoped to avoid, Senate leaders were working last night on a proposal for deposing witnesses over the weekend that would conclude with a vote Tuesday on whether to call any witnesses to testify in person to the Senate.Feuding continued over such issues as whether depositions would be videotaped and what role the White House would play during that process.

WASHINGTON -- At about midday today, William H. Rehnquist will get into the back seat of a Supreme Court limousine and take a quick four-block ride into history -- to the Capitol to become the first chief justice to preside over an impeachment trial of an elected president.The initial duties for the 74-year-old chief justice will be ceremonial only.But nearly every gesture Rehnquist makes is likely to provide at least a hint of the kind of presiding officer he will be when -- and if -- a trial gets fully under way.After today's rituals, Rehnquist will be formally in charge.