When you are on the “winning” side of some soon to be resolved issue, you are naturally disinclined to invite detailed argument about the merits of your position. Congressional Democrats believe they have this Clinton-Lewinsky matter locked down tight. So last Monday, at the House Constitution Sub-committee hearing on standards for presidential impeachment, they felt no need to engage in any serious debate about the foreordained result.
Perjury charges against the president? They have long since been adequately addressed by the newspaper funny pages, according to Rep. John Conyers; “Garry Trudeau dismissed that a few weeks ago.” The continuing controversy over those charges? It is a “jihad” and a “witch hunt,” according to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, something that bears comparison to “the 17th-century Court of Star Chamber or to a Moscow show trial of the 1930s.” On what basis are we to resolve the controversy? We need look no further, every Democrat insisted, than recent election results and poll numbers. And once we’re done, then what? We must get on with more important public business — like, Rep. Maxine Waters suggested, the “long-standing fallout of drugs and the CIA issue that I’ve been working on for the past two years.”
