This phrase, as we understand it, conjures images of the president engaged in felonious conduct punishable by a prison sentence. However, our founders did not intend to create such a threshold. According to legal scholar Charles L. Black, in his thoughtful 1974 survey, Impeachment: A Handbook, English history seems to establish with some clarity that the British did not understand the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" as denoting only common crimes, but in some sense saw it as including serious misconduct in office, whether or not punishable as crime in the ordinary courts.
Indeed, in their writings, the founders embraced a similar understanding. In No. 65 of The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton wrote that impeachment concerned "those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust." Even Hillary Clinton, while acting in her capacity as a staff member of the Nixon impeachment inquiry, concluded that high crimes and misdemeanors meant not a criminal offense but an injury to the state or system of government.
Under this traditional interpretation, Bill Clinton's illegal fund-raising activities, his unlawful use of FBI files for political purposes, and his countless examples of moral turpitude clearly fall within the scope of impeachable offenses.
The crisis in the White House does not begin with the independent counsel statute, as Ms. Postrel writes. It begins with a morally bankrupt president who thinks he's above the law. As such, he deserves everything he gets.
Andrew E.
Andersen
Communications Consultant
Senate Republican Caucus
Poor Bill Clinton? All-powerful Ken Starr? Come on. After a string of scandals--Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, campaign money laundering, Chinagate--Ken Starr was ready to give up. He hadn't laid a glove on Clinton. During that time nobody complained about his investigations. Then the president, who evidently enjoys skating on thin ice, fell through. Knowing full well he was being dogged by an IC, he opened himself up to charges of perjury, suborning perjury, and obstruction of justice. Likely Clinton will skate on those charges too.
But we're supposed to shudder at the all-powerful IC and feel sympathy for the man holding the most powerful and sensitive office in the world for being stupid enough to take up with an unstable, ex-teeny bopper blabbermouth? It's his private business? The president of the United States puts himself in a compromising position, subject to blackmail and ridicule, and it's his private business?
The IC slightly weakens the office of president. Whoever holds that position won't be able to (or won't risk trying to) get away with some illegal things he otherwise might try. I'm surprised that a libertarian magazine finds that distressing. I would assign an IC to every president upon his inauguration. Judging from the effectiveness of past ICs, it would be a largely symbolic gesture. But maybe it would help some of these fellows keep their pants on while acting as president of the United States.
Virginia Postrel replies: Mr. Andersen seems to confuse my editorial, which specifically concerned the Lewinsky affair, with a discussion of such matters as illegal fund raising and the unlawful use of FBI files. Those may or may not be impeachable offenses, legally or politically, but it's pretty clear to me that sexual activity between consenting adults, however morally revolting it may be in this case, is not the sort of thing the Constitution's Framers had in mind.
Mr. Glasgow's impassioned cry for unbounded prosecutorial power--to be unleashed on all presidents and, of necessity, on all those who choose to work with or know them, and to be limited not only to crimes but to such offenses as "tak[ing] up with an unstable, ex-teeny bopper blabbermouth"--is truly frightening. I can only refer him to Mr. Allen's letter and to the wise words the playwright Robert Bolt put in the mouth of Sir Thomas More: "I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake." That concept, not a defense of Bill Clinton's character, was the subject of my editorial.
Domestic Arguments
Since I doubt that REASON would give me the space to respond to all the mischaracterizations of my argument in Cathy Young's review of my book Domestic Tranquility ("Women on the Verge," April) I address only four.
I do not impatiently brush aside all dissident critiques of radical feminism, but cite some approvingly as ably documented attacks and masterful analyses. It was not the purpose of these critiques to defend traditional women (nor did they try). I fault one critic who, while claiming to support traditionalism in some sense, rejects the concept of women's dependence on men for support and protection because she believes that domesticity cannot be a satisfactory story of an intelligent woman's life, an assertion that negates any support she might have given.
It was not necessary to my argument to develop the Siegfried legend any further than I did. If Young chooses to do so, she should explain that Siegfried married another woman while under a spell cast by his enemies. As he lay dying, mortally wounded by these enemies, the spell lifted, he was reunited with Brunhilde, and she then threw herself on his funeral pyre.
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