Panel’s Vote on Impeachment

Dec. 12, 1998, a date that will live in infamy! The House Judiciary Committee, led by right-wing extremists, started the process to overturn this country’s 1996 presidential election. The Republicans will be soundly defeated in November 2000 unless their moderates wake up in time this week.

WATANA CHAROENRATH

Agoura Hills

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Clearly, the actions of the majority of the House Judiciary Committee are the latest chapter in the engineering of a bloodless coup that began with the right-wing funding of the bogus Paula Jones lawsuit, the illegal wiretapping of Monica Lewinsky and the appalling investigation conducted by Ken Starr. Who is holding the extreme right accountable for this assault against the Constitution and the will of the people?

I do not condone for a second the president’s actions, but these guys have lowered the standards required for impeachment to “probable cause”--precisely the circumstance the framers wanted to prevent. Can you imagine anyone with half a brain wanting to be president?

DAVID ELLIS

Sherman Oaks

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I am a registered Democrat who has voted Republican in the last two presidential elections. Then and as well as now, I find Bill Clinton totally lacking in the leadership and moral qualities held by some of my heroes in the Democratic Party, like Bobby Kennedy, and Sens. Harold Hughes, Sam Ervin and Adlai Stevenson III. If Democrats really want a strong presidency, they will do whatever they can to encourage President Clinton to once again become citizen Clinton so as not to put our country through any more of this agony.

BOB McKAY

North Hills

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I could not help notice the striking contrast on Sunday between President Clinton’s magnificent speech in Jerusalem and the rhetoric on television by Republican members of the House and the Senate. President Clinton’s brilliant speech dealt with the peace process in the Middle East, which will affect the lives and survival of millions of persons, perhaps including ourselves. The pinched, puritanical faces of the elected Republicans reflected their narrow, moralistic certitude as they condemned the president as unfit because he may not have told the whole truth about whether he had, or had not, touched the breast and genitals of an eager and consenting adult female.

There is a tragic lack of perspective here, and as a lifelong Republican I deplore the influence of the Christian right, which in my opinion is neither Christian nor right.

DAVID WARDELL

Santa Ana

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If the House leadership disallows its members to vote on whether the president should be censured, the Republican duplicity will be further exposed. Americans have made it clear that such a resolution is a serious option to our dilemma; why then should our representatives not vote on this pertinent national issue? Does the House know better? Or is further humiliation of the president more important to the Republicans than a quick and reasonable resolution?

MICHAEL O’MALLEY

Sun City

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The Democrats want censure, the Republicans want impeachment. Well, the Democrats have always been soft on crime.

CHRISTOPHER T. HICKS

Long Beach

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In your Dec. 12 editorial, you state that the president’s behavior was “most deplorable of all.” Get off your high horse. Spending millions and millions of taxpayers’ dollars to put a popular, twice-elected president in the crosshairs of an investigation that included his private life is the most deplorable act by a political party in the history of the republic. Republicans have shown that they are unable to govern as a majority party. They put politics before country. They’re the ones that should be impeached. I and the vast majority are outraged.

STEVE BAKER

Los Angeles

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Your editorial gives all the reasons to justify the impeachment of the president. Then it comes up with the stupid recommendation of opprobrium, a joint resolution signed by Clinton that does anything but provide a responsible alternative to impeachment. It simply lets the president get away with the despicable behavior you so eloquently describe that justifies impeachment. Where is your sense of reason?

C.V. RUZEK JR.

Los Angeles

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So Rep. Henry Hyde wants Clinton to resign in order to spare the nation (Dec. 14). What really worries Hyde is the fact that Republicans, as much as Clinton, will be on trial before our country. While Clinton’s acts are deplorable they are not impeachable. Republicans have recklessly brought this country to the precipice and now may reap the whirlwind. Remember the old saying about not wishing for something too much because you may just get it?

NORMA FITTON

San Luis Obispo

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I guess Republicans hate Bill Clinton more than Democrats disliked Ronald Reagan.

JAY CROSBY

Oxnard

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The juxtaposition of two Dec. 12 front-page articles, “Panel Approves 3 Impeachment Counts” and “Rep. Kim Closes District Offices, Can’t Be Found,” points up a unique situation for me and my neighbors. The House, in which I am apparently not currently represented, is moving toward consideration of impeaching a president for whom I voted twice. I am being governed without representation--isn’t that unconstitutional?

ALISON M. GRIMES

Yorba Linda

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Re “Clinton’s Words of Remorse Fall on Deaf Ears,” Dec. 12: deja vu. Another apology from Clinton. How many more will there be? How can we believe his “sincere” apologies when his lying was so sincere? Like the Sophists of ancient Greece he uses words to attempt to manipulate the listener, e.g. the “wag the finger” speech of Jan. 26 when he denied any sexual relationship with Lewinsky and his self-aggrandizing “repentance” at the September prayer breakfast. Clinton sees truth as merely a servant of his ambition.

JOHN HAGGERTY

Woodland Hills

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The difference between President Clinton and the pro-impeachment lunatics? Clinton has apologized.

WILLIAM D. WOLFF

Los Angeles

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Re Column Left, “Nothing Is Enough for the Republicans,” Dec. 13: I thank Robert Scheer for his erudite summation. As a registered independent, once a Republican, I mourn the lack of bipartisan fairness displayed by members of the House Judiciary Committee and Republican members of Congress. The Republicans have their “pound of flesh.” Their self-righteous posturing is a mocking spectacle of a once democratic government.

It is evident there is no regard for the will of the people but only what the politicians think is good for us. I find it difficult to imagine ever voting for a candidate from the “Grand Old Party” again.

GLENETTA FARRELL

South Laguna

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History will record one indisputable fact concerning the current impeachment process: President Clinton was, indeed, prosecuted and judged by a “jury” of his peers.

ROBERT M. ROCCO

Los Angeles