Speaking of Impeachment...

The Sunday talk shows looked like a rump meeting of Congress, with 19 lawmakers taking to the airwaves to state their views on the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton. Here is a sample of the rhetoric, right and left.

THE DEMOCRATS

“If we [call witnesses] for the House managers, we’re going to have to do this for the president of the United States. And I can assure you, if I’m any reader of the tea leaves in this situation, front and center is going to be Kenneth Starr, and we will go through prosecutorial abuse, how he came by information, who he talked to, and we are going to put the system of justice on trial.”

--Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) on “Face the Nation”

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“The political science teacher in me says, ‘Wait a minute. We talk about removing a president when that president’s a threat to the security of the country, when that president constitutes a threat to the freedom and liberty of the country.’ I don’t think we’re at that threshold.”

--Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) on “Meet the Press”

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“What will it say to the rule of law ... if a government investigator, charged with one responsibility to investigate one thing, winds up investigating the private life ... of a politician and uses [that] as the underlying act of incrimination? That is a very serious set of consequences for precedent.”

--Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) on “Meet the Press”

“This is not a courtroom ... This is not ‘Perry Mason.’ This is not something where somebody suddenly comes running in the courtroom and says, ‘Oh, my God! I did it!”’

--Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) on “This Week”

“We’re more than just jurors. We have to take into account not only facts and law, but the public good, history, what this will mean for the future, how it affects the country, how it affects our standing in the world. We have to weigh all of these things. Juries don’t do that.”

--Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) on “This Week”

“If you get into the witness issue ... if you got that route ... we could be talking May or June before you finish this trial. And I think the Senate ought to think seriously before it goes that length of time.”

--Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) on “Meet the Press”

THE REPUBLICANS

“I really do think witnesses will be essential to get to the bottom-line truth with certainty.... It’s one thing to have lawyers tell you what happened. It’s another thing to have the people who were there tell you what happened.”

--House Impeachment manager Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) on “Face the Nation”

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“I think we’ve changed some minds in regard to witnesses. ... I think that this was the first time the senators and American public have been able to sit down and listen to how comprehensive the case is against the president, free of interruptions and partisan sniping.”

--House impeachment manager F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) on “This Week”

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“The defenders of the president ... have pointed to the public opinion polls (and say) that obviously you shouldn’t remove a popular president. (But) 63% of the American people think the president ought to testify. Now, he can’t have it both ways. If the people want the president to testify, maybe the president should testify.”

--Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on “Face the Nation”

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“The reality is there is only one standard for impeachment. It applies to all federal officials. Who wants to say behavior that is unacceptable for a federal judge is acceptable for the president of the United States?”

--Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) on “This Week”

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“It was right on this program, last summer, when I told the president

--Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) on “Meet the Press”