Impeachment Process Quotes
The first Federal judge who was impeached and convicted was John Pickering of New Hampshire. Jefferson was not pleased with the process that the Congress had to go through:
Weyrich and many other extreme religious conservatives are often loose with legal and political facts. Actually President Clinton was impeached by the Republican Controlled House of Representatives, but was acquitted by the Senate which decided that he was not guilty of what his political enemies had accused him of or those things were not of sufficient import to warrant impeachment. What Weyrich probably meant was that if there had been a moral majority in America, Clinton would have been convicted and removed from office. Ironically, the Republican Speaker of the House which impeached Clinton had been Newt Gingrich, who abandoned his first wife and was having an affair with a staff member. Livingston who was then elected speaker of the House also was committing adultery as were many in the group who found Clinton morally wanting for his sexual activity with am intern and his attempted coverup. They too, tried to cover up their scandalous behavior.
The debate was about the unlimited pardon power of the President. Madison argued that the check was the impeachment power. However, Presidents had tended to make large numbers of pardons just before they leave office so the impeachment power works only as a check for the beginning and middle part of their term.
The issue had first arisen during the Watergate Scandal, where there was concern that if the House held impeachment hearings of President Nixon, he might refuse to provide documents or order others in the Executive Branch not to testify. In this hearing, they were discussing the possible impeachment of President George W. Bush.
