Word: gavels
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...impeachment hawk like Pat Robertson tells you to get off the stage. Robertson told the audience of his "700 Club" TV show that President Clinton "hit a home run" with the State of the Union Speech -- and that as far as he was concerned, Republicans should take their gavel and go home. As conversions go, it was as if the Pope had suddenly begun reciting the Koran at mass. And it provided even more cover to the growing list of Republicans who are glancing at Clinton's stratospheric poll numbers and nervously looking for the exit. "A lot of Republicans...
...Henry Hyde read the two articles of impeachment, and Chief Justice Rehnquist was sworn in as judge by the Senate's own Methuselah, Strom Thurmond. Then the Senate jurors bent and signed the oath book, each getting to keep his own ceremonial pen. With a tap of Rehnquist's gavel, the historic moment was complete, and Senators could get back to their squabble...
...much of November, Republicans were looking everywhere for an impeachment escape hatch. The midterm elections had gone badly, and everyone blamed it on the party's obsession with ousting the President. Shut it down, said party elders; take Henry Hyde's gavel away and move on. In the House, G.O.P. members began discussing milder presidential punishments as if they were debating different models of a new car. Formulations like "censure," "censure plus," and "censure with teeth" came in and out of fashion. With Gingrich out, Hyde's committee in obvious disarray and Livingston showing no stomach for dealing with...
...also difficult for Americans to invest in the spectacle because committee members, Republicans and Democrats alike, checked all pretense of impartiality in the cloakroom, with Democrats aiming a fusillade of sneers at Republican chairman Henry Hyde within minutes of the opening gavel and with Hyde clapping approvingly as Starr left the room 12 hours later. What should have been an uplifting display of American democracy at work had become so tedious and so illegitimate to the Americans who bothered to tune in that even Starr suggested he might rather be elsewhere. If not for his commitment to duty, the witness...
That hardly mattered to the outcome, since minds were made up before the debate began, but it reinforced the sense that this is a headlong descent into quicksand. Newt Gingrich had to raise voice and gavel repeatedly to be heard over chattering staffers and milling members. Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde invoked "our awesome and terrible responsibility," as he likened the offenses President Clinton allegedly committed by concealing his dalliance with Lewinsky to the abuses of government perpetrated by Richard Nixon. "This isn't about sexual misconduct any more than Watergate was about a third-rate burglary," proclaimed Hyde...