Word: livingstones
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...Saturday, the day of the impeachment vote, there was a resignation that stunned the capital, but it wasn't Clinton's. A slow-moving Livingston, head bowed, took the floor to deliver what his colleagues believed would be a speech about the President's transgressions and instead gave a speech about his own. Then Livingston made his way to the now common Republican argument that if Clinton truly wanted to avoid the nightmare of a Senate trial, he should do the honorable thing. "You sir," he addressed the President, "may resign your post." Democrats hissed and moaned. Waters of California...
...cacophony lasted nearly a minute, maybe more. And when it was over, Livingston, who stood bracing his tall, lean frame over the lectern, lifted his head up and delivered the sentences that sucked the air out of the House chamber. "I can only challenge you in such fashion that I am willing to heed my own words," he said, still addressing Clinton. At that there was an audible, collective gasp. At least one Republican lawmaker softly spoke the plea...
...Livingston announced that he would not stand for Speaker and would even resign his House seat within six months. When he finished, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle rose and applauded. Republicans surged toward Livingston and slapped him on the shoulders or hugged him. Florida Representative Mark Foley, sitting just a few feet from where Livingston spoke, wept openly. Republicans like Ed Bryant, a Judiciary Committee member, were dizzy. When he goes home to Tennessee, he said, "I will be taking my phone off the hook...
From the White House, Clinton himself picked up the narrative of this fevered impeachment day and twisted it again. He took the extraordinary step, by way of an announcement made by his press secretary, Lockhart, of urging Livingston not to resign. On the House floor, some Democrats did the same, hoping their words would somehow be taken as a white flag: We forgive you, forgive us. Livingston's resignation, after all, had suddenly become the best evidence that this whole Washington mess wasn't about lying after all--it was about...
...ring across the capital. "We need to start healing; we need to start binding up our wounds; we need to end this downward spiral that will end with the death of our representative democracy," Gephardt said as he urged in vain for the chance to vote on censure. Linking Livingston with Clinton, Gephardt said, "Our Founding Fathers created a system of government of men, not of angels. We are on the brink of the abyss. The only way we stop this insanity is through the force of our own will...