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#17 - Gingrich, Livingston, Clinton, etc.
Two major resignations from Washington in recent weeks and a third one is being urged. Is it good or bad, and should or should not have they resigned?
Gingrich resigned in November after the congressional elections. He should not have resigned. There was a big push that the Republicans had lost and it was his fault. Wrong. The Republicans won. They have five fewer members, but they still have a majority. If we had a parliamentary system, that some advocate, then the Republicans would control the whole government right now and Clinton would have been gone in 1994. His resignations showed his immaturity in that as a history professor by trade, he did not consider the previous and quit. A good leader can take the complaints. The results did raise the question of whether he may or may not be the best Speaker of the House. Lastly his district re-elected him to represent them, and he is refusing to do the job he was elected to do, and spent $6 million accomplishing. As a good leader he should have been able to work from floor also.
Livingston has resigned from his election as the Speaker. He also should not have resigned. He told the House and CNN at the time of his election that he was not a saint. He had not violated a law. He is encouraging Clinton and Flynt to destroy their opponents. Of course on the opposite side if he resigned for this minor of a situation, then more pressure on Clinton to resign.
By resigning, he has set a standard that Clinton does not want. If Livingston did not violate the law, but only sex, and Clinton did both, then Clinton needs to strongly consider resigning. A standard has now been set that will bar anyone from serving or wanting to serve in public office. If you ever did anything that you are ashamed of, or someone else may be, or you ever did anything illegal, you are prevented from serving. Prior to now we tended to follow the "we have sinned, we are working to do better, but we are not perfect" approach.
Clinton needs to call off Larry Flynt, James Carville and others who are destroying persons in Congress. Not only firing an employee when caught discrediting people, but also remove them from his professional life. Clinton shows his real thoughts on things when he accepts resignations for such activities when they get caught, and then allows them to continue to be informal advisors. Get rid of them.
Clinton also needs to finally answer who had the FBI files and what is being done with the data. What is now occurring is worse than Nixon's enemy list in that Clinton is allowing an attempt to overthrow our government by forcing various members of Congress to resign due to incidents in their past private lives.
We need to remember that the current Monicagate issue is a result of a sexual harassment lawsuit, which Clinton settled for $800,000 (four times his annual salary), and thereby inferred guilt. In addition he perjured himself in court hearings, (not stopping military personnel from being court martialed for similar actions, although in his defense several of his Christmas Day pardons were for people doing the same) and the acts he perjured himself on in court and to the public occurred on the clock in the public official area of the White House. It is time for Clinton to decide: come clean, admit lying under oath and call off the dogs, or Continue to fight, deny lying to court and public (he claims he just mislead us), lose all historical status, and risk being convicted in the Senate, or Resign.
Larry Flynt has achieved his goal of claming that Clinton is not the only person in Washington to do a questionable sexual activity. However he proved nothing to the American people. We did not elect 537 saints to represent us in Washington. We did expect them to obey laws like the rest of us. The truth is that if Clinton had done what he has done in the Jones and Lewinski cases, and had been CEO of AT&T, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Shoney's, etc. he would have been fired long ago.
To the bipartisan crowd, get off your high horse. Without bipartisan support impeachment article three would have failed. If it had been strictly a partisan vote all four articles would have passed. Realize that the Republicans and the Democrats have two philosophies and we need them both. Republicans tend to favor less government and fewer taxes and be more pro business. Democrats favor the government solving more problems and tend to be more pro labor. To each party, stop being woozies and stand up for what you believe in and fight for these items so that we can move to being a better America and world in the next millennium.
Dwight
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