On December 19, 1998, U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton was impeached by the United States House of Representatives for allegedly committing perjury, obstructing justice and abusing his presidential powers in the Paula Jones sex harassment case (and the icky, irrelevant Monica Lewinsky scandal.) After the prurient Ken Starr, the Republican House leadership (led by confessed wife thief Bob Livingston, who replaced the disgraced, wife dumping fellatophile Newt Gingrich, and then resigned himself,) and the fatuous press corps had put the country through a full year of bawdy, useless sturm und drang (and about $80 million in wasteful spending,) Clinton was acquitted in the Senate, by a vote of 55-45 on the obstruction charge, and a 50-50 deadlock on the perjury charge, on February 12, 1999. [Photo at left from coolstamps.com]
During the time of impeachment, Bill Clinton continued to exercise the full powers of his office, including operating a joint military campaign with Great Britain that was actively bombing Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Senate did not move to curb his powers. And Clinton felt no burden to stop making appointments during that awful period in his presidency, including the following additions to his State Department:
On December 28, 1998, he appointed Eric James Boswell to a career diplomatic security post in the Office of Foreign Missions.
On December 29, he made a recess appointment of James F. Dobbins to a career post at the Office of European and Canadian Affairs.
And because the impeachment sideshow was just the end of a full year of fruitless investigation by Starr, and sensational media coverage, it’s helpful to look at the entire year of 1998, when Clinton managed to make a number of appointments to the federal bench, all of which were acted on by Congress, even as Clinton was “under a cloud.” Those included:
*Vote 190+: June 30, 1999
Keith Ellison Southern District of Texas
Gary Feess Central District of California
Stephen Underhill District of Connecticut
W. Allen Pepper Northern District of Mississippi
Karen Schreier District of South Dakota
Vote 262: September 8, 1999
Adalberto Jordan Southern District of Florida
Vote 263: September 8, 1999
Marsha J. Pechman Western District of Washington
Vote 307: October 5, 1999
Ronnie L. White Eastern District of Missouri
Vote 308: October 5, 1999
Brian T. Stewart District of Utah
Vote 309: October 5, 1999
Raymond C. Fisher 9th Circuit
And Congress didn’t even hint at not seating them. In fact, 1998 marked the high water mark for roll call votes on Clinton judicial nominees – there were 13 such votes on lower court picks, more than any year in the Clinton presidency. And by the end of his second term, Clinton had put more judges on the bench than any president before him: fully 47% of those actively serving on the court.
What’s the point? Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is in the midst of a pretty ugly scandal; and he is attracting the gaze of the excitable press corps. But he made his Senate appointment before he has been convicted of anything, and before he has even been impeached. By what grounds, legal or ethical, can Harry Reid (who didn’t seem to mind seating Clinton appointees during the president’s impeachment, and worse, who had no trouble seating the treacherous Joe Lieberman, gavel and all, deny Blago’s appointment of Roland Burris?
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