Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. As this determination moves forward, there is a growing cry for fairness. And I know we talked a little bit about that last week, but we saw it again this week with more closed hearings, more hearings where both sides were not allowed the same equal rights that have always been provided in impeachment inquiries. And, of course, when you look through our Nation's history, fortunately, there are not that many instances where Congress had to try to impeach or inquire about impeaching a President--three times. In fact, in all three cases, it started with a vote of the full House, and it started with a fair set of rules. And in the last two that were the most public, where you saw the proceedings on television, you saw both sides vote for Nixon, where you had a divided government. You had a Democrat House and a Republican President. And then, for the Clinton impeachment, you had a Republican House and a Democrat President. They used the same set of rules. Both sides got to call witnesses, both sides got to subpoena. The President's legal counsel actually got to be in the room and, maybe most importantly, the public got to be in the room. Members of Congress, even if they weren't on the relevant committees, were allowed to watch these hearings. That is not going on today. These hearings are going on in secret in a secret room. A number of my colleagues and I went down to see what was going on, to see the hearings and the proceedings.…”