IT'S HISTORY.
You know, the Clinton impeachment thing. Remember that? It had something to do with an intern, secretly taped conversations and a cigar. But it happened in the late 1990s, and it's getting harder and harder to remember the details of that long-vanished era.
When the Associated Press reported this week that the impeachment of President Clinton had finally made it into the major high school history textbooks, it seemed only fitting. Most adults forgot about the impeachment the instant it was over. Now high school kids can read the story, and as soon as their exams are over, they too can forget it.
So someday, 2005 may be recalled as the year the Clinton impeachment was relegated to the dustbin of history. But it may also be recalled as the year that paved the way for George W. Bush's impeachment.
With the mid-December revelations of a secret Bush administration domestic wiretapping program carried out by the National Security Agency, commentators -- including some Republicans -- are once more murmuring about "high crimes and misdemeanors." And with good reason. On its face, the president's no-longer-secret wiretapping program violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The president asserts that on Sept. 14, 2001 -- when Congress authorized him to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against those connected to the 9/11 attacks -- Congress implicitly repealed the act's restrictions on presidential surveillance powers. Besides, he says, as commander in chief, he has the inherent constitutional power to do anything he deems necessary in time of war, Congress be damned.
SUZANNE SPAULDING, a former CIA assistant general counsel, recently pointed out that this is a bizarre and disturbing legal argument. If Congress' 9/14/01 resolution rendered moot any prior legislative restraints on the president's power to conduct domestic surveillance, or if the president's inherent wartime powers trump congressional control anyway, then why did the administration bother to seek renewal of the Patriot Act?
Those history books that have now been revised to feature the Clinton impeachment presumably still carry a few paragraphs on the Declaration of Independence. The founding fathers included good reasons for rebelling against Britain's King George III: "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power ... [he is] abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our Governments.... " That's why our Constitution created checks and balances.
