The suggestion is made that: ______________________________ "Surely it depends about what, when, and to whom. Lying to Congress to start a war -- were this ever to occur -- must surely fit within "high crime and misdemeanor" or we're a strange kind of republic indeed." ______________________________
While I concede the facial appeal of this claim, I've got to take issue with it. LBJ surely lied about Vietnam yet I don't think he should have been impeached. FDR told some lies in order to ease the country into WWII, I think. Lincoln may have told some lies precedent to the Civil War. Only when a lie rises to the level of producing widespread public outrage would impeachment become plausible. Now, one may argue that the public is too slow to take outrage over lying, but in our democratic system I would think they are the determinant. I really hoped that the Clinton experience had given the lie to claims that a certain action or type of action is an "impeachable offense" in some traditional legalistic sense. Frank Cross Herbert D. Kelleher Centennial Professor of Business Law CBA 5.202 University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78712
