Gingrich is said to want to call Congress back in session right after the elections and to move to an impeachment vote by Thanksgiving--which suggests that he is not following a partisan drag-this-out strategy.

Impeachment Rules
That doesn't mean, by the way, that the Senate would have to try Clinton before new members are seated. There is a lot of confusion on this point. Tim Russert said in August on "Meet the Press" that if the report came this fall, "There would have to be a special session of Congress to deal with this, because you can't carry over this investigation to a new Congress." The latest U.S. News and World Report says, "If the House starts the impeachment process before this session of Congress ends, it is unclear whether it will have to start over in the next session." Actually, it's not unclear at all. Deschler's Precedents says that the House impeachment and Senate trial do not have to be in the same Congress. "Both Judge John Pickering and Judge Harold Louderback were impeached by the House in one Congress and tried by the Senate in the next." Next question?

Video Killed the Newspaper Star
A partisan fight is shaping up over whether Clinton's testimony should be released as a transcript or on videotape, with some Democrats charging that the latter would be "piling on" with an intent to embarrass. To accede to their demand would be to shift the goalposts: until now, everyone has been saying that they will release any information that doesn't hurt innocent parties. So why not go for the more complete disclosure? As the public weighs these issues, why shouldn't they weigh the demeanor of the President before the grand jury?

Republican Wimp-Out Watch
After sitting out the early reaction to the Starr report (see "Profiles in Courage," 9/14), the RNC finally had a comment today. Jim Nicholson blasted DNC chairman Steve Grossman's encomium yesterday to President Clinton's "moral leadership." For other Republicans, though, silence might have been an improvement. Matt Fong, candidate for Senate from California, told a group of reporters, "We've only heard one side of the story," evidently unaware that he is repeating the Democratic spin. Jeb Bush, however, surely knows better than to say, as Hotline reports he did on MSNBC this morning, "I haven't read it and I don't intend to read it. . . . I don't think it should have been on the internet for everybody to see. Why do we have to let every child in America go through all the gory details of phone sex and all these other things? Let's move on to letting the process work and let's talk about things that are important to people." At least we now know whether law-breaking by the Commander-in-Chief is important to Jeb Bush.

Lowering the Bar
President Clinton repeatedly violated his oath of professional responsibility and ethics and should be disbarred, argued the Southeastern Legal Foundation on Tuesday in a formal complaint with the State Bar of Arkansas. Clinton is currently a Bar member-in-active-standing.

"When a lawyer who is an elected official violates his professional oath, lies before a court of law, and undermines public confidence in the rule of law, that lawyer should be punished," said SLF's Matthew J. Glavin, who made headlines recently for a successful lawsuit against the Clinton administration's census sampling scheme.