Bill Clinton Quotes

The Republican Majority of the House, when Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, was running for President, established a select committee to investigate an incident that occurred in the State Department during Clinton's term. However, there already had been both House and Senate hearings and numerous investigations of the same incident. This committee uniquely was established with no deadlines to finish their work and an unlimited budget. Soon it became clear that the focus of the Republican efforts was on Mrs. Clinton and not on State Department activities except as how they might be negative to Clinton. Even leading Republicans admitted that the majority had abused its Congressional power to investigate to achieve primarily partisan advantage. See {582958} for Hanna's later statement when he incurred the ire of some of the Republicans for his admitting the truth.

In 2015, a group of hyper-partisan Republicans initiated yet another investigation of the attack on an American Consulate in Libya where the U. S Ambassador was killed. The incident had occurred when Hilary Clinton had been Secretary of State some time earlier. However, she was then the leading Democratic Candidate for President, and some Republicans wanted to question her under oath in the hopes that they could find something to embarrass her and derail her surging campaign. Hanna and a few other Republicans admitted the truth as they were opposed to the abuse of the Congressional power to investigate for partisan purposes. However, the reaction against Hanna by some members of his own party was extremely harsh. The theory of the Hanna critics was that telling the truth was in this case highly embarrassing to the Party and damaged the credibility of many accusations made against Mrs. Clinton who turned the tables on the investigators in when they questioned her for over 11 hours straight, and despite the total absurdity of the hearing and the questions—all of which had been asked before, she comported herself with Presidential dignity and pretended to take the hearings very seriously and answered the same loaded questions repeatedly. See {582957} for his earlier statements.

This was Executive Privilege of the time. The result of this type of conflict between the executive and the legislative body was a Civil War in which Parliament won. This concept of executive privilege operates to this day in America where the President typically refuses to have his special assistants and staff be questioned by Congressional investigating committees. IT also extends to documents where the President has refused to allow Congress access to papers. In the Watergate scandal, it was the Supreme Court Decision that President Nixon could not claim Executive Privilege with respect to the Watergate tapes. Their exposure forced his resignation.

Indeed Senator Thomas Collier Platt, in cooperation with major New York corporations, was leading just such an effort. See {624063}. However, many close friends and supporters wanted him to do for the national ticket what he had done for New York—reform. These schemes succeeded beyond the proponents’ wildest dreams when President McKinley was assassinated, and TR was the President. His enemies however were crestfallen—Party leader Thomas Collier Platt was very distressed. See {585078}.

Abrams had been convicted of "withholding information from Congress" in his Congressional testimony.

In 2007 the Republicans, who were in the minority, began to use the filibuster to a degree that it had never been used. Within the single year of 2007 Republican’s filibustered 62 times, doubling the highest rate that had occurred before. A small minority of senators were able to block legislation that easily passed the House and was supported by the majority of senators and in some cases supported by the overwhelming majority of the American Public.

At the time Dulles was the Assistant Secretary & Near East Division chief of the State Department. Congress was outraged over the Turkish massacres of the Armenians, the Russian pogroms against the Jews, and the Belgian atrocities against the Blacks in the Congo. However, the State Department was then more interested in maintaining relations for our corporations than the moral aspects of mass murder within a country.

Sparta, an ancient Greek city-state, trained all its young men for war. One “test” was each youth was to sneak into the countryside and murder someone’s slave and not get caught. The murder was against the laws of the society, but if the young man was caught he was punished severely, not for murder or attempted murder, but for getting caught.

He won the debate and the Congress created the first committee to investigate and oversee military affairs.

Most American politicians and citizens, unlike DeLay, believe that arguing against the opponents’ political philosophy should be done with debate, civil argument, advocacy, speechmaking and writing and not by attacking opponents and confronting them whenever possible. Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.

Dana Ruth Schwartz. The Republicans who had control of the House of Representatives were reaching the end of the fiscal year and had not yet passed a budget so the government would have to shut down in a few days. They had a very strong position if they wanted to blackmail the Democratically controlled Senate and the Democratic President. The majority of the Republicans decided that they wanted to use the Blackmail tactic, so they passed a budget that they knew the Senate and the President would reject and then the Republicans could hold out for their ransom demands. However, when the Republicans met to decide on what they should demand they neither could agree in what or the timing of their tactics. They had launched a major attack without having a clear objective, an exit strategy or even an alternate if they did not succeed.

The historian was comparing Obama to other historical presidents who either had a majority of both Houses of Congress or had an opposition party that was generally quite cooperative and willing to compromise for the sake of running the country smoothly. At this point in time there was a Tea Party wing of the Republican that was particularly negative and obstructionist. They tended to threaten and intimidate the main stream Republicans who used the filibuster to block legislation the majority of Senators had voted for more times than all the other Congresses in American history. And that was only in Obamas first 6 years.

She was one of many senior Republicans who took the unprecedented action of asking the Presidential nominee of their own part to withdraw from the race. Trump, despite his populist appeal, was considered totally unfit to be President and totally destructive to conservatism and the Republican Party by continuing his campaign,