Well, the attacks on the Libby verdict have begun. Among the arguments advanced as set forth by advisorjim is the silliness that there should not have been charges since no underlying crime was committed.
Let's look back at a few statements from the not-so-distant past. Let's look back at the Clinton impeachment and look at our esteemed public servants waxing on about the sanctity of the oath.
Why John McCain noted about the seriousness of the oath
All of my life, I have been instructed never to swear an oath to my country in vain. In my former profession, those who violated their sworn oath were punished severely and considered outcasts from our society.
There's more.
McCain went on to observe how serious perjury and obstruction of justice were/are.
Are perjury and obstruction of justice expressly listed as high crimes and misdemeanors? No. Why? Because they are self-evidently so.
No less a legal mind than our soon-to-be AG, John Ashcroft argued as follows::
In other words, do perjury and obstruction of justice constitute high crimes and misdemeanors? The precedents of the Senate provide an unequivocal answer: the Senate has repeatedly treated perjury as a high crime and misdemeanor that justifies--indeed, necessitates--removal.
Three times in the last fifteen years the House has impeached and the Senate has removed a federal judge for perjury or related crimes. In two of the three cases, moreover, the judge was removed for lies that had nothing to do with his official duties.
After a historical digression that quotes John Jay's jury instruction:
Independent of the abominable insult which perjury offers to the divine Being, there is no crime more extensively pernicious to Society. It discolours and poisons the streams of justice, and by substituting falsehood for truth, saps the Foundation of personal and public rights. Controversies of various kinds exist at all times, and in all communities. To decide them, Courts of justice are instituted. Their decisions must be regulated by evidence, and the greater part of the evidence will always consist of the testimony of witnesses. This testimony is given under those solemn obligations which an appeal to the God of Truth impose; and if oaths should cease to be held sacred, our dearest and most valuable rights would become insecure.
Wow. Serious stuff
That is perjury. The nation's first Chief Justice stated that `there is no crime more extensively pernicious to Society.' Our current Chief Justice described it as a `flagrant abuse of office.' And the Watergate Special Prosecutor thought subornation of perjury by the President `as demeaning an act as could be imagined.' There is no doubt in my mind that perjury and the closely related crime of obstruction of justice are high crime and misdemeanors.
The independent minded legal scholar Kay Bailey Hutchinson weighed in with this lovely analysis
If President Washington, as a child, had cut down a cherry tree and lied about it, he would be guilty of `lying,' but would not be guilty of `perjury.'
If, on the other hand, President Washington, as an adult, had been warned not to cut down a cherry tree, but he cut it down anyway, with the tree falling on a man and severely injuring or killing him, with President Washington stating later under oath that it was not he who cut down the tree, that would be `perjury.' Because it was a material fact in determining the circumstances of the man's injury or death.
Some would argue that the President in the second example should not be impeached because the whole thing is about a cherry tree, and lies about cherry trees, even under oath, though despicable, do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution. I disagree.
The perjury committed in the second example was an attempt to impede, frustrate, and obstruct the judicial system in determining how the man was injured or killed, when, and by whose hand, in order to escape personal responsibility under the law, either civil or criminal. Such would be an impeachable offense. To say otherwise would be to severely lower the moral and legal standards of accountability that are imposed on ordinary citizens every day. The same standard should be imposed on our leaders.
Nearly every child in America believes that President Washington, as a child himself, did in fact cut down the cherry tree and admitted to his father that he did it, saying simply: `I cannot tell a lie.'
I will not compromise this simple but high moral principle in order to avoid serious consequences to a successor President who may choose to ignore it...
If only the President had followed the simple, high moral principle handed to us by our Nation's first leader as a child and had said early in this episode `I cannot tell a lie,' we would not be here today.
Gee. Even George Washington would have voted for impeachment, huh?
As oaths go, nobody loved them more than Ted Stevens
As free citizens of the world's most successful democracy we are inexorably tied to the pledges and commitments we make. These obligations, and the unlimited benefits they bestow on us, depend on our willingness to be truthful with one another. The President took the two most serious oaths any American ever encounters: the oath to faithfully execute our laws, administered by the Chief Justice, our Presiding Officer, on the steps of this building, and the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to a jury of his peers.
I am most concerned that the action we take here to day not denigrate the role of oaths and truth in our society.
Who knows if he's right? Obviously, an oath meant nothing to Libby.
John Kyl piled on with the following;
The House mangers pointed out, accurately, that even though perjury and obstruction of justice are not specifically listed as impeachable offenses in the Constitution, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines treat these offenses more seriously than they do the crime of bribery--one of two specifically enumerated impeachable offenses. Significantly, where bribery is committed in connection with a judicial proceeding (such as bribing a witness in a case), its seriousness under the Guidelines rises to that of perjury and obstruction. When misdeeds, in other words, take place in connection with a judicial process, to try to affect or control that process, they get extra attention in our legal system. They are not simply brushed aside. Far from it. Perjury and obstruction are like bribery; they are `other high crimes' by any reasonable construction.
Here's Sensenbrenner
An ordinary citizen who lies under oath four times to a grand jury is subject to substantial time in a Federal prison. The decision each Senator must make with respect to article I is whether the President is to pay a price for his perjury, just like any citizen must.
Here's House Manager McCollum
What damage is done for future generations by a vote to acquit? Will more witnesses be inclined to commit perjury in trials? Will more jurors decide that perjury and obstruction of justice should not be crimes for which they convict? No military officer, no Cabinet official, no judge, no CEO of a major corporation, no president of a university, no principal of a public school in this Nation would remain in office, no matter how popular they were, if they committed perjury and obstruction of justice as charged here.
Finally the Esteemed Blowhard from Illinois, Mr. Hyde pontificated as follows:
A failure to convict will make a statement that lying under oath, while unpleasant and to be avoided, is not all that serious. Perhaps we can explain this to those currently in prison for perjury. We have reduced lying under oath to a breach of etiquette, but only if you are the President.
Wherever and whenever you avert your eyes from a wrong, from an injustice, you become a part of the problem...
Edward Gibbon wrote his magisterial `Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' in the late 18th century--in fact the first volume was issued in 1776. In his work, he discusses an emperor named Septimius Severus, who died in 211 A.D. after ruling 18 years. And here is what Gibbon wrote about the emperor:
Severus promised, only to betray; he flattered only to ruin; and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation.
Oh there's more. But after reading Hyde (of all people) complaining about averting eyes from a wrong, I need to take a shower.