power, but the future of our democracy and constitutional order require it, and i yield back. the gentle lady yields back. mr. sensenbrenner? mr. chairman, i agree with everybody that tonight is a vor sell very solemn night. tonight is the first night in the last 45 years that this committee has sat through the articles of impeachment against the president of the united states. when we re debating here, in my opinion, is the weakest case in history, and yet the democrats have decided to go full speed ahead again, because of the clock and the calendar with an incomplete record simply by using hearsay evidence and trashing the rules of the house every time they can in order to speed things up, with a
wrong. do you think that the republicans, i mean, just to say, well, it s, you know, their districts, there were a lot of very brave people back in the clinton sensenbrenner being one of them who s out there tonight as a republican. you know, who broke with the party and they broke with the opinion, but that s what leadership is about because opinions started to follow those republicans and it, actually, they were able to form opinion by jumping out in front taking on their own constituency by simply saying this is, we have to look at this straight in the eye and say, it s unacceptable. yeah. elliot i think in this particular case, a core difference from the nixon example is is that people have access to a lot direct access to a lot more information than they had in those days. you have access to you know, like tonight, you could watch it on cnn tonight, you have access to it in realtime. public opinion, the fact public opinion hasn t changed, in fact, some places may have
said then about clinton. there are clearly members of the republican majority who have never accepted the results of the 1992 or 9196 elections. reporter: this time the ae allegations are quite different. which party is being impeached and which party holds the gavel. five members are still there now. three democrats. nadler, sheila jackson lee, loffgren and sensenbrenner. i was involved in this two decade ago. i never dreamed we d see it again. reporter: in your opening statement back decembr 10th, 1998 it s so weird it s almost to the day. allowing the president s actions to go unpunished would gravley injure the office and