Impeachment is a big deal, a damn big deal! It had only been used twice so far, once on Andrew Johnson after the Civil War, and once on Dick Nixon after Watergate. Johnson's real crime was that he was a moderate in a time of radicalism; the Republican Congress wanted the South to suffer and Johnson wanted things to settle down. They trumped up some charges and put him on trial; Johnson won by a single vote. Nixon's offenses were much more serious and legitimate, and it never actually got so far as an actual impeachment. Nixon was told that he would be impeached if he didn't resign first, so he resigned. They never actually got around to drafting the paperwork.
Now Gingrich was hunting around for anything he could lay his hands on to fry Clinton's ass. The Constitution is delightfully vague in some areas, and this was one of them. A President can be impeached for 'treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors'. Treason and bribery were pretty self-explanatory, but what was meant by high crimes and misdemeanors was left blank. Johnson's crime was ignoring the real powers in Congress and the Cabinet, not precisely what the Founders had in mind. Nixon's crimes actually involved real crimes, like ordering break-ins and running a slush fund out of the Oval Office. Clinton's crimes, such as they were, seemed to fall quite a bit lower down the scale, but Newt was pushing hard.
So far, all that was known for sure was that there had been allegations of bribe taking in the Whitewater real estate mess in Arkansas; although Clinton never got the money, a friend did. To what extent any of this was credible was questionable. There was a single person making the complaint and it was a legal quagmire. Considering that the Clintons actually lost money on the project made a lot of us figure it wasn't worthy of the investigation – if you make money, okay, it's bribery; if you lose money, you're stupid and deserve whatever happens to you. As far as Clinton's numerous marital affairs, so far there was just a whole lot of smoke but no sign of any fire; how that would end up in an impeachment nobody could figure out. You don't get impeached for screwing around, you get divorced! The same applied to all the other little nonsense around the joint, the FBI files and the Travel Office issues. It's embarrassing, but not something to be impeached over.
One of the most common jokes at the time was:
'Q: What do you get when you cross a crooked lawyer and a crooked politician?
A: Chelsea!'
On the plus side, since I wasn't a Senator, I didn't have to vote on the impeachment. I resolved to not vote for the impeachment in any matters crossing my desk in the House. If Hillary cut his schlong off with a rusty machete that would be sufficient for me.
My enemies weren't only on the Democratic side. Newt Gingrich was of the opinion that if you weren't for him, you were against him. Shortly after the election, I discovered I was no longer on the Armed Services Committee. I was now back in Science, Space, and Technology. I was about in the middle of the pack. I think that if the House had a committee on extinct animals, I would have been assigned there. On the plus side, my old buddy Harlan now had enough time in the Army that with accrued leave and a variety of other credits he could retire in February of 1997. He managed to get an assignment for a few months directly with the Armed Services Committee, and found himself a future position with United Defense, the manufacturers of the M109 Paladin howitzers that he had worked with earlier in his career.
I lost a couple of junior staffers when it became known that Gingrich had me in his sights. My senior people could see what was happening, but they could also see that Gingrich was getting more than a little nutty. I told them that Gingrich was going to wear out his welcome sooner rather than later, and that sticking with me might just work out better in the long term. At least we didn't lose our offices. The House rules wouldn't let Gingrich send me packing off to Cannon and the Cages, which was certainly something he had to be contemplating.
Meanwhile a massive crisis was brewing in the Buckman household. It had been simmering for a dozen years now, and was now finally erupting into a full blown disaster. The twins were twelve-and-a-half years old, rapidly approaching thirteen, and were in the seventh grade. My wonderful little angels were no more. They had died, killed by zombies, and their brains had been sucked out and replaced by the spawn of Satan.
Almost on a daily basis came anguished cries of 'MOM!' and hateful stares at me as they screamed 'YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!' followed by a SLAM as a bedroom door closed suddenly and forcefully. These outbursts were generally caused by my simple existence and perpetual survival on the planet. From what I could determine Lucifer's daughters simply objected to my possession of life.
I was at a loss to explain the cause of this sudden hatred for me. Marilyn was no help whatsoever, rolling her eyes at these outbursts and telling me to leave them alone, it was 'growing pains'. Both girls hit puberty within a day of each other. They were changing, too. Up until now they had been short and a bit scrawny, with their mother's round face and upturned nose, but my family's straight hair. Now, while they were still short, they were filling out, and weren't all that scrawny anymore. In fact, they were growing breasts and their hips were getting broader. Worst of all, I was not the only male noticing. Their brother Charlie tended to tease them mercilessly, occasioning head slaps from the parental unit nearest him when we caught him. That wasn't the bad part. The bad part was that other males were noticing, males who were not interested in teasing them. It seems that even the daughters of billionaire Congressman can get bra straps snapped and requests for 'dates.'
Neither their mother nor their father went along with any of this nonsense, but only I had to suffer their wrath. Marilyn escaped most of it. It just wasn't fair.
I had gone through this once before, with Maggie. (Alison, with her Williams Syndrome, had been nowhere near as nutty.) I had thought Maggie was impossible, but I had never contemplated going through adolescent hormones with twins! I started telling Marilyn I was going to permanently move to Washington. "Only if I can go with you!", was the response. The screams of outrage from Holly and Molly got especially loud when I asked Marilyn what she thought of sending the girls to boarding school in Switzerland, and only bringing them back when they turned eighteen. Both Marilyn and I knew the girls were listening to us and watching, so when she said we should look into it, they ran screaming to their room, and slammed the door behind them. She watched them run, and then looked at me and smiled. "You're mean!"
Music began blaring from down the hall. "You think so?"
My wife snorted and went back to making a pie.
Another time they announced they were going to leave, "And there's nothing you can do about it!" This was told us right after an argument before dinner, so we were all in the dining room together.
I nodded thoughtfully, and then commented, "Well, you might just want to know, you've heard about GPS, right? The global tracking stuff? Well, when you two were babies, we were worried about kidnappers, so we had tags surgically implanted inside you. We can find you anywhere in the world." I was keeping a straight face through this. Marilyn simply rolled her eyes, and Charlie grinned and nodded.
The girls were thunderstruck, of course. They didn't realize GPS wasn't around when they were born. "You didn't!", cried Molly.