LoseAsDirected:
With all due respect, you are mistaken. It is former President (thank God, or the deity or higher power of your choice or particular religious denomination) WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON who is, to use your phrase, a "former cokehead" (according to his own brother, Roger Clinton, a reputed former drug dealer who, on at least one occasion, described his elder sibling as having "...a nose like a vacuum cleaner..."), NOT George Walker Bush.
Also, while he IS pro-gun, as well as being a native Texan, President Bush is NOT, as far as I know, a gun-toting maniac, to paraphrase what you said earlier.
While he, as the Commander-In-Chief of the combined Armed Forces (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard) of the United States, probably has the authority to carry a weapon, to the best of my knowledge, President Bush chooses not to do so. For the record, the last President known to carry a weapon while in office was Theodore Roosevelt, who began carrying a concealed handgun following the assassination of his predecessor in office, William McKinley, in September of 1901.
President Bush may not be a Rhodes Scholar, like Clinton is, but I'd rather have a mildly intellectually (or at least socially) challenged HONORABLE man who commits social or linguistic
faux pas-es once in a while running the country than an adulterous, womanizing, drug-addicted sociopathic patholigical liar like Clinton. (The man may also be a murderer. Did you ever notice how people who pose a threat to this man have a nasty habit of turning up dead (Ron Brown and Vincent Foster are but two examples), or simply disappear, never to be heard from again? The only reason that he was EVER elected to the Presidency in the first place is because he is, in the words of (then-current, now-former) Nebraska Senator (and, incidentally, fellow Democrat) Bob Kerrey, "...an unusually good liar....". While campaigning in both 1992 and 1996, he made a lot of promises he didn't EVER intend to keep, and people fell for it both times. And let's not forget all of those pardons he issued on the eve of leaving office, or the Puerto Rican terrorists he freed from prison and pardoned in order to help the Missus, Hillary, get elected to the Senate.
In spite of this Clinton, along with his supporters, seems to think, because the U.S. Senate couldn't muster enough votes to convict him at the trial following his impeachment (a two-thirds majority is required to dismiss a serving President), that it means that he was (A) not impeached, or (B) acquitted.
Impeachment is only the preparatory stage. Clinton WAS impeached. The House voted 258-176-1 (the last was a "Not Voting", which I guess is an abstention, cast by a Republican; and by the way, 31 of those who voted IN FAVOR OF impeachment were some of Clinton's fellow Democrats; 1 Independent voted with the 175 Democrats who voted AGAINST impeachment) to impeach him, and passed two of the four Articles of Impeachment (Article 1, by a vote of 228 (5 of whom were Democrats) to 206 (200 of whom were Democrats, with 1 Independent voting with the Democrats and one "NV" vote, cast by a Democrat)), and Article 3, by a vote of 221 (5 of whom were Democrats) to 212 (12 Republicans, 199 Democrats, and 1 Independent, with 2 "NV" votes being cast by Democrats). It was at the subsequent trial that they failed to muster the necessary number of votes to remove him from office (the vote on Article 1 was 45 "Guilty", 55 "Not Guilty", and on Article 2 (the former Article 3 of the original 4-Article Articles of Impeachment), the vote was an even split--50 "Guilty", 50 "Not Guilty"). There is NO SUCH THING as an acquittal at a Senate trial--either they CONVICT the President of the crimes with which he has been charged, or they DON'T. Just because they couldn't muster enough votes to convict the man doesn't mean that he was innocent--only that he got away with it.
You are entitled to your opinion. Just check your facts before stating your case, and be prepared to defend your position.
And for the record, I hate what Clinton represents about as much as LoseAsDirected seems to hate President Bush--in my case, I don't hate the man personally; rather, I hate what happened to my country as a result of his being in office. This includes the September 11, 2001 attacks, which occurred at least partially because of Clinton-era degradation of our military and intelligence network.
I also am not overly fond of his designated successor, Gore who, among other transgressions, has somehow managed to convince a lot of people that President Bush stole the 2000 Presidential election from *HIM*, when everybody with a grain of common sense knows that it was Gore who tried to steal the election, by interfering with the electoral process in Florida.
End of rant.
My apologies to the other posters here. Some things just get my dander up, and anything involving Messrs. Clinton and Gore is on that list.
--Foreigner