The Impeachment Of A President: Vocal Americans

Thomas Mann, Brookings Institution:

"It is not an ennobling time. As someone who's watched national politics for almost 30 years, I've never been so ashamed of our national political leaders, and never so saddened by the behaviour of Congress."

Barbra Streisand, actress and staunch Clinton supporter: "Who could have imagined that we would be living in a time when those we elected to office would turn off their phones and unplug their fax machines in order to ignore the voices of the American people?"

Walter Isaacson, the managing editor of Time magazine, which named Bill Clinton and Kenneth Starr its "men of the year": "Decades hence, we will still be debating the meaning of the great Clinton-Starr struggle and picking at the lingering wounds."

Arianna Huffington, conservative columnist: "Congress is not the appropriate venue for Livingston to tell his wife, as he did in the middle of an impeachment debate, he loves her... nor is his resignation a sign of political valour. Instead, it blurs irreparably the line between the president's serial infidelities and his serial lying under oath."