U.S. Government (History) The United States Government
A collection of short reports all dealing with the United States Government.
William Jefferson Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. His father, William J. Blythe III was killed in an automobile collision just two months before William’s birth. At age four, William Jefferson Blythe IV was legally adopted by his mothers second husband, Roger Clinton, making him William Jefferson Clinton.
At age 22 William received a Bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University. Just five years later, he received his law degree from Yale.
Soon after graduating from Yale, he became a law professor at the University of Arkansas. He did not stay in one place for long though, and in 1978 he became the Attorney General of Arkansas. From this political position, he moved higher up in the ranks and in 1978 won the election for the gubernatorial seat of Arkansas. In the 1980 elections, however, William (Bill) was defeated by Republican Frank White. As the youngest governor of Arkansas in 40 years, Bill then became the youngest ex-governor in United States history. During the interim, Clinton was hired by the law firm Wright, Lindsey and Jennings. In the 1982 elections, Mr. Clinton went after the position of governor with renewed vigor and defeated incumbent Republican Frank White. During the campaigning for the election a Time magazine article stated: ?If Clinton does win, it could seem like less a comeback than a canny mid-course correction in the path of a young, bright political star.?
Clinton went on to win the next two gubernatorial elections in the state of Arkansas. In 1988 he had the possibility of a Democratic Party presidential nomination, but he refused to run. Finally, in 1991, Clinton announced that he was going to run for President of the United States.
In the 1992 election, Bill Clinton ran against Republican incumbent George Herbert Walker Bush and independent Ross H. Perot. During the campaign, Bill met with some difficulty when the media discovered that he had dodged the Vietnam draft, been unfaithful to his spouse, and smoked marijuana while attending Oxford. Bill placated the liberal-biased media by saying that he didn’t believe in the war, and he ?didn’t inhale.? Opposition mounted when reporters discovered that Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham, whom he married in 1975, had made some questionable dealings over a piece of real estate referred to commonly as Whitewater.
Despite the seemingly insurmountable odds, Clinton won the election, with 46% of voting Americans supporting him.
Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia was born March 11, 1936 in an Italian majority section of Trenton, New Jersey. His father, Eugene Scalia was a literary scholar and a professor of Romance Languages at Brooklyn College. His mother was an elementary school teacher.
Scalia attended Xavier High School, a Catholic Military academy. He graduated, first in his class, in 1953. One of his good friends once said: ?He was brilliant, way above everybody else.? He later majored in History at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he again graduated first in his class. Soon after leaving Georgetown, he enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was known around the campus as an effective debater.
From Harvard he earned an LL. B. Degree and in 1960 joined the Cleveland based law firm Jones, Day, Cockly and Reavis. He was one of the most straightforward conservatives on the staff and there too earned a reputation as a debater.
Later, President Richard Nixon appointed Scalia to the position of Part-time General Counsel in Executive Office of Telecom Policy. He was confirmed by Congress under the Gerald Ford administration for the position of Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel. At that time his job was mostly to give advice to the President and the Attorney General.
In 1977 he became a Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Antonin Scalia is now an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. He took his oath in 1986 and is the first Italian-American Supreme Court Justice. He was part of President Ronald Reagan’s effort to make the judiciary system more conservative.
Mr. Scalia is very outspoken against racially based affirmative action programs and the ?Constitutional Right? to abortion. His views are closely related to those of the Reagan administration. Scalia is a very intelligent individual, has an elegant writing style, and has personal charm that makes him an influential member on the Supreme Court.
Legislative Department
The Legislative Department consists mostly of the House and the Senate, the two parts of Congress. The Senate has 100 members or two per state. The House of Representatives has one representative per 30,000 people in the state, currently 435, not including the one from Washington, D.C., who is not allowed to vote. This is called the ?great compromise? because when the laws were first being written the larger states wanted to have a system like the House of Representatives, and the smaller states wanted an equal voice and liked the Senate system better. Finally, in a compromise they decided to have both.
Facts on the House of Representatives:
? House of Representative members are elected to a 2 year term.
? The minimum age to become a member is 25 years.
? In order to become a member, you must have been a citizen of the United
States for 7 years.
? Members must be a resident of the state they are elected by.
? The House of Representatives has the ?power of impeachment.’ This means
that the House
can vote to put the president of the United States on trial before the
Senate. The only president
to have ever been impeached was Andrew Johnson in 1867. When the Senate
finally voted,
however, he missed being removed from office by one vote.
Facts on the Senate:
? Senators are elected to six year terms.
? The minimum age for a senator is 30 years.
? You must have been a citizen of the United States for 9 years.
? The Senate tries cases of impeachment.
