Dale Bumpers pleads with Senate to honor Constitution Updated January 21, 1999 5:41 p.m. ET            Full Coverage Search Clinton in Crisis The Trial Trial Guide Evidence Guide Transcripts Video Discuss the Trial The Starr Report and Rebuttals Video Index Documents Starr Investigation Jones v. Clinton Whitewater Jones v. Clinton Whitewater WASHINGTON (Court TV) — Concluding three days of arguments by the White House defense team, former Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers urged his former colleagues to uphold the Constitution and the people's will by voting to acquit the president of the impeachment charges. "Colleagues, this is the most important vote you will ever cast," said Bumpers. "Don't leave a precedent from which we will never recover and will surely regret." In an hour-long speech, Bumpers combined a law professor's lecture on the framers of the Constitution and a family friend's appeal on the "moral agony and sleepless nights" that the First Family has suffered throughout the five-year investigation. Bumpers said that when the framers developed the constitutional standard for impeachment, they relied on an English law that defined "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" as "offenses, distinctly political, against the state." The charges against the president, he said, "don't even come close" to the standard that James Madison and Alexander Hamilton had in mind. This investigation, he added, is not about perjury but sex and marital infidelity. Senators who bear a personal hatred toward Clinton, he said, must overcome it in order to maintain the integrity of the country's founding legal document. "Rise about it. He is not the issue," Bumpers said. "If you vote to convict, you will create more havoc than he could ever create. He's only got two years left." Bumpers also pleaded with the Senate to heed the people's desire to get on with the political agenda awaiting the 106th Congress, as evidenced by polls that show that the majority of the public approves of Clinton's performance and wants him to complete his term. "They're asking for an end to this nightmare," he said. "It's a legitimate request." Bumpers' statement wrapped up three days of arguments in which Clinton's lawyers attacked the House prosecutors' case as a series of sinister inferences drawn from circumstantial evidence, often in contradiction to witnesses' testimony. Chief counsel Charles Ruff began the defense team's presentation on Tuesday, Greg Craig and Cheryl Mills spent Wednesday hammering away at the sequence of events underlying the perjury and obstruction of justice charges, and David Kendall tried to dismantle the remainder of the obstruction of justice charges in the three hours that preceded Bumper's discourse. Read more about Kendall and Bumpers "The direct evidence disproves the charges," said Kendall, accusing the prosecutors of deliberately ignoring testimony that didn't fit into the "sinister pattern" of events they developed. "This isn't even smoke and mirrors. It's worse," he said. Any Questions? On Friday and Saturday, senators who have been forced under trial rules to sit in uncharacteristic silence will finally be able to ask questions — but those questions must be submitted in writing to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who will read them and ask counsel on both sides to respond. A GOP spokesman said Thursday that Republican senators have submitted at least 70 questions so far. The questioning period may be conducted in a bipartisan spirit, but the upcoming motions to dismiss the case and call witnesses are expected to divide the Senate along party lines. The White House has said it will submit a motion to dismiss the case on Monday. Republicans have said they oppose dismissal. They want to call a handful of the most critical witnesses, including Lewinsky, Jordan and presidential secretary Betty Currie. Since they have a 55-45 majority, they are expected to get their way on the witness questions, but they will still have to win over a dozen Democrats to obtain the 67 votes necessary to remove the president from office. Democrats thus far have shown no signs that they will support removing the president from office. Republicans are aware that the trial, like much of the impeachment process, remains unpopular with Americans. Clinton's job approval ratings rose after his State of the Union address Tuesday night, ranging from 66 percent in an ABC poll to 72 percent in a CBS survey to 76 percent for NBC. In a survey of 1,200 adults by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, 67 percent said the trial hadn't changed their opinions on Clinton's impeachment and two-thirds don't want him taken out of office. Albright speaks out Secretary of State Madeleine Albright cautioned Thursday against a lengthy Senate trial of President Clinton, saying time would be lost in tending to "the people's business." "What bothers me is we have a huge agenda," Albright said as she outlined foreign policy programs confronting her as she nears the end of two years on the job. She said Congress has the authority to try Clinton, but it also is a partner of the administration in dealing with such problems as Kosovo, Iraq and the spread of nuclear technology. "So any time we are not spending on the people's business ultimately is time lost," Albright said following a speech to the Center for National Policy, a private group she once headed. The House impeachment of the president and his current trial in the Senate is puzzling to foreign leaders, Albright said. "Friends around the world are kind of amazed this is going on." Read about Wednesday's White House presentation and the House response Court TV's Catherine Heins and The Associated Press contributed to this report.