History of impeachment column contained inaccuracies

In the past I have found the articles by James Attridge on our American presidents and the law to be very informative and well written. However, his most recent article, "Politics and impeachment attempts: a look back" (May 24) contains the following inaccuracies.

First, Mr. Attridge writes that President Clinton "was impeached for lying in response to an irrelevant question in a deposition he never should have been compelled to attend in a groundless lawsuit." However, Clinton was not impeached for lying at his deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case (i.e., the House of Representatives voted against adopting that article of impeachment). Instead, he was impeached for lying to a grand jury in the testimony he voluntarily agreed to give. Furthermore, the questions Clinton was asked - both at the deposition and before the grand jury - were relevant to the issue of whether he had engaged in a pattern of sexually harassing those who worked under him, first as governor in Arkansas and then at the White House. In fact, these questions were deemed to be so relevant by the federal court in the Jones case that it found Clinton in contempt of court for failing to truthfully answer them and Clinton lost his right to practice law in Arkansas and before the U.S. Supreme Court as a result. Moreover, the Jones case was hardly "groundless" where Clinton (as bright and persuasive an individual as he is) chose to pay Ms. Jones $850,000 rather than defend his name in court.

Second, Mr. Attridge is inaccurate when he describes the Senate that acquitted Clinton as controlled by Democrats. In fact, the Republican Party controlled that particular Senate by a margin of 55 to 45.

It is important for Mr. Attridge (like all historians) to be as thoroughly accurate as possible especially in an article where he spends a significant amount of time trying to draw tenuous parallels between the Watergate tragedy and our current president.