The Catholic Case Against Impeachment - Crisis

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Theo520 said:
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LeafByNiggle:
That is what the Senate trial is supposed to determine. That has not happened yet.
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The House should have presented said evidence. They haven’t.
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The decision as to whether the house has found sufficient evidence is what the Senate will decide.
 
7_Sorrows said:
There is no hard evidence any law had been broken. The democrats are trying to
convince the American public that Trump did something wrong, but they haven’t been very convincing.
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And once again, impeachment doesn’t have to be based on the violation of any statute.
 
That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m too lazy to go back and look up my posts from last week on the topic, but basically some points to consider:
  1. In Federalist #65, Alexander Hamilton explained why impeachment was formulated in the Constitution as it was, directly referring to the British Parliamentary power of impeachment. In fact the US Constitution pretty much replicates it. In Britain, the House of Commons impeached an officer or minister of the Crown, and the House of Lords held the trial. In Britain, impeachment was not based on any violation of statute, Common Law or judicial precedent, but rather on broader notions such as “abuse of power”.
  2. I gave the example of a Chief Justice in Massachusetts just prior to the Revolutionary War who was impeached by the Massachusetts assembly for the “high crime” by taking the British government’s offer of an increased salary. Clearly, this could not possibly have been a crime prior to the Revolutionary War, as the American Colonies were still British, and the British Privy Council had every right to offer judges and other officials in the colonies money for performing their duties.
  3. There was some debate prior to ratification about impeachment, with some in favor of tying it to statutes or creating a list of crimes that the President or other Federal official could be impeached for, but the Framers went with the British model, leaving the definition of a “high crime and/or misdemeanor” up to the House, with the counterbalance that 2/3s of the Senate had to vote to convict. The reason Federalist #65 was published was to try to explain why Congress, rather than the Supreme Court or some specially convened tribunal, was the appropriate place for impeachment and trial to occur, and even presaged that the attempted removal of a President would inflame the passions of supports and opponents alike.
I should add that in Britain impeachment largely became extinct by the end of the 18th century as the Parliamentary power of revoking confidence in the King’s Ministry became the preferred method to hold a Government to account. The House of Commons, in fact, voted no confidence in Lord North’s ministry precisely because he was blamed for the failure to successfully prosecute the war against the Thirteen Colonies. The US might have had a very different government if it had declared independence even 20 years later. To no small degree, the US is built on how the Westminster system functioned in the 18th century, when British political institutions hadn’t fully evolved.
 
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niceatheist said:
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7_Sorrows:
There is no hard evidence any law had been broken. The democrats are trying to
convince the American public that Trump did something wrong, but they haven’t been very convincing.
Click to expand...
And once again, impeachment doesn’t have to be based on the violation of any statute.
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I was responding to someone else’s post who brought up laws.
 
niceatheist said:
And once again, impeachment doesn’t have to be based on the violation of any statute.
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Technically, since the House has sole power to impeach, it could be for his hair color. But practically the Constitution does spell out that it most definitely has to be Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. So of course some statute has to be broken to meet the requirements of the Constitution.
 
pnewton said:
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niceatheist:
And once again, impeachment doesn’t have to be based on the violation of any statute.
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Technically, since the House has sole power to impeach, it could be for his hair color. But practically the Constitution does spell out that it most definitely has to be Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. So of course some statute has to be broken to meet the requirements of the Constitution.
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That language is straight out of English Common Law. Typically impeaching representatives of the Crown in England, and later Britain, meant for treason, bribery, or abuses of power (like self-enrichment of self, family or friends). And I said, impeached occurred in the Colonies prior to Independence, and in the example I gave a few days ago, the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts colony was impeached for accepting additional salary from the British government, something that most certainly could not have been illegal prior to the Revolutionary War, seeing as judges were officers of the British government.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
The decision as to whether the house has found sufficient evidence is what the Senate will decide.
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every pundit already agrees, what they presented wasn’t sufficient.

Heck even Pelosi agrees, which is why she hasn’t sent her articles to the Senate.
 
Polls show that an overwhelming majority of the American people already want fact witness like Pomepo and Mulvaney to provide testimony in the Senate trial.
 
dvdjs said:
Polls show that an overwhelming majority of the American people already want fact witness like Pomepo and Mulvaney to provide testimony in the Senate trial.
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Which raises the question why didn’t Pelosi take it to the court on whether executive privilege was valid?

I say she didn’t because she knew it would fail. She’s got no case.
 
Theo520 said:
Which raises the question why didn’t Pelosi take it to the court on whether executive privilege was valid?
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I suppose because she had enough for the impeachment, and the matter of requiring witness testimony could be handled immediately by Justice Roberts in the Senate.
 
Exactly, Because the House did not follow a normal process they did not vote to authorize articles of impeachment. The absence of judicial enforcement authority that resulted from this meant they had no authority to enforce House subpoenas. That’s why they could not hold anyone in contempt of congress for not appearing. Trump didn’t allow witnesses called to testify, not because he had anything to hide but because he wasn’t about to set a precedent for future Presidents in which this would be considered normal.
 
dvdjs said:
I suppose because she had enough for the impeachment, and the matter of requiring witness testimony could be handled immediately by Justice Roberts in the Senate
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Then why is she holding things up?

The real tell here is the fact that hasn’t sent the case to the Senate. That tells Americans she doesn’t have a case at all. Instead she wants the Senate to change the rules to benefit her side. It looks a bit like trading what she has for something she wants for political gain. What do they call that again? Oh yeah…quid pro quo. The same thing they accused Trump of.
 
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