Schiff is a prophet
- Thread starter Crazyhole
- Start date
It's all speculation, but I highly doubt you get to 51 censure votes without a trial. And if you couldn't get Republican support in the house to open in impeachment inquiry, I don't see how you get support for a formal censure, so it's still partisan.
There wouldn't be any political pressure on Republicans to support Censure without the spectacle of the trial. Plus, there's no way on earth McConnell let's that go to floor for debate anyway.
Joe Mancin proposed censure and it was DOA. Republicans making the intellectually dishonest argument that if the Dems wanted Censure that's where they should have started, when everyone knows it never would have gotten to the floor.
Censure would have required moral leadership from Republicans. Publicly making the case what Trump did was wrong but not worthy of impeachment. If you have a block of 10 Republican Senators lobbying the house for a censure in lieu of impeachment, you might have gotten it.
Censure was DOA for Manchin because they'd already made the decision to go all-in on impeachment. A lot of the midterms campaigned on it. Pelosi caved to that wing of the party and there was no going back. At that point, they knew impeachment was going to fail and they crafted talking points, such as the Republican party is just the party of Trump now. This has always been about the optics and disruption. You've already expressed the opinions they pushed so it's obviously working.
Just going back to this for the first paragraph. Impeachment does necessitate a crime being committed. That's why they listed treason, bribery and OTHER high crimes. At the very least it has to be crime-like behavior. Abuse of power isnt a crime. Contempt of congress is, but trump wasn't guilty of it as they rescinded their subpoenas. If it had been like Nixon, where he refused to comply even after a court order or Clinton when he committed perjury then it would have been a crime.
Last edited:
The problem that I have with Abuse of Power being the criteria is that one man’s Abuse of Power is another man’s leadership. That’s why they listed high crimes and misdemeanors. Because, even in those days, the acts that constituted HC & M had very clear and discrete criteria with precedents in English and colonial law. They didn’t leave it up to vagaries that could be exploited by a shift in political perception.
In the 1700a and prior in Britain, a misdemeanor could actually result in the death penalty. We think of misdemeanors as stuff like traffic tickets or not keeping a well kept lawn but that is absolutely not what the founders knew it to be.
For 4 decades now the federal government lead by Democrats has failed to enforce our immigration laws. Per Article Section 8 , Congress has the responsibility for naturalization. So, for 4 decades Shiffs buddies have failed to keep essentially foreign invasion out from primarily Mexico. What protection have the feds been providing these border states? None or very little. So, you are getting upset over this Alaska idea and Russia but are you perfectly fine with the rampant illegal migration of tens of millions? One is a theoretical idea and the other is very much real and has been real for decades.
My take is I don't know if Biden is corrupt. It smells of it from that video. What I do know is we the tax payers gave $1.8 billion and research revealed this past week from investigative reporting from Glenn Beck suggests the money was laundered and is now gone.
With that said, I see nothing wrong with Trump's call. Given the testimony of 18 witnesses, mostly 2nd and 3rd person hersey evidence , I can't figure out exactly why the guy was impeached.
With that said, I go to the Bahamas from time to time on my boat. It is a foreign nation. My Constitutionsl rights as an American don't apply in the Bahamas. If I were to break a law there, that's on me and If I am detained I am now in their legal system. So, I don't know how or where you apply the US Constitution to an American citizen doing potentially bad stuff in a foreign country? He is only afforded his rights here in the US. Ukraine can investigate and charge and prosecute under their laws even when it's an US citizen.
In the end, I don't know what the VP did or did not do, but his video suggests something was done and as a citizen and tax payer I have no issues asking questions here. None.
We are not a Banana Republic but the way things have been going lately we are sliding towards one. We should all want corruption ferreted out regardless of party.
Exactly. The Constitution gives the House the right to subpoena as part of its oversight role. People can’t just ignore them. This is about as ‘black and white’ of an abuse of power as it gets.
HRC destroyed thousands of emails and documents under subpoena and you guys had ZERO shits to give. Not even a court order could mandate those items be turned over since she hired a lackey to assure they were permanently deleted.
Please spare us again with your opportunist hypocritical bed wetting and STFU.
Here's the fundamental flaw with this argument. I've mentioned it like 20 times on this board and I don't think anyone's even tried to argue it. If "abuse of power" isn't impeachable, then how do you thwart a POTUS who is - for example - using the Pardon Power to punish a state he's mad at by pardoning all federal prisoners that reside in that state?
He unquestionably has the lawful authority to issue those pardons. Any efforts on the part of Congress to limit his pardon power are not going to stand up to judicial scrutiny. Change this example to anything you want. He pardons all federal sex offenders. Pardon's all federal members of his own party. Or perhaps he pre-emptively says that he will pardon anyone who violates election law to his benefit, and then he does.
This is unquestionably a violation of his oath to faithfully execute the laws. It's clearly an abuse of the power vested in him by the US Constitution. But you'd be reaching really hard to make it a crime.
It's totally reasonable to make an argument that this particular abuse of power isn't worthy of removal. It's wholly irresponsible to argue Abuse of Power isn't impeachable.
You could’ve made the example more relevant by saying that the President uses his privilege to pardon criminal donors to his campaign and party upon exiting the Presidency. In your circumstance, unless the President is pardoning I their last day in office, which is what they do, then the Senate gets together and refuses to work with the President for the rest of their term. The House as well. This neutering the President until the voters decide whether the actions were acceptable or not.
Or more recently, you file lawsuits in the federal circuit in that state and get a sympathetic judge to issue a nationwide stay until SCOTUS reviews the case (a practice this needs review itself). There are a number of remedies for a POTUS acting within his Constitutional authority but against the best interest of the US.
Your specific example is interesting, as well. If you feel that releasing criminals that have committed felonies is an Abuse of Power of the highest order, then how do you feel about jurisdictions that obstruct the federal arrest and prosecution of people that committed immigration felonies. Should all of those officials be removed from their office because they are abusing their power to the detriment of the United States?
So what are the clear and discrete criteria for "high crimes"? I haven't seen any good evidence that supports that. Instead, we merely have historical precedent of the times that phrase was invoked in impeachments prior to the Constitution. The Brits have impeached officials using "high crimes and misdemeanors" to describe conduct like:
- giving the sovereign bad advice
- sheer ineptitude
- military mismanagement.
To your point that Abuse of Power is too easy malleable. This piece by a law professor I think sums it up really well:
The beauty of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” from the perspective of the men of 1787 was that it provided both flexibility and some measure of guidance. Flexibility because it plainly pointed to the parliamentary practice of defining impeachable conduct on a case-by-case basis. Guidance because it incorporated, by reference, 400 years of prior practice on which one could rely in identifying the kinds and degrees of misbehavior that ought to be impeachable.
I guess I would say that it is within Congress's scope of practice that if they identify something they consider a crime, they can write a bill that criminalizes it. Maybe that's the flexibility written into the constitution: not restricting what they can consider a high crime.
hey now, give the republicans some credit for this too. the fact is that the people in charge didnt really want to do anything at all about the problem. but that is exactly what congress always does. they are reactionary and never proactive.
George Mason argued against giving POTUS the power to pardon, fearing that a president may use the pardon power to hide his own misdeeds by stopping inquiries that could uncover them. James Madison responded to this concern by pointing out that any President who did such things would be subject to impeachment.
And no I'm not arguing that any specific use of the pardon power is an abuse. I'm merely trying to illustrate examples where it could be. I do think politically motivated pardons on your last day in office is an abuse of power. If those pardons happen with a year left in the term, then it's a political question whether or not those abuses warrant impeachment / removal. What I don't believe is that Congress should neuter their own explicitly granted power by accepting arguments put forward by the accused attempting to narrow down that authority.
At it's core, Impeachment is there to save us from a rogue wanna-be dictator subverting the constitution and rule of law. We have representative government for a reason. Elections don't always cure you of populists demagogues with broad public appeal abusing the powers of the executive to remain in office.
By the way, I view this as a good defense to Trump's impeachment. That his behavior to this point is bad, but not "take the choice away from voters" bad. What I disagree with is arguing that there is simply no abuse of power that is impeachable. Historical precedent disagrees. James Madison disagrees. Alexander Hamilton disagrees.
I went back and looked at it again and I think you’re right. That phrasing was meant to be removal for political purposes.
There was no federal criminal code when the US Constitution was adopted. So there's no way to argue that standard. You could argue that the behavior needs to be something that historically is viewed as a crime (common law style), but even then you don't need congress to pass a law.
The other flaw here is that you're giving the Chief Executive veto power over his own impeachment standard. If impeachment is the sole power of the House, I don't see how you can support a standard that gives POTUS veto power over what is and is not impeachable conduct.
The law would have to be implemented prior to the "crime" being committed, otherwise it would be ex-post-facto. Regardless, the senate can override a veto so they dont really need the president to sign it anyway.
Tomorrow, Congress could write a law stating that a president cannot withold aid dollars to a country for personal reasons and get it signed into law before it happens again. They could write a law that says a president can't sell a state. They could do all kinds of things that limit the presidents ability to abuse his power.
The irony here is that there's general historical and scholarly consensus on most of this stuff. The counter-arguments are almost exclusively from the defenses of those were actually impeached. Johnson, Clinton, and Trump have all argued for incredibly narrow definitions (which is logical). The purpose of those arguments are often to provide cover / validation for those who are politically inclined to acquit.
You've pointed out the flaw in your own argument here. There are simply no limits to the imagination of ways in which POTUS could abuse his legally vested authority. Your standard requires Congress to imagine every possible scenario, in advance, with a veto-proof majority of both houses in support.
Also, because this standard is not consistent with impeachments historically, we haven't spent 200+ years codifying impeachable conduct. Logic would tell you that if you're correct, all sorts of laws would be on the books already. If you're standard held, then an impeachment trial becomes an exercise in loopholes and legal technicalities.
Historic impeachments? Of the 4 which got to an advanced stage, 2 included known crimes, 2 didn't, so I dont think I would say it's a precedent either way.
Yea that's not really how precedent works. There's multiple examples in England of "high crime and misdemeanors" being the language for impeachments that didn't charge crimes. You're admitting 2/4 Presidential impeachments we're are least partially structured on non criminal acts. Plus we have multiple judicial impeachments that weren't centered on crimes.
Nixon and Clinton were both guilty of crimes. There's some grey area on Johnson but there was a law that he broke, he just broke it prior to the signing of it.
If you want to predate the US to define high crimes and misdemeanors, in England it was a misdemeanor to pet the Kings dog at one time, worthy of jail time. If trump gets the queens dog, is that impeachable?
If you don't base "high crimes and misdemeanors" on the English standard that it was adopted from, what do you base it on? Since no federal criminal code existed when the Constitution was adopted, does that mean that "high crimes and misdemeanors" was functionally meaningless at that time as it could apply to nothing?
And your argument is silly. In England, the phrase was broad giving large discretion over what was and wasn't impeachable. Just because you committed a crime, didn't mean your conduct as inherently worthy of impeachment. So even if petting the dog is a technical crime, discretion was the intent. Whether you believe a crime is necessary or not, I think we all agree on discretion.
To some degree, Maxine Waters was right. It's whatever Congress decides it is at that moment in time. Which leads to a slippery slope but that is how it was designed. Hopefully we won't see a trend of impeachments over the next several Presidencies.
And she was quoting Gerald Ford. I think his original quote is pretty reasonable. He's not really arguing that Congress has an unlimited ability to impeach the President. It was more a practical point that no matter what arguments are made and by whom, the sole power ultimately rests in the discretion of Congress.
The only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers [it] to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office. - Gerald Ford
Well so far, in all 3 cases where it has actually happened it has proven ineffective in its goal. Maybe they should try to codify these things so it's a little bit more black and white on what a president can or can not do. They won't, and it's not because they want the process to be more streamlined but because they want it to remain political in nature for the sake of optics.
Back in november you said the democrats should frame this around a bribery charge because it is a codified offense. What changed?
