I’m wondering whether what I’m about to write about will be
moot by the time we get through the day and I get this posted. Still, I’m going
to comment—on the impeachment, and then on Nancy Pelosi’s threat not to pass the
articles of impeachment along to the Senate.
Yesterday, for the third time in history, the House voted to
impeach a US President. For the first time in history, the House voted to
impeach a president without there being an underlying crime that the president
may have committed.
 |
| President Trump at rally while House votes to impeach screenshot from here |
What happened the other two times?
There were 11 articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson
in 1868, but the main charge had to do with the violation of the Tenure of
Office Act—a bill he had vetoed, but that the legislature had overruled. It was
designed to protect a particular Secretary of War. Andrew Johnson dismissed the
man and replaced him anyway. This was during the contentious post-Civil War
era, when, granted, there was a lot of division. Add to that, Johnson had come
to office replacing Lincoln, after the assassination, and was of the opposite
party of Lincoln. Lincoln had chosen him to help bring people together. But it’s
hard to imagine that sort of setup today—mainly because you’d need to worry
about assassination. Not that Johnson had anything to do with that, but you can
see the motive.
By the way, Johnson was not removed from office by the
Senate.
According to the Wikipedia article on that impeachment, here’s
the takeaway:
The impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson had important
political implications for the balance of federal legislative–executive power.
It maintained the principle that Congress should not remove the president from
office simply because its members disagreed with him over policy, style, and
administration of the office.
A hundred and thirty years later, there were two articles of
impeachment against Bill Clinton: lying under oath and obstruction of justice.
This was the case in which several women had accused him of sexual assault, and
he lied under oath in a court of law. Somewhere during his testimony in that
trial was when he famously equivocated by saying, “It depends upon what the
meaning of the word 'is' is.” He also lied directly to the American people
about his affair, in the White House, with intern Monica Lewinsky, saying, “I
did not have sex with that woman,” which of course semen stains on the blue
dress he had given her proved was a lie. He did both the literal crimes and the
heinous acts. For lying under oath, he lost his law license. Still, the Senate
did not vote to remove him from office, reframing the lying and abuse of power as,
his sex life is his private business and has nothing to do with running the country.
The takeaway is that, if the Senate wants their president to
stay, there’s almost no limit to the wrongdoings they will justify for him.
The other time there was almost an impeachment was with
Richard Nixon, in the 1970s, who stepped down rather than put the country
through the ordeal of an impeachment. There was a break-in at the Watergate
Hotel, into Democrat Party headquarters. The thieves were caught. It turned out
they had been hired by members of the president’s re-election campaign. The
president had been unaware, and not approving of any such break-in, but he did
participate in the coverup in order to distance his campaign from the crime.
That didn’t work out so well. That was in fact obstruction of justice, and it’s
likely he would have been both impeached and removed.
Ironically, the Nixon re-election campaign was doing well
without the information the crooks were trying to obtain. Add to that, if Nixon
had told the truth, that he didn’t know about the scheme, and if he had then disavowed
anyone involved, he’d have probably survived the scandal. Truth is better.
There are a couple of things that make this current impeachment
historic. First is that there is no underlying crime that the president has
committed; it is a purely partisan political maneuver.
Second, the articles of impeachment have been voted on; the
impeachment has happened. Except that the Speaker of the House is hesitating to
pass the articles of impeachment along to the Senate. She’s insisting that the
Senate run their hearing on whether to remove the president from office based
on Democrat-led House demands. She wants the Senate to go by the House’s rules.
She’s saying, “Unless you do as I say, I’m not giving you the articles of
impeachment.” (That’s a summary, not a verbatim quote, of course.)
 |
| House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, following impeachment vote screenshot from here |
This is odd in so many ways. Let’s try a couple of analogies
to clarify.
I follow a lot of bills when the Texas legislature is in
session, as it was this past January to June. I keep a list, and update
whenever there’s been movement. Every bill goes through several stages, but the
simplest version is, it goes through the originating body, House or Senate, and
when that body passes it, it goes on to the other body. If it passes there, but
with amendments, it goes back to the first body for reconciliation. And finally,
if passed by both chambers, it is sent on to the governor for signature or
veto.
So, it’s a significant movement when the bill passes in,
say, the House and gets sent to the Senate. I tend to think of this passing
from one body to the other as automatic. But sometimes it takes a day, or maybe
even two, for the bill to actually appear in the Senate to be dealt with. But
it never fails that the bill does get sent.
There is no possibility that a bill gets passed in the House
and doesn’t get sent on to the Senate. The House is required to send it on. And
it would be both a pointless and unlawful betrayal of the House and the people
the House represents to take their votes and pocket them. If it were up to any
individual member of the House to “table” the bill following a lawful vote,
wouldn’t such an individual be tempted to do that any time it suited him or
her? It. Can’t. Happen.
Yet that is what Nancy Pelosi is doing. All of the representatives
are now on record for whether they think the president should be removed from
office; for some, that is a political risk, because they’re in districts that
elected this president. But she doesn’t care; she’ll just withhold the articles,
because she wants to use them as leverage.
Except, that’s not really how leverage works. As Senator Ted
Cruz, an actual constitutional scholar, puts it,
Her threat to the Senate is, “Do exactly what I want or I’m
not going to impeach the president; I’m not going to send over the impeachment
articles.” My attitude is, OK, throw us in that brier patch. Don’t send them.
That’s all right. We actually have work to do.
Yeah, pretending they didn’t impeach the President makes Republicans chuckle, not shake in their boots.
One more analogy. Let’s say there’s been suspicion of a
crime. Between the investigating officers and the district attorney’s office,
there is a case built. Say the prosecutor announces, “We’re pressing the
following charges—” and then lists them. But then he doesn’t actually file the
charges. The accusation is out there in the media, possibly hanging over the
accused, but it doesn’t go to court. It’s nothing but words.
That is similar to what Nancy Pelosi is doing. She is
announcing the pressing of charges, but she is not presenting any of the
charges to the court. As far as the court is concerned, then, there are no
charges. Until they are delivered to the Senate, there can be no impeachment
trial.
Each body of the legislature is entitled to set up its own
rules. What incentive is there for the Senate to bow to this demanding
Democrat-led House to conduct their business against their own interests?
Nancy Pelosi has no power to do what she’s attempting to do.
No right to do it. And no rationale for doing it.
Nancy Pelosi is trying to usurp power—that is, take power
that has not been granted to her. That is an abuse of power—what the House has
accused the president of without showing he has actually abused his power. She
is literally abusing power and obstructing Congress.
So many ironies. Let’s add one more.
Another option for the House would have been to censure the
President. This would have held no legal standing, but it would have sent the message,
“We don’t like what you said in that July phonecall, because it could be
misinterpreted, so we censure you for not being more careful with your speech when
officially representing our nation.” It’s possible that there would have been
no Democrat defectors for that (there were two nays joining all the Republicans,
plus one abstention, in yesterday’s vote), and maybe even a Republican or two
would have been willing to send that message. This would not have required
passing anything along to the Senate, where there is virtually zero chance of
the President being removed from office.
It would have saved face without any betrayal of House
members. It would have been essentially the same outcome as voting to impeach
but then not delivering the articles of impeachment—without any embarrassing
lawbreaking on Pelosi’s part.
My guess is that this wasn’t done because the radical base
of the Democrat party has insisted on impeaching the President since before his
inauguration.
It’s inconceivable, simply because of its lawlessness, that
this holdout will continue. I expect Pelosi will give in, with some sort of
speech about how much she cares about the Constitution—more irony—and eventually
deliver the articles of impeachment. We’ll see.
But one thing to consider is, if the Democrats are accusing
someone of some wrongdoing, it is highly probable that they are committing that
very wrongdoing. I’d sure like to see the truth laid bare for the world to see
on every one of their collusions, quid pro quos, obstructions, and lies.
One more analogy. We recently used a pressure washer to clean the bathroom tile, and got rid of twenty years of ground in grime, hairspray, and whatnot. It's like new again. Our government could use a good pressure washing like that. Then we could get back to thriving with greater freedom, prosperity, and civilization.
