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Kudos to Richard Epstein
On the recent Uncommon Knowledge podcast (with Peter Robinson, Richard Epstein, John Yoo, Andrew McCarthy), Richard Epstein (no Trump lover) makes the most salient and accurate statements regarding the second Impeachment that I have heard:
- Intellectually dishonest.
- Illegitimate.
- Evil.
He makes an unassailable case for each point. Without even trying. Worth listening.
Andrew McCarthy tries to defend the indefensible while admitting that it is indefensible. Thinks it should be done anyway?!
John Yoo dances like a prizefighter who doesn’t want to get his nose bloodied.
And Peter seems to recognize that Trump does have a point when he calls the election illegitimate, inasmuch as many states dispensed with election laws under cover of Covid. No one else will say this, but his guests have to begrudgingly agree. And this is the point. The Left/Democrats/Media/Industrial/Corporate complex are suppressing any suggestion of electoral irregularities when we have seen irregularities as in no other election in American history. To deny this is to take leave of reality. The Left (Time Magazine) even brags about how this was done while pretending what was done was legitimate. Perversity of the highest order.
None of these gentlemen, however, except Richard, seems capable of simply acknowledging the plain text of the US Constitution, e.g., that the President is to be tried by the Senate with the Chief Justice presiding with the only penalty being removal from office, with the option to bar the convicted of holding future office if the President is removed from office.
All of these gentlemen recognize, along with most of the Republican Senators sitting as jurors in Trump’s trial, that in the Impeachment charge of “inciting insurrection” (the mother of all overcharges, such that even Andy McCarthy, that professional indicter of ham sandwiches, admits that it is an overcharge), the Left is attempting to extend a conviction of Trump to all of his supporters, to curtail political activity of any Trump supporter, even to remove from office anyone who supported him. Not since the removal of voting rights from members of the Confederacy in the aftermath of the Civil War has such a thing been attempted for such a large swath of the electorate in the US (and that turned out very badly in the very long run).
And of course, in true Democrat/Leftist fashion, the Democrats are of such limited imagination that they can only charge (falsely, of course) an opponent with doing exactly what they themselves are doing. At the same time. As they falsely charge Trump for inciting insurrection, the Biden administration is supporting Antifa/BLM rioting and mayhem against Federal targets (they might as well be shelling Fort Sumter), with their stated goal of destroying the US. Now that’s insurrection. And the Biden administration is supporting that in word and deed.
One question lingers: How politically myopic is Liz Cheney? And Mitt Romney? and Susan Collins? And Lisa Murkowski? And Pat Toomey? And Ben Sasse? And Bill Cassidy? (Or Peggy Noonan, for that matter?) These good people now own this fiasco of an impeachment trial. May it grace their reputations forever.
Published in Politics
That is NOT the plain text of the US Constitution.
This is Article I Section 3:
The only reference to the President is that the Supreme Court Justice shall preside over a Presidential impeachment trial, and it does NOT say that disqualification can only ever be imposed if someone has been removed from office. Nowhere in the constitution does it state plainly that only federal government officials can be impeached. According to the plain text of the US constitution, the House can impeach and the Senate can convict anybody on the planet. The only way to interpret the text otherwise is to rely on emanations and penumbras.
On the other hand: One can argue that it says removal from office and disqualification, not removal from office or disqualification. It’s a fair quibble, but still entirely arguable one way or the other.
IMHO.
I’m not a lawyer…
Well, Donald Trump is not the President.
Which is why the Chief Justice isn’t presiding over the trial.
You got that right.
So if they are not impeaching the President, they must be impeaching a private citizen? Where does the Congress have the authority to impeach a private citizen?
The impeachment took place while Donald Trump was President. The authority to try and convict is in question since he is a private citizen.
Article I Section 2:
The argument goes like this: Having the sole Power of Impeachment means that no court can tell the House of Representatives who it can or cannot impeach.
We have no rule of law in this country. Just the execution of power. The Democrats have all the power. They can do what they please, as they please, when they please, and execute any penalties they please. The rest is just political theater.
So the Congress can impeach and try any Citizen?
I tend to lump the Impeachment and the trial together as there is a functional similarity in this case…
Excellent summary Nanocelt. I too felt that McCarthy could not back his arguments while Epstein did provide excellent reasoning for his views.
Yes, I suppose. But impeach him for what? Political speech? And try him for what? A non-crime?
I’m no lawyer either, although I have fathered one of the rascals.
This excerpt is plain. The punishment for a successful impeachment is removal from office and inability to serve the government again. Therefore one MUST be in office to be impeached.
Which leaves me puzzled about Alcee Hastings. His impeachment from a judgeship should disqualify him to be in the House. Article 1 gives the House control over its own membership. Why did the House republicans not contest his seating when they held the majority? Our side is such a bunch of wimps.
Why, at this point, does anybody pay attention to what Andrew McCarthy says?
Any human on Earth according to the plain text of the document, but that assumes the Supreme Court wouldn’t rule that the “emanations and penumbra” of the constitution say otherwise.
I’m not going to get into a big argument about it, but Mark Levin says that Andy McCarthy really boxed himself intellectually by writing his last book.
That’s not how the plain text of the US Constitution puts it. The impeachment and the trial are kept separate, presumably for a reason.
To my surprise, Senator Ted Cruz in the Verdict podcast concludes that the Senate has the power to try the impeachment, but the Senate not required to conduct a trial. Sen. Cruz says the Senate should not have conducted the trial for prudential reasons.
Consider the most basic of basics: Impeachment is a charge by a legislative body, the sole reason for which is removal of an official from office. That is what Impeachment means. That is what it is for. There is no other way to construe Impeachment. That in the past Impeachment has been misused, abused, exploited, misapplied, and corrupted (including, most viciously and egregiously by that Conservative Saint, Edmund Burke) is not sufficient reason for us to abuse ourselves with such balderdash. To construe Impeachment as something other than a process for removal from office of a public official is to do violence to language, reason, law, and the public weal.
The Constitution makes no sense regarding Impeachment unless the basic meaning of Impeachment is grasped. Then the plain language of the Constitution DOES require that the Senate try the sitting President, with the Chief Justice presiding, in order to convict or acquit and remove from office or not, and bar from further office or not. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. The US Senate notwithstanding.
Alcee Hasting’s trial in the Senate was conducted by none other than Arlen Specter. Both the House and the Senate were controlled by Democrats at the time. Specter did not advocate that Hastings be barred from holding further office, and he wasn’t. Hastings was tried on charges of accepting bribes and was acquited because his collaborator refused to testify. Guilty as sin; free as a bird. And the longest serving member of Florida’s Congressional delegation. Known for paying more money to family members (including a girlfriend) as his staff than any other Congressperson. Corruption, thy name is Congress.
Toomey is not seeking re-election in 2022