Posted on 04/13/2005 8:21:32 PM PDT by cyncooper
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay apologized Wednesday for using overheated rhetoric on the day Terri Schiavo died, but refused to say whether he supports impeachment of the judges who ruled in her case.
~snip~
At a crowded news conference in his Capitol office, DeLay addressed remarks he made in the hours after the brain-damaged Florida woman died on March 31. "I said something in an inartful way and I shouldn't have said it that way and I apologize for saying it that way," DeLay told reporters.
~snip~
DeLay seemed at pains to soften, if slightly, his rhetoric of March 31, when Schiavo died despite an extraordinary political and legal effort to save her life.
"I believe in an independent judiciary. I repeat, of course I believe in an independent judiciary," DeLay said.
At the same time, he added, the Constitution gives Congress power to oversee the courts.
"We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse," DeLay said.
Asked whether he favors impeachment for any of the judges in the Schiavo case, he did not answer directly.
Instead, he referred reporters to an earlier request he made to the House Judiciary Committee to look into "judicial activism" and Schiavo's case in particular.
~snip~
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
Since you believe there was a misapplication of the law or an ignoring of it this means you do NOT have an equal understanding of it.
If you do not believe in a conspiracy that is a welcome difference from most of your allies.
You're being "impressed" would indicate great weakness in my argument and would not be welcome.
Thank you bb. I agree I could never put my boys through that kind of experience. It seems like the closest one could come to Hell on Earth. The best leavetaking, for me, would be one like Stonewall's.
I get it and it was not very difficult to do so.
TS was reduced to essentially a body with organs functioning because of the autonomic nervous system but that is barely human. Consciousness is the essence of humanity not mobility or even brilliance but consciousness above the level of plants. When the consciousness goes so does the humanity.
After three rounds of chemo Arlene's cancer returned and we all knew that to put her through it again for another few months was not acceptable. To hear her dealing with it tore at my very being. Nothing could cut the nausea not marijuana not the synthetics without giving her tremendous headaches.
Her life was taken while she remained with us everything which was part of that special feeling people had when she walked into a room was gone replaced by a pain-wracked existence I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. All that gave her joy: raising her boys, her art, her students, her enjoyment of fine cooking and decorating her house was taken from her. She had nothing left.
It was pretty much agreed by the Founders that it was not acceptible to impeach for "political" reasons because the Court was considered outside of politics. This doctrine was taken so seriously that Congress would not even remove an insane alcoholic judge, Pickering I believe, early in the Republic's history.
Chase actually could have been removed legitimately because his behavior on the bench was abusive and biased IMO.
I am so sorry to hear of your wifes struggle with cancer, and how she suffered....she was lucky tho, to have you with her through her trials...from what you say, I deduce that when her cancer returned, she opted to have no more chemo...and its just as well, as so often the tradeoff, of enduring the chemo, for very little time, is not worth it...
So sorry that you had to watch her suffer, but without you, it would have been worse for her...I hope your memories of her when she was healthy, will warm your heart, and make you smile....
cyncooper: Neither have I.
I can't say whether that's absolutely true or not, because I haven't read all of cyncooper's posts, but in this case, she was not posting about my looks. She was dropping a reminder of the insulting comments made by certain "freepers" about our troops. At one point, they had zeroed in on one particular soldier who had a mustache. They called him a woman, and said he had a hormone problem. The only thing they knew about him at the time was that he was wearing the uniform of the United States Army. That was all the provocation they needed. When I objected to the nasty things they were saying about our troops, I was called a POS. After insulting me several times while the thread grew by hundreds of posts, they began denying the remarks they'd made about our troops. Once the posts were buried so far back they knew it would be time consuming to find them, they demanded I post a link to the offending posts. At first I refused to do their homework for them, but then I decided to post the links for any lurkers who had just shown up. As soon as I posted links to three of the offending posts, one of their group who was serving as a moderator suspended me for four days.
I've received a few messages from other freepers, thanking me for the links, and expressing their disgust at the remarks made about our troops. Most of the "freepers" who were caught insulting our troops have made up lies, pretending they didn't say the things they said, or that the words they used don't mean what everybody knows they mean. Judge for yourself. Links to three of the offending posts are listed near the bottom of my profile page.
Cyncooper is telling the truth when she says it has nothing to do with my looks. It's just a reminder that she and her buddies can bash the troops all they want, and when I complain about it, I stand the risk of being suspended.
An excellent summation!
Tell her about it, "you ignorant POS."
So maybe you'd enjoy being kept alive with a liquified brain, with no chance of ever recovering (with all due respect to Terri), but I certainly wouldn't.
That is nowhere near all the respect Terri is due. That's an extremely disrespectful way to speak about a fellow human being. That's even worse than calling our Infantry soldiers women with hormone problems, not that you'd see anything wrong with that.
At least some of the founders found the impeachment power to be the mechnaism by which a legislature could remedy a judicial system that was encroaching on legislative power. Judges that "make" law from the bench via misconstruction of statute or otherwise stifling legislative intent are legitimate targets for impeachment and removal.
America's founders intended that Congress impeach activist judges. In The Federalist No.81, Alexander Hamilton argued that "the supposed danger of judiciary encroachments on the legislative authority...is in reality a phantom." Why? Because, wrote Hamilton, "there never can be a danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the legislature, would hazard the united resentment of the body entrusted with [impeachment]."This doctrine was taken so seriously that Congress would not even remove an insane alcoholic judge, Pickering I believe, early in the Republic's history....
According to Professor Raoul Berger, impeachment was created precisely because some actions for which public officials should be removed from office are not covered by the criminal law. The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" already had 400-year-old roots in English common law when the framers placed it in the U.S. Constitution. English judges were impeached for misuse of their official position or power, mal-administration, unconstitutional or extrajudicial opinions, misinterpreting the law, and encroaching on the power of the legislature.
http://www.childrensjustice.org/impeachment/impch-is-cure.htm <-- Article
Insanity and alcoholism to not render a judge a political activist. Pickering was impeached, convicted and removed. Although it does not suprise me that Congress is generally reluctant to exercize it's power. Congress is a lilly-livered institution, focused on it's own self-preservation, and these days, self preservation by pandering to special interests, and by shifting wealth from a smaller number of producing voters to a larger population of consuming voters. "Once half the population figures out it can vote largess for itself from the public treasury ..." and all that.
The "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" would of course include what we today think of as indictable criminal offenses--both felonies and misdemeanors--but also included mere misbehavior in office. William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, the standard explanation of English law at the time our Constitution was written, clearly made impeachment the remedy for any act that might be an injury to the state or system of government, whether it was actually a crime or not. "Crimes and misdemeanors are mere synonymous terms;" Blackstone wrote, "but, in common usage, the word crime is made to denote offenses of a deeper and more atrocious dye, while small faults and omission of less consequence are comprised under the gentler name of misdemeanor." That the Founders shared this view was made clear when they specified that an impeached and removed official would still "be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law" (Article 1, Section 3). Impeachment was the political solution; criminal matters would still be handled by the courts.In their own commentary on the Constitution, The Federalist Papers, some of the Founders explained more about how they expected the process to work. In "Federalist Number 65," first published in the New York Packet on March 7, 1788, Alexander Hamilton wrote that impeachment was for "those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are," he continued, "of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL" [emphasis in the original]. Hamilton went on to explain why the Senate was the ideal body to try and if necessary remove those who might be impeached by the House. It was large enough and democratic enough to be entrusted with so momentous a duty and yet sufficiently insulated from the eddying currents of public opinion to follow the law strictly in what the Founders anticipated would likely be a surrounding atmosphere of intense political battle.
http://www.his.tcu.edu/Frog&Globe/SiteArchives/Woodworth-Impeachment.htm
Here is another one. I found quite a few using the tersms "impeachment" "founders" or "impeachment" "chase" in the Google search engine.
Impeachment at the federal level is basically like a courtroom conviction in the sense that when a person is impeached, that person has been convicted of wrongdoing. The criminal charges are generally stated in the articles of impeachment. The House decides on impeachment while the Senate tries the impeachment. The Congressional Quarterly issue, "Impeachment and the U.S. Congress," describes the power well."Impeachment is perhaps the most awesome though the least used power of Congress. In essence, it is a political action, couched in legal terminology, directed against a ranking official of the federal government. The House of Representatives is the prosecutor. The Senate chamber is the courtroom; and the Senate is the judge and jury. The final penalty is removal from office and possible disqualification from further office. There is no appeal."
http://www.somacon.com/blog/page20.php <-- Political Parties and Impeachment
Chase actually could have been removed legitimately because his behavior on the bench was abusive and biased IMO.
His judicial decision was flawed. The party that Chase conviced was pardoned. The impeachment proceeding broke down along party lines (as did the Clinton impeachment - see, it really IS a political process), with the quasi-legal arguments being focued on the meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors" language in the Constitution. The winners in the trial took the view that you espouse, impeachment is not a political weapon, and is only to be used against a judge who breaks the law. A narrow "plain meaning" construction of Congress' Constitutional power of impeachment. I fall on the other side. Congress shouldn't impeach willy-nilly, but it darn well should impeach judges that legislate from the bench, and it should impeach judges that misapply or misconstrue Congressional intent.
State legislative bodies could do the same.
The Schiavo case is a tougher nut though. In part because the case was a cilvil matter, not a criminal one. And in general, the stakes of civil disputes are lower. Historically, they have been ALWAYS lower, it is only recently (the past 20 years) that an error in civil court decision could possibly result in death of a legally innocent person.
I stated the applicable section of the 2DCA's opinion regarding Schiavo, guardians and conflicts. You have stated nothing except opinion, which you are entitled to but you're not entitled to crown yourself King of the Courts. Comprende'?
If you do not believe in a conspiracy that is a welcome difference from most of your allies.
A tacit admission that you lied to further what you see as your cause, whatever that may be.
You're being "impressed" would indicate great weakness in my argument and would not be welcome.
Friend, you don't have arguments, you have opinion, ad hominem and lies from what I've seen of our discussion.
I repeat, the 2DCA held that Schiavo had a conflcit therefore it was the states decision to kill Terri Schiavo. Florida law prohibits appointment of guardians who "may have a conflcit of interest".
If you've got a problem with my statement of the law or the facts back it up, if not I suggest you back off.
Where does consciousness reside and how much cortex does one need to be conscious?
Like most, you play at being a medical expert but even the medical experts are confounded by cases where folks have almost no cerbral cortex and yet test above average on the Stanford Binet.
Presumably you can explain how a fellow with just several of mm's of cortex can score 115 on his IQ test becuase nobody else can.
It was pretty much agreed by the Founders that it was not acceptible to impeach for "political" reasons because the Court was considered outside of politics.
This is false. The founders viewed congressional impeachment of judges as a perfectly legitimate political exercise against judges who make law from the bench, or who apply the law in a way is contrary to Congressional/legislative intent.
This doctrine was taken so seriously that Congress would not even remove an insane alcoholic judge, Pickering I believe, early in the Republic's history.
Removal of a judge for mental incompetence (e.g., insanity, drug-induced rulings, etc.) has no probative value to the question of whether or not impeachment is legitimately a political process. By the way, Pickering was removed.
Chase actually could have been removed legitimately because his behavior on the bench was abusive and biased IMO.
Chase's judicial appointment survived impeachment because Congress voted along political lines. This is contrary to the view that impeachment proceedings are not political in nature. There is little doubt that Chase's decision was the wrong one, the law was misapplied. Even Chase's defenders admitted as much. But Chase was not removed. The person(s) conviced in Chase's court were pardoned.
President Thomas Jefferson, leader of the Republicans, disliked the idea of judges being appointed for life. He feared that under such a system, the judiciary might become too powerful. And when Samuel Chase expressed Federalist opinions from the bench, Jefferson encouraged the House of Representatives to impeach him.So, a founder, Jefferson, encourages Congress to impeach a Supreme Court justice for what amounted to politically motivated court orders. This is a concrete example against the statement, "It was pretty much agreed by the Founders that it was not acceptible to impeach for 'political' reasons because the Court was considered outside of politics."
A question then is what constitutes "political" activity? I think legislating from the bench fits that, nicely. As does thumbing the judicial nose, showing the judical ass, to Congress.
Do I think Congress has the political will to override an activist judiciary? Nope. We're stuck with activist courts. The GOP-lead Congress doesn't have the balls to use it's Constitutionally granted power of impeachment. Heck, the GOP-lead Congress doesn't seem to have the balls to approve presidential appointments.
Judge Greer and Jim King rolled Jebbie right over and they are thugs.
It was NEVER about a soldier...We were making fun of YOU.
You seem to be the only one who doesn't understand that.
You are the worst type of creature to deal with..YOU BELIEVE your own lies.
You're not the tough broad you picture yourself to be...LOL.
sw
Get off your high horse...
sw
It's not my fight, but ...
Making fun of people detracts from FR.
Your friend can't produce the stealth post where ANY of us bashed the military. It's slanderous, outrageous and she should produce that offensive post, or apologize. She should put up, shut up or slink out of here.
sw
Just because I stepped into your fight doesn't mean I took either side, and it is presumptuous of you to assign me to be "a friend" of anybody at FR.
My comment was simple and direct. Making fun of people detracts from FR, and you asserted that you were making fun of a poster.
I absolutely agree with your point that a person who is making an assertion is obliged to support it, or risk others doubting the assertion. And I also agree that apologizing is the right thing to do in many online circumstances.
I see your manners are improving. Next we'll see if we can't work on your sense of honesty.
Others who have read the offensive posts have told me they found them insulting toward our troops too. The only ones who have denied their content are the ones who posted the insults.
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