Posted on 08/04/2017 2:14:31 PM PDT by cotton1706
Having noted the change in President Andrew Johnson’s views regarding Reconstruction, the Radical Republicans acted to expand Congressional power at the expense of the Executive branch. In March 1867, the Tenure of Office Act was passed by both houses, but vetoed by the President. Then it was re-passed in Congress by the necessary two-thirds margin and became law.
The law provided for the following, that: Any official appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate would require similar consent for dismissal Presidential cabinet members were to hold their position for a full term unless removed by the Senate. The Radical Republicans were specifically trying to extend protection to Edwin M. Stanton, the secretary of war, who had been cooperating actively with Johnson’s opponents.
Johnson sought to challenge the constitutionality of the measure by dismissing Stanton. U.S. Grant was tapped as interim secretary, but backed out. Another individual was named by the president, but Stanton locked his office doors and refused to vacate. Eventually, the secretary tired of the spectacle and gave up office in May 1868. However, the fact that Johnson had attempted to ignore this act of Congress became one of the main the impeachment proceedings against him.
The Tenure of Office Act was amended during the Grant administration and repealed in 1887. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1926 ruled in Myers v. United States that the law was unconstitutional.)
(Excerpt) Read more at u-s-history.com ...
This has been tried before...and failed!
That’s unconstitutional as well as Congress telling the President he can’t lift sanctions on Russia without its consent.
Forget factual history ( and many thanks for posting this! ), the vast majority of them don’t even know what our Constitution states!
To a liberal, history started at breakfast this morning...................
Nor do they care..........
That never matters to these spineless yobs
Sadly very true.
As an aside, Edwin M. Stanton is remembered for being on of the most important cabinet officers the US has ever had, because of one order he issued while in office.
Fearing that after the Civil War, the courts would be swamped with lawsuits against the US government, he ordered that *all* US war records be carefully retained. And when the US Army captured Confederate records, they must be carefully preserved as well.
The lawsuits never came, but there has thereafter been an enormous bulge of demographic and military data for a decade or more. Before then, information and records are relatively scant, likewise after that time.
The end result is a “snapshot” of America and its people at that time. A gigantic pool of now priceless information about our history.
So Mueller cannot be Constitutionally insulated by Congress against firing. Congress will use their Tenure Redux act to impeach Trump and then the Constitutional Crises gets going full blast unless the USSC takes it and rules immediately. Then we have to worry about Roberts and Kennedy. Kennedy enjoys “making history” and Roberts is susceptible to malevolent pressure.
Maybe yes, maybe no. If the Congress could muster a 2/3 majority in both houses to pass a new Independent Counsel Act, and especially if Kennedy stays on the SCOTUS, it's conceivable that the Court would uphold the new statute.
The constitutionl "hook" for the old Independent Counsel statute was a provision in the USC that allows Congress to vest the appointment powers for "inferior" officers in the Courts, to wit:
[T]he Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
ARTICLE II, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 2
Now to be sure, some legal experts say an independent counsel with virtually unlimited powers is by no stretch of the imagination an "inferior" officer. But nobody really knows how the SCOTUS would rule if it ever should consider the matter.
Roberts can’t take the blackmail pressure that will be applied- blackmail or pure extortion.
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