Posted on 12/20/2019 6:39:00 AM PST by Kaslin
Some political observers, like Carl Hulse at the New York Times, are wondering if highly politicized impeachments will become the "new normal." I don't share that concern. Impeachments have always been politicized, because the process is overtly political. What they've never been, and will likely never be, is "normal."
That is not because there is some high hurdle that needs to be cleared in order to impeach a president, mind you. According to Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution, the "House of Representatives ... shall have the sole Power of Impeachment," and the House needs only a straight-majority vote to introduce articles of impeachment.
Having won a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, Democrats were emboldened, and beseeched by the more radical elements of their base, to impeach the president at all costs. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally, and I'd argue reluctantly, caved to these elements.
But she's always known that this won't go anywhere beyond the impeachment grandstanding that we've witnessed recently. In order to convict and remove the president from office, a two-thirds majority of the Senate is required by the Constitution.
The reason for the structure of this process is as simple as it is brilliantly designed.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Yeaaaaah....let’s quote an expert from the NYT.
Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School, published an opinion piece in Bloomberg on Thursday arguing against the House Democrats withholding the articles of impeachment, thus preventing the Senate from holding a trial.
"Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution:
The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment.
The Senate must actually hold a trial," he argues. "If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president.
If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
PS: Please check my tagline.
ALL OF THIS TRAVESTY would’ve come down on the EFFIN rats heads if BARR would’ve hit the swamp before they had a chance of the hoax hearings!! I BLAME MOST Sessions, I hope he burn in hell soon and Barr for delaying his findings!! EFFIN SWAMP creatures!
“won’t go anywhere beyond the impeachment grandstanding that we’ve witnessed recently”
Perhaps, but it will do damage to her party like nothing Trump could have ever done.
Democrats have threatened to impeach, or actually done so, every Republican president since at least Nixon. Will they now impeach all going forward?
The left really never learns. They just figure out a better way to cheat and circumvent the system.
where does it say in the constitution they need house managers?
They should hold it without them. Call a vote so the business of the Senate can move forward.
For Johnson’s trial in 1868, the Senate adopted specific rules to govern the proceedings.
According to the current “Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials” (as revised in 1986), the Senate must start the trial by 1 p.m. on the day (Sunday excepted) following the day that the House sends its impeachment “managers” to the Senate to present the articles of impeachment.
But nothing will happen in the Senate, even after any articles of impeachment are approved, until (1) the House appoints managers (the House members who will prosecute the case in the Senate) and (2) the managers formally appear in the well of the Senate and “exhibit” the articles of impeachment to the senators.
The last impeachment trial—of former federal Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr.—that was held in the Senate was in 2010. The Democratic manager of the case was Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., now a leader in the drive to impeach Trump. The Republican manager was former Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.
For the Clinton impeachment trial, the House appointed 13 managers.
Under the 1986 Rules, the Senate shall “continue in session from day to day (Sundays excepted) after the trial shall commence (unless otherwise ordered by the Senate) until final judgment shall be rendered.”
All other “legislative and executive business” before the Senate is suspended during the conduct of the trial. The rules specify that the “chief justice shall be” sworn in “by the presiding officer of the Senate and shall preside over the Senate during” the trial.
The Senate has the “power to compel the attendance of witnesses, to enforce obedience to its orders, mandates, writs, precepts, and judgments,” and to “punish” disobedience to its orders and mandates. Thus, the Senate could compel witnesses such as the so-called whistleblower to appear.
All motions, objections, and requests go to the presiding officer, who is given the power to “rule on all questions of evidence including, but not limited to, questions of relevancy, materiality, and redundancy.”
There was a legal, fair and constitutional election...but the liberals/progressives didn’t like the outcome.
So they will destroy the basic and longstanding pillars of society and government to overturn that election.
And they think everything will go back to normal afterwards.
Impeachment is like the dog running after cars but what will he do it he ever catches one? Or like killing someone. You can trash and vilify a person in any number of ways, ruin his reputation, get him fired, put sugar in his gas tank...but killing them requires more thought on what do you do now? How do you get rid of the body? How do you escape consequences? Hum..
Why all this talk in the media about impeachment being such a high hurdle?
It takes more congressional votes to override a veto.
Impeachment sets a deliberately lower bar.
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