Both of you are making excellent points; great contributions to the best resource on the net.
My only quibble is that I believe existing Senate rules stipulate that the chamber must take up impeachment when given notice by the House. So, in that regard the Senate is very different than normal criminal/civil court processes. That is, the 3rd branch has well developed systems & procedures in place to handle preliminary steps, scheduling, delays, appeals, etc.
If my understanding is correct, then under existing Senate rules, the Senate is at mercy to the whims of the House. That doesn't sound very reasonable or in character whatsoever for the Senate - especially if they are bound to cease regular business in order to try the impeachment.
I think the proposal floating around to update the Senate rules in order to force a timely issuance by the House would head off further potential abuses. No one thought it was necessary before, but that shipped has sailed now that the House has destroyed 230 years of precedent by passing a resolution to impeach based on purely political motives.
Yes exactly! Pelosi is exploiting the current rules to her party’s political advantage; to hog the spotlight longer; to control the narrative longer; to issue demands; to get her people more airtime and print and tweets; and to keep a cloud over Trump as long as possible (imo they think the cloud of the Russia Hoax/Mueller probe helped them to win the House in 2018, esp those districts that Trump won in 2016, so they want another cloud over him for 2020). Thus Pelosi figures drag this out as long as possible to inflict as much damage as possible. Certainly let it fester through the holidays. So divisive to America.
The Senate isn’t exactly at the mercy of the House; however POTUS is. And this is politically bad for the GOP. McConnell as a leader of the party simply cannot allow it.
Not as much as you might think. Of course an impeachment of a president is a high priority, but the senate passed all sorts of legislation the same days it was handling the impeachment case. Legislative, confirmation and other business did not grind to a halt. The senate was probably less preoccupied with the Clinton impeachment than it was with comprehensive immigration reform that it handled for a couple weeks and never passed.
Most senators are lawyers, and the details of the process are substantially setup by assistant/staff lawyers in the senate.
There is no appeal system. As far as procedural stuff goes, CJ SCOTUS rules on wehther the senate is following the rules the senate wrote, and the senate can override those decisions by voting.
You've seen the senate (general) rules on impeachment? Skimmed the Congressional Record of Clinton's impeachment? This case is way easier than Clinton's, just based on the content of the allegations and weakness of evidence. In Clinton';s case there were real arguments over a felony being grounds for removal.
> “My only quibble is that I believe existing Senate rules stipulate that the chamber must take up impeachment when given notice by the House.”
In normal order yes, but it’s clear the Democrats are playing the system and displaying bad faith. Hence, the issues are taken to the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus. See my #105 above.