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To: Eleutheria5

Taking the constitutional wording of Article 4 Section 2 is deliberately construed to mean a more shallow/diluted meaning then what our founders intended when they wrote the Section 2

“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

The clause was understood and deliberate at the time of its adoption during the Constitution Convention Debates of 1787. As explained below from an excerpt from both

http://www.crf-usa.org/impeachment/high-crimes-and-misdemeanors.html

AND

http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/2/essays/100/standards-for-impeachment

With the convention agreed on the necessity of impeachment, it next had to agree on the grounds. One committee proposed the grounds be “treason, bribery, and corruption.” Another committee was selected to deal with matters not yet decided. This committee deleted corruption and left “treason or bribery” as the grounds.

But the committee’s recommendation did not satisfy everyone. George Mason of Virginia proposed adding “maladministration.” He thought that treason and bribery did not cover all the harm that a president might do. He pointed to the English case of Warren Hastings, whose impeachment trial was then being heard in London. Hastings, the first Governor General of Bengal in India, was accused of corruption and treating the Indian people brutally.

Madison objected to “maladministration.” He thought this term was so vague that it would threaten the separation of powers. Congress could remove any president it disagreed with on grounds of “maladministration.” This would give Congress complete power over the executive.

Mason abandoned “maladministration” and proposed “high crimes and misdemeanors against the state.” The convention adopted Mason’s proposal, but dropped “against the state.” The final version, which appears in the Constitution, stated: “The president, vice-president, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The convention adopted “high crimes and misdemeanors” with little discussion. Most of the framers knew the phrase well. Since 1386, the English parliament had used “high crimes and misdemeanors” as one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping “suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,” granting warrants without cause, and bribery. Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not. The one common denominator in all these accusations was that the official had somehow abused the power of his office and was unfit to serve.

After the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution had to be ratified by the states. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote a series of essays, known as the Federalist Papers, urging support of the Constitution. In Federalist No. 65, Hamilton explained impeachment. He defined impeachable offenses as “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 of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

Violation of the Constitution by the President is very much within the meaning of Article 4 Section 2.


128 posted on 11/13/2014 4:30:06 PM PST by Bellagio
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To: Bellagio

So then if any act that a POTUS enacted by executive order is declared unconstitutional by SCOTUS, then COTUS can start impeachment proceedings. He’s violated the Constitution, so has committed an HCAMD. That once again destroys the system of checks and balances, and puts unlimited power in the hands of the legislative branch, at the discretion of the judiciary’s whim. You need a little more than that, I think.

It might work better to say that he’s giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the US by enabling an invasion, but people living far away from the Rio Grande valley will have trouble thinking of their gardeners and landscapers as invaders, even if they do tend to vote excessively often on behalf of dead people.

So while it might work legally, it would be hard to sell politically. Let’s not forget that there were legal grounds to impeach Clinton and remove him from office, but those grounds failed to gain political support, so the entire process ended badly.


132 posted on 11/13/2014 4:55:10 PM PST by Eleutheria5 (End the occupation. Annex today.)
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