Yes, Trump's Pardon of Arpaio Is Actually an Impeachable Offense

[MineralMan]

It demonstrates that Donald Trump does not care about the Constitution and is willing to act outside of its limitations on his power at will. However, unless a Republican-controlled Congress is willing to impeach and remove Trump from office, it will not matter. That is the essential element in all of this. At this point, it seems likely that there are simply not enough votes to either impeach or convict Trump in Congress.

What that means is that he will have successfully violated his oath of office with impunity. That is unthinkable to me, but appears to be OK with most Republicans. We should be very worried about that. Very worried, indeed.

[drray23]

1. since its totally up to congress to define what is impeacheable

it does qualify. they already have enough to impeach if they wanted to. Unfortunately they are not yet at this point.

[MineralMan]

3. I'm not sure this Congress will ever reach that point, frankly.

We'd better start looking at 2018 and 2020 very closely and begin preparations to regain control of this nation. If we do not, we may find it impossible to do later. That's my fear.

[LiberalLoner]

11. +1

We are in very dangerous territory now.

[Ligyron]

12. plus 1

It will be interesting to see how they react once Trump pardons a few more members of his crime syndicate.

Because I think we all realize something like that is going to happen.

The House will be difficult unless the districts change and the courts are about our only real hope in that regard.

[NightWatcher]

2. Now all we need is a Congress willing to do the right thing.

And they've proven that they are too busy sucking up to a vocal racist minority to do anything like that.

[MineralMan]

5. I think we're going to need to elect that Congress.

We'll have a couple more chances in 2018 and 2020. But, if we do not succeed, we may not get another chance for a very long time.

[flibbitygiblets]

7. True, but they ignore it at their own political peril

It's looking easier and easier to repeal and replace Congress in 2018. Especially since the few of them who do speak out against hair fuhrer get his "fire and fury " treatment. Seems like lose - lose for R's.

[NightWatcher]

8. Except that through gerrymandering they've got the seats but they have to appeal to the teabaggers

The seats are going to republicans no matter what happens. Unfortunately the party is controlled by threats to primary officials with more and more regressive and evil candidates.

There are enough republicans who would vote for impeachment and removal but they know if they vote for it they'll be replaced by rwnj's who hold more and more fascistic views. The republicans who are not racists and fascists are hostage to nazis, racists who will replace them.

[Bettie]

4. They will never impeach

remember, the only principle they have: Party over Country, 100% of the time.

[Hugin]

6. Well, you said the essence of this better than I've been able to.

I'll only add an observation by Sherlock Holmes via Authur Connan Doyle, "Sometimes the Law and Justice are at odds."

It's a clear violation of the Oath of Office taken by every Federal Employee.

[mitch96]

9. " begin preparations to regain control of this nation"

If Democrats take over the house and senate in 2018, they can then impeach? I believe we need to turn out the vote like we did for Obama... Do what needs to be done to get an overwhelming voter turnout.... Cross all the "t's" and dot all the "I's"...
m

[MineralMan]

10. Yes, they can impeach, if they do that.

All impeachment requires is a simple majority in the House. However, removal requires a 2/3 vote in the Senate. That is a high and difficult bar to reach. We cannot win a 2/3 majority in the Senate in 2018. We could in 2020, though, but Trump would be out of office if we managed that, since we would also have elected a Democrat as President. I'll settle for that, though, if we could get a 2/3 majority in the Senate and a sizable majority in the House in 2020. With those and a new Democratic President, we could reverse the harm that Trump has done in fairly short order and move on to achieve our other goals.

That should be our only goal from now until November 2020. If we could do that, we'd change everything. I think it's worth a shot, but it will require a massive, unified effort.