http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/27/113/James Madison - “Impeach Bush Over Purgegate!”
by Thom Hartmann
According to James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” if a President were to order or allow the “wanton removal of meritorious officers” such as US attorneys, such an action “would subject the President to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.”
The issue of the firing of people within the Executive branch for political purposes came up during a debate in 1789 about how to create agencies within the Executive branch that would be consistent with Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution, which says that the President can appoint people (like US Attorneys/prosecutors), but they couldn’t take office unless the Senate votes to confirm each individual appointment:
He
shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the 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.
But if the President can nominate, and the Senate confirm somebody like a federal prosecutor, who can fire one? And what if they’re fired for politcal purposes?
Madison’s logic was straightforward, and came about in one of his first major speeches before the House of Representatives, on 17 June 1789, just a few months into his first term as a Congressman (he would later become Secretary of State and President). A bill was put forward to create what is today known as the State Department in a more formal fashion than had existed when George Washington had become the new nation’s first President just three months before and appointed Thomas Jefferson as his Secretary of State Affairs.
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