Reply #8: There is no "grey area" that needs "updating" on impeachment [View All]

[pat_k]

Impeachment is intended to be a political process. Just as we grant our consent through political processes, so to do we withdraw it. Impeachment is intended to be a direct expression of our will at a given point in time. The definition of "impeachable offense is intentionally vague.

In our common contract, the Constitution of the United States, we surrendered NONE of our sovereignty to any institution or office we created. We are all subject to the collective authority of We the People (and that includes the elected and appointed government officials who serve with our consent). We created the institutions and offices through which we express our will. We charge officials with certain duties. We dictate the powers delegated and forbidden.

We charge the men and women we elect to Congress with the duty to support and defend that contract. Impeachment and removal is the means by which we defend ourselves against intolerable acts that usurp OUR collective sovereign authority. As the body closest to and most responsive to our will, we gave the House the power to impeach and call on the Senate to remove an official who abuses and betrays us.

The branches DO NOT share power equally. The power of impeachment is our trump card. It is the means by which we enforce our sovereignty.

The definition of "impeachable offense" is for We the People, through our Representatives, to define. We empowered the House -- the body closest to and most responsive to We the People -- for a reason. Impeachment is not some abstract legal process. We never intended our representatives to be legal scholars. Congress -- our voice -- is the final word when it comes to impeachment and removal. There is no judicial review. It was designed to be simple, swift, and certain.(Note 1)

Each time Bush and Cheney invoke their fascist fantasy of a unitary authoritarian executive they dare our Representatives to impeach and challenge their treasonous claims against our sovereign authority. Each day that Members of the House refuse to act, they join Bush and Cheney in their treason by allowing their lies to stand.


=======================
Note 1

GQ, March 2007
The People v. Richard Cheney
Wil S. Hylton

When the Founding Fathers crafted the U.S. Constitution, they wanted to be sure that the president, vice president, and other ranking officials could be evicted more easily than the British monarchy. To ensure that the process would be swift and certain, they made it simple: Only two conditions must be met. First, a majority of the House of Representatives must agree on a set of charges; then, two-thirds of the Senate must agree to convict. After that, there is no legal wrangling, no appeal to a higher authority, no reversal on technical grounds. There is not even a limit on what the charges may be. As the Constitution describes it, the cause may be “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors,” but even these were left deliberately vague; as Gerald Ford once pointed out while still serving in the House of Representatives, the only real definition of an “impeachable offense” is “whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."