CraigM
5311
For every member you peel off, some other number leave that block completely.
I don’t see that percentage shifting, merely shrinking best case.
Nesrie
5312
The author wants you to take what he says earlier about Clinton and Democrats as just fact, and only later does he decide to challenge anyone about what they’ve given up and for what. I will take what that author said about that as fact, and the fact they’re retiring is just, well the NPR guys did it too, so had their run, leave the mess for others to mop up. That’s not courage.
So the whole “it’s not an impeachment unless the articles are presented to the Senate” is an actual legal argument
Could this actually lead Trump to sue? If he does, would it mean that he is asking the Supreme Court to force the House to impeach him?
Impeachment is an Article 1 power which is given solely and entirely to the House of Representatives. The courts have no say in it.
SlyFrog
5315
Evangelicals are hopeless for the most part. It’s just a giant con game. They ignore their own purportedly most important work. There are literally so many Bible messages against greed, wealth, mixing religion with business, etc.
As a friend of mine said, “What parts of Jesus and the money lenders and it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven are you having a hard time with?”
Says you. Noah Feldman, one of the Harvard Law professors called by the Democrats to argue in favor of impeachment, isn’t so sure.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-19/trump-impeachment-delay-could-be-serious-problem-for-democrats
“But the House would be acting against the implicit logic of the Constitution’s description of impeachment.”
In much the same way not holding an up-or-down vote on a nominee to the Supreme Court would be a serious problem if anyone were unscrupulous enough to do such a thing, I suppose. Fortunately, our leaders aren’t so unscrupulous.
I’m not saying that I want him to be technically not yet impeached. What I want is completely immaterial to how, or even if, the Supreme Court would decide the matter anyway. I’m just pointing out that a serious, pro-impeachment law professor has raised to possibility, so when Trump’s cronies float the idea, this is one that didn’t come from Russian bot accounts.
And - I would find it funny for Trump to sue the House to force them to impeach him.
Good for him, and good luck finding ‘transmit’ or any synonym in the actual text of the Constitution.
Article 1 Section 2:
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers;and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Article 1 Section 3
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
If you can find an obligation for the House to transmit anything at all to the Senate in that text, I’ll eat my hat.
JoshL
5320
It’s all a bunch of sound a fury signifying nothing. “Impeached” is just a word. Unless he’s removed by the Senate, it means nothing (it might have political implications, good or bad, but those will happen regardless). I guess Trump just wants to prevent the history books from saying he was impeached? Which is dumb, that is what they are going to say. In any case, Pelosi will eventually send it to the Senate and all this argument will be moot. And thank goodness for that, because this is the dumbest argument.
Does that offer extend to the words “privacy” and “abortion” as well?
I personally read it the same way you do - your argument is with Feldman. I already explained why I thought it was worth bringing up in the forum.
Yes, fair enough. It just strikes me that almost everything we know about how impeachment ‘works’ comes from the House and Senate rules, not the Constitution. Without checking, I’m sure the Senate rules rely on the House ‘transmitting’ the charges and supplying ‘House managers’ etc, but it looks to me as if — per the actual Constitution— the Senate could go ahead and vote to hold a trial today, regardless of what the House does.
I think the right to privacy was more or less assumed at the time of the Founding. After all, where does the 4th Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures come from? Or the ban on compelled self-incrimination?
Or is the thinking that those had to be explicitly called out because they don’t spring from natural rights? I know that such obvious rights had been (and continue to be) ignored and trampled on by governments as long as there have been humans, of course.
magnet
5325
Sure, but it was also more or less assumed that an impeachment vote is both necessary and sufficient for a trial.
It means that a nontrivial portion of our electorate and its representatives knew the President was a crook.
It doesn’t really change anything, but I think there’s some value in bearing witness accurately.
JoshL
5327
Yes, but my point is, whether or not you can make some arcane argument that he isn’t actually “impeached” because Pelosi doesn’t forward it to the Senate has no bearing on that outcome.
That seems to be the case. No reason the Republicans in the Senate can’t start a trial tomorrow.
The constitution doesn’t provide any structure for what is considered an official act of the House and what isn’t. The House decides that. If they say that the Senate must await transmittal before acting, then they have that power. I don’t see how anyone would have standing to sue, other than a member of the House, and it’s unclear that Pelosi refusing to transmit a bill a member didn’t vote for causes any harm to that member, so it might require some who voted for it to sue.
If the Senate starts voting on stuff the House hasn’t delivered, the House can surely sue to invalidate those votes. I doubt the courts want to tell the House what does and does not constitute proper internal procedures for exercising its Constitutional powers. I mean, if the Senate can decide that X has been approved by the House without the consent of the House, then what’s to stop McConnell and Trump from just passing whatever laws they want?
The inability to point to anything approved by a vote of the House? Something like this:
I think that means the House has impeached the President. Is there some other way the House should convey that? Can the House pass a bill which the Speaker then pretends isn’t a bill, for the purposes of preventing the Senate from taking it up? I doubt it.
