IMPEACHMENT

Rich Galen


There is a growing battle between the
Republican-controlled House of
Representatives and the Democrat-controlled White House.
President Barack Obama is signing what are
known as "Executive Orders" to (in the minds of House Republicans) either create laws that don't exist, or ignore laws that do exist.
This is a classic fight between what, in Our
Nation's Capital is known as the Article I
Branch of Government vs. the Article II
Branch. Those are the Legislative and
Executive Branches and which Article of the U.S. Constitution describes their duties and prerogatives.
Article I, Section 1 states:
"All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,
which shall consist of a Senate and House of
Representatives."
Article II, Section 1 states:
"The executive power shall be vested in a
President of the United States of America."
Just to keep the conversation going,
ArticleIII, Section 1 begins:
"The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."
Those are the starting lineups: The
Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial
Branches.
As we learned in grammar school, the
Congress passes laws that the President is
supposed to enforce. The Supreme Court
decides on whether or not those laws are
Constitutional.
A couple of years ago, you may remember,
the Supreme Court ruled that, in the main,
Obamacare was Constitutional. Not all of it,
but enough of it to have given people like me something to talk about on TV and write
about in Mullings on a regular basis.
That's the way the system is supposed to
work.
If the President and/or Congress does
something that is extra-Constitutional, then
an aggrieved party can file a lawsuit and, if it is deemed sufficiently important, it will get to the Supreme Court and it will rule.
In 1974 President Richard Nixon claimed
Executive Privilege in refusing to turn over
the all the audio tapes that had been made
during his Presidency. Chief Justice Warren
Burger wrote, for the unanimous Court, (from Streetlaw.org):
"Absent a claim of need to protect military,
diplomatic, or sensitive national security
secrets, we find it difficult to accept the . . .
[absolute] confidentiality of presidential
communications."
More recently, the Supreme Court ruled that President Obama's claim that (essentially) anytime the Senate was not in session it was, by definition in recess and therefore he could invoke his Constitutional right to make "recess appointments" in this case to the National Labor Relations Board.
The Supreme Court, again, unanimously ruled he had overstepped his bounds with Mr. Justice Breyer writing (according to the
Washington Post coverage),
"The Senate is in session when it says it is."
The point is, Presidents can overstep their
authority without having committed an
impeachable offense which is loosely defined in Article II, Section 4 as:
"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and
Misdemeanors."
This somewhat tedious discussion is necessary because the "I" word is being thrown around in Washington again.
In 1998 the House Impeached President Bill
Clinton although he was not convicted by the Senate. The House has impeachment
authority (think, indictment) but the Senate
must convict (think jury trial).
1998 happened to have been the year of the
mid-term election in President Clinton's
second term. We know about second term
mid-term elections: They generally are
dreadful for the party of the President.
The GOP's entire strategy was to make the
1998 elections a referendum on Clinton and
Monica Lewinsky.
Republicans chose badly. As Time Magazine
put it:
"[T]he the election that was supposed to be
another G.O.P. blowout ended with a gain of five House seats for the Democrats, no change in the Senate and the morning-after spectacle of dumbstruck Republicans."
The Democrats succeeded in making the
campaign a battle between Clinton and
Gingrich. They drove off-year turnout for the party of the President up dramatically which caught Republicans flat-footed.
That is why the White House let slip the dogs of impeachment last week saying the
Republicans might impeach President Obama over his plans to go it alone on immigration.
The Administration is trying to gin up the
Democratic base with 100 days to go before a mid-term election that might well cost them control of the Senate.
The Republicans may - in fact, probably will - sue the President for overstepping his
executive authority, but they won't institute
impeachment proceedings against him.