The “I” word

[*michaelsean*]

(11-29-2018, 02:12 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: https://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/lrc-presents-all-the-presidents-lawyers/the-i-word

I have to say, I have been and am still not in favor of impeachment proceedings at this point. However, if you have a listen to this (it's a 30 minute podcast) it provides some interesting information that counters a lot of things said in defense of not impeaching Trump.

For anyone unfamiliar with the podcast, this is an offshoot of Left, Right, and Center from KCRW, which provides an across the spectrum look at the events of the week. This one is specifically about legal issues going on and has the host from LRC, Josh Barro, with Ken White, otherwise known as @popehat. This episode, Josh is out and Ken has a discussion with Gene Healy, VP of the Cato Institute, about impeachment through history and in context for modern times.

Things I learned (all of this is from Gene based on his research):
1. Impeachment of a president requiring an actual law to be broken is a new thing and not original intent, especially since federal crimes really didn't exist then.
2. Andrew Johnson has articles brought up against him based on his questioning the legitimacy of Congress.
3. There have been more impeachment votes than I thought because I had never considered the judicial ones.
4. Madison was all about the impeachment to protect the republic.

While I am sure that Gene's research is solid, I think they failed to take into consideration our political climate. I get from a purely legal perspective that Trump's actions may very well be impeachable offenses based on historical precedent, but I think doing so in the highly charged partisan environment we are in would result in repercussions that would harm the democracy.

I hope some of you get a chance to listen as it's a good discussion.

As their is no appeal you can pretty much impeach a president for anything. But maybe impeachment should be like prosecution. If you have no chance of a conviction in the senate then you shouldn’t move forward with impeachment. That was my biggest problem with Clinton. There was zero chance in the Senate so it was a giant waste of time. With Nixon it most certainly could have.