ONCE AGAIN, last week, we learned that shameless
Trump supporters will say anything to protect his orange hide, even when—with
the most minimal effort—it would be easy to prove them wrong.
Even worse, if that shameless Trump supporter
should happen to appear on Fox News, the host of the show on which that
shameless supporter plans to speak, won’t fact check the guest at all.
Normally, the host will prove to be
an idiot too.
One egregious example could be seen
last week, when former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker lumbered onto the
set of Laura Ingraham’s show and took a seat. He was
there to assure Ingraham and her loyal viewers that impeaching the president
thirteen months before an election was “not good for the Republic.”
(Neither was having a president bend U.S. diplomacy to place
personal interests ahead of the country. But let that go.)
*
In any case, I think Whitaker meant we should let Trump slide and
maybe he could pardon himself and everyone else
involved.
Naturally, Ingraham agreed. She works for Fox News. She would have
agreed if Whitaker had claimed that Trump had the right to practice polygamy in
the White House.
“Mueller failed” in a previous effort to bring Trump down, she
says, contributing to the dialogue in that way. Whitaker says that “global
elitists” are out to get the president, too.
Finally, he offers up this gem. “Abuse
of power is not a crime. Let’s fundamentally boil it down, the
Constitution is very clear that there has to be some pretty egregious behavior.”
In other words, Trump can’t be impeached.
Of course, if one were to take time to study
the U.S. Constitution, one would know it’s not that simple.
As for those of us who are not complete and utter nincompoops, we know the Constitution says only that an individual can be impeached for treason, bribery and “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
*
Even the Founding Fathers couldn’t make up
their minds what that phrase should be understood to include. James Madison,
speaking at the Constitutional Convention, on July 20, 1787, favored a clause
outlining the power of the legislative branch to impeach a president. He talked
of a need to guard against the chief executive in cases of “incapacity,
negligence or perfidy.”
For example, a future president, Mr. Madison
warned, “might betray his trust to foreign powers.”
Impeachments: “A good magistrate will not fear
them. A bad one ought to be kept in fear of them. He hoped the maxim would
never be adopted here that the chief magistrate could do no wrong.”
Elbridge Gerry
According to Madison’s notes from the Convention,
Mr. Pinckney (he failed to specify which “Mr. Pinckney,” and there were two)
“did not see the necessity of impeachments.” Mr. Edmund Randolph admitted that
“impeachment was a favorite principle with him. Guilt wherever found,” he said,
“ought to be punished.” “In some respects the public money will be in his
hands,” Randolph warned of any president. The temptation might prove too much
for ordinary men. Ben Franklin explained that the power of impeachment would
serve as a guard against more violent methods of removing a chief executive.
Elbridge Gerry also “urged the necessity of impeachments. A good magistrate
will not fear them. A bad one ought to be kept in fear of them. He hoped the
maxim would never be adopted here that the chief magistrate could do no wrong.”
(Or pardon himself, if he
did?????????????????????)
 |
Madison is considered the "Father of the Constitution."
|
Gouverneur Morris spoke last for that day. His
“opinion had been changed by the arguments used in the discussion,” he said.
Morris noted, for example, that “Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.”
The president, in the system the Founding
Fathers envisioned, might more easily be tempted by riches, since he (or she,
in modern parlance) had no hereditary interest in government, as did royals.
Morris continued,
He may be bribed by a greater interest to
betray his trust; and no one would say that we ought to expose ourselves to the
danger of seeing the first Magistrate in forign [sic] pay, without being able
to guard against it by displacing him…The Executive ought therefore to be
impeachable for treachery.
Nine state delegations (at the Convention in
Philadelphia in 1787, each state had one vote) voted in favor of the
proposition: “Shall the Executive be removable on impeachments &c.?”
Only South Carolina voted “nay.”
Six days later, as delegates hammered out
details of the new plan, Madison noted that it was agreed the Constitution
should specify removal of a president for “malfeasance or neglect of duty.”
That wording seemed too broad and it was refined on August 6. It was now
proposed that the Constitution specify impeachment of the president for
“treason, bribery, or corruption.”
“Corruption” was also considered to be too
broad.
 |
| Whitaker should have known. |
On
September 8, delegates revisited the matter. At that point, as the proposed new
plan of government read, the president was removable only for “treason or
bribery.” George Mason argued for adding, after bribery, the words: “or
maladministration.” His motion was seconded.
Madison
warned that such a definition was “so vague” as to put any president in the
hands of a hostile Senate. Mason, withdrew his suggestion and substituted the
phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The vote was 8-3, the motion carrying.
(At the time, Rhode Island was not represented; and all but one member of the
New York delegation, Alexander Hamilton, had gone home in a huff.)
Yet
another adjustment was deemed necessary; and “the vice-President and other
Civil officers of the U.S.” were added to the list of those impeachable. That
list already included members of the legislature and federal judges. A
suggestion that members of the Supreme Court be granted the final vote in cases
of impeachment—not the Senate—was defeated.
On
September 14 one last proposal was made. It was suggested that such wording be
added to the Constitution: “that persons impeached be suspended from office
until they be tried and acquitted.”
This
was voted down, eight states against, three in favor.
So,
the question of what the term “high crimes and misdemeanors” means was not in
any way as simple as Mr. Whitaker was trying to make it sound on an evening,
more than two hundred years later, on a Fox News show—to the benefit of his
lord and master, Donald J. Trump.
And
you might think a highly-paid Fox News pundit would have sniffed out the
subtleties and enlightened her viewing public.
*
You
would be wrong, of course. Ingraham had sorted through all the issues related
to the testimony of half-a-dozen witnesses who had appeared before the House
Intelligence Committee. You could not put anything past Ms. Ingraham! Oh, no!
Her keen nose had sniffed out the key to the impeachment inquiry. Her defense
of President Trump would be rock solid. Yes, she was bothered by the
single-spacing of Ambassador Taylor’s fifteen-page, opening statement.
Fifteen
pages! Single-spaced! It put her in mind of some doltish young job seeker,
turning in a crappy resume. This, she said, would be a person you would “never
want to hire.”
Spacing!
Really.
This
blogger happened to catch a recording of the Whitaker/Ingraham discussion afterwards. It made
him wonder.
Would
you prefer to hire Whitaker, based on a double-spaced resume, if he included
the time he served as chief
counsel for World Patent Marketing? That company was found guilty of bilking customers
out of $26 million.
As
for Trump, would you prefer to hire him, if he double-spaced and listed bone
spurs, Trump University—shut down as a scam—multiple bankruptcies and hush
money paid to silence women he had had sex with outside of marriage?
And
who hired Ingraham, a woman so dense as to try to defend Trump, based on the
idea that Taylor’s “spacing” was what mattered?
With
such thoughts dancing in his head, this blogger went to bed Friday and
slumbered in bliss.
No comments:
Post a Comment