I believe you, but why should we pay for any of them? Give each one say $150,000 per year for office help which should get you a receptionist and an intern or two. Beyond that isn’t something the taxpayers should fund.
You can drag this into the light of day without an impeachment. It seems like it’s already getting attention, at least by leftists.
Why not? I think even legislators need more than 2-3 staff helping them out.
People can’t have it both ways, if you want competent leaders you need to provide them with competent staff, that costs money. This isn’t the 18th century where being a member of Congress is basically a part time job.
I’m not even opposed to the idea of the public funding political staff, politicians need to get reelected, after all. And we already have “Federal matching funds” for elections. All these proposals would do is hurt the Congressmen who aren’t already independently wealthy and probably have the effect of making Congress even more disconnected from the average American by applying significant pressure against those Congressmen who actually aren’t multi-millionaires.
I’m not following. What about Nixon? How criminal charges, not impeachment, was pursued against his staff who did wrong? How the Supreme Court shot down an attempt to assert executive privilege over documents relating to crimes? I’m really not following your point, because I think you’re making my case for me.
Talk about moving the goalposts. First there’s the argument that the Administration won’t prosecute one of their own. Then we hear they’ll cover up everything under Executive Privilege. I point out that one of their own was convicted of criminal acts and the EP wasn’t a bar to that, and the response is, oh yeah, but that won’t happen again. There’s no way to intelligently debate arguments that seem to be coming from an Ouija board.
I find it very strange that for all the misdeeds that you want to string Rove up about and drag into the light of day, there’s barely been two dozen words in this two page thread about what he actually did. There’s a link to an incomprehensible blog entry listing a bunch of government departments, a little handwaving about Rove politicizing government… and holy cow, I hate Karl Rove, but I just have no clue about any details of what he did that was wrong! Can someone please point me to something that actually explains the underlying issue in a coherent way? Are we talking about the email issue, which honestly I haven’t followed that closely, or something else?
On another issue, with respect to political activities by Federal employees: very broadly, the White House is the single anomaly in the prohibition against campaign activities and government. The Hatch Act has a provision which specifically excludes certain individuals employed in the Executive Office of the President. Other Federal employees, including those who work for a member of Congress, are prohibited from purely political activities like raising money, coordinating with political parties for electioneering, drafting reelection fliers, and that sort of stuff while on the job or on Federal property. There’s some overlap – if Senator Foghorn Leghorn or Secretary of Defense Beetle Bailey gives a speech, it’s pretty hard to say whether it is good political or bad political in nature. Any staff working for a member of a Federal department or Congress doing electioneering type things on the job has committed a crime, but again, there’s a carve-out for some employees of the EOP.
And this, finally, gets to the crux of the real question: did Rove violate the Hatch Act by making political presentations to civil servants? If so, he’s liable to criminal prosecution; if not, there’s no impeachable offense. I really, really, really wish my fellow leftists would maintain some hold on reality here.
There are far more important things to be doing than pushing an impeachment of anyone. If, during the course of investigations of the executive branch, more and better evidence comes to light, we can readdress the impeachment issue then. Right now, the evidence is simply not there. Period.
The impeachment process is not to be undertaken in the hopes of discovering evidence; it is to be undertaken when the evidence is already there, obvious and overwhelming to all. This was the Republican mistake ten years ago - let’s not repeat it. Let’s instead work for our long-term goals, and show the country that we have more in mind (or anything in mind) than sticking a poker up Bush’s ass.
The bottom line is that impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. If Congress decides that Rove is impeachable, and convicts him of a high crime or misdemeanor, then he is impeached.
I assume you are referring to your statement that Rove and Bush are wrong. Fair enough.
I think that as a practical matter, what’s impeachable is a matter of what Congress thinks is impeachable. And I think the Dems are going to HAVE to do some hard charging after SOMEBODY in the Bush White House, or risk losing the momentum they picked up in 2006. They weren’t elected to COMPLAIN about Bush, they were elected to go AFTER him.
I think Rove would make a GREAT target. VERY high profile, tied to a string of despicable acts, unpopular with all but the Pubbie core, and with more negative charisma than anyone in the Bush White House, and that includes Cheney and Gonzales! Just start an impeachment, hold a lot of hearings, have a lot of debates, and subject the guy to the death of a thousand cuts. Almost worked against Clinton, and all they had on him was a blowjob.
Yeah, yeah, sure, absolutely, agreed. So what? As a political process, if the House got every Democrat on board to impeach, there is not currently the evidence to get 67 Senators on board to convict. What is gained by an impeachment?
That’s not the same thing as getting all the as yet undisclosed facts on public record.
The fact that it would be interpreted as that by so many people doesn’t make it true. Yes, the Republicans probably have indeed discredited the ultimate tool of statecraft by using it for partisan vengeance in the false clothing of a legal process, but that doesn’t make that true either. If you let your opponents define the terms of a debate, you’ve lost before you’ve started - yet that form of surrender is what you appear to advocate.
Now, how do suggest we work *for * those “long-term goals” without first nullifying those forces intent on obstructing us? Just keep complaining about them until more people decide to vote the other way someday? Is that truly good for the country, our first responsibility, in the meanwhile?
Whether or not Rove violated a specific law is not fundamental to his or anybody else’s impeachability, or to the need of the country to remove him from power. Yes, it does help make the case that a federal official needs to be removed if there’s a conviction in place, sure, but that is not necessary, nor (to say it once again) does the process have anything at all to do with the legal system. Nor, for that matter, will the incumbent Attorney General do anything at all in the way of doing the investigation that we agree would be required under a more-normal, responsible administration. So what else is to be done?
If the case is strong enough to get an impeachment in the House, there is no way to tell how many Republican Senators would vote Yes. You’re equating GOP membership with lockstep order-taking from the White House - and that assertion, apparent even to me, merely reinforces that faction’s peremptory dismissal of the legitimacy of the process if it’s ever tried.
It makes it, for political purposes, true. What other purpose is there?
We do that by making our opponents politically impotent. This is not done, at least in this country, by a coup, but rather by force of ideas.
Stick it out for a year and a half.
This is, frankly, delusional. It is exactly the Republican plan for the impeachment of Clinton.
I can’t really disagree with anything there. It might very well work.
…and a charge of perjury and obstruction of justice, but what’s a few overlooked facts between friends, huh? 
Rove doesn’t even look good at a distance. Put him under the microscope you’d get in an impeachment, and he’d look downright hideous. He’s been tied to the Federal judiciary scandal, Plamegate, and a host of other nasty little attempts to thwart free and fair elections in America. He could bring down the whole Republican Party. Or at least, any Republican who voted against impeaching Rove after the Dems dragged out ALL the facts, or at least, allegations, about Rove and got them before the media, front and center.
Man, if this attitude is actually prevalent among Democratic voters, then I genuinely weep for America. You don’t get to replace the President every two years based on doing well in Congressional elections, or to “go after him.” That isn’t how our political system is supposed to work, this isn’t a parliamentary democracy. Bush is rightfully in office until January, 2009. If any of the voters in 2006 were actually casting their votes because they wanted to see Congress try to oust the President because of policy differences, that is abominable and shows that this country’s democratic experiment may more or less be coming to an end.
However, I have a lot more faith in voters, and a lot more faith even in liberal voters and Democratic voters. I take solace in the fact that a lot of these views are those of the radical left, and not the actual grown up left that conducts real politics in America.
You can’t disagree that at least some of the new congresscritters were put in because of anti-war, anti-Bush sentiments, though.
Unless you are disagreeing with that, of course.
Article I, sec. 3 of the US Constitution provides:
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 Rove were to be impeached and convicted, he could be barred from holding any federal “Office of honor, Trust or Profit.” This would prevent Bush or any future administration from hiring him back.
It seems mostly to be confined to the extremists, who are over-represented on the SDMB.
My head is spinning.
On the one hand, we have the above assertion that innocence or guilt are irrelevant to impeachments. On the other, we have the repeated assertions that the Clinton impeachment was wrong because he didn’t “really” lie under oath. And on the third hand, we have the assertion that Bush should be impeached for firing the attorneys even though it was completely legal.
Rove should be impeached because he politicized the government. Democrats should politicize the impeachment process to do so.
Too ridiculous to be funny, unfortunately.
Regards,
Shodan
This is not necessarily true. If evidence shows that they were fired for not prosecuting Democrats enough, or pressured to drop prosecutions of Republicans, then that is obstruction of justice, an impeachable offense. You can fire the US Attorneys for no reason, or for a good reason, but you can’t fire them to obstruct justice, which may well be the case.
Regardless,
Bob
We’ve already gone over this. There is nothing that is not an impeachable offense (for Republicans). And obstruction of justice is not an impeachable offense (for Democrats).
Regards,
Shodan