That’s what this whole U.S.-attorney-firings business is really about – not a few highly competent government lawyers losing their jobs when they deserved to keep them. Facts posted in this thread show clearly that the point of putting “loyal Bushies” into the key positions was to prepare the ground for challenging the voting eligibility of poor/minority/Dem voters in the 2008 elections – like the Pubs did in 2004, but this time with official DoJ support.
It stinks, but is it a crime? In the thread linked above on the 2004 “caging lists,”, I reviewed the Voting Rights Act and could find nothing on criminal penalties. And I’m not certain the Hatch Act covers this.
If it’s not a prosecutable crime, can it still be an impeachable offense?
TG,IANAL - but there has to be a crime in all of this somewhere, that Hatch Act thingy looks pretty tight. But for my two bits, the crime element is only important as it offers a rationale for investigation. I want the truth, I don’t really care if a bunch of white guys in suits get sent on vacation to Club Fed.
Gather round, children, Uncle E. has a story…there was a time when there were sane and reasonable conservatives, people you could reason with and negotiate. People who were commited to progress and justice, but were concerned for prudent and pragmatic approaches. There was a civil compact, frequently broached, sure, but an accepted standard, a comity to strive for. A dance of compromise between progressives and conservatives, not a Steel Cage Death Match. (cue music…cut to John Ashcroft singing Camelot.)
Sure there is: Gonzalez lying to Congress; obstruction of justice; and the WH use of the RNC’s server for its e-mails violates the Presidential Records Act. But I’m asking whether the core of the matter, the use of the DoJ to help the Pubs’ chances in elections, is itself a crime. After all, the Pubs can always say, “But fighting voter fraud is just enforcing the law.”
Of course, as Captain Amazing pointed out in post #40 of this thread, a president can be impeached for acts not constituting prosecutable crimes; Andrew Johnson was. And, as Blalron noted in post #41, an impeachment and conviction by Congress is unreviewable by any court.
But the question of whether the Administration’s acts here are criminal or not remains an important one.
You ask this question, or at least a form of this question constantly. There’s even some evidence (like in post #3) that you’ve heard the answers.
An impeachable offense is whatever Congress decides it is, period. There is no objective standard for impeachable offense, so there is no debate there. You shouldn’t ask that question like there’s a real, factual answer, like you’re talking about a question of law. It isn’t a matter of law, it’s a matter of politics. Impeachment is a political tool, period. It can’t be reviewed, it can’t be appealed, and it does not have to have any serious justification, virtually anything is an impeachable offense. Disagreeing with Congress is more or less why Johnson was impeached.
I’m also curious if you think any member of Bush’s administration is going to be impeached. Because you ask about it all the time. You either genuinely believe this, and if so, I have to ask, “Why?” Because in the real world, political appointees resign before they get fired. And the Congress isn’t nearly willing to try and remove the President himself, they’ve proven that as definitively as you could possibly want.
Gonzalez might well be impeached, if he won’t resign. And he almost certainly won’t. We’re dealing with an administration that is more stubborn than any since Nixon’s. At this point, if Gonzalez is impeached, even the Pubs in the Senate might have to vote to convict him, just to save face with the voters.
After that, and after his trial brings all the facts to light, we might see a groundswell for impeaching Bush and Cheney that even Pelosi won’t be able to resist. They won’t be convicted in the Senate, the Pubs there would never go that far, but that doesn’t mean impeachment would be a waste of time; it would focus public attention on this malfeasance and just possibly make sure it never happens again. There might even be legislation passed, with real teeth in it.
I agree with that, but some Dopers argue the contrary. And back during the Nixon Admin, there was endless public discussion over whether his actions constituted “impeachable offenses” or not.
I disagree. The standard is spelled out in the Constitution: "“treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”. Now, I’m sure you’re convinced that I’m only begging the question and that “high crimes and misdemeanors” means whatever Congress says it is, but it’s not. It is a standard set by the Constitution. It’s not “Because we don’t like you” or “because you’re a member of the opposition party”, it requires, by definition, the commitment of a “crime” against the country. Impeachment was never meant to be a kind of recall election, or to allow the removal of someone Congress doesn’t like.
But suppose that Congress decided to impeach an official for something that clearly was not “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”? By what process could the official being impeached appeal? None. You think the SCOTUS would take up that case? I doubt it. So, if there is no check on Congress’s ability to impeach, those words don’t mean anything if enough Congresscritters choose to ignore them.
So you could make a case for Hamlet’s position – provided you’re of the school that favors interpreting the Constitution based not only on its plain text but on its historical background.
But, still, leaving the question of impeachment aside for the moment: Does what the Bush Admin has been doing WRT the DoJ constitute a crime, in the ordinary legal sense?
This SCOTUS might, considering its provenance and loyalties. Whether it would have any constitutional jurisdiction to do so is a question that . . . well, a question that only the SCOTUS itself can authoritatively decide.