Cite?
And what, exactly is stopping his from doing whatever he wants, if they refuse to punish him ? If he can order people tortured, exactly what laws and restrictions still apply to him ? Except “No blowjobs.”
Well people have been arguing that what he did was within the letter of the law. It is the President’s job to interpret the law and enforce it as it exists. If a loophole allows it, close the loophole. If his powers of execution are overbroad change the structure of his implementation. I don’t see how getting absolutely nothing else done in the middle of an election cycle is beneficial in any way. You’re advocating a mere ideological tactic. One that has no real benefit, and would be very difficult to make work. By the time they impeached he’d be out of office anyway, so what’s the point?
If we were talking about a criminal prosecution, the defendants’ ignorance or misinterpretation of the law would be no defense. It can hardly be any more of a defense WRT impeachment.
Eh? A parliamentary system need not be a multiparty system. (The House of Commons at Westminster is “The Mother of Parliaments” and has operated under a de facto two-party system for most of its history.) Its defining characeristic is simply that the executive is directly answerable to the legislature.
I already TOLD you the point. To make it clear to later Presidents that they are not above the law or other repercussions, that their actions have consequences.
Right but what I am saying is that the role of the President would then be neutered to such a degree that it would be unworkable in a single party system. Anytime the President did anything significantly controversial the antagonistic opposition party would simply impeach him. If there were a credible third party then they could balance the roles of the two main parties. So if the President really did warrant impeaching they could get a coalition together, rather than just playing gotcha politics across the aisle.
No, it’s a valid argument. Like I said, just because a law’s on paper doesn’t mean it means anything. Absent an enforcement mechanism, it’s of symbolic value only.
I don’t see impeachment as being a real enforcement mechanism. So he’s impeached? What then? He leaves office a few days early and Cheney is President?
There were plenty of chances to stand up to this guy throughout his career. Time and time again I watched seasoned politicians cave before whatever it was that this guy had. Now in the 11th hour you’re again talking about impeachment. If he was to be impeached it should have been years ago. It’s too little too late now. People COULD have voted against war in Iraq, they COULD have voted against any number of measures, they could have enacted laws to limit his power, but they didn’t. They signed the Patriot Act, they didn’t close Gitmo or Abu Ghraib. You are asking for the same Congress that gave him a pass all this time to impeach him now that it doesn’t make a difference.
Granted, there have been more no-confidence votes taken in the UK than impeachments in the US, but it’s not like the government collapses every time the PM pisses off the opposition.
So we make it clear to the CIA that they aren’t allowed to torture people. And to make sure that the CIA doesn’t torture people, we’ll ask the CIA to make sure they don’t torture people. For oversight, we ask the CIA to promise not to torture people. Is that about right?
You know, it’s a funny thing. I’ve heard so many people over the last few years claim that waterboarding isn’t torture, and also that waterboarding is an important technique to get information from terrorists.
But they never seem to be able to explain WHY waterboarding makes terrorists talk. If waterboarding is just uncomfortable, why in the world would it make a hardened terrorist babble like a baby? If it’s not torture, why does it work? It HAS to be torture, or else the terrorists will just smirk.
Waterboarding won’t work as an interrogation tool unless it is torture. If it’s not torture then it can’t work as an interrogation tool. The pro-waterboarding but anti-torture position is incoherent. At least pro-waterboarding and pro-torture makes a certain amount of sense, from a certain point of view. But someone who is against torture but for waterboarding either hasn’t thought their position through, or hopes that the person they’re arguing with hasn’t.
It generally boils down to a claim that it isn’t torture if it doesn’t cause any physical pain or leave permanent scares. It’s not “torture” in the sense that thumb screws or being stretched on the rack is torture. It’s more akin to psychological torture, which is a problem in and of itself.
The old “if it doesn’t leave a mark, it’s not torture” argument. So you think those people would agree that anally raping prisoners would be acceptable under that standard…as long as the interrogator used plenty of lube and didn’t give the victim an untreatable STD. After all, a little gentle anal rape isn’t going to leave scar, is it?
Ah, but it can hurt and it can leave scars. But who knows, maybe they would consider that OK. However, I think rape (of any kind) would have its own problems, legally, even if you could somehow argue that wasn’t torture.
Waterboarding is more like putting a gun to someone’s head and telling them you’re going to pull the trigger if they don’t talk. Or blindfolding them and telling them you’re going to push them out of an airplane. Only worse. They can feel themselves in the process of dying. It’s the psychological fear of dying that you’re using to get information.
Um… what are you looking for, here? The article of impeachment alleged that Nixon’s conduct impaired “…the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries.”
If true, that’s a crime under 18 USC §1505, the obstruction of justice statute, which criminalizes the actions of anyone who: “…corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States…”
Thoses posts WERE a cite. I provided the text of the article of impeachment and the statutory language annotated with the chapter and section number of the US Code.
When you ask for a cite on top of that, I’m not sure what you mean.
And then you impeach or prosecute him as well.
My Christian universal cultural background tell me that it’s the only ethical thing to do. Or course, as you mention upthread and in others, that isn’t quite tangible. But it is ethical, correct?
Uncommon Sense? There are simply no words, nor here or other forum, to express my disgust at the blatant xenophobia you’ve expressed here.
It’s people like you I worry about while going through customs/TSA in the US – and once I’m in it. They could could throw me in jail and torture me if for no other reason that people like you allow it. No, not allow it, condone it.
What an ugly impression that leaves of your country. Certainly one I still refuse to be true – not in the majority anyway. It’s monstrous.
Uhh, not to be a dick, but that IS the cite.
What’s missing is the nature of the connection. Did you retrospectively find a statute that fits, 34 years after the fact, or did they have this in mind at the time? If the House Jucidiary Committee, in the summer of 1974, drafted that article with a criminal statute in mind, then you’d be right about the Nixon articles of impeachment. If not, then it doesn’t matter if a statute can be fitted to it afterwards: the largest majority that the House Judiciary Committee produced for any of the Nixon impeachment articles would have still meant that abuse of Executive power is impeachable, even if there’s no clear statutory violation.
Two big legal inaccuracies here.
First, criminal acts are not a clear legal prerequisite to impeachment. They may be a political prerequisite, but that’s a whole different story. And there are arguments for interpreting the Constitution in such a way that they would be a legal prerequisite, but there is no existing Supreme Court precedent or statute which would compel such an interpretation.
Second, international criminal law does exist outside domestic statutory law as it is relevant to US jurisdiction. For your assertion to the contrary to be true, there would have to be no self-executing treaties related to criminal law. That isn’t so. Take a look at Breyer’s dissent in Medellin for a list of self-executing treaties in criminal law (the majority also conceded that many of those would remain self-executing despite the decision in Medellin). Neither of the cases you cite holds that all international criminal treaties must be implemented by Congressional statute. Rather, they discuss the relationship between conflicting statutes and treaties, and conflict between treaties and the Constitution, respectively.