This isn’t elections, and not really a pit story, so I guess I’ll put it here.
The West Virginia legislature has voted to impeach every member of the state’s Supreme Court over financial fraud and misuse of tax money.
I don’t know when the trials will begin.
The last item on the thread happened two months ago. The impeachment vote occurred today.
The last post to that thread was yesterday.
Ack. Somehow I missed the entire second page.
Order! Order in the court!
Sounds like it’s another Republican move to gain/keep power contrary to the (possible) will of the people.
Sometimes “the people” are a collective bunch of morons who wouldn’t know how to govern properly if their lives depended on it.
Why are you being so harsh about Trump voters?
While I won’t argue that point, I have to ask: Do you believe that justifies one political party in perverting the system in order to stay in power, even though most voters don’t want them there?
Tilts head in the direction of the Oval Office.
No I don’t. At the same time, I don’t believe that the situation in WV qualifies as that. Just because something is seldom done doesn’t automatically mean that it shouldn’t be done.
Whether justified or not, this is certainly going to put this strategy into the minds of congressmen, State and Federal, across the country.
Supreme Court justices in State and Federal government are going to start seeing Congressional investigators kicking their tires and asking for documents, and have to worry - in any government that has a single party majority - that they will be out of office if they don’t vote as they have been told to do.
It may well be that the West Virginia judges did need to be removed, but that doesn’t change that the path will now be on everyone’s mind.
I find this story unsettling. There’s too many ways this tactic can be abused.
There’s budgetry ways to limit excessive spending. It does sound like spending by the West Virginia Supreme Court was excessive. State audits and restrictions on budgetary expenditures could be put in place.
Impeachment for expensive office renovations seems like a political move. That’s a clear infringement on the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches of government.
Ah, here’s the root of the problem.
They can fix this with an constitutional amendment on the ballot. Let voters curb the excessive spending. Taxpayers would love the chance to reduce wasteful government spending.
I think it might.
Reading the article, one of the things I took away is the belief that things went down, in the way and timeline that they went down, in order to avoid a special election, where the new Justices would have been picked by those pesky, uninformed voters, and to allow for direct appointment by the Governor, who can ignore the party affiliations of the previous office holders and appoint all new Justices of his favored persuasion.
Now, that’s just how I read it. Perhaps I’m all wet.
As the sages once said:
Conversely, just because something shouldn’t be done doesn’t mean that it is seldom done. The tolerated existence of Republicans in positions of political power, for instance.
I think they have every right to impeach them for fiduciary malfeasance. The replacement process is a different story. That should go to the ballot box.
I’ll take a ham & cheese on rye.