Rand puts a nail in the coffin on second impeachment attempt.

[Invisible Man]

What you are reading in that quote is the limits on the punishment of impeachment. You can remove someone and then you can bar them from future office. But the impeachment proceedings can't go into further punishment - that's up to the courts. But to construe that to mean that you can bar someone from future office who is not currently holding office is wrong. Complete and utter misreading.

I read it the same way you just explained. So no, not a misreading.

What I was saying was that whereas removal from office logically can only apply to current office holders, disqualification from future office holding logically is not so limited in whom it can apply to.

My point was that I see nothing in the Constitution that limits impeachment trials to current office holders, such as would be the case if removal from office were the only judgment that the Senate could give.

[CaptUSA]

That's not correct. Impeaching someone doesn't remove them from office.

Don't be an idiot. I know how it works. And I never said anything like what you're suggesting.

I said the "purpose" for impeaching someone...

And the judgment for impeachment can include removal from office and disqualification from future office. Not "or".

Article I
Section 3
Clause 7
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.

You are either being stupid or disingenuous. I suspect it's the TDS that's got you.

[CaptUSA]

I read it the same way you just explained. So no, not a misreading.

What I was saying was that whereas removal from office logically can only apply to current office holders, disqualification from future office holding logically is not so limited in whom it can apply to.

My point was that I see nothing in the Constitution that limits impeachment trials to current office holders, such as would be the case if removal from office were the only judgment that the Senate could give.

AND =/= OR

And was never intended as such. You are just wrong. You should probably give it up now. I am aware of no case in history where it has EVER been used in the manner you're suggesting.

[Invisible Man]

Here's a key line in Federalist 65 that gets to what I alluded to above in post #60:

A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.

The definition of impeachment does limit it in such a way that it couldn't apply to just any ordinary civilian. But those who have held public offices, even if they don't hold them any more, can still be guilty of the kinds of offenses this definition describes.

[Invisible Man]

AND =/= OR

And was never intended as such. You are just wrong. You should probably give it up now. I am aware of no case in history where it has EVER been used in the manner you're suggesting.

I agree that it's unprecedented. I also think it's dumb, which is probably part of why it's unprecedented. But that doesn't mean it violates the Constitution.

[CaptUSA]

I agree that it's unprecedented. But that doesn't mean it's unconstitutional.

The Constitution specifically states "and". If they wanted it to be an "and/or", they would have written it that way. The purpose of impeachment proceedings is to get rid of a currently seated corrupt politician. You are trying to amend the Constitution through a disingenuous reading of it. The reason it is unprecedented is because it's unconstitutional.

Period.

Now, you should probably move away from this topic. Your TDS is showing.

[acptulsa]

I guess the word "and" has no meaning any more.

[Invisible Man]

Don't be an idiot. I know how it works. And I never said anything like what you're suggesting.

I said the "purpose" for impeaching someone...

And the judgment for impeachment can include removal from office and disqualification from future office. Not "or".

The and/or distinction doesn't support the conclusion that you're saying.

As you already pointed out, that provision in Article 1 Section 3 is there to limit the possible punishments from impeachment trials to those things listed. The "and" means that the combination of removal from office *and* disqualification from future office is the most that the Senate can do. It cannot give additional punishments, but must leave those to the courts in any future criminal trials that might take place for the same offences.

But within that scope of what the Senate can do in impeachment trials, disqualification from holding office is included. It is not only removal from office.

Obviously, in the case of someone no longer in office, removal from office is not applicable. But disqualification from holding office is still applicable. And if the Senate passes a judgment in an impeachment trial resulting in disqualification from holding office without removing them from office (since they're already no longer in office), they would still be adhering to the limitation placed on them in Article 1 Section 3. A violation of that provision would only happen if they went beyond the punishments listed, but not if they only gave one and not the other.

As for TDS, since I have been clear that I think this impeachment is dumb, I don't see that either.

[Invisible Man]

The Constitution specifically states "and". If they wanted it to be an "and/or", they would have written it that way.

I agree.

I don't see how that results in it being unconstitutional though.

The Constitution limits the punishments the Senate can give such that they "cannot extend further than" A and B. It does not say that they must include both A and B, but only that they cannot include anything beyond them. Anything less than that maximum allowable punishment is still within the limit of not extending further than it.

You keep focusing on the "and," without paying attention to "cannot extend further than."

[jmdrake]

video?

And for those of us who don't like YouTube:

https://www.bitchute.com/video/X1ZcnqXq0e7C/

https://odysee.com/@NewsmaxTV:3/rand...-impeachment:9

To @JoshLowry and @Bryan, how much would it cost to update this forum to be able to embed videos from platforms other than YouTrash? If you do a gofundme I'll donate. If this is open source software I'll donate time to looking into re-configuring the forum software. Thank you and you're welcome.

[Invisible Man]

And for those of us who don't like YouTube:

https://www.bitchute.com/video/X1ZcnqXq0e7C/

https://odysee.com/@NewsmaxTV:3/rand...-impeachment:9

To @JoshLowry and @Bryan, how much would it cost to update this forum to be able to embed videos from platforms other than YouTrash? If you do a gofundme I'll donate. If this is open source software I'll donate time to looking into re-configuring the forum software. Thank you and you're welcome.

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to jmdrake again."

[CaptUSA]

I agree.

I don't see how that results in it being unconstitutional though.

The Constitution limits the punishments the Senate can give such that they "cannot extend further than" A and B. It does not say that they must include both A and B, but only that they cannot include anything beyond them. Anything less than that maximum allowable punishment is still within the limit of not extending further than it.

You keep focusing on the "and," without paying attention to "cannot extend further than."

Ugh...

It's because the PURPOSE of impeaching someone is to get them out of the office they're holding!! If the Founders meant for impeachment to be used in the way you're suggesting, they would have written it that way. They didn't. And if it were meant to be used in that way, it would have been applied and tested MANY times before now.

Dude, you're just wrong. And you're trying to parse out something that isn't in there. And for what? A process that you think is dumb, anyway? TDS is a serious disease. SMH.

[Invisible Man]

It's because the PURPOSE of impeaching someone is to get them out of the office they're holding!!

That's one of the purposes. But I see nothing in the Constitution that says it's the only one. And in fact Article 1 Section 3 indicates that it isn't.

Dude, you're just wrong. And you're trying to parse out something that isn't in there. And for what? A process that you think is dumb, anyway? TDS is a serious disease. SMH.

I have been supporting the impeachment of former presidents in principle for years and years, since long before Trump was president. I'm pretty sure that I can even find posts made on my previous handle saying that. And this particular impeachment I haven't even said a single thing in support of (although I don't claim that holding the impeachment trial in the Senate would violate the Constitution).

I don't ever remember encountering such strong objections to it until now.

It does look like opinions about this particular impeachment are clouding peoples' judgement about the more general constitutional question. But to me it looks like the other way around from what you're accusing me of.

[CaptUSA]

I don't ever remember encountering such strong objections to it until now.

Probably because no one was ever so idiotic as to suggest until now.

[Invisible Man]

Probably because no one was ever so idiotic as to suggest until now.

It's been suggested plenty of times before now and before anybody ever thought of doing it to Trump. It never got to this point. But it's been talked about as a serious thing. I don't ever remember it being called idiotic or not taken seriously as a possibility under the right circumstances.

[acptulsa]

It's been suggested plenty of times before now and before anybody ever thought of doing it to Trump. It never got to this point. But it's been talked about as a serious thing. I don't ever remember it being called idiotic or not taken seriously as a possibility under the right circumstances.

I do. It was August of 1974, and I saw no one at all taking it seriously.

[Invisible Man]

Well I'll be. Looks like I was wrong to concede that holding an impeachment trial of a former office holder is unprecedented. It isn't.

Here's a journal article that I've only just skimmed, but it has lots of great info on the subject. And you can download it for free.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....ract_id=286277

[Invisible Man]

I do. It was August of 1974, and I saw no one at all taking it seriously.

The impeachment of Nixon never ended up taking place in the House, so holding an impeachment trial in the Senate was a moot point. If you're saying that there was continuing debate about whether or not to impeach him even after he resigned, then I didn't know that, and I defer to you, since you remember it and I don't. But there would have been good reasons to consider such an impeachment pointless and imprudent altogether apart from the constitutional question. Are you sure that the reason it wasn't taken seriously was that everybody simply took for granted that it was unconstitutional? I highly doubt that was the case, given what I've seen of discussions of the possibility of impeaching former office holders.

The impeachment of Bill Clinton for his pardon of Marc Rich after Clinton left office was also seriously discussed.

There are lots of reasons why impeaching someone who's no longer in office, or holding an impeachment trial for them in the Senate, may be considered imprudent. But that's different from the question of whether or not it violates the Constitution.

[Invisible Man]

I see that the debate that went on about impeaching Nixon after he had resigned is discussed in the article I mentioned above on p. 62, which I quote here:

The political atmosphere in Watergate was somewhat charged: a President unpopular among lawprofessors, whose conduct seemed clearly to be impeachable, who resigned rather than face impeachment,
and who was pardoned by his successor. Other than the dim possibility of state criminal proceedings, the
only possibility of punishing Nixon under the law was to impeach him even though he had left office.
One article in the Duke Law Journal argued that Nixon could still be impeached,507 even as it conceded
that Congress appeared unlikely to do so.508 Another article reached the same conclusion in quite strong
terms,509 and chided Raoul Berger for leaving the late impeachment issue completely out of his book
Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems.
510
It was assumed by some of these same commentators that an impeachment conviction would allow
Congress to strip Nixon of his pension,511 but it now seems that this would have violated the
constitutional limitation on judgments to removal and disqualification. In retrospect, Congress could have
taken steps to allow late impeachment to strip an ex-officer of his pension, but it was probably too late to
apply such law to Nixon.512
Most recently, Michael Gerhardt, perhaps the leading scholar of impeachment working today, has
written that there is a “surprising consensus among commentators” that late impeachment is acceptable.513
(In fact the consensus, while surprising, is not unanimous.514) Gerhardt agrees that the precedents of
failure to use late impeachment reflect practical considerations rather than constitutional limits.515
Gerhardt cites the Warren Hastings precedent and pre-1787 state constitutional language addressing late
impeachment.516 He continues with a structural argument about disqualification, evidence of original
understanding, citation to John Quincy Adams, and a dismissal of Justice Story’s concerns.517

Notice that the section I bolded makes the exact same point I just did.

[donnay]

[Invisible Man]

I come back to the accusation that was made against me a couple of times that my initial question in this thread was gaslighting. And I'd like to invite readers to think about the discussion that's gone on in this thread with respect to gaslighting.

Here's how wikipedia defines gaslighting:

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment. It may evoke changes in them such as cognitive dissonance or low self-esteem, rendering the victim additionally dependent on the gaslighter for emotional support and validation. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's beliefs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

Throughout this entire thread, I've done nothing other than ask honest questions and raise points that I believe to be legitimate. I have taken points raised against what I said seriously, engaged with them, and when I agreed with them conceded the point. I have consistently spoken to everyone in a respectful manner. I have never belittled the people arguing against me or treated their position like it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.

The same can't be said about some of the people arguing against me. They've used profanities against me. They've given me neg reps. They've impugned my reading abilities. They've called me and my arguments idiotic. They've asserted that my arguments have never before been taken seriously because they don't deserve to be because they're so stupid. They have acted like the reason they can't point to anything in the Constitution to support their position is because nobody would have ever even had the possibility of impeaching a former office holder enter their minds, as if the very use of the word "impeach" ruled that out.

But it turns out, as anybody who takes a little time to look into it can see, that there is precedent for impeaching and/or subsequently trying former office holders, that discussion about doing so, and whether or not the Constitution allows it, has gone on throughout the nation's history, the very points I've raised have factored into these discussions, and, in fact, far from being some marginal idiotic view that nobody discusses because they never took it seriously, the position that impeaching and subsequently trying former office holders is allowed by the Constitution is, as far as I can tell, the majority view among constitutional scholars who have addressed the question. If I didn't have enough confidence in my own reasoning abilities, I would have easily been effectively silenced by all the people telling me that the things I was saying were too stupid to warrant a response, before even taking the time to look into it.

So who here has engaged in gaslighting?

Unfortunately, I fear that those who have engaged in it are now so committed to the position that they've portrayed as the only one that's conceivable, that it will be difficult for them to give the other side a fair shake, no matter what points may be in its favor.

[Mordan]

Good on Rand.

He is showing some teeth.

[DamianTV]

My question isn't like that.

Notice how you keep doing this with my posts.

I am not the only one who has observed your loaded questions. Yesterday you were called out repeatedly by multiple members. The questions you want to ask should be done in a mirror, because you are gonna have a very hard time deceiving any of us here. So really, I think you are only lying to yourself if you want to believe the crap you are trying to make us believe.

[Invisible Man]

I am not the only one who has observed your loaded questions. Yesterday you were called out repeatedly by multiple members. The questions you want to ask should be done in a mirror, because you are gonna have a very hard time deceiving any of us here. So really, I think you are only lying to yourself if you want to believe the crap you are trying to make us believe.

What crap do you think I'm trying to make you believe?

And why not just take my questions literally, rather than looking for a hidden agenda behind them that nobody can find in my actual words?

Just because other posters have done the same thing to me that you have doesn't make it right.

Take this thread for example. If you read how the discussion ended up ensuing since the question I asked that you called gaslighting, it should be pretty clear by now that it wasn't that at all. And in fact, I was the one getting gaslighted (gaslit?).

[Gaius Marius]

I see that the debate that went on about impeaching Nixon after he had resigned is discussed in the article I mentioned above on p. 62, which I quote here:


Notice that the section I bolded makes the exact same point I just did.

I believe Nixon was impeached. However, he was not tried by the US Senate since he resigned before any such trial could be conducted. In fact, Nixon resigned because Senator Barry Goldwater told Nixon that only nine senators would vote against conviction.

To be clear, only the House of Representatives has impeachment power. However, once there has been an impeachment, then the Senate conducts a trial of the impeached person. Think of of impeachment as an indictment. Accordingly, the House of Representatives indicts (impeaches) while the Senate convicts.

[Invisible Man]

I believe Nixon was impeached.

Impeachment proceedings had begun, but he resigned before getting impeached, and they did not end up impeaching him.

To the point I was getting at though, that wasn't because the Constitution wouldn't have allowed it. It was decided out of practical/political considerations.

To be clear, only the House of Representatives has impeachment power. However, once there has been an impeachment, then the Senate conducts a trial of the impeached person. Think of of impeachment as an indictment. Accordingly, the House of Representatives indicts (impeaches) while the Senate convicts.

That is correct, and helpful. People often get confused on that point.

With Nixon, it's not just that the Senate did not convict him, it's that the House didn't impeach him (although it would have, had he not resigned). Only 3 presidents have been impeached, and Nixon isn't one of them. None have been convicted by the Senate.

[Gaius Marius]

Impeachment proceedings had begun, but he resigned before getting impeached, and they did not end up impeaching him.

To the point I was getting at though, that wasn't because the Constitution wouldn't have allowed it. It was decided out of practical/political considerations.



That is correct, and helpful. People often get confused on that point.

With Nixon, it's not just that the Senate did not convict him, it's that the House didn't impeach him (although it would have, had he not resigned). Only 3 presidents have been impeached, and Nixon isn't one of them. None have been convicted by the Senate.

Okay, I thought the House of Representatives did in fact impeach Nixon. I am only going by my memory of an awkward debate long ago between my HS US Gov't teacher versus my HS History teacher in front of the entire school, but maybe I misunderstood what they stated.

[DamianTV]

What crap do you think I'm trying to make you believe?

And why not just take my questions literally, rather than looking for a hidden agenda behind them that nobody can find in my actual words?

Just because other posters have done the same thing to me that you have doesn't make it right.

Take this thread for example. If you read how the discussion ended up ensuing since the question I asked that you called gaslighting, it should be pretty clear by now that it wasn't that at all. And in fact, I was the one getting gaslighted (gaslit?).

Trump Lost. The Election was honest. Your Headline yesterday was Objective Fact and Truth. Not sure what else. MSM doesnt radicalize. News Articles are NEVER misleading. Vaccines are all perfectly safe. What other falsehoods do you believe? Dont bother playing the Victim card, your words ARE divisive.

[Invisible Man]

Trump Lost. The Election was honest. Your Headline yesterday was Objective Fact and Truth. Not sure what else. MSM doesnt radicalize. News Articles are NEVER misleading. Vaccines are all perfectly safe. What other falsehoods do you believe? Dont bother playing the Victim card, your words ARE divisive.

My thread title yesterday was an objective factual statement about what the statement I presented in the OP that was made by American Thinker said. That's all that the thread title was. As such, yes, it was an objective fact that anybody who read that statement could see. I made no claims in the thread title or elsewhere in the thread about whether I agreed with that statement.

The rest of what you're claiming can't be gotten from anything I've ever said. You're just reading into my words and flat out making things up. If you can find quotes where you think I've said those things or even implied any of them, please show me.

For some reason you've made assumptions about me. You think you know what my beliefs are and that I have some agenda that you've dreamed up. But you can't find any post I've ever made that fits your assumption.

Again, what's so objectionable about simply taking what I actually say at face value? When you do that, you might find it's not as bad as you think.

[RJB]

This is hilarious! LOL. The word game master is asking for charity. You get in fights with 90% of the forum over stupid uncharitable readings. The only people you don't fight with are obvious trolls like Sola_Fide, Zippy, etc.

A Jewish friend explained an example of Chutzpuh is a person who murders his parents and then throws himself at the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. This is a new example.

My goodness. I am going to be laughing about this for the next few days. Thanks!

My question could have been read more charitably than that.

Again, you're being uncharitable to me.