Our Constitution's Greatest Failure

[ThomWV]

Our Constitution fails on one point; it allows impeachment but it does not require it.

[John Gauger]

1. I think requirement is implied.

Seriously, isn't it implicit that it is our duty to remove from office the various criminals that are harming our nation?

[ThomWV]

2. Apparently Only You and I Believe That To Be True

And its a shame. I have called my Congressman, I have been to his office, I have begged him to support impeachment. I may just as well ask him to eat a shit sandwich for all the good it has done.

[magellan]

5. Exactly so

But these days, Congress first has to define "criminal" and convince everyone else of their definition while weighing the chances of success against political backlash. Only then will they possibly move on to the first step in impeachment -- investigations.

:crazy: :mad:

[porphyrian]

3. Ah, but is that a failure of the document or of Congress?

I think what makes our Constitution so great is its adaptability to the changing times. I believe the failure is not with it, but with those in Congress who allow it to be defied by the Executive branch unpunished.

[Cerridwen]

4. What porphyrian said.

I was thinking the same thing - though I wondered if it was "We, the People" who have failed our Constitution.

In theory - we elected our representatives - if they don't act - then is it "We" who didn't get it right? Of course, the whole election fraud mess may have subverted that little theory.

[bryant69]

6. I would agree with this but think a certain part of the blame lays with us

the American People. I mean the reason they are such cowards is that they believe we would punish them for impeaching the President - they believe that we wouldn't be behind them (and truth to tell I'm not sure we would).

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[porphyrian]

7. Anyone who isn't behind them in impeaching these traitors doesn't understand impeachment.

If they're really concerned about that, they need to educate their constituents, not hide from their duty. And, while DU may not represent the entire voting population, I think it's fair to say just about everyone here would support them in running these assholes out of town on a rail. Impeachment is the least they can do.

[ThomWV]

8. I Don't Care If It Takes Until His Last Day In Office - Impeach Him

It is the absolute duty of our Representatives to protect the Constitution, Bush threatens the Constitution. How much more difficult could it be? The grounds are there in spades, treason is not a strong enough word for what these trators have done under the rule of one man - George W. Bush. He must be impeached and if it takes until the last day of his second term to get it done then that is what must be done.

[porphyrian]

9. Oh, I'm with you. And I'm getting sick of the career-fear excuses.

I didn't elect my representatives to protect their job security, I elected them to do their fucking job.

[bryant69]

10. Yeah but DU is miniscule compared to America as a whole.

I mean if DU had any leverage Dennis Kucinich would not be a no-hope candidate. I think it's a shame we don't - but at the same it'd be foolish of us to pretend we have influence that we don't.

Bryant

[porphyrian]

12. I'm not pretending anything about our influence (which may be greater than your realize).

I'm saying that we're right, and it doesn't take a genius to understand why. If there isn't support for doing the right thing, the thing it is Congress's job to do, then it is also their job to explain this to their constituents. After all, we didn't swear to protect and uphold the Constitution. (Well, not all of us, anyway.)

[bryant69]

17. Yes but they are representatives of our will

I should also note that while I do think Bush should be impeached, I don't think it's an open and shut case.

Bryant

[porphyrian]

18. Why don't you? - n/t

[bryant69]

20. Because the laws for the kinds of crimes Bush has committed

aren't written very clearly. There's right and wrong and then their's the law, and this is one of many situations where the two don't line up perfectly.

Bryant

[porphyrian]

21. You seriously think this administration's guilt in breaking the law is in question?

You're fucking kidding, right?

[bryant69]

22. Yes. Obviously. What's wrong with you that you don't recognize that?

If their guilt was not in question than impeachment would be a lot more serious. Republicans, for example, don't believe that he's guilty at all, and many, if not most, in the middle believe he's a loser and an idiot, but don't see those as impeachable offensives.

You get 20 people in a room - go down to your local mall and ask them if President Bush has broken the law, how many are going to say "Yes?"

And no, I'm not "fucking kidding." I don't know the difference between "fucking kidding" and regular kidding, but I'm not doing either one.

Bryant

[porphyrian]

23. I recognize it, but I thought you were smarter than that.

How many times does the administration have to break the law to convince you? Besides, you don't prove a law has been broken to impeach, you impeach to determine whether a law has been broken or not based on preliminary evidence, which exists in spades. Anyone who isn't convinced right now that bush and others in this administration should be impeached will certainly be "enlightened" by the ensuing investigation, so your people in a room suggestion is irrelevant.

And, since you're as ignorant of slang as you are of what constitutes criminality, the "fucking" was for emphasis.

[bryant69]

25. You are living in a fairytale if you think an impeachment

will automatically lead to clarity. What do you suppose our friends the Republicans are going to do during an impeachment trial? Fold their hands and quietly wait for it to end? Or rise to Wagnerian heights of deception and smoke blowing?

And impeachment is both a legal and a political process.

Bryant

[genie_weenie]

11. The Failure of the Constitution is

it is old, and generation upon generation of the Ruling Class have worked to limit it's restrictions and expand their own power.

[ThomWV]

13. Please Explain .....

I am missing your point, or maybe the better way to say it is that I am missing how what you claim could have happened? I understand how law at the local level is written by wealth, but not at the Constitutional level. Do you make a connection at the Court or do you see some other road by which what you claim has happened?

[genie_weenie]

31. In the history of the U.S.

locks placed upon government have been weakened or eliminated by government officials.

Examples:

The Power to declare War. Congress clearly has the authority and duty so that no one man or small group could lead the nation into war. This is now not the case. Presidents routinely pushed U.S. forces into conflicts by simply naming them other things: "Police Actions", "Operations", etc.

The Power to tax. This was not in the constitution for a reason. To much power and money allows for all kinds of abuse. A steady stream of money can be used to create and maintain a military which can then be used for Imperial ambitions. Combine a large standing Military and the War Powers Act and you get Iraq.

The Power to restrict Free Speech Almost immediately with the Alien and Sedition Acts, followed on with the Espionage Act, allowing those who question the government to be imprisoned.

The key is no system can be designed which will chain and limit government power. Some rational can always be trumped up to circumvent or change the locks and once a precedent has been set future "Leaders" will always harken back to it, to claim their abuse is legal.

[Greyhound]

27. Good point. They were far too unclear on the function and responsibilities of the courts

Article three is short and says nothing about dealing with laws passed in the legislative. Maybe that was the original intent and what we created afterward is completely outside of the thought behind the document.

[onenote]

14. how would a "requirement" of impeachment work?

The Constitution requires that if the House impeaches, a trial by the Senate is required and if the Senate convicts, removal from office is required.

The only element that is not required is the "impeaching" part -- but that is the equivalent to indictment or bringing charges.

When is it ever "required", as a matter of law, that someone be indicted or that an indictment even be sought? Such matters have always been given over to prosecutorial discretion. In the constitutional analogy for impeachment, the House has been given the same discretion to decide whether or not to consider and adopt articles of impeachment. If it was "required" the House could find itself in a perpetual state of considering (and sometimes approving and sometimes defeating) articles of impeachment.

[ThomWV]

16. Maybe You Have Provided A Method

If we can make it manditory for a person to appear in court for a traffic summons we can certainly make the Executive accountable to the Congress - because that is what impeachment is really all about.

OK, here is what I think I saw in your comment that might work. Let the Congress establish a committee which would be in effect a Congressional petite Grand Jury, required to report to the full Congress regularly and frequently (let us say quarterly) the percieved need for impeachment's first stage (impeachment hearings) - or not, within that group of officials who are impeachable. Let a Committee, not the Speaker of the House, be the decider as to if impeachment hearings will take place or not. That is all I ask.

[onenote]

19. isn't that what the Judiciary Committee does?

The committee you propose already exists -- its the HOuse Judiciary Committee.

[ThomWV]

24. You're right

I should have seen it. You're absolutely right. I will say in my own defense though that the Judiciary Committee's existence is not a Constitutional matter, its a matter of the rules. The Judiciary Committee could disappear tomorrow just as easily as the Passenger Pigeon, it doesn't have permanency. Maybe my argument fails in that it would seem to require micromanagement of either the Congress or the Court, but in my own defense I'm saying that we should be smart enough to find a way to force miscreants to defend their actions in office or be removed faster than waiting for elections in cases where it is bad enough to warrant such.

[dysfunctional press]

15. our constitution's TWO greatest failures...

both of them caught, ironically, in the act of expressing their feelings toward the u.s. constitution, american democracy, and the american people in general.

[Greyhound]

26. Here's another, no provision or mechanism to eliminate the government

when it, inevitably, becomes abusive and unresponsive. They certainly recognized that this was, at least a possibility, yet created no method for substantially changing it, short of bloody revolution.

[onenote]

28. elections?

It would seem that the founders did provide a mechnism for eliminating the government -- it was called elections.

[Greyhound]

29. Ah but they didn't, they set up the process to become what we have now

a false choice between barely discernible rulers, neither of which is willing, or even desires, to alter the status quo. It has always been so and is even more so now.

Let's look at the potential, some say likely, choice we will have in '08, Clinton and Giuliani, which of these two is going to take on the issue of challenging the corporate state? What do you expect that they will accomplish without this?
Universal health care?
Disintegrating public education system?
Deteriorating infrastructure?
Off-shoring?
Corporations hiring illegal immigrants?
Iraq war?
Oil dependence?
Corporate welfare?
$500+ billion "defense" budget?
Drug war?

Sure there will be a flurry of expensive, ineffective, policies, but it will come down to slight differences in how much to give to which corporation. I don't think either would be as bad as arbusto, but who do we get to vote for?

[onenote]

30. and that choice will be the product of....elections...

You are right that the founding fathers didn't set up a process to "eliminate" government in the sense of replacing the governing structure with a void. Rather, they set up a process to eliminate the current government by replacing it through elections. The fact that you or I or someone else may not like the choices doesn't mean that there aren't choices.

[Greyhound]

32. We are at a point in this country where the one thing nearly everyone, Democrat, Repuke,

Independent, Green, non-voters, etc. agrees on is that our government is broken. It does not address the needs of the people and, fact or feeling, is thoroughly corrupt. There is no way to fix this with elections, at least not as we have them now.

I believe this is the reason that often, if not most of the time, the non-voters are the true majority. I also believe that both major parties entirely ignore this group because that is the way they want it. The fewer the voters, the easier it is to maintain their power over all of us. Why else would we spend the time and money we do trying to attract the 10%, or whatever it is, of the "swing voters" that decide the winner, when either party could focus on the non-voters and blow the other side away in a landslide.

If things are to be improved, in any meaningful sense of the word, our nation requires broad-based and fundamental change. Until this happens, things will continue to lurch along, getting worse with every succeeding generation, until it inevitably collapses.