Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to My point was not to argue syntax

For want of a comma...
Robert — (archived)

I think that in 1996 the Republicans must've been reading from a fly-specked copy of the Constitution, and imagined that there was a comma between "crimes" and "and misdemeanors".

With a comma, the grounds for impeachment devolve to, literally, "your behavior that I don't like". With a comma, the sentence doesn't make sense, with the triviality of the second part contradicting the seriousness of the first part.

Without a comma, though, it's clear that impeachment is reserved for serious transgressions. This isn't like the murkiness of the Second Amendment; the grounds for impeachment look to have been carefully constructed. It starts with two clear illustrations of serious offenses unique to holders of high office: bribery and treason. Then it generalizes from the two examples with "or other high crimes and misdemeanors.", that is, crimes and bad behavior of the same gravity as treason and bribery.

There's really not much ambiguity there, so I must disagree, Congress does not have an open-ended power of impeachment. I think that Republicans trivialized and cheapened impeachment by using it against Bill Clinton in 1996 on grounds so tangential to execution* of the duties of the office and trivial in general terms. It's fascinating to watch today how those chickens are coming home to roost and Republicans are arguing that Bush hasn't done anything nearly serious enough to warrant impeachment. That represents one perverted value system, if you ask me.

(*--Lemme tell ya, I had to think hard to come up with "execution" as an alternative to "discharge")

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