James Madison - “Impeach Bush Over Purgegate!” by Thom Hartmann

[kpete]

Published on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
James Madison - “Impeach Bush Over Purgegate!”
by Thom Hartmann

According to James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” if a President were to order or allow the “wanton removal of meritorious officers” such as US attorneys, such an action “would subject the President to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.”

The issue of the firing of people within the Executive branch for political purposes came up during a debate in 1789 about how to create agencies within the Executive branch that would be consistent with Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution, which says that the President can appoint people (like US Attorneys/prosecutors), but they couldn’t take office unless the Senate votes to confirm each individual appointment:

He (the President) shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

.....if the president should possess alone the power of removal from office, those who are employed in the execution of the law will be in their proper situation, and the chain of dependence be preserved; the lowest officers, the middle grade, and the highest, will depend, as they ought, on the president, and the president on the community. The chain of dependence therefore terminates in the supreme body, namely, in the people; who will possess besides, in aid of their original power, the decisive engine of impeachment.

Madison was prescient. The remedy for this High Crime against American democracy is impeachment.

more at:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/27/113/

[texpatriot2004]

1. Impeachment, it's happening nm

[BOSSHOG]

2. The brilliant statesman Madison

was thinking to the future. He surmised that someday there would be some ignorant dumbass hoisted on a pedestal by religious zealots who would just assume he is God. Not the land of the free that I know.

[bryant69]

3. It does seem like impeachment is more of a possibility

I think though it is his offenses against Congress that are going to sink him. He is starting to piss them off a little too much with his arrogant and dismissive attitude towards them.

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

[kaal]

4. Impeachment is the only option

... Even if it doesn't work, it'll stall this Administration from committing further crimes until it departs!

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

9. If nothing else, it restores a semblance of honor and dignity to America

We have to at least attempt to have these criminals removed from office and prosecuted once they are removed or leave office.

Otherwise, the rest of the world will believe that We, the People condone BushCo's crimes.

[LiberalFighter]

5. Improper continuance of bad men in office or a man of merit?

The danger then consists merely in this, the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be impeachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.

But what can be his motives for displacing a worthy man? It must be that he may fill the place with an unworthy creature of his own. Can he accomplish this end? No; he can place no man in the vacancy whom the senate shall not approve; and if he could fill the vacancy with the man he might chuse, I am sure he would have little inducement to make an improper removal.

From the same speech

[LiberalFighter]

6. Appointment is not made just by the President...

After rereading the Constitution and this speech. Both the President and Senate make the appointment.

Another doctrine which has found very respectable friends, has been particularly advocated by the gentleman from South-Carolina (Mr. Smith). It is this; when an officer is appointed by the president and senate...

[LiberalFighter]

7. Elbridge Gerry's argument against impeachment for this purpose

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Madison yielded the floor to Mr. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who argued against impeaching a President for firing an honorable man. “It is said that the president will be subject to an impeachment for dismissing a good man,” Gerry noted. “This in my mind involves an absurdity.”

Gerry then went on to build a case that no President would do such a thing, because his new appointment would also be subject to confirmation by the Senate. When the Senate considered the new appointment, it would be able to ask what had happened to the last person, thus bringing accountability of the President into the picture.

[Toots]

8. Which explains why that little clause in the Patriot Act slipped in by Specter

was unconstitutional. The Senate is to approve all appointments of the judiciary so they can indeed ask what happened to the person they are being asked to replace...