Motley Moose – Archive

“Insane”.

The Republican Party is making a point of not mentioning “Impeachment”. In fact just yesterday, Famously Insane Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said this:

“I think Congress has to sit down, have a serious look at the rest of this constitution, and that includes that ‘i’ word that we don’t want to say,”

He was talking about the other “I” word, “Immigration” and making sure that President Obama knew that trying to fix the immigration crisis via executive order (yes, the same crisis that Speaker Boehner (R-OH) begged him to fix via executive order) would trigger Impeachment.

Why is Rep. King so adamant about this? Because he is the author of HR 5272, aka, The Republican Party Suicide Note. He was bursting with pride over it:

“The changes brought into this are ones I’ve developed and advocated for over the past two years,” he told CQ Roll Call. “It’s like I ordered it off the menu.”

Well, as one who wants the Republican party to shrink into Irrelevance (another great “I” word!), seeing them following the lead of Steve King would be something I would order off the menu.

First, let’s start with what the Constitution defines as offenses warranting impeachment and removal from office.  Those can be found in Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Treason and bribery are pretty straightforward, but what, exactly, constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors.  Here’s what former House Minority Leader (and former president) Gerald Ford (R-Michigan) said about them:

An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office.