Obama Likes His Laws A La Carte - Granite Grok

Obama Likes His Laws A La Carte

I'll have the Constitution MY way! TerrellAfterMath.com August 26th
I’ll have the Constitution MY way!
Terrell AfterMath August 26th
Commerce Claws the rest of the Constitution?
Shredding The Constitution, Picking and choosing which laws to enforce (including his own!) – these are the actions of a person wholly unsuited to high office.

I have stated here and elsewhere that arbitrary and capricious enforcement of unworkable or unfathomable laws is the textbook definition of tyranny. Couple that with Barry’s determined efforts to circumvent, subvert, and undermine our hallowed Constitution, and we are looking at “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”, or in other words, fully justifiable grounds for impeachment! (Something Ann Coulter laid out convincingly in respect to Bill Clinton.)

As well as English Common Law being the basis for our own legal system, it also established standards for public office, and the requirements for removal (or impeachment) of flawed characters from office, which our Founders drew upon when writing the constitution. Here are a couple of excerpts from Coulter’s book on ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’:

James Madison said the ‘first aim’ of the Constitution was to ensure wise and virtuous rulers and to ‘prevent their degeneracy’.

The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.

For that reason, the Constitution provides for impeachment. The requirement for virtue goes to the President most of all, John Jay said, for example “there is reason to presume” that the presidency would fall only to those “who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue“. He imagined that the electors would not “be deceived by those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism, which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle“. He did not imagine [Barack The Lightbringer].

The third and final author of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, praised the method for selecting the President as likely to ensure that the office will be “filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue“: “Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single state,” but “other talents“, including virtue, would be required to win the Presidency.

Talents for “low intrigue” might be enough for [Illinois], but they were not expected to be enough to win the Presidency. The entire system is constructed to ensure that the office will be filled by “some fit person”. At a bare minimum, this suggests that the President must have virtues beyond not being a convicted criminal.

What to do when the President fails to display appropriate abilities and virtue?

That’s where impeachment comes in. The whole reason for including an impeachment procedure [in the Constitution] was to provide a backup mechanism for removing rogues when the selection process itself had failed to produce “some fit person” with “ability and virtue” – not merely some person who, thus far, has managed to escape a finding that he is guilty beyond reasonable doubt in a criminal prosecution.

Coulter goes on to point out that “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” are not necessarily conventional crimes at all, but rather a breach of the trust of the People, or gross failure in the conduct of the high office, such as would necessitate removal of the deviant or incapable officeholder. Constitutional scholar Raoul Berger noted:

“In sum, ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’ appear to be words of art confined to impeachments, without roots in the common law, and which so far as I could discover, had no relation to whether [the act in question] constituted a crime.”

The Nixon Era Rodino Report on “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment” observed that

Since the fourteenth century the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” had been used in English impeachment cases to charge officials with a wide range of criminal and non-criminal offenses against the institutions and fundamental principles of English government.

There is evidence that the framers were aware of the special, non-criminal meaning of the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” in the English law of impeachment. Not only did Hamilton acknowledge Great Britain as “the model from which [impeachment] has been borrowed,” but George Mason referred in the debates to the impeachment of Warren Hastings, then pending before Parliament. Indeed, Mason, who proposed the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” expressly stated his intent to encompass “[a]ttempts to subvert the Constitution.”

In other words, and thanks to Coulter for pulling it all together, there is a strong case that Executive misbehavior such as is rife in this Regime Administration, is EXACTLY the kind of display of poor character and lack of virtue which the framers had in mind when incorporating mechanisms for impeachment into the Constitution.

DemPinataIs there anybody of strong enough character to strike the first blow against this very obvious piñata?
Boehner? Bueller? Anybody?
Is the real problem that almost ALL of our elected representatives are of such low character and virtue that we should impeach/recall the whole lot?

Dear Democrats, are you really comfortable with setting precedents for usurping yet more of Congress’ power by the Executive branch?
Do you think that in the end game of decaying Socialist Utopia, where the government has 100% control of the decaying ruins of America, that you will all be fat and comfortable Apparatchiks? Do you feel lucky, punks, well do ya?

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