[Peace-discuss] John W.'s Founding Fathers

[Jenifer Cartwright]

As I understand it, there are three levels, which (in increasing order of severity) are: sanction (official criticism/vote of no confidence w/o penalty -- which Russ Feingold proposed a couple of years ago and which NO senator would support), impeachment (officially charged w/ an ofense -- which Nixon was not and Bill Clinton was but NOT removed from office), and convicted (removed from office).
   
  Re charging our evil-doing administration w/ crimes after they leave office: who in fact could bring charges against them? Outraged citizens? Wronged citizens? Foreign gov'ts? State or local gov'ts? the ACLU? Whoever bro't charges against Kissinger (Latin America?) almost made them stick, as I remember...  
   --Jenifer 

Barbara kessel <barkes at gmail.com> wrote:
  It is my understanding that after impeachment, which is removal from office, there can be criminal proceedings launched on the person or persons. Thus, the presidential pardon of Gerald Ford protected Nixon from criminal proceedings. If he had stuck around to be impeached, he would not have been able to make the deal with Ford before resigning. Ford would still have filled in in any case, but would not have pardoned Nixon. 
      Bush and company can be charged with crimes after they leave office, but who will so charge them? Any ideas? Barbara

  On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 7:13 AM, John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com> wrote:
  At 11:42 PM 3/31/2008, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

  Just accident. It was sent to me quite independently of the discussion between John and me.

'Twas the perfect cartoon to accompany the discussion, at any rate.  :-)

In a more serious vein, I wish they had offered a course in law school on the history of our Constitution - on how and why our Founding Fathers came to the conclusions and compromises they did.  I know there are books on the subject, but I haven't read any of 'em.

For example, I would have had a tendency to impose much harsher penalties than mere impeachment on a treasonous Chief Executive like Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice.  I'm sure that was debated back in 1787 or whenever it was, and I'd love to know why the relatively mild sanction of impeachment was agreed upon.  I suppose because they were afraid that there'd be endless political witch hunts all the time, as a way of eliminating one's political enemies.



  Jenifer Cartwright wrote:

  This is GREAT! Pardon my ignorance, but is that really the caption, or was it inserted to fit the discussion, or was it what generated the discussion to begin with?
 --Jenifer



*/"C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:

_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss




       
---------------------------------
You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20080401/23caa5e2/attachment.htm