[Peace-discuss] Good Riddance Killary! Hillary R Clinton. We Came, We Saw, He Died"

[C. G. Estabrook]

> On Nov 25, 2016, at 3:22 PM, Bryan Savage <bryan at sneezingdogs.com> wrote:
> 
> ...You did stop WW III; but, wait, oh my god! Obama still has time to start the war. let's get busy on the impeachment resolution. First things first!

Absolutely right. And also, 

"It is possible to impeach someone even after the accused has vacated their office in order to disqualify the person from future office [a Supreme Court appointment has been mentioned for Obama; cf. W. H. Taft] or from certain emoluments of their prior office (such as a pension)…"

"In 1876, Secretary of War General William Belknap [who served in the scandal-plagued Republican administration of Pres. Ulysses Grant], accused of accepting a bribe, resigned just hours before the House was scheduled to consider articles of impeachment. The House went ahead and unanimously impeached him, and by a vote of 37-29 the Senate rejected the argument that Belknap’s resignation should abort the case. The Senate proceeded with the trial, but Belknap was narrowly acquitted. A number of the Senators who voted for acquittal explained that they felt they lacked jurisdiction because of his resignation…

"By contrast, when in 1926 Illinois District Judge George English, impeached for various acts of wrongdoing, resigned from office six days before the scheduled commencement of his trial in the Senate, the matter was discontinued. The same was true, of course, when Richard Nixon resigned just prior to adoption of articles of impeachment by the House.

"The Belknap precedent aside, is there any logic to impeaching and trying an official who is no longer in office? One answer might be the value of establishing a precedent that certain misconduct is (or is not) impeachable … Evidence suggests that the Framers of the Constitution concurred in this conclusion — they did not regard resignation as automatically precluding impeachment or conviction…"