The President Is Not the United States<\/p>\n
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.<\/em><\/p>\n The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.<\/em>– US Constitution, Article III, \u00a7 3<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cunelected deep state operatives\u201d are a \u201cthreat to democracy itself.\u201d \u00a0\u201c(the person who wrote the op-ed) may not be a Republican,<\/em>\u00a0it may not be a conservative, it may be a deep state person who has been there for a long time\u201d\u00a0\u2013 President Donald Trump \u2013 9\/6\/18<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cNumber one, the\u00a0<\/em>Times<\/em>\u00a0should never have done that, because really what they\u2019ve done is virtually, you know, it\u2019s treason, you could call it a lot of things.\u201d –\u00a0<\/em>President Donald Trump \u2013 9\/6\/18<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people. SICK!\u201d Twitter – President Donald Trump \u2013 2\/17\/17<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Donald Trump, among his many other flaws, is confused.\u00a0 He has conflated the United States, our nation, with himself.\u00a0 While the President of the United States may be the head of state, representing our nation both at home and overseas, the holder of that office is NOT the United States.\u00a0 Trump needs to figure that out.<\/p>\n In the past year or so, he has accused the media of treason and as being an enemy of the American people.\u00a0He has also accused the \u201canonymous\u201d (or \u2018annimus\u2019) author of this week\u2019s cry for help in the New York Times<\/em> of treason, and has asked the Department of Justice to investigate and find out who the writer was.<\/p>\n Criticizing the President is not a crime, at least since the Sedition Act expired in 1801. (A brief history lesson, President John Adams and the Federalist Party of Hamilton\u2019s fame, wrote a series of laws restricting immigration and criticism.\u00a0 One, in 1798, was called the Sedition Act, making criticizing the Administration a crime punishable by imprisonment.\u00a0 Jefferson\u2019s Democratic-Republican Party made opposition to these laws a prime issue in their winning election of 1800, and most, including the Sedition Act, were allowed to expire at the beginning of the Jefferson Administration.<\/em>)\u00a0 And even in the brief three years when it was a crime, it wasn\u2019t treason.\u00a0\u00a0 John Adams knew the difference between infuriating criticism that he wanted to end and actual treason against the United States.<\/p>\n In fact, despite the wishes of most \u201cResistance\u201d fans, even if Trump was a direct agent of Russia who achieved the Presidency with knowing aid of Russian intelligence, he probably still hasn\u2019t committed treason.\u00a0 Russia has not been defined as an \u201cenemy,\u201d and while trying to subvert our electoral process may be considered a \u201cbad\u201d act, it probably doesn\u2019t rise to the legal definition of an \u201cact of war.\u201d\u00a0 Treason is an ultimate crime, one of the few defined in the Constitution itself; it probably does not fit even the worst imagined extremes of the Trump Campaign.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t mean that in the most extreme case, the Trump Campaign and the President himself haven\u2019t committed serious legal offenses.\u00a0 Violation of Federal Election Laws, conspiracy to commit fraud on the United States, conspiracy of theft in the Clinton emails, and acting as an unregistered agent of foreign nations are just a few of the possible charges. \u00a0These possible acts don\u2019t meet the Constitutional definition of treason, but do definitely reach the definition of \u201chigh crimes and misdemeanors\u201d as written in the impeachment clause.<\/p>\n \u201cTreason\u201d and \u201cEnemy of the People\u201d are phrases used to fire up crowds at campaign style rallies, but they shouldn’t apply to what\u2019s going on today.\u00a0 These are dangerous phrases:\u00a0 Americans would \u201ctake up arms\u201d against treason, they would try to eliminate \u201cenemies of the people.\u201d\u00a0 These terms are incitements to violence, and in an era where there are weapons of war (1.5 million assault weapons sold each year in US) stored throughout the nation, and an expanding division in race and ideology, they are \u201cflame to gasoline\u201d dangerous.\u00a0 It feeds into an American \u201cdream\u201d of the Minuteman (common man) standing on the green at Lexington, fighting against tyranny.\u00a0 This \u201ctreason\u201d needs to be \u201cput down\u201d and if the Justice Department, or the military, won\u2019t do it, well, maybe we will.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason the American Eagle is on the symbol of the National Rifle Association.<\/p>\n But the President does have one thing right, though not in the way he means it.\u00a0 There is a \u201cthreat to democracy\u201d by the \u201csteadystate\u201d theory put forth in the New York Times opinion article.\u00a0 That the un-elected staffers of the executive branch are trying to steady the government from the whims of an out of control President has little to do with democracy.\u00a0 Our system has Constitutional alternatives for this situation; that the \u201csteadystaters\u201d are gaining the tax cuts or regulatory reform they want is far outweighed by the needs of protecting \u00a0our democracy by using the system.\u00a0 Subverting it by an \u201cadministrative coup\u201d does our nation no good.<\/p>\n America needs to \u201cright the ship.\u201d\u00a0 It will take some time, and, unfortunately, during that time more damage will be done.\u00a0But the Constitution charts a course to fix this, and going outside of its structure threatens permanent damage to our democracy.\u00a0 It starts in November:\u00a0 as former President Obama said once again yesterday:\u00a0 \u201cdon\u2019t boo \u2013 vote!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n