There is so much to talk about today. The President gave a speech last night in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that four years ago would have caused a national crisis. Almost everything he said was a lie. Among those falsehoods, he managed to call the FBI \u201cscum\u201d, and convicted felons \u201cgreat people\u201d. He is a President unmoored from reality, and willing to say literally anything to further his own ambitions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And his Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer in the United States, also attacked his own FBI and Justice Department. Instead of standing for his employees, he said that the Inspector General\u2019s Report, after two years, got everything wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>is reenacting their great story of the early 1970\u2019s, the\u00a0Pentagon Papers\u00a0<\/em>that\u00a0<\/em>revealed the decades of lies surrounding the Vietnam War.\u00a0\u00a0This modern version deals with our historically longest war in Afghanistan, now eighteen years old.\u00a0\u00a0Like the Pentagon of the 1960\u2019s, the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>discovered that what we are told about US goals and achievements in Afghanistan have been intentionally falsified to fool the American people.\u00a0\u00a0And it\u2019s been going on for decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n And quietly, the President is planning to announce that Jews in America are now not just a religion, but legally a race. This is a fundamental change in American thinking and policy to achieve short-term political gains. It raises serious questions about an action that further divides Americans into factions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of these warrant examination. And they all happened yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, fifty years from now, December 11th<\/sup>, 2019 will be known as the day that the House of Representatives presented Articles of Impeachment of the President of the United States.\u00a0\u00a0So while all of the other crises today are dramatic and important, this is the one that \u201c\u2026history will have its eyes on.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Constitution was ratified in 1788, and our current form of government began in 1789. In the two hundred and thirty years since, Congress and the President have only reached this impasse four times. It is worth examining the conditions of those historic actions, to get a better understanding of today\u2019s extraordinary situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andrew Johnson was the President who wasn\u2019t supposed to be. In the summer of 1864, as the Union Armies poured blood onto the fields of Virginia, Abraham Lincoln\u2019s reelection was by no means a sure thing. General George McClellan, the \u201cHero of Antietam,\u201d was the Democratic candidate. He was willing to end the war without victory, and so end the massive casualty lists printed in the daily papers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lincoln needed to assure a broad coalition to regain the White House and finish the cause that those who sacrificed had \u201c\u2026thus far so nobly advanced\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0So he dropped his first Vice President, Republican Hannibal Hamlin of Maine.\u00a0\u00a0Lincoln, a Republican as well, ran under the \u201cNational Union\u201d Party, and chose as his second running mate a \u201cWar Democrat,\u201d the Military Governor of Tennessee Andrew Johnson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Johnson\u2019s sole job was to balance the ticket.\u00a0\u00a0By the fall the situation on the battlefield changed as well, as General Sherman captured Atlanta in September.\u00a0\u00a0Lincoln was reelected in November, and in the spring of 1865, the Radical Republican Congress and the President were planning for the Reconstruction of the Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n John Wilkes Booth changed those plans, with a bullet to Lincoln\u2019s head. Andrew Johnson, the War Democrat, the former slave owner, was now the President of the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Johnson\u2019s version of reconstructing the Union was to return the South to pre-war status, less the slaves.\u00a0\u00a0Johnson supported the discriminatory laws that kept the former slaves in a second-class status, and vetoed twenty-nine bills passed by Congress.\u00a0\u00a0The Congress overrode over half of his vetoes, and ultimately the ideological divide over the future of the country led the Congress to try to restrict Johnson\u2019s power. They passed the Tenure of Office Act, again over his veto, and required Presidential appointments that needed Senate approval, to need Senate approval to be removed as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Johnson ignored the law, and fired his Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. This became the core charge in Johnson\u2019s impeachment, though there were a total of eleven articles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, like Johnson or not, the historic basis for his impeachment was a difference in policy beliefs between him and the Congress. Johnson held onto his Presidency by one vote in the Senate. That vote was cast by Kansas Senator Edmund G. Ross and immortalized by John F. Kennedy in his book, Profiles in Courage. <\/em> While Ross showed a willingness to risk his political future, the practical effect of his vote was to put civil rights for black citizens on hold for a century. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It would be one hundred and four years for impeachment to be considered again.\u00a0\u00a0 Impeachment articles for Nixon were written for using the powers of his office to attack his political enemies, and to orchestrate a cover-up of the crimes.\u00a0\u00a0Despite Nixon\u2019s public assertions that \u201cI am not a crook,\u201d in reality, he was exactly that, violating Federal criminal laws.\u00a0\u00a0His own Justice Department rebelled when Nixon tried to fire the investigators examining his actions, and the Special Prosecutor\u2019s investigation was key to discovering the President\u2019s culpability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over audiotapes of White House meetings and his criminal conduct was apparent, Congressional leaders from his own Republican Party warned him he would be removed from office.\u00a0\u00a0Nixon, aware not only of the historic significance of being removed, but also his personal financial implications, resigned from office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So with Johnson we had an impeachment based on political differences. With Nixon, we had an impeachment based on clear criminal conduct. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m a Democrat, and I was a Democrat in 1998 as well.\u00a0\u00a0Bill Clinton disgraced the Presidency.\u00a0\u00a0He took advantage of a twenty-one year old intern and had a sexual affair literally in the halls of the White House.\u00a0\u00a0As a teacher at the time, I found myself having delicate conversations with my high school seniors about oral sex, DNA samples on blue dresses, and where cigars might go.\u00a0\u00a0In our current \u201cMe-Too\u201d era, Clinton\u2019s actions would have resulted in his immediate resignation.\u00a0\u00a0That should have happened in 1998 too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it didn\u2019t. Clinton determined to stay in the White House, and tried to \u201cweasel\u201d his way out of the scandal by making a case that \u201coral gratification\u201d wasn\u2019t actually sex. That didn\u2019t go over well in my classroom, and nor with the Federal Courts, who found his testimony perjurous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So Clinton committed perjury. He ultimately was disbarred in Arkansas for it. And Clinton abused an intern, even though she was \u201cof legal age\u201d. The question that confronted the Congress was did those acts reach the standard for removal from office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Founding Fathers used a term of art, \u201chigh crimes and misdemeanors\u201d. \u201cHigh Crimes\u201d were crimes against the state, the government, as opposed to \u201clow\u201d crimes that were crimes against individuals. Abuse of power might not even be a crime in a legal sense, but it could be a \u201chigh crime\u201d if done by a President. Killing a King would be a \u201chigh crime,\u201d killing the man next door, not so much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So were Clinton\u2019s sexual exploits, and his lying about it, a \u201chigh crime\u201d or a \u201clow crime\u201d? That was the question examined by the House of Representatives in 1998. The problem that many of those gentlemen ran into was their own sexual dalliances. Speaker Gingrich was in the process of divorcing his wife and marrying a staff member, Speaker Livingston was forced to confess to an affair, and ultimately Speaker Hastert led the House. It wasn\u2019t until much later we found out about his prior perversions with the high school wrestlers he coached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clinton was impeached along party lines, and the Articles sent to the Senate. After a long Senate trial, has was acquitted. This too is a \u201cterm of art;\u201d acquitted. Clinton was not exonerated, nor was he innocent. But the Senate determined that his actions did not rise to the \u201chigh crime\u201d level of impeachable offenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here we are today. The House of Representatives is considering two Articles of Impeachment against President Donald J. Trump. The House is saying that the President committed two \u201chigh crimes\u201d. The first: using the power of his office to gain foreign intervention to advance his own personal political campaign. The second: using those same powers to obstruct the investigation into his actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What the Senate, and ultimately the nation, will have to decide is what kind of impeachment is this. Is this an impeachment of policy difference, as many Republicans claim, like the Johnson impeachment? Or is this a criminal impeachment, one where reasonable Congressional leadership would go to Mr. Trump, as they did to Mr. Nixon, and ask him to resign? Or are these actually \u201clow crimes,\u201d not deserving of removal from office, as the 1999 Senate decided about Clinton?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Senate will probably decide this January. As I listen to Senator Lindsey Graham rail on about the 2016 election (the Senate grilling of Mr. Horowitz has just begun), it\u2019s clear that the bipartisanship of the Nixon impeachment won\u2019t be possible. It is likely that the Senate will vote along Party lines, and Trump will stay in office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the evidence of Trump\u2019s actions is being presented not just to the Senate, but also to the American people. So while the President may still remain in office this January, it will be the people that have the final say in November of 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopefully the election will be fair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Impeaching the President<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Compromise Gone Wrong<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Future of the Union<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A Simple Crime <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Disgraceful or Impeachable<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
High Crimes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Impeaching this President<\/h3>\n\n\n\n