Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Infrastructure week. at last.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

I really should read my own blog.

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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Everybody saw this coming.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

You are here: Home / Rosenkranz and Guildenstern are dead

Rosenkranz and Guildenstern are dead

by | 138 Comments

This post is in: 

“I wish a motherfucker would” doesn’t do this justice (apologies for linking to #dickwhisperer):

One of the majority’s witnesses, Georgetown law professor Nicholas Rosenkranz, encouraged the Republicans not to be so shy. “I don’t think you should be hesitant to speak the word in this room,” he said. “A check on executive lawlessness is impeachment.”

What will it be for? Benghazigate? ACAgate?

Reader Interactions

138Comments

  2. 2.

    SFAW

    Benghazigate? ACAgate?

    No. PWB.

    ETA: Which is, as Villago noted, “Presidentin’ While Black”

  5. 5.

    Villago Delenda Est

    What will it be for? Benghazigate? ACAgate?

    Presidentin’ while blah, of course. There can be no greater crime.

    Also, he’s fathered two black children. I feel an attack of the vapors coming on.

    /shakefist at SFAW

  8. 8.

    Yatsuno

    @maya: Fast and Furious baby, Fast and Furious. There is still an open hearing about that, though now they’re trying to get the scalp of Holder for it.

  14. 14.

    Short Bus Bully

    Bring it bitches.

    The American people would just LOVE another impeachment proceeding in the midst of all the other shit we have to take care of as a nation…

  16. 16.

    Violet

    Can they bring the impeachment charges at the same time they shut down the government again? Twofer!

  18. 18.

    Jeffro

    I love it.
    It’s probably never occurred to them to simply (gasp) a) accept the outcome of an election, and then b) figure out how best to fight the next one.

    $10 says they were the first in their pre-schools to flip the Candyland board when they were about to lose

  21. 21.

    GregB

    If there is anything that will cause these ratfucking fascists to plunge headlong over an electoral abyss from which there is no return it will be the urge to impeach Obama.

    Please proceed ratfuckers.

  22. 22.

    Hawes

    Filibuster reform.

    While it was done by Harry Reid, we all know that Obama was behind it.

    Either that or helping tens of millions of Americans get health insurance.

    Also, too, death panels.

  23. 23.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @SFAW:

    Well, if you start channeling Chairman Darrell “GTA” Issa, you will.

    I’d much rather channel Stalin, Khomeini, Pol Pot, or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-By-Command-Of-Godwin.

    All of them were not total fuckups in their evil, at least.

  24. 24.

    Hawes

    @GregB: Actually, we should be ratfucking THIS.

    Where can we go to help push them to impeach Obama? Can I make phone calls? Sign a petition? Drive my Hoverround scooter around the Beltway to snarl traffic?

  25. 25.

    scav

    For all their passionate defense of dead white guy European literature, their familiarity with it is dead level with their insight into scripture. Will they next call their expert Dr Leontes Othello to the stand to opine on the state of the Obama and de Blasio marriages?

  27. 27.

    Schlemizel

    @SFAW:

    Whitewater

    I think you may be onto something here. Obama did have Vince Foster killed, right? I know he was importing cocaine to a landing field in Arkansas.

  28. 28.

    mdblanche

    “Rosenkranz?”

    “Impeach!!!”

    “Guildenstern?”

    “Impeach!!!”

    “Don’t you discriminate at ALL?”

  29. 29.

    JR

    I’m one of Nick’s former students. I’m out at the moment, but I’ll elaborate in a bit on what I think he means by this. In short, this is a snippet of a much larger, completely consistent view of government that he holds.

  31. 31.

    SFAW

    @Schlemizel:

    Obama did have Vince Foster killed, right? I know he was importing cocaine to a landing field in Arkansas.

    Well, I know he put a hit out on Vince from his (i.e., Obama’s) home base in Nairobi. But I hadn’t heard about the Arkansas coke thing. The one on the Big Island, though – well, EVERYONE knows about that.

  32. 32.

    Suffern ACE

    Well they won’t touch the NSA with a 20 foot pole. I’m still not certain what they expect from Benghazi. Did the president hire those thugs to shoot at the CIA compound?

    I’ll go with IRS Gate. It’s the closest they can come to abuse of power. They’d only have to stretch 1/3 of the facts and make up 1/2 in that one.

  33. 33.

    JPL

    @Suffern ACE: I actually like Fast and Furious. Just cuz homeless guys could buy dozens of guns and transport them, doesn’t mean they weren’t doing anything wrong.

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @SFAW:

    This is how small a world Los Angeles is. I found out today that my Weight Watchers leader is friends with Walker’s family. And she doesn’t work in show business (in her non-WW life, she’s a nurse).

  40. 40.

    Davis X. Machina

    I’m surprised they’re only calling for impeachment. That’s a mild form of redress to seek against the leader of a government of occupation, imposed by a foreign power, and maintained by force against the will of its citizens.

    These people do not actually believe that non-Republicans are due any of the privileges and immunities of citizens, like the ballot.
    These people do not think Democrats are actually Americans.
    Do not let the lack of shooting lull you into thinking that there is no civil war going on.

  41. 41.

    maya

    He’ll be impeached for actually having the gall to use the White House toilets instead of cleaning them. They just have a little work to do on the proper wording for the indictment.

  42. 42.

    Pen

    @Davis X. Machina: every time I bring up that point I’m accused by friends and family of “being shrill”. But then the biggest proponent of that worldview is my just retired from public service grandmother who, while spending 3 months a years
    Traveling on vacation, legitimately believes that “college students should be allowed to vote at school so of course their ID shouldn’t be valid in elections, they can vote at home”. The fact that they spend as much time in the city every year as she does completely gets ignored, so there is that.

  43. 43.

    Yatsuno

    @Suffern ACE: Not really. There is more evidence of incompetence from Bush legacies than anything else. Plus the Cincinnati office was SCREAMING for advice from HQ and getting nada. Unfortunately they made it up as they went along. Oh and totally ignore the progressive groups that also were submitted to the extra scrutiny.

    @SFAW: S’okay. Going the James Dean route is not necessarily a bad way for a star to go.

  45. 45.

    SFAW

    @Pen:

    every time I bring up that point I’m accused by friends and family of “being shrill”.

    Prof. Krugman? Is that you?

  46. 46.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    The Congressional GOP gives me a chronic headache. I should be more technically accurate and note that reading about the idiotic ways the morons can wast their (tax funded) salaries on acting out 3 year old style tantrums gives me headaches. So I can perhaps engage in prevention by not reading.

    @Yatsuno: He was indeed pretty, and died too young. I think he played on my team. :)

  47. 47.

    El Cid

    The New ACORN Black Panthers being sent to target Tea Party leaders with the IRS in order to send guns to Mexican drug gangs via Fast & Furious so that Mexican Shari’a anchor babies would have the arms with which to kill our embassy staff in Benghazi in order to manipulate the 2012 elections.

  48. 48.

    Joe Buck

    Unfortunately, there are real crimes being committed, but they have bipartisan backing: NSA blanket surveillance in violation of the 4th amendment, defiance of the convention against torture (which requires signatories to prosecute government officials who engage in or order torture), execution of American citizens without trial, and so on. If we hadn’t abandoned the rule of law long ago, any of those could justify impeachment.

    But since Republicans are fully on board for all or most of that, we’ll only hear about Benghazi and the like.

  49. 49.

    Ash Can

    Dickwhisperer’s concluding point needs a little adjustment:

    Why bother with impeachment? They need a revolution medication and therapy.

  50. 50.

    SFAW

    @El Cid:

    The New ACORN Black Panthers being sent to target Tea Party leaders with the IRS in order to send guns to Mexican drug gangs via Fast & Furious so that Mexican Shari’a anchor babies would have the arms with which to kill our embassy staff in Benghazi in order to manipulate the 2012 elections.

    You forgot Poland!

    But outside of that, I think you pretty much covered it.

  52. 52.

    ? Martin

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): One of the more astounding things I discovered when I moved out here is just how many people know each other. Ms Martin is an amateur singer, but had the same voice coach as many quite famous people (Discord!) and got to know them pretty well. A number of years back she got to be on her favorite show through a connection. One of her best friends from HS (still a close friend) got an Oscar a few years ago (the speech kind, not the ‘good job with the rigging’ kind).

    And you get one or two of these contacts and all of a sudden you hook into a whole bunch of other people. We know several auto racers through similar networking (lots of auto racing teams here in SoCal).

    It’s really kind of weird.

  53. 53.

    mai naem

    Y’all are wrong. They are going to impeach him for Hillary’s fall and all of Biden’s verbal faux pas because he was trying to look better than the Dems who will inherit the Dem leadership role. Also too, Princess Snooki of the Northwest’s word salad issues. Obama put some voodoo spells on the Snow Princess that he learned at the Mombasa Madrassa that he was born at.

  54. 54.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Michael Smerconish, who IIANM self-IDs as libertarian and ex-Republican, just pretty much did a commercial for Obamacare on L O’Donnell’s show

  55. 55.

    mk3872

    Really? A #dickwhisperer link??

    And you failed to mention this beauty from the #dickwhisperer in that story:

    “… it’s true that this president has stretched the bounds of executive authority”

    Well, then the GOP is justified in impeachment, right?

  56. 56.

    rda909

    Well, we already know that if they pick something like DROOONZZ!1! or the NSA activities that President Obama has actually curtailed during his time in office, that many of the white “progressives” will happily “stand with Rand” and join with Grover Norquist as has already happened, in order to bring down the most liberal President in any of our lifetimes, so they could try those some more. Many people here even would be completely on board with that too, considering what they say here every single day.

    Fortunately, the Online Progressive Party (Yea, OPP…) makes a lot of noise but never does the necessary hard work to actually achieve their goals, so yea, please proceed Republiprogressives! It’ll backfire on them as usual.

  57. 57.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    I’m still trying to figure out what the underlying problem with Fast & Furious was. When I put together their arguments and their underlying philosophy, as near as I can tell the problem is that they like Mexico being a murderous anarchy and so they don’t want the ATF taking the guns there that would help to make it a polite society.

  58. 58.

    A Humble Lurker

    Briar patch.
    I wish they would just decide whether or not to do it already. It’s all this waffling that’s annoying me. We know you’re full of shit, so either shit or get off the pot.

  61. 61.

    kindness

    So if the idiots in the House do actually start hearings for impeachment….how long before the nuts in this country start a revolution all on their own? No, I don’t mean organized. They aren’t. They are testosterone driven, dick challenged troglodites dreaming of killing the ‘others’. We and a bunch of other folk are those others. What I guess I mean is that are Republicans trying to drive the nuts to start killing people or what? Sure looks like it.

  62. 62.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    The wingtards are a mass of conflicting, contradictory impulses that would cause Norman to go comatose in seconds. You wouldn’t even need to use Harry Mudd’s “I’m lying to you” gambit to cause the shutdown.

    Paul Ryan epitomizes this in his claim to be a Christian and an Ayn Rand acolyte.

  63. 63.

    Yatsuno

    @kindness: They need some kind of backing from the military. Right now they don’t have that. I doubt they are willing to put in the work to win over the military. So yeah, maybe a few isolated pockets of frustration (to wit: the white supremacist who tried to take over a town in North Dakota) but otherwise just simmering resentment.

  65. 65.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @kindness:

    What I guess I mean is that are Republicans trying to drive the nuts to start killing people or what? Sure looks like it.

    Start? They’ve been doing it for years now. It’s just that because they’re not Arabs/Muslims/Hippies/Environmentalists/The Weather Underground, they’re not classified as “terrorists” even though they have absolutely classic, textbook motivations and tactics.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):

    Because they believe that Obama and Holder sent guns from the US to Mexico so Mexicans would then carry the US guns back over the border into the US and commit crimes with the guns and the Mexicans-with-US-guns crime wave would lead to “anti-second amendment” regulation.

    This is the actual theory.

    I think they love it so much because it has both guns and illegal immigrants and of course Eric Holder, who has to be removed because Alberto Gonzales had to resign, so that makes it fair.

  68. 68.

    Yatsuno

    @Kay:

    and of course Eric Holder, who has to be removed because Alberto Gonzales had to resign, so that makes it fair.

    BOF SIDES!!!

    And F & F started as a Bush fuck-up continued by career legacies in the DoJ. They already knew it wasn’t working but decided to hot potato it so Nobummer could get blamed.

  69. 69.

    RaflW

    @Pen: I suspect that a chunk of these folks think the students parents should be able to vote their kids ballots “since dad is paying for their edumacashun.” Or at the very least that the kids might be cowed into voting TeaTard with dadio watching them vote at the home precinct.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @Yatsuno:

    You don’t have to tell me. I think the Fast and Furious theory is proof that they’re actually insane.

    They really do loathe Holder, though. I think it’s the AA prosecutor/power thing, definitely, myself. There’s just no rational reason to hate him so much.

  72. 72.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Regarding Rosenkranz’s encouragement of impeachment, I offer this from Stoppard’s play: We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

  74. 74.

    RaflW

    “… it’s true that this president has stretched the bounds of executive authority”

    Well, if congress would do even 1/3 of its job, the Preznit might not be stretching executive orders and spitballing on stuff like extending ACA deadlines.

    But, eh! who has time to thing about why these actions occurred. That would be like journalism rather than punditry. Only punditry is both profitable and easy.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kay:

    I think it’s the AA prosecutor/power thing,

    Supposedly, LBJ talked Marshall into taking the Solicitor General’s job by taking him to the DoJ and pointing down the hall at the SG’s office and saying something like, “I want the bastards to look down this hall and know that there is a n*****r in that office.”

  77. 77.

    jheartney

    If you’re up for a blast of Wingnut Crazee, try the comment thread for this article. (Warning: Daily Caller.) They’re angrily shouting about how everybody knows the gummint shutdown was engineered by Harry Reid and the Muslim Usurper, and that we should impeach his near ass for doing muslim prayin’ in the White House. (The article was linked from Millbank’s piece.)

  78. 78.

    John Dillinger

    The eventual articles of impeachment put up for a vote will be in ALL CAPS and refer to the President a “Obummer.”

  79. 79.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @RaflW:

    Well,yeah. I mean, just how outrageous is it on a scale of 1 to 10 (I’d say a 14 to 18) that a blah man is exercising any executive authority at all?

    Never mind that the deserting coward/Dark Lord malasstration is the one that basically said “fuck the Geneva Convention, it’s quaint, we’re going to institute a Night and Fog decree for everyone on the planet” NOT an extension of executive authority.

    Oh, I forget. IOKIYAR.

  80. 80.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @rikyrah: Yeah, they are just looking for a hook on which to hang that hat. Obama just won’t give it to them – that makes them crazier.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @Yatsuno:

    So, the vendetta against Eric Holder began with the New Black Panther Scandal, which was complete bullshit, but that’s why I think the Holder-hate is race-based. They were waiting for “proof” he would treat black people differently than white people from the moment he was sworn in.

    I read a transcript of the fake-hearing. They called Thomas Perez, who was then the head of the civil rights division (now sec of labor). I felt sorry for him. He was really trying to track what they were saying, but it was too crazy. He gave up, eventually, and they just yelled at him for a really long time.

  83. 83.

    Omnes Omnibus

    OT: I am watching NL’s Christmas Vacation and they just aired a Liberty U Online ad. Followed by something from Dior with Natalie Portman and what sounded like Grace Jones covering La vie en rose. Bipolar much?

  87. 87.

    Kay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    “I want the bastards to look down this hall and know that there is a n*****r in that office.”

    Don’t you think that’s it, though? I just can’t imagine getting extremely riled up about Eric Holder.
    He’s very…lawyerly.

    We see this sort of buttoned-up DC person and they see wild-eyed radical defense counsel for the New Black Panther Party.

  88. 88.

    ? Martin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Actually, that a bit more colorful than how it actually happened, but it’s not terribly far off either. The conversation was recorded and transcribed.

    President Johnson: And our government. And then ourselves way down at the bottom of the list. I want you to be my Solicitor General.

    Marshall: Wow.

    President Johnson: Now, you lose a lot. You lose security and you lose the freedom that you like. And you lose the philosophizing that you can do. And I’m familiar with all those things.

    Marshall: The number one [unclear].

    President Johnson: Well, you won’t lose any. And I want you to do it for two or three reasons. One, I want the top lawyer in the United States representing me before the Supreme Court–

    Marshall: [Unclear]–

    President Johnson: –to be a negro.

    Marshall: Oh.

    President Johnson: And be a damn good lawyer that’s done it before. That’s–so, you have those peculiar qualifiations.

  89. 89.

    scav

    @Omnes Omnibus: check your arras Polonius, or at least your folio, while your worm is your only emperor for diet, I’m still finding a convocation of politic ones, and that’s before a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

  90. 90.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kay:

    Don’t you think that’s it, though? I just can’t imagine getting extremely riled up about Eric Holder.
    He’s very…lawyerly.

    It is as good an explanation as any I have heard. To me – as you suggest, Holder is a lawyer-bureaucrat who is careful and cautious, but generally moving in the right direction. An Obama guy – oops, there it is.

  91. 91.

    rikyrah

    They hate Holder because:

    1. He’s Black.
    2. He’s Black.
    3. Did I fail to mention that he’s Black?
    4. Black Black Blackilicious, Blackedity Black Black.

  97. 97.

    Churchlady

    @SFAW: Issa has no traction because he keeps lying, hiding documents, falsifying data, and calling NO witnesses from “the other side” – not Dems. PEOPLE. He has shown himself to be so utterly corrupt that nothing he says makes headway with any but the most zealous anti Obama people who are, thank heavens, relatively few on the ground.

  98. 98.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @scav: There is a small town outside of the small central Wisconsin city in which I grew up named Wittenberg. In IB English as we read Hamlet, inordinate amusement resulted from, “Go not to Wittenberg.” Especially because you had to go through Nutterville to get there.

  99. 99.

    PaulW

    They will bring a list of items for impeachment, during which they’ll force another shutdown of the government (remember, that’s what March 2014 is for!) and impeach him for that too.

    At some point the majority of Americans who are not in the wingnut 27 percent are gonna wake up to the fact that the Republicans will impeach every Democratic President if they can. Because the Republicans can no longer conceive of the notion of Democrats interfering with their 1000 years of Pax Reaganicus (or is that Reagana? I need someone with better understanding of Latin to confirm).

  100. 100.

    PaulW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    There is a small town outside of the small central Wisconsin city in which I grew up named Wittenberg. In IB English as we read Hamlet, inordinate amusement resulted from, “Go not to Wittenberg.” Especially because you had to go through Nutterville to get there.

    Hey! I might be related to Wittenberg…

  101. 101.

    Churchlady

    @Suffern ACE: Sorry – there are NO ‘facts’ showing discrimination. Quite the opposite since the only groups denied their c-4 were liberal. I’d like to have the IRS’s head for LETTING these groups HAVE their c-4 when they turned around and did partisan politics which is a no-no. My organization has a c-4, and we use it as intended. I’m sick of the RW getting handled with kid gloves over this. They are violating the law!

  104. 104.

    Amir Khalid

    The Republican party knows Obama will never be stupid enough to do anything actually impeachable. But its members want his head on a pike anyway, don’t they? That’s the unicorn they want for Christmas. When they name this or that imaginary crime for which they tell themselves they can impeach him, they’re just having a naming contest for their unicorn.

  108. 108.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @scav: Central Wisconsin is an odd place. Yankees, Germans, and Poles, with just enough Scandinavians and French to make it interesting. Plus ice fishing.

  115. 115.

    M. Bouffant

    No one else read to the end? This was the best part:

    Read more about this topic: Charles Krauthammer: An outbreak of lawlessness George F. Will: Obama’s unconstitutional steps worse than Nixon’s Charles Krauthammer: Can Obama write his own laws?

  116. 116.

    Napoleon

    @JR: I was hoping you would post more. How is it that major law schools appear to have complete nuts on the faculty that would, short of being forced or appearing in opposition, would appear in front of a Congressional panel with such a completely lawless purpose to remove a duly elected President for nothing coming withing a hundred miles of a legitimate reason?

  117. 117.

    Patricia Kayden

    “apologies for linking to #dickwhisperer”

    Funniest thing I’ve read all week. BJ Frontpagers are a hoot.

  118. 118.

    sparrow

    @jheartney: Woah. I guess it’s totally normal that all the popups for that site involve smiling families that are uber-white, blond-haired and blue-eyed. I’m not even sure what they’re trying to sell me…. creepy.

  119. 119.

    Anya

    I am not sure about impeachment backfiring on republicans. So far nothing has. As long as the MSM is enabling them, and as long as hacks like George Stephanopoulos, Dancing Dave, Candy Crowley, and to lessor extend, Jack Tapper are repeating GOP talking points, American people will not get the real story and by the end of the impeachment proceedings, they would have convinced Americans that not only was Obama born in Kenya, stole two elections, committed hight crimes and fraud, he was also responsible for abducting and killing, (insert the name of a missing white woman). And let’s not forget the cowardice that’s the democratic party, they will abandon Obama like their life depends on it. Some of them might even make a case why he should be impeached. And some liberal blogs will argue that Obama is in this predicament because he was not pure enough.

  120. 120.

    Napoleon

    @Anya:

    I think your concern about the Dems reactions is unfounded. At one time, yes, but I think pretty much everyone in the caucus now realizes how collosal the bad faith and insanity is from the Rep.

  121. 121.

    debbie

    @Anya:

    I am not sure about impeachment backfiring on republicans. So far nothing has.

    Then how do you explain their very low polling numbers?

  122. 122.

    Anya

    @Napoleon: I am miss remberimg the way they reacted to the website glitches?

    @debbie: both sides do it, baby! Also, too, last polling shows that generic republican is beating generic democrat.

  123. 123.

    Napoleon

    @Anya:

    None of them called for a repeal of Obamacare, etc (some voted with the Rep on some of their bills, but they are things they had voted for before the web issues). To the extent legislation was offered it was doing things around the margins. I don’t think Obama lost a single Dem with that complete self inflicted fiasco on Obamas part.

    By the way, the website was a genuine f-up of the first order and should have been criticized, which makes it entirely different from a ginned up, baseless impeachment push.

  124. 124.

    Matt McIrvin

    @debbie: The thing to look at is the national House party polling, which is pretty much neck and neck:

    http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2014-national-house-race#!smoothing=less&estimate=custom

    The Republicans hurt themselves badly with the shutdown/debt ceiling business, but it was very temporary: the ACA rollout fuss immediately erased the damage once the crisis was over, and they were ahead for a while. The numbers are really volatile now, so who’s ahead depends on how much smoothing you apply.

  125. 125.

    Just One More Canuck

    Has there ever been a coherent explanation (not a foaming at the mouth, falling over backwards explanation) of how anything that they claim Obama has done (or hasn’t done) reaches the standard of an impeachable offense?

    Christ these people are crazy

  126. 126.

    Cacti

    The charges for impeachment will include:

    1. Presidentin’ while Black

    2. Presidentin’ while Democrat

    3. Presidentin’ while a Black Democrat

  127. 127.

    briber

    It is important to understand that the Watergate scandal is perceived differently by liberals and conservatives.

    the liberal view: “Even the President of the United States is not above the law.”

    the conservative view: “Since Democrats have already used impeachment to achieve partisan political ends, we get to do the same.”

    Conservatives CAN NOT SEE that Nixon did anything wrong. Therefore, “having done something wrong,” must not be a pre-condition for impeachment.

  128. 128.

    JR

    Okay, sorry for the delay: long night.

    Prof. Rosenkranz is an adherent to the notion that we’ve failed to properly give weight to a lot of the Constitution’s language. For example, there isn’t much done by way of enforcing the Take Care Clause (“[The President] shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”) So in a situation, say, where the President orders the DOJ to stop defending DOMA in court, or where he permits HHS to delay implementation of a provision of Obamacare, those would be violations of his duties under the Take Care Clause, and would be impeachable offenses. I don’t know Nick’s views of Presidential war powers versus congressional ones, but I imagine that the President’s failure to abide by the War Powers Resolution would likewise rise to the level of impeachable offense.

    Rosenkranz is a Textualist, and government is replete with examples of practicality trumping formal textual requirements. In order to get the government to function in line with the Constitution’s text (which establishes a much stronger Legislative Branch than we have now, and a less empowered Executive), Congress has to start throwing elbows more. Rosenkranz would like to see impeachment for impeachment’s sake: a way for Congress to exert its primacy in government and re-balance the checks and balances between branches, but also to establish that Textualism will be the way that presidential actions are judged.

    @Napoleon: First, I’d bear in mind that Georgetown Law is one of the most left-leaning law schools, being one of the main homes of Critical Legal Studies adherents–when I went there, the joke was that Rosenkranz was the Republican on the faculty. But beyond that, impeachment is a political act. Congress decides what rises to the level of an impeachable offense, with only public opinion to hold them in check. So Congress could say that our air strikes against Gaddafi were unauthorized by law and hence impeachable. Or they could go with the assassination of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Or instructing the Solicitor General’s office to not defend DOMA in court. Or instructing ICE to defer deportations for certain undocumented immigrants. Any of those would be enough for Congress to begin impeachment.

  129. 129.

    Teejay

    I saw no comment about Prof. Turley’s testimony.
    I watched the full House Judiciary hearing.
    It’s unconstitutional for Obama to legislate from the oval office!
    http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/316596-1
    Yes the R’s are idiots along with Fox and others.
    Tribalism has run a muck here. Turley says
    Obama’s actions are clearly, egregiously
    unconstitutional!

  131. 131.

    Napoleon

    @JR:

    Thanks for the reply. Maybe impeachment is a political act, but Congress ought to save it for truely extraordinary circumstances where you would ordinarily expect there to be a large bipartisan majority in agreement.

    I did not realize that about Georgetown, but then again when I was chosing a law school I did not look at them and even if I had that was long enough ago that things may have changed by now.

  132. 132.

    Napoleon

    PS, Rosenkranz has a point on Congress’ powers, but I think inpeachment is really a last resort if that is your issue and only under the right circumstances. Honestly a lot of the reason that the executive has accumulated power not contemplated by the Constitution is that Congress essentially hands it over to the President by running away from issues.

  134. 134.

    JR

    @JustRuss: In principle, he strongly supports Presidential signing statements for their value in determining the meaning of legislation and the President’s duties under the Take Care Clause. The President’s duties under the Take Care Clause are always dependent on the meaning of the law at issue, and if the President announces his interpretation of it, Congress is able to act to change or supplement the law before problems arise. Signing statements let the rest of the Executive Branch know how the White House wants the law interpreted, and lets the public know the President’s view of the law at issue. In court, he doesn’t think signing statements should carry much (if any) weight in how judges interpret the statute, or the President’s obligations under it, because he doesn’t believe anything other than the statute’s text should guide judicial interpretation.

    So, long story short, every branch gets to interpret a statute. Congress interprets it when they write it to get the words to match their intention. The President interprets it in directing the manner of its enforcement. The Judiciary interprets it to settle disagreements about its implementation or validity.

    He offered pretty extensive testimony to Congress on this topic back in 2007, which you can read here: http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1092&context=cong

  135. 135.

    JR

    @Napoleon: He would probably say that’s the perfect position for you to take as a member of the body politic. We’re the people who have the most direct check on Congressional excesses, because when they do things that they are empowered to do but shouldn’t, we get to vote their asses out.

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