“Every impeachment reinvents what impeachment is for, and what it means, a theory of government itself”
Every impeachment reinvents what impeachment is for, and what it means, a theory of government itself. Every impeachment also offers a chance to establish a new political settlement in an unruly nation. The impeachment of Samuel Chase steered the United States toward judicial independence, and an accommodation with a party system that had not been […] continued…
“Because impeachment happens so infrequently, it’s hard to draw conclusions about what it does, or even how it works, and, on each occasion, people spend a lot of time fighting over the meaning of the words and the nature of the crimes”
The U.S. Senate has held only eighteen impeachment trials in two hundred and thirty years, and only twice for a President. Because impeachment happens so infrequently, it’s hard to draw conclusions about what it does, or even how it works, and, on each occasion, people spend a lot of time fighting over the meaning of […] continued…
“To believe that Presidents can do anything they like is to give up on self-government”
In 1787, the delegates in Philadelphia narrowed their list down to “Treason & bribery, or other high crimes & misdemeanors against the United States.” In preparing the final draft of the Constitution, the Committee on Style deleted the phrase “against the United States,” presumably because it is implied. “What, then, is an impeachable offense?” Gerald […] continued…
“The ‘high’ in ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ has its origins in phrases that include the ‘certain high treasons and offenses and misprisons’ invoked in the impeachment of the Duke of Suffolk”
The “high” in “high crimes and misdemeanors” has its origins in phrases that include the “certain high treasons and offenses and misprisons” invoked in the impeachment of the Duke of Suffolk, in 1450. Parliament was the “high court,” the men Parliament impeached were of the “highest rank”; offenses that Parliament described as “high” were public […] continued…
“all but one of England’s original thirteen American colonies had been founded before impeachment went out of style”
The Englishman responsible for bringing the ancient practice of impeachment back into use was Edward Coke, an investor in the Virginia Company who became a Member of Parliament in 1589. Coke, a profoundly agile legal thinker, had served as Elizabeth I’s Attorney General and as Chief Justice under her successor, James I. In 1621—two years […] continued…
“The fact that Georgia’s Senate races will be decided by runoffs is a quirk of the state’s electoral system…”
The fact that Georgia’s Senate races will be decided by runoffs is a quirk of the state’s electoral system that, like many electoral quirks, originates in efforts to limit the influence of the Black vote. The Georgia state law adopting the runoff model was the brainchild of Denmark Groover Jr., a Democratic state representative and […] continued…
“The Trump era has often come wrapped in a cloak of self-protective irony”
The Trump era has often come wrapped in a cloak of self-protective irony. We have been asked to separate the man from his tweets, to believe that Trump doesn’t mean what he says, that he doesn’t intend to act on his beliefs, that he isn’t what he obviously is. Any divergence between word and reality […] continued…
“Had observers better grasped white anxieties unleashed by the growth of America’s nonwhite population and the two-term Presidency of Barack Obama, Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 would have come as no surprise”
Twenty years after Myrdal published his report, and five years after King travelled to India, the dream of seeing aggressive anti-discrimination legislation in America was realized: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. Wilkerson emphasizes the recoil that followed this victory. No Democratic contender for President has won the majority of the white […] continued…
“The point of a race-riot commission…is for the government that appoints it to appear to be doing something, while actually doing nothing”
White mob violence against black people and their homes and businesses was the far more common variety of race riot, from the first rising of the K.K.K., after the Civil War, through the second, in 1915. And so the earliest twentieth-century commissions charged with investigating “race riots” reported on the riots of white mobs, beginning […] continued…
“…there are ultimately four characteristics in candidates that I think drive our perceptions and our decisions…”
I think there are ultimately four characteristics in candidates that I think drive our perceptions and our decisions: competence (can this person do this job); policies (does this person have clear prescriptions to deal with issues that matter to us); character and persona (will I feel proud, or appropriately represented, by this person in this […] continued…
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