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Originally Posted by Elphaba
If I follow your thinking, Bush would need to be convicted (not just indicted) of a crime, such as conspiracy to defraud the US, which would then be an impeachable offense?
Clinton lied under oath and that was his "high crime" that led to his impreachment trial. The only occurrence that I'm aware of that might relate to Bush was whether he was under oath when giving testimony to Fitzgerald and the grand jury. He would have had to knowingly make a false statement that was later proven to be false. Would that be correct?
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The President is effectively immune from criminal prosecution for as long as he is in office. Thus, he could not be indicted for a crime, much less convicted of it. What I am trying to point out is that there are some crimes for which one can be indicted that one should not be impeached for. This list would include a host of minor offenses. On top of that, some crimes are impeachable offenses but are not indictable. In this category, I would put procedural idiocies such as vetoing every single bill passed by Congress, effectively paralizing the government.
So, what I meant was not that Bush should first be convicted of a crime and then be impeached: I meant that, even if it turns out Bush committed an indictable offense, that does not automatically prove that he has committed an impeachable offence.
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Last edited by politicophile; 10-31-2005 at 07:41 AM..
Reason: changed "indictable to "impeachable" in last line
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