Reforms Needed to save our Federal Republic

In an article titled: Post-Roger Stone: Ten ideas for repairing Trump’s justice system By Jennifer Rubin, She writes:

“President Trump granting clemency to his crony Roger Stone, who served as the go-between for the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, on practically the eve of Stone’s incarceration for multiple crimes attendant to his coverup on behalf of the president, is grotesquely corrupt but unsurprising.”

She recounts the latest Cassus Belli of Trump's perfidy

She notes that “Stone virtually confessed to a quid pro quo,” (To me he was boasting), telling Howard Fineman,

“He [Trump] knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.”

I don't think anyone with integrity doesn't feel that this wasn't a high crime and a misdemeanor.Rubin writes:

“Silence for clemency. A separate system of justice for the president’s henchmen. This is the very definition of corruption.”

Former Candidate Romney put it baldly in a tweet:

"Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president." Link to Tweet

She reports:

“By this action, President Trump abused the powers of his office in an apparent effort to reward Roger Stone for his refusal to cooperate with investigators examining the President’s own conduct,”

She also reports how House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a written statement released Friday:

“No other president has exercised the clemency power for such a patently personal and self-serving purpose.”

Actually, her hero George Herbert Walker Bush, exercised his clemency and pardon powers in 1992 for just such a patently corrupt and self serving cause when he pardoned the perps in the Iran Contra scandal. But what counts with Republicans is what they are doing now, so I can forgive past crimes as long as folks have seen the light. This post is about her suggestions for fixing the problems. I'm endeavering to analyze the problem by critiquing her suggestions. Most of them are obvious or things that were taken out of the law due to misuse or to protect the wrong people. Any reforms made should be based on firm Constitutional Grounds. And if that is not adequate, it might take a Constitutional Amendment.

Related Posts

Iran Contra and Bill Barr

Trump Got His Chaika

Impeachment As Regulation

Clarify Impeachment

Nancy Pelosi was asked about President Trump's plan to commute Roger Stone's sentance and replied that she is looking into legislation that would forbid the President using his pardon power that way.  This is exactly the scenario I forsaw 2 years + ago.  

Simplistic legislation would probably fail a constitutional test. But there is a way to proceed that might succeed. There are two basis for this.

The house has "Sole Power of Impeachment"

That means not only does the house have the power to impeach executive & Judiciary members, but it has the power to write the rules of impeachment.  That means they can define the officers and offices involved, procedures, entry points and when and how a case should go to the Senate for trial.

Except In Cases of Impeachment

As I noted before, the President:

“shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."

Thus the power to pardon is limited by impeachment.  So the House should be able to stop the President using his pardon power? But how.

Simply forbidding him won't work. He is not impeached at the moment because the case went to the Senate and they acquitted him.  SCOTUS would laugh such a law out the door.

Define the rules of impeachment

What congress needs to do is the opposite of what they have done in the past. The house needs to make impeachment part of its regular order, defining what can be impeached and setting up administrative bodies combining the powers of special prosecutors and Inspector Generals to police those infractions.

Open Impeachment

Essentially the house needs to have an open impeachment inquiry run by an inspector general under the supervision of a house Impeachment committee and define the terms under which individuals are part of an impeachment inquiry into the President and he cannot pardon them, or they are under the panels protection until it goes to trial in the Senate. It would function like a grand jury except legal products would become parts of censure resolutions & legislation.

Nancy can use Roberts 4 guidelines as input into defining impeachment legislation.

Related Posts

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2018/12/why-congress-must-impeach-trump.html?m=1

Roberts Denies Powers of Impeachment

In our country some judicial powers are distributed. The executive has the power to bring charges and try cases in a court. Courts are saddled with juries, who represent actual democracy at work, since they are common people stepping up to judge cases.  The Judiciary is not supposed to make law, but through the power of interpretation often over-rides the legislature to make laws at odds with the will of the people. The separations of powers in the constitution are not absolute. Checks and balances require powers be distributed among the branches to put a check on tyranny and usurpation. 

Impeachment and oversight

The Constitution gave the house a judicial role when they gave the HOUSE has "sole power of impeachment." Roberts can't and won't do squat about executive corruption. Neither the executive nor the judiciary can be trusted to investigate themselves.  For that reason the impeachment process was distributed to the legislature.

Necessary and proper to impeachment

The House's sole power of impeachment requires inquiry powers beyond those with a purely legislative purpose.  Impeachment cannot be severed from oversight. Subpoenas are necessary & proper to discovering when impeachment is needed! Without the power to look at records and investigate issues, the impeachment power is denied.

Justice Roberts Denies Impeachment Power

Justice Roberts can't "give powers of oversight" to the house. The constitution gave the house those powers when they gave the house "sole power of impeachment." Nevertheless he sent the case back to the lower courts ordering them to meet 3 criteria!

One; The asserted legislative purpose is to oversee the President in a case where clear wrong doing has already been discovered, and determine whether or not impeachment is justified. Whether the House actually can send additional articles of impeachment to the Senate is immaterial. Whether they are actually impeaching the president yet, is also immaterial. Roberts should have denied certiori on this request because its not his business to rule on a House Constitutional prerogative.

Two; For the same reason, it is up to the house how broad a subpoena is. Impeachment is an administrative & political proceeding since the most Congress can do is remove and bar from office.  The house involves the courts when the executive disputes a subpoena. They are looking at evidence of misconduct.  They may pass laws to close the barn doors afterwards, but they have a natural right to the information.

Third; the courts need to remember the House has a legitimate legislative purpose in examining tax records of executives. This should be a moot point.

Fourth; the President has a duty to respond to subpoenas. The burden is on him complying.

There was no need to remand either case back to the courts. The House had already established a legislative purpose when they issued them, because this is part of their "sole power" of impeachment.

Improving Scrutiny Part II

The Purpose of Checks and Balances

At the heart of any human system maintaining it's function is the realization that we aren't dealing with machines. Machines function as designed, or not. When they don't function as designed they are broken and either need to be fixed, patched or discarded. Humans, at their best, don't always function as designed. The virtue of a machine is that it is a tool that does something. The virtue of humans is that we use tools to do things. The vice of our tool use is that we can use those tools for good or ill, for selfish purposes or as intended. People use drugs recreationally that intended to treat pain. People steal from their businesses. The purpose of checks and balances is to keep ourselves in line. The principles are to prevent abuse and to mitigate its occurrence.

Separation of powers has two purposes:

1. To reduce the temptation to abuse power.
2. To provide a glass barrier that leaves a record when folks break the rules
3. Irregularities must be recorded and audited periodically
4. Infractions must be punished according to set and regular rules
5. Those entrusted with separated powers must not be allowed to defeat the rules.

Staying Alive in a Time of COVID 19

Steps in Contact Tracing

Anyone who's been following the news and government actions, since this Pandemic became a real crisis sometime in March can be excused for being confused, if they were believing the things the President was saying. The virus is everywhere. It is spread by droplets, large and small. The scientists keep learning new things about how dangerous it is. People get it and don't know they got it. Others get severe pneumonia symptoms. Now we find out that it gets into the blood and causes a wide variety of symptoms, organ damage, symptoms similar to myalgia in some people, invisible lung damage in others, and death in too many people.

Scrutiny and the Courts

Thousands of U.S. judges who broke laws or oaths remained on the bench

In a research article published by Reuters: (https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-judges-misconduct/) They report on how too many judges at state and local level have been given immunity, impunity and passes to commit crimes themselves. Worse their victims have found it nearly impossible to get compensation or accountability when they've been clearly harmed by the behavior of the judges. The article sums itself as follows:

Reuters Report

He Didn't want to die

He did not want to die
He did not want to be a martyr
He wanted to see his neices & nephews grow old.
To sit by their beds
And tell them stories at night.
The kind of scary stories
With a safe kind of fright...

Good night.
Sleep well.
Hope your dreams are not as disturbing as mine.
For I see prophesies & visions;
Warnings of what is coming
Unless we do the right thing.
A Dragon emerges from my heart
soars above a scorched plain.
Will humans listen?
Or plunge the world in darkness again?

There is no cure
For what ails you.
You can torture thousands.
Drink their blood.
Bathe in it.
It is all the same.
An empty, hollow game.
Your soul is already in hell.
The suffering you inflict,
The pain & conflict
You will feel.
From your own vile judgement
There is no appeal.

I've reached the nadir of my despair.
It is not that I no longer care.
But I say a serenity prayer.
I focus on what I can change
And let go of what I can't.
These times of dysfunction
Only illustrate what is proper function.
We need a revolution
In our communities & hearts.