Desperation is the best word to use in describing the democrat political machine. With poll after poll showing a huge gap between republican voters and democrat, Obama is doing what he does best (w/teleprompter), campaign, play the race card, lie, lie some more, and just act disingenuous. Does he have any respect for the office he holds? I say not. When does a sitting President accuse the Chamber of Commerce of ill gotten contributions from foreign countries. Yes, this is a federal offense. However, there is not any evidence that the C of C did use any minuscule contributions from foreign countries. Many organizations receive foreign contributions, unions like SEIU and Teachers' unions. People in glass houses should not throw stones, Mr. president. You still haven't shown where approximately 200 million dollars of your Presidential contributions came from? And this was two years ago. Why don't you take the lead and show us your contribution sources? Carl Rove and Ed Gillespie are now covert operatives stealing our democracy by secretly accepting foreign donations? Idiocracy at it's best. Barry is reading too many John Grisham novels. As a Presidential candidate, throwing out accusations like this is unprofessional and dishonest. As a sitting President, making accusations like this, especially, after a liberal newspaper like the New York Times says there isn't any evidence, Barry doesn't care about facts, Barry is still out there desperately telling fibs as he campaigns to try to ignite his base. He doesn't realize his base has deteriorated massively since 2008. Isn't this a form of tyranny when a government goes after a private company? Joe McCarthy, answer your phone, please. I thought in America, you are innocent until proven guilty? Three weeks until the day of reckoning. Even George ( Dr. Evil) Soros predicts a blowout. He said he can't stop the republican avalanche. Obama can go out day after day acting like a school yard bully, However, he can't change the facts. Stimulus didn't do anything except cost us over a trillion dollars. Unemployment stands at 9.6%. 15 million Americans are without employment. The country is more divided today than I've ever witnessed. The government oversteps it's boundaries on a daily basis and disregards the Constitution. Obama's czars are socialists and of course, did not go through proper congressional vetting. Honestly, there are too many issues to name in a timely manner for this post. Bottom line, we
Remember November!
Bob (the Liberal) Schieffer slamming Spin Doctor Axelrod:
Gingrich: ‘Paychecks versus Food Stamps’
By Robert Costa
October 7, 2010 6:36 P.M.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich unveiled his GOP strategy memo on Wednesday in Minnesota. Gingrich advises Republicans to frame the mid-terms as a choice between “the Democratic party of food stamps and the Republican party of paychecks.”
Earlier today, Gingrich spoke with National Review Online about his “closing argument.” Gingrich, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, is in the midst of a twelve-city “Jobs Here, Jobs Now” tour that will take him to, among other places, Iowa and South Carolina. “Just bouncing around trying to elect candidates,” he says.
Gingrich predicts that Republicans will make major gains this fall if they can articulate a “clear cut, vivid choice” to voters as November approaches. “It strikes me that the case should be pretty clear that the Democrats’ policies are job-killing, and that it’s no accident that at the same time that we have extraordinarily high unemployment, we have more Americans on food stamps than at any time in American history,” he says. “People are being driven to food stamps by the Democrats’ job-killing policies.”
House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) slammed Gingrich’s document on Wednesday, calling it a “subliminal message” and an “unfortunate course to go down,” before adding that the government gets “the biggest bang for the buck when you do food stamps and unemployment insurance — the biggest bang for the buck.” Gingrich tells NRO that Pelosi “doesn’t understand anything about how free markets, entrepreneurship, and small businesses operate.”
“She thinks that this is all bad luck,” he says. “With regards to her comment that food stamps are actually an effective way to stimulate the economy, well, I don’t know any economist who would agree with that. It shows you how inaccurate they are about the very nature of the American economy.” Gingrich contends that Democrats’ economic policies are worse than those of Herbert Hoover.
“Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate for four years and they have been in charge of the White House for two years,” he notes. “Their policies include high taxes, anti-business language, a massive governmental bureaucracy over the financial system, a massive governmental bureaucracy over the health system, an effort to impose massive energy costs, and a passionate belief in government-employee unions and in centralizing power in Washington.”
Gingrich continues: “When I go around the country talking to businesses, whether they are big or small, I ask if they are going to hire more people. None of them have any doubt that these policies are job-killing policies.” To win these disgruntled voters over to the GOP, Gingrich urges Republicans to pose sharp questions on the trail: “Do you want the party that will repeal Obamacare or the party that is going to try to implement it? Do you want the party that wants to keep taxes low, or do you want the party that wants to raise taxes? Do you want the party that is trying to create jobs, or do you want the party that is trying to create big government while killing jobs?” If candidates do that, Gingrich says they can make November 2 “boil down to a very simple symbol: paychecks versus food stamps.”
Turning to a little political shop talk, I ask Gingrich about many Republicans’ concern that a senior official in the Obama administration may have, as the New York Times puts it, “improperly accessed the tax records of Koch Industries, an oil company whose owners are major conservative donors.” Gingrich says such an action by a White House official would be “very much like the Nixon White House: If you cross these guys, they try to hurt you. They have brought a Chicago-machine mentality to the White House for the first time in American history, and it’s very, very dangerous.”
Briefly, I ask Gingrich about another potential 2012 contender: former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Palin has been embroiled in a media kerfuffle this week about whether she is “qualified” to be president — a kerfuffle stirred by recent comments from Joe Miller, the Alaska GOP Senate nominee, and leaked emails about the matter from Palin’s husband, Todd.
Does Gingrich think that Palin is “qualified” for the presidency? While he has not reviewed the back-and-forth between Miller, Palin, and others, he is quick to call it a “nonsense argument.”
“As far as I’m concerned, she is fine,” Gingrich says. “She is not disqualified to run for president. I would rather have her policies than Obama’s policies.” Palin, he adds, has been an “effective governor and an effective mayor, as well as an effective nationwide articulator of her values.”
Pathetic Funnies:
The American Left Slides into Psychosis
By J.R. Dunn
History tells us that organizations, movements, even entire nations can go mad in much the same way an individual does, with the same expression of irrationality, frenzy, and violence. Recent evidence suggests that the American left is going through precisely such a breakdown.
In his memoir Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung, the psychiatric pioneer who was smarter than Freud, discussed a particular case history in which a patient told of a troubling dream: he was repeatedly confronted with the image of a howling, feces-covered baby. Jung had no immediate explanation and thought about little else for several days. At last, the solution appeared: his patient harbored a buried psychosis, one that was in danger of emerging. To his horror, Jung realized that it must be the therapy itself that was threatening his patients sanity. Jung was presented with the dilemma of how to cut short the analysis without allowing the patient to guess the actual reason, which might well send him into a tailspin from which he would never recover. (Freud would have kept pushing until the guy was institutionalized.)
Fortunately, on his next visit, the patient asked to curtail the treatment, giving only vague reasons. A relieved Jung concurred. The patient never returned, but Jung checked on him regularly and assured himself that the man remained whole and rational, the seed of insanity remaining safely buried for the balance of his life.
What better metaphor for the current condition of the left? Leftism suffers from an equivalent psychosis -- one that is now beginning to break out. This is not by chance, but due to the ongoing collapse of the Lefts epic dream. Leftists have always believed that one clear shot, one opportunity to put their policies into play without opposition from "reactionary interests," would result in a political chain reaction, success leading to further success and finally absolute triumph as the New Socialist Jerusalem came into being with almost no effort on their part. This is childish fantasy, a wish-fulfillment daydream, transparent almost to the point of contempt. (It's also extremely ahistorical -- exactly such circumstances existed in 1933 and 1964 due to historical accident. Liberals botched things then exactly as they are doing now.) But for many years, it has been the only thing keeping the left going.
Leftists really believed that Obama embodied their moment. Obama held all the cards -- majorities in both houses, a slavish press that viewed him as no less than a godling, an enthusiastic public, even an acquiescent international establishment, overlooking a few holdouts such as Kim and Ahmadinejad. No left-of-center president has had a smoother road before him -- not FDR, not Lyndon Johnson. Yet Obama's efforts amount to utter failure -- not because of opposition from the "party of no," not because of circumstances, not because of sabotage, but because of Obama's "success" itself. He got the bills passed, guaranteed that their execution would be in the hands of extraconstitutional figures beholden only to him, and got them funded by means both legal and illegal. All of it was put into play with a smoothness that only Chicago thuggery combined with socialist chicanery could accomplish. He launched them, and they crashed, and they burned.
They crashed and burned because they cannot work. Not in a universe with natural laws that operate the way they do and with human nature constituted as it is. They have never worked anywhere they have been tried -- not in Europe, not in Asia, not in Africa, nowhere across this wide world. Obama's grand schemes have been attempted previously. The failures were hurriedly stuffed down the memory hole, enabling the left to hope for another shot sometime down the line. (No small number of people in this country -- many of them not doctrinaire leftists by any means -- truly believe that FDR "ended" the Depression.)
But today they have a problem -- several, in point of fact. The first is that the memory hole has in large part been filled in over the past decade and a half by such things as the Internet and the New Media. It's no longer a simple matter to shove nationwide failures out of sight. It may not even be possible.
The second is the fact that this time, they bet the house. They put everything down on Obama. Because it had to work. Because the third time was the charm. Because O was the messiah. And now they're sitting in the casino dead broke, without another dime to lay on the table, and through the doorway they can hear the shouts of the people whose money they embezzled.
This is why the left is being overwhelmed by psychosis. Because they are up against the wall with no way out. Under such circumstances, the strong individual bites the bullet and runs for daylight. The weak fall apart. It's been a long, long time since anyone defined leftists as "strong."
The Lefts psychosis, like those of many individuals, involves violence. Simply put, no left-wing regime has ever attained complete power without causing the deaths of its own citizens on a mass scale. We need simply give a short roll call of the bloody names: the USSR, Red China, "Democratic Kampuchea," Cuba, Vietnam...these speak well enough for themselves.
Some of the mortality incurred by social-nationalist states is caused by accident -- policies that simply don't work out (this includes hundreds of thousands of deaths in the U.S. itself, another memory-hole saga that is going to emerge back into the light come this January). But violence is the major cause -- the ubiquitous secret police, the not at all uncommon massacres, the brutal crushing of dissidents and workers' protests, and the camp networks that no leftist government can do without. A left-wing state cannot exist without violence because there is no other method of keeping the people in line once the inevitable policy failures occur.
The policy failures are piling up in this country. So it is no coincidence to find violence breaking out in their wake.
•In Philadelphia on election day in 2008, two members of the New Black Panthers planted themselves outside a polling station wearing bogus military gear, one of them armed with a nightstick. Several potential voters were chased away. The case, uncontested by the defendants, was suddenly dropped by the Justice Department. It has taken over a year to establish that the highest levels of the department ordered an end to litigation involving electoral violations by minorities -- that, in other words, Panther violence was to be sponsored and encouraged at the highest levels of the federal government.
•Kenneth Gladney was beaten by union goons in St. Louis in August 2009 for selling patriotic items outside a town hall meeting in an effort to supplement his unemployment payments. Gladney was worked over badly enough to be hospitalized. Legal proceedings began last April but have not progressed one iota.
•In New Orleans last April, two Republican political operatives, Allee Bautsch and Joe Brown, were attacked by anarchists after leaving a GOP dinner. Both were badly beaten, Ms. Bautsch seriously enough to require hospitalization. Although the gang leader was identified from a videotape and was of distinctive appearance (he looks like a combination of the late Frank Zappa and Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber), no arrests have been made.
•At the "Working Together" Washington union bash this past October 2, a reporter for Human Events was assaulted by a female union member. Viewing the footage, it's difficult to tell exactly what triggered the incident, but it's all part of the pattern. No arrest was made here, either.
•For well over a year, Sarah Palin and her close friend Kristan Cole have been harassed by an unbalanced individual claiming to be on some sort of mission with biblical sanction involving the punishment of the governor and her associates. This campaign escalated to outright stalking in recent weeks, when the individual sent Palin a copy of a receipt for a pistol purchase and made a threatening call to Ms. Cole from what seemed to be a local Alaska number.
Beyond the threats themselves, what's disturbing is the left-wing response. Comments on local media reports (There has been no national coverage. If Palin slipped a soda can into the regular trash, the sky would be rent asunder amid raging headlines, editorials, jabbering talk-show hosts, and the whole nine yards. But a threatened assault on a national political figure simply doesn't rate.) feature page after page of remarks such as "Go get her, Shawn!" (Referring to the perp), "Good luck, Shawn!", "Wish I could be there," and so on. While some of this is the standard crassness we've come to expect from leftists, some is undoubtedly intended to goad the stalker to further action.
•In Houston on August 27, on the eve of serious revelations concerning voter fraud, the warehouse containing Harris County's entire supply of voting machines burned to the ground. While unquestionably suspicious, it's difficult to tell from media reports if any real investigation is taking place.
Most recently, we have had the incident marking the full emergence of left-wing psychosis in all its mad glory: the "No Pressure" film released by the 10:10 group. Few AT readers can have missed discussion of this little gem, which features a series of vignettes in which anyone opposed to the "global warming" hoax is annihilated by a magic button that blows them to pieces on the spot. (Some may protest that the film is English -- the author, Richard Curtis, is noted for his genteel British comedies. But in truth, it's international -- Gillian Anderson is American, and if you were to further trace artistic and financial involvement, you'd find plenty more Yanks in the mix.)
This is as clear a depiction of left-wing psychosis as we are ever going to see. It is the yearning -- of an intensity beyond the grasp of sane, normal individuals-- to possess some means of total power, some instrument of near-divine retribution and punishment. Not for personal aggrandizement or sadistic pleasure, no, not at all...but simply to remove those stones in the path of progress: the Neanderthals, the troglodytes, the reactionaries, who are standing between the people and their righteous destiny. We'll use it just a few times, only against the really bad ones, and only to make an impression. And once we do that, we'll put it aside, and never, ever touch it again, we promise...
This is infantilism, pure and simple, as all psychoses are, including the one diagnosed by Jung. It is a compulsive belief that the world needs to bow to the demands of the eternal child immediately and without protest. And when it doesn't -- and we can be sure it won't -- it must be punished to the limits of the imagination and beyond. This is the impulse behind leftism, stacked to the roof as it is with people who never grew out of deepest childhood, who have grown twisted and embittered in the conviction that world has let them down and must pay for it.
It is also the impulse of the tyrant from time immemorial, from the Neros and Ashurbanipals to the Stalins and Maos of our own epoch. In "Pressure," we see it expressed more clearly than ever before, by extremely talented and sophisticated people, in the expectation that it will encourage others. (Another point that struck me was the way the film mixes bloodshed with whimsy. Whimsicality -- what unfunny people have instead of a sense of humor -- has always been a mark of the left. Now it has been publicly intertwined with the impulse to kill. How sick is that?)
Some readers might find this overwrought. These are all minor incidents, well separated in time and space. But trends tend to reveal themselves as discrete incidents. We can be sure that some of these episodes are probes, carried out to test how blatantly the line can be crossed. If judged successful, then in three weeks we'd see hundreds of polling stations patrolled by Panthers and Black Muslims and SEIU goons -- and in 2012, not one, but dozens of voting machine warehouses gone up in flames. And over the next few years, we'd be inundated with commercials, films, and scenes of smiling, cheerful lefties beheading, gassing, vaporizing, and setting ablaze anyone who disagrees with them.
But success eludes them, and after November, the left will lose its collective mind. The acting out will intensify; the assaults will grow more vicious as the dream continues its collapse. Anyone who has ever stood against them -- the Tea Parties, the GOP, ordinary Americans asserting their rights -- will be targeted. It would be wise to consider methods of self-defense.
But it will come to nothing. No socialist paradise, no universal nanny government, and certainly no police state. It will come to nothing thanks to one simple fact: the American left has no spine.
Kent State, once etched in national consciousness, is now beginning its slow fade into history. It was the apotheosis of the anti-Vietnam war movement. When in May 1970 U.S. troops entered Cambodia seeking to destroy communist bases and supply dumps being used against South Vietnam, the left went wild across the entire country. At Kent State, they raged down the streets, smashing windows, burning cars, and menacing passersby. There were rumors that certain unknown figures had brought in weapons, rumors that turned out to be all too true.
On May 4, someone took four shots at the Ohio National Guard troops protecting the campus. (This information, well understood by the investigating committee, was kept secret for forty years, being released only this year. The identity of those who suppressed it remains unknown. Obviously, such facts would have seriously embarrassed the left. Readers may draw their own conclusions.) The troops returned fire, killing four rioters on the spot. The rest broke and fled, and peace returned to the Kent State campus.
Along with the country as a whole. After Kent, the antiwar Movement collapsed. There were a few more riots, a few attempted "Days of Rage," but the revos who had terrorized the country for years suddenly found themselves isolated as the bulk of their followers discovered better things to do.
That's the left in action. Once it all turns real, once their rhetoric and activities get the response they have earned, they suddenly turn into good, obedient yuppies, concerned with their investments and their summer homes. I will be quite surprised if the results are any different this time.
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker and will edit the forthcoming Military Thinker.
Video: California politicians debating Prop 19:
Polls we can live with:
29% Strongly approve of President's job approval
42% Strongly disapprove
48% Somewhat approve
51% somewhat disapprove
55% Favor repeal of Healthcare law
Senate race: 48 Dem, 48 GOP, 4 toss up's
Governors' race: 28 GOP, 15 Dem, 7 toss up's
-Thanks to Rasmussen Reports
Quote du jour:
If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.
Henry Commager
Writings of Our Founding Fathers
Federalist Papers
Objections to the Power of the Senate To Set as a Court for Impeachments Further Considered
From the New York Packet.
Tuesday, March 11, 1788.
Author: Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:
A REVIEW of the principal objections that have appeared against the proposed court for the trial of impeachments, will not improbably eradicate the remains of any unfavorable impressions which may still exist in regard to this matter.
The FIRST of these objections is, that the provision in question confounds legislative and judiciary authorities in the same body, in violation of that important and well established maxim which requires a separation between the different departments of power. The true meaning of this maxim has been discussed and ascertained in another place, and has been shown to be entirely compatible with a partial intermixture of those departments for special purposes, preserving them, in the main, distinct and unconnected. This partial intermixture is even, in some cases, not only proper but necessary to the mutual defense of the several members of the government against each other. An absolute or qualified negative in the executive upon the acts of the legislative body, is admitted, by the ablest adepts in political science, to be an indispensable barrier against the encroachments of the latter upon the former. And it may, perhaps, with no less reason be contended, that the powers relating to impeachments are, as before intimated, an essential check in the hands of that body upon the encroachments of the executive. The division of them between the two branches of the legislature, assigning to one the right of accusing, to the other the right of judging, avoids the inconvenience of making the same persons both accusers and judges; and guards against the danger of persecution, from the prevalency of a factious spirit in either of those branches. As the concurrence of two thirds of the Senate will be requisite to a condemnation, the security to innocence, from this additional circumstance, will be as complete as itself can desire.
It is curious to observe, with what vehemence this part of the plan is assailed, on the principle here taken notice of, by men who profess to admire, without exception, the constitution of this State; while that constitution makes the Senate, together with the chancellor and judges of the Supreme Court, not only a court of impeachments, but the highest judicatory in the State, in all causes, civil and criminal. The proportion, in point of numbers, of the chancellor and judges to the senators, is so inconsiderable, that the judiciary authority of New York, in the last resort, may, with truth, be said to reside in its Senate. If the plan of the convention be, in this respect, chargeable with a departure from the celebrated maxim which has been so often mentioned, and seems to be so little understood, how much more culpable must be the constitution of New York? [1]
A SECOND objection to the Senate, as a court of impeachments, is, that it contributes to an undue accumulation of power in that body, tending to give to the government a countenance too aristocratic. The Senate, it is observed, is to have concurrent authority with the Executive in the formation of treaties and in the appointment to offices: if, say the objectors, to these prerogatives is added that of deciding in all cases of impeachment, it will give a decided predominancy to senatorial influence. To an objection so little precise in itself, it is not easy to find a very precise answer. Where is the measure or criterion to which we can appeal, for determining what will give the Senate too much, too little, or barely the proper degree of influence? Will it not be more safe, as well as more simple, to dismiss such vague and uncertain calculations, to examine each power by itself, and to decide, on general principles, where it may be deposited with most advantage and least inconvenience?
If we take this course, it will lead to a more intelligible, if not to a more certain result. The disposition of the power of making treaties, which has obtained in the plan of the convention, will, then, if I mistake not, appear to be fully justified by the considerations stated in a former number, and by others which will occur under the next head of our inquiries. The expediency of the junction of the Senate with the Executive, in the power of appointing to offices, will, I trust, be placed in a light not less satisfactory, in the disquisitions under the same head. And I flatter myself the observations in my last paper must have gone no inconsiderable way towards proving that it was not easy, if practicable, to find a more fit receptacle for the power of determining impeachments, than that which has been chosen. If this be truly the case, the hypothetical dread of the too great weight of the Senate ought to be discarded from our reasonings.
But this hypothesis, such as it is, has already been refuted in the remarks applied to the duration in office prescribed for the senators. It was by them shown, as well on the credit of historical examples, as from the reason of the thing, that the most POPULAR branch of every government, partaking of the republican genius, by being generally the favorite of the people, will be as generally a full match, if not an overmatch, for every other member of the Government.
But independent of this most active and operative principle, to secure the equilibrium of the national House of Representatives, the plan of the convention has provided in its favor several important counterpoises to the additional authorities to be conferred upon the Senate. The exclusive privilege of originating money bills will belong to the House of Representatives. The same house will possess the sole right of instituting impeachments: is not this a complete counterbalance to that of determining them? The same house will be the umpire in all elections of the President, which do not unite the suffrages of a majority of the whole number of electors; a case which it cannot be doubted will sometimes, if not frequently, happen. The constant possibility of the thing must be a fruitful source of influence to that body. The more it is contemplated, the more important will appear this ultimate though contingent power, of deciding the competitions of the most illustrious citizens of the Union, for the first office in it. It would not perhaps be rash to predict, that as a mean of influence it will be found to outweigh all the peculiar attributes of the Senate.
A THIRD objection to the Senate as a court of impeachments, is drawn from the agency they are to have in the appointments to office. It is imagined that they would be too indulgent judges of the conduct of men, in whose official creation they had participated. The principle of this objection would condemn a practice, which is to be seen in all the State governments, if not in all the governments with which we are acquainted: I mean that of rendering those who hold offices during pleasure, dependent on the pleasure of those who appoint them. With equal plausibility might it be alleged in this case, that the favoritism of the latter would always be an asylum for the misbehavior of the former. But that practice, in contradiction to this principle, proceeds upon the presumption, that the responsibility of those who appoint, for the fitness and competency of the persons on whom they bestow their choice, and the interest they will have in the respectable and prosperous administration of affairs, will inspire a sufficient disposition to dismiss from a share in it all such who, by their conduct, shall have proved themselves unworthy of the confidence reposed in them. Though facts may not always correspond with this presumption, yet if it be, in the main, just, it must destroy the supposition that the Senate, who will merely sanction the choice of the Executive, should feel a bias, towards the objects of that choice, strong enough to blind them to the evidences of guilt so extraordinary, as to have induced the representatives of the nation to become its accusers.
If any further arguments were necessary to evince the improbability of such a bias, it might be found in the nature of the agency of the Senate in the business of appointments.
It will be the office of the President to NOMINATE, and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to APPOINT. There will, of course, be no exertion of CHOICE on the part of the Senate. They may defeat one choice of the Executive, and oblige him to make another; but they cannot themselves CHOOSE, they can only ratify or reject the choice of the President. They might even entertain a preference to some other person, at the very moment they were assenting to the one proposed, because there might be no positive ground of opposition to him; and they could not be sure, if they withheld their assent, that the subsequent nomination would fall upon their own favorite, or upon any other person in their estimation more meritorious than the one rejected. Thus it could hardly happen, that the majority of the Senate would feel any other complacency towards the object of an appointment than such as the appearances of merit might inspire, and the proofs of the want of it destroy.
A FOURTH objection to the Senate in the capacity of a court of impeachments, is derived from its union with the Executive in the power of making treaties. This, it has been said, would constitute the senators their own judges, in every case of a corrupt or perfidious execution of that trust. After having combined with the Executive in betraying the interests of the nation in a ruinous treaty, what prospect, it is asked, would there be of their being made to suffer the punishment they would deserve, when they were themselves to decide upon the accusation brought against them for the treachery of which they have been guilty?
This objection has been circulated with more earnestness and with greater show of reason than any other which has appeared against this part of the plan; and yet I am deceived if it does not rest upon an erroneous foundation.
The security essentially intended by the Constitution against corruption and treachery in the formation of treaties, is to be sought for in the numbers and characters of those who are to make them. The JOINT AGENCY of the Chief Magistrate of the Union, and of two thirds of the members of a body selected by the collective wisdom of the legislatures of the several States, is designed to be the pledge for the fidelity of the national councils in this particular. The convention might with propriety have meditated the punishment of the Executive, for a deviation from the instructions of the Senate, or a want of integrity in the conduct of the negotiations committed to him; they might also have had in view the punishment of a few leading individuals in the Senate, who should have prostituted their influence in that body as the mercenary instruments of foreign corruption: but they could not, with more or with equal propriety, have contemplated the impeachment and punishment of two thirds of the Senate, consenting to an improper treaty, than of a majority of that or of the other branch of the national legislature, consenting to a pernicious or unconstitutional law, a principle which, I believe, has never been admitted into any government. How, in fact, could a majority in the House of Representatives impeach themselves? Not better, it is evident, than two thirds of the Senate might try themselves. And yet what reason is there, that a majority of the House of Representatives, sacrificing the interests of the society by an unjust and tyrannical act of legislation, should escape with impunity, more than two thirds of the Senate, sacrificing the same interests in an injurious treaty with a foreign power? The truth is, that in all such cases it is essential to the freedom and to the necessary independence of the deliberations of the body, that the members of it should be exempt from punishment for acts done in a collective capacity; and the security to the society must depend on the care which is taken to confide the trust to proper hands, to make it their interest to execute it with fidelity, and to make it as difficult as possible for them to combine in any interest opposite to that of the public good.
So far as might concern the misbehavior of the Executive in perverting the instructions or contravening the views of the Senate, we need not be apprehensive of the want of a disposition in that body to punish the abuse of their confidence or to vindicate their own authority. We may thus far count upon their pride, if not upon their virtue. And so far even as might concern the corruption of leading members, by whose arts and influence the majority may have been inveigled into measures odious to the community, if the proofs of that corruption should be satisfactory, the usual propensity of human nature will warrant us in concluding that there would be commonly no defect of inclination in the body to divert the public resentment from themselves by a ready sacrifice of the authors of their mismanagement and disgrace.
PUBLIUS.
1. In that of New Jersey, also, the final judiciary authority is in a branch of the legislature. In New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, one branch of the legislature is the court for the trial of impeachments.
References:
http://www.hotair.com/
http://www.wnd.com/
http://www.theblaze.com/
http://www.dailycaller.com/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
http://www.nronline.com/
http://www.americanthinker.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.thehill.com/
http://www.quotationspage.com/
Library of Congress/Federalist papers
J.R. Dunn
Robert Costa
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/
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