Dr. Frank Einstein (35 page)

   
First, let us look at the two presidents that were impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.  In eighteen sixty six Congress passed a law that stated that the president could only fire a cabinet member with the approval of Congress.   President Andrew Johnson was the only president in history required to get the approval of Congress for this.  It states in the Constitution that the president has to seek congress approval to appoint a cabinet member.  However the Constitution says nothing about congressional approval for terminating a cabinet member.   Presidents before Johnson had fired cabinet members without congressional approval and presidents after President Johnson fired cabinet members without congress.  The eighteen sixty six law was a gotcha law.  The congress wanted to get rid of President Johnson and pass this law, hoping that Johnson would violated it. Then they could impeach him.  President Johnson was in theory a Republican president and the Congress was Republican.  However the leaders of Congress viewed him as a Southern Democrat too sympathic with the South to enforce reconstruction policies imposed on the South passed by congress.  In fact President Johnson often baque on policies that he thought were too harsh on the South. President Johnson felt the President Lincoln wanted to approach the post-civil war south with a conciliatory tone.

      President Johnson had been a slave owner. However, He thought it unconscionable to secede from you own country.  He was only the United State Senator from Confederate state to refuse to join the confederacy.  He remained a citizen of the United States when his state of Tennessee joined the confederacy.   He was rewarded for his patriotism by Lincoln who appointed him Military Governor of Tennessee when the Union recaptured it.  Then President Lincoln made him his running mate in eighteen sixty four election.  President Lincoln chose Johnson to show the South he wanted to conciliatory with them when the North would won the War.

   
   President Johnson knew that purpose of this gotcha law.  He was upset that he was being goated by such an arbitrary law and decided to challenge it.  He fired Secretary Stanton, the most Radical Republican in his cabinet as well as the most favored by Congress.  Stanton also was the one most opposed to decisions of   Johnson.  When he fired Stanton, Congress immediately filed articles of impeachment against him.  Then he was impeached by the House of Representatives.  Clearly, President Johnson had violated the law, but was what he had done a high crime?  The senate decided that this violation was not a high crime and refused to convict President Johnson.  After this experience, President Johnson had no desire to run for reelection.

  
    President Clinton was impeached for committing perjury in a private lawsuit that had nothing to do with his Presidency.  President Clinton was being sued in civil, not criminal, lawsuit by Paula Jones for being sexually harassed by him while he was governor of Arkansas not when he was president.  There is even a question of if he even committed perjury in this he- said-she said lawsuit.  However he was convicted.  He was convicted for a crime.   However was it a high Crime?  Another issues can a president be impeached on issues that were before (s) he was president? And is committing a criminal procedural during a civil proceeding really criminal?  

  
    In nineteen ninety five, Congress was taken over by the Republicans.  They became very hostile to the Democratic President.   The problem was not ideological. the Republicans just wanted to controlled the White House again (such controlled would satisfy their cravings for power and greed. it is the same strong cravings they shared with the Democrats; just at each other’s peril). Also, they wanted payback from the Democrats for impeaching the Republican President Richard Nixon twenty years before.  The Republicans were obsessed like the Democrats.  The only way they were going to completely dominate the United States was to control both Houses of Congress and the White House.  If they destroy the presidency of Clinton then the Republicans would win the White House, thus gaining their domination.

 
      Without provocation, Congress appointed a special prosecutor to find anything to impeach President Clinton.  After twenty million dollars and five years all the special prosecutor came up with a perjury conviction in a private lawsuit.  There were lots implications of a lot of bad acts to titillate the public to turn against President Clinton, but the perjury conviction was the only thing that stuck.  

    
   What was really going on was the Republican Congress Used intimidation against President Clinton to sign into law massive deregulations that would later destroy the economy in two thousand and eight, reaping billions for the speculators that controlled these Republicans.

  
    After the House impeached him, the Senate failed to convict on the premise that the crime President of Clinton was not a high crime.  (According the net Gallop daily tracking polls President Clinton was, during his presidency, more popular than President Reagan during his presidency).  Later, I am going to write what president Clinton that should have got him justifiably impeached.

      
She came in the room to retrieve something.  “Don’t mind me, “she gently said,” continue with your work.” She blew me a kiss and smiled at me.

   
    The closest supermarket, and bank for that matter, was fifty eight kilometers from our house in Sorsogon city.  We rode in the sidecar of our motorcycle (what the Filipinos call a tricycle).  She always snuggled up to me.  The tricycle travailed around curves and up and down steep hills through the rainforests she listened as I organize my thoughts for my writing.  She would fall asleep as I pontificated through thickly tree line road.  She said she like the way this put her to sleep. I continued to vocalize:

    
  President Nixon would have been impeached if he had not resigned in nineteen seven four.  The reason I say that he would have is because the Senate committee that was investigating President Nixon voted for articles of impeachment.  This included two votes from President Nixon’s own party.   One of the two votes was Minority leader and Co chairman Howard Baker.   It was the vote of Baker that convinced President Nixon that he should resigned and get the succeeding President Ford to pardon him before he soon faced criminal charges in Federal court and avoid the jail terms that his coconspirators would later suffer.

    
   What was going to impeach him was the impending Congressional investigating of his misuse of the Central Intelligence Agency to block the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate of the Watergate cover-up, withholding evidence and tampering with evidence.  These are tools that that president Nixon used to cover up illegal activities that his staff was involved in. 

    
    Power comes from complete control of the government.  There were no doubts that the Democrats desired to control all three branches of government.  Unfortunately for them the Republicans controlled the presidency.  

 
       The Congress never questioned President Nixon’s noninvolvement of the Break in of the Democratic Campaign Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.  Congress was convinced this was masterminded by Ehrlichman and Halderman unbeknownst by the President.      What were the articles of impeachment based on was that President tried to sabotage the Federal Bureau of Investigation from investigating the Watergate break in.  Why was this a high crime?  It violates the United States constitution checks and balances and separation of power.   Even though the Federal Bureau of Investigation is under the Executive Brach, it was charged to be an investigate arm of congress.   President Nixon ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to block the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This impeded the Congress from investigating the break in.  In theory, President Nixon should have stood have aside and let his subordinates burn for their crimes.  He tried to protect them and by doing so violate checks and balances and separation of powers.

   
     The purpose of the Watergate break in was to sabotage the nineteen seventy two election.  It was to impinge the election process so to eliminate a fair election.  Knowing the outcome of the election, this break-in seemed totally foolish.  They did not find anything damaging against the Democrats. The President won by the biggest landslide in United States Presidential History anyway.  E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy are the like the world dumbest criminals ever!

         
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Felt, aka Deep throat, leaked the break in and its cover-up to Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein who exposed it in a series of articles.  A hostile press jumped on the scandal.  There is no doubt that the press was out for Nixon.  He did not like the press and often showed it.  President Nixon seemed to be convinced that he knew what was right for America.  His advisors confirmed this by telling him daily.  He had been convinced that the “silent” majority approved of his policies.  It was the wealth elite, the vocal minority—like the Kennedys, which controlled the media and sought to control the country for their own selfish purposes.  However the country had elected a Democratic controlled congress to provide checks and balances to the Federal government.  President Nixon never accepted that the people had elected congress.  He was convinced that somehow the elite had thwarted the Democratic process to elect so many liberals to congress.  He knew what the country wanted; not the congress. His beliefs angered the Democrats in Congress.  To them this belief was epitome of arrogance.  Both parties knew that controlling all three branches would satisfy their need for power.  The Democrats at the time control both the judicial and legislature branches and they desperately wanted the executive branch.  So they jumped on this scandal.

   
     Alexander Butterfield, a Nixon aide, told congress that the president was secretly recording discussions in the White House. Congress subpoenaed the tapes of these recordings, President Nixon invoked executive privilege.  They threaten contempt of Congress.  He relinquished the tape.  Nothing was found to incriminate the president.  However there was an eighteen minute gap that Nixon's private secretary claimed to accidently erase that portion of the tape.  Congress relied on the testimony of White House counsel John Dean to describe the President’s illegal actives in the Watergate scandal.

   
   President George Washington should have been impeached for violating the Constitution.  The fact the he should have been impeached should not negate all great things he did as president.  Just as the offenses of President Nixon should not take away that some great deeds he did. 

 
       In the Whiskey Rebellion he commanded a military excursion against farmers who were upset with an increase in taxes.  He should have had these farmers arrested for violating the law but instead he made war with them.  He violated their First, Second, and Sixth amendment rights.  Of course if the President had that problem like this today the President would just send the ATF to apprehend suspects.  Washington did not have this at his disposal.  However he did have some federal agents that could have made these arrests.

   
    President John Adams should have been impeached because of the Alien and Sedition act.  The Aliens and Sedition stated a person could be convicted of a crime if he or she criticized the government.  The act was enforced by the executive branch and violated the first amendment.  Actual attempts to impeach President Adams were going on but this act occurred pretty much at the end of his term and he was not reelected.  Of course Congress passed the act so they are not going to impeach a president with an act they have already passed.

   
    President Thomas Jefferson should have been impeached because he kept violating many decisions handed down by the Supreme Court.  He did not accept judicial review which states that the court will determine if a law in constitutional or not.  Also he did like the court ruling that federal law trumps state law.  He tried to support many state laws that violated federal laws. 

   
     As of yet I have not found any impeachable offenses by Presidents James Madison or James Monroe.   However, if you know of any of his offenses contact me at the email below.  If verifiable I will insert it in this book.

        President John Quincy Adams should have been impeached for bribery for giving Henry Clay, who was in the position of Speaker of the House of Representatives,  the position of Secretary of State in exchange for convincing the House of Representatives to elect Adams In the  eighteen twenty four election.   In the election no outright majority was attained between Adams and Andrew Jackson for president.   the process required resolution in the House of Representatives, whose Speaker and candidate in his own right, Henry Clay, gave his support to John Quincy Adams, and was then selected to be his Secretary of State.  The corrupt bargain theory, however, still carries sufficient merit not because of the decision of electing John Quincy Adams, but as a result of the agreement to give the Secretary of State position to Henry Clay.

         President Andrew Jackson should have been impeached for murdering many Cherokees and others from Native American nations. Native American did not receive Americans citizenship until nineteen twenty seven.  However, unlike slaves, there is no mention that prohibits Native Americans from being citizen from the inception of the nation.  It was just assumed that they were not included in the United States Constitution.  But they are. Murder especially mass murder is a high crime.  Jackson as president confiscated Native American property without compensation and moved them against their will to reservations in the Oklahoma territory.  This violated the ninth amendment.