http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/06/16/when-things-change/When Things Change
June 16th, 2014 - 5:26 pm
Wikipedia has an article describing the six times Republican politicians suggested impeaching Barack Obama, the most serious of which was a hearing by the House Judiciary Committee “formally titled ‘The President’s Constitutional Duty to Faithfully Execute the Laws,’ that has been viewed as an attempt to begin justifying impeachment proceedings”.
None of these have gone anywhere and there is clearly no present momentum behind the project, as suggested by the absence of a groundswell for a petition to impeach the president and a dearth of newspaper articles suggesting the same. The process itself, as described by Wikipedia, is surprisingly simple. Any party with a majority in the lower house can start it.
At the federal level, the impeachment process is a two-step procedure. The House of Representatives must first pass, by a simple majority of those present and voting, articles of impeachment, which constitute the formal allegation or allegations. Upon passage, the defendant has been ‘impeached’. Next, the Senate tries the accused. In the case of the impeachment of a president, the Chief Justice of the United States presides over the proceedings.
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