The Impeachment the President Mirrors Our Nation’s First

by

       M. Richard Maxson

      The impeachment of Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, was initiated on February 24, 1868. The United States House of Representatives resolved to impeach Johnson, for "high crimes and misdemeanors," which were detailed in 11 articles of impeachment. On March 2–3, 1868,Johnson became the first American president to be impeached when the House formally adopted the articles of impeachment and forwarded them to the United States Senate for adjudication.

      The primary charge against Johnson was violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The Tenure of Office Act was a United States federal law (in force from 1867 to 1887) that was intended to restrict the power of the president to remove certain office-holders without the approval of the Senate. The law was enacted on March 2, 1867, over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. This was an attempt by Congress to have control over and to restrict the powers of the executive branch. This was clearly un- constitutional without an amendment to the Constitution. It purported to deny the president the power to remove any executive officer who had been appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, unless the Senate approved the removal during the next full session of Congress.

       The trial in the Senate began three days later, with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding. On May 16, the Senate failed to convict Johnson on one of the articles, with the 35–19 vote in favor of conviction falling short of the necessary two-thirds majority by a single vote. A 10-day recess was called before attempting to convict him on additional articles. The delay did not change the outcome, however, as on May 26, it failed to convict the president on two articles, both by the same margin, after which the trial was adjourned. 

 

      The act was significantly amended on April 5, 1869, by President Ulysses S. Grant. Congress repealed the act in its entirety in 1887, exactly 20 years after the law was enacted. Lyman Trumbull(R) of Illinois one Republican senators whose refusal to vote for conviction prevented Johnson's removal from office noted in the speech he gave explaining his vote for acquittal, that "had President Johnson been convicted, the main source of the president's political power—the freedom to disagree with the Congress without consequences—would have been destroyed, and the Constitution's system of checks and balances along with it."

       Trumbull, in a speech defending his decision he stated, “Once set the example of impeaching a President for what, when the excitement of the hour shall have subsided, will be regarded as insufficient causes, as several of those now alleged against the President were decided to be by the House of Representatives only a few months since, and no future President will be safe who happens to differ with a majority of the House and two thirds of the Senate on any measure deemed by them important, particularly if of a political character. Blinded by partisan zeal, with such an example before them, they will not scruple to remove out of the way any obstacle to the accomplishment of their purposes, and what then becomes of the checks and balances of the Constitution, so carefully devised and so vital to its perpetuity? They are all gone.” He was correct. while evaluating the constitutionality of a similar law in Myers v. United States (1926), the Supreme Court stated that the Tenure of Office Act was likely invalid.

       The impeachment of President Trump is almost a mirror of our nation’s first impeachment in an attempt to control the executive branch. The President is an outsider who does not go through traditional channels to get things done. His distrust for “the swamp,” as he calls it, has inflamed the political elite and they have used their immense power to attempt to regain their control over the government. The impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson had important political implications for the balance of federal legislative–executive power. It maintained the principle that Congress should not remove the president from office simply because its members disagreed with him over policy, style, and administration of the office.

This is an Ugly Chapter in American History

by

       M. Richard Maxson

      We just concluded one of the strangest, and most illuminating, weeks in the history of American politics — a week in which the Democrat Party, through its majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives, exposed itself as driven by anti-American ideologues. Their party has become radicalized by the left. They have attempted to justify their actions by wrapping themselves in false patriotism but their first and foremost allegiance is to an ideology, not the Constitution, not our country or our system of government. That’s why their actions are completely one-sided and compromise has become impossible. They have placated to their cultural urban and suburban enclaves where they have centralized tremendous amounts of power while disregarding the interests and values of most of the country. They have responded to America’s nationalism by retreating deeper into undemocratic institutions, whether it was the bureaucracy or the corporate media, while doubling down on its political radicalism. It is now openly defying the outcome of a national election using a coalition of bureaucrats, corporations, unelected officials, celebrities and reporters that are based out of its cultural and political enclaves.

       These Democrats aren’t interested in fair hearings, and they aren’t interested in persuading the persuadable. What they’re interested in is using political and cultural power to force people to accept things no intelligent person should be able to accept. The Constitution’s system of checks and balances sets the various branches against each other for the laudable purpose of constraining tyranny. However, due to partisan polarization, individual corruption, and corporate indoctrination, sometimes the political institutions in these arrangements fail, sending the governmental system into a crisis.

       Officials from the previous administration, at various levels of government, have rejected the authority of the President of the United States and of the Constitution because those are at odds with their radical ideology. Judges have cloaked this rejection in law. Mayors and governors are not even pretending that their actions are lawful such as seen in the state of Virginia.

 

      The left has made it clear that it will not accept the lawful authority of our system of government. It will not accept the outcome of elections. It will not accept these things because they are at odds with its ideology and because they represent the will of large portions of the country and a President whom they despise.

      President Trump has done much of which I do not approve, but if we start removing presidents from office for thought crime or taking actions that the opposition considers inappropriate even though there is precedent, even though many other presidents have done the same including their own in the previous administration, then it will be a constitutional moment of fundamental significance. Former judge and prosecutor Kenneth Starr said it best when he stated, “This is an ugly chapter in American history.” Thomas Jefferson predicted that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants..” That time may be coming soon.

A Return to a Constitutional America

by

       M. Richard Maxson

      Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is a Constitutionalist. He believes that the Founding Fathers meant what they said and said what they meant. This is known as “Originalism.” Originalism is taking the constitution as it was written and having the courts interpret what it means. What was the concept what was the ideas what was the meaning behind those words on the paper. In other words, what did the Founding Fathers of this nation have in mind? They laid down basic truths that serve a vital role in sustaining the republic, a nation established on the idea that the government exists to serve the people—not the other way around. He believes that our founders chose to believe that the people could govern themselves prudently, without destroying the civil liberties their ancestors had won, and without subjecting political minorities to arbitrary power. Originalists continue trying to be vigilant to be sure the courts are not making up and substituting their own personal preferences or political biases or their policy ideas for what is actually on the pages of the Constitution. The only thing a judge should consider, “Is this law true to the Constitution?”

      Unfortunately today, as he sits on the nation’s highest court, he is troubled by what he sees as an attack on the country and the Constitution by Leftist forces that would like to see that Constitution replaced or modified in diversion of it’s original intent. Progressives are trying to turn the Constitution and the country in a different direction than what the founders had in mind and put on paper and the Constitution. He sees the lower courts filled with “activist” judges that do not interpret the Founders meaning in the Constitution as they should do but rather how they would “like” it to be. He wrote, “American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education. This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary.”

       The rejection of “originalism” is known as the theory of the “living constitution.” Its tenets are that modern-day jurists can adapt the Constitution to modern-day societal preferences and governmental needs or in novel and creative or even destructive ways, according to their own ideologies. It permits them to adapt a meaning in the text that they wish had been there to fortify contemporary societal attitudes. They are not there to wish and this “we are above the mere words on the paper is a violation of their duty as jurists’ This raises the question whether we are still living in America, where "we the people" are supposed to decide what kind of society we want, NOT have our betters, that the progressives think they are, impose their notions on us. He wrote. “If you’re going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you’re probably doing something wrong.”

      Federal judges have life tenure because they represent the anti-democratic part of the federal government. Their job is to preserve constitutional norms and structures and guarantees from interference by the popular branches of the federal government or the States, even when those branches or the States command popular support that runs against the Founding Fathers intent. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Anthony Scalia argued that the job of the jurist is not to adapt the text of the Constitution to public trends or cultural changes. That is the job of the Congress and the States through legislation as set out in the Constitution. Justice Scalia argued that that itself violates the judicial oath, which is to uphold the Constitution as it was written, not as some jurists may wish it to be.

      As an American Patriot and an originalist myself. I am relieved to have a president who is also one. To see so many originalist jurors being sworn into our federal courts gives me hope for the future of the country. The judgments by lower court progressive jurists who continually rule by popularity and feelings are constantly being over-ruled at the higher judicial levels as their comrades in government continue to put an end to the originalism by vainly attempting to removing an elected president. For our nation, they must fail and they are failing gives me hope for a return to a Constitutional America.

Socialist Communism and the Democratic Party

by

       Zeno Potas

      Today’s Democratic party is NOT the party of your fathers and your grand-fathers. It has, over the past decades, been taken over by those who expound a corporate Socialist/Communist agenda. They present this agenda wrapped in red, white, and blue and quoting their version of the constitution and excerpts of quotes from the founding fathers to justify their actions. They say they are the future of America and some bravely identify, with pride, as Democratic Socialists. A recent national poll identifies how much the Democratic party has been taken over with almost half of responding Democrats wanting to do away with our current form of government for Communist Socialism.

      According to the Democratic Socialists, they are a group that’s dedicated to pushing an anti-capitalist, socialist platform by infiltrating and working within the Democratic Party, and pushing it further and further to the left. The group has said it wants to move away from the image – though not all the tenets – of Marxist-Leninist principles. The Democratic Socialists which is not a formal political party but a large group within the Democratic party. They have worked their way into the Democratic Party in part because of its failure to advance its own brand with a voting public reflexively suspicious of hard-left socialist policies.

                                                       How did this happen?

      Recall the campus demonstrations of the 1960s, in which campus radicals, often accompanied by their professors, marched around singing the praises of Mao and waving Mao's Little Red Book. Many of those campus radicals are now tenured professors and administrators at today's universities and colleges and K-12 schoolteachers and principals indoctrinating our youth.

      "Marxism ideology is being pumped into the heads of at least 3 generations of American students without being challenged or counter-balanced by Americanism.

Your Leftists in the United States, all these professors and all these civil rights defenders, they are instrumental in the process of subversion to destabilize a nation."

                                    -Yuri Bezmanov – former KGB propagandist

      Which brings us to how Marxist Socialism has infected the West itself. Ideological Subversion and Demoralization

•   Ideological Subversion - Schools have been pumping out generations of students that see themselves as “global citizens”. People have been divided along every plane imaginable, with new divisions sprouting daily. It is now evil to affirm a Western identity. “Politically (in) Correctness.” Certain topics cannot be approached in public - slowly, and daily, it is the case online as well. The idea of “America privilege,” a precursor to “white privilege” was introduced by the Soviets during the cold war. Socialist influence in our media, politics and nearly every phase of our life has produced a growing conviction on the part of many Americans that we are the “bad guys”.

• Demoralization – Elimination of American Exceptionalism, fundamental change of national identity, structural deconstruction of foundational principles, elimination of religion. Embedding a new societal design upon the psyche of generations through ideological academia. Peer pressure by elites upon academics and society to convince that prior values were inherently flawed, racist, prejudiced etc. National identity is diluted with aspersions toward historical references. National history is re-written, re-defined, and molded to fit the new intended behavioral model and create the new values.

                                                   The Rules Of Revolution

 

      The path to Socialist/Communist rule is to convince the public that it is either the best way of life or the only way of life. Too often, that lie was and is believed. The way they accomplish this is to:

• Produce propaganda on such a massive scale, also shines a light on the third group of supporters: the ones in control.

• Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial issues of no importance.

• Destroy people’s faith in their national leaders by holding the latter up for contempt, ridicule and disgrace.

• Always preach democracy.

      What can patriotic Americans do? Subversion is hard to defeat because it’s insidious and long-term Most of the actions are overt, legitimate, and easily identifiable. The only trouble is — they are “stretched in time”. In other words, the process of subversion is such a long-term process that an average individual, due to the short time-span of his historical memory, is unable to perceive the process of subversion as a consistant and willful effort. That is exactly how it is intended to be: like the small hand of your watch. You know it moves, but you cannot see it moving.

 

      Another way is constant crisis. Creation of economic, financial, and national security crisis. Also includes social crisis and breakdown of previous self-evident restrictions on moral behavior. The crisis produces benevolent leaders who will promise to deliver “things” (Hope and Change) to meet people’s needs through social and economic justice. False illusions that the situation is under control if certain strategic directions are followed (Bailouts, Stimulus, Jobs Bills, Regulations of industry, Unconstitutional Power Grabs, Dismissal of Historical Laws, Changes in legislative processes, Changes in checks and balances of power etc).

      After that - False Normalization – The uncomfortable feelings of change including losses of freedom are absorbed and accepted. Lost national identity becomes accepted as the norm within the new societal model. A period of national re branding transition where people are so overwhelmed by the change they become numb and begin to accept a ‘new normal’. This period of normalization lasts indefinitely as the progression is continually advanced and acceptance takes place in small controlled doses. (New limits on behavior, Regulations, TSA Patdowns, Intrusions into privacy, Controls into daily life) These things begin to be accepted as “just the way it is now”..

      Under Democratic Socialism the government can control your income through taxation, employment and redistribution; tell you what to eat by deciding your choices for you; tell you how much energy you are allowed to consume through rules and regulation; which light bulbs you must use; tell you what kind of car you can be allowed to drive; tell you what type of toilet you can buy; tell you what kind of detergent you may wash with; determine what information you have access to through the TV media and internet access; and then control your capacity to receive the healthcare of your choice.

       Today it is Democrats who are declaring war on the Constitution. What is the difference between the Democratic party’s given agenda and what is being slid down the throats of every citizen in this country now when they hear the news or watch a subliminal movie or television show? In short, nothing. Leading Democrats are promising that, if elected in 2020, they will abolish the Electoral College and might also pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices -- allowing them to marginalize Americans who do not support their increasingly radical agenda and impose it on an unwilling nation. Their American Socialism is going according to a plan. The only hill in their path is the current president and you, perhaps the last of patriotic Constitutional Americans.