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Fair Warning: Starting tweet to me with "...you clearly don't understand..." will invoke a lengthy thread intended to back you out of the batter's box. You were warned.
(1) You clearly don't know what I know, sport. So let me educate you. Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 is the specific location where the Constitution provides the House with the "sole responsibility" for impeachment. It does NOT require that it be popular with the people.
(2) It does NOT require the House to evaluate whether there are sufficient votes in the Senate to convict -- repeating again -- that the sole purpose of impeachment is establishing the "indictment" of the person the House is investigating. In Federalist Paper 65, Hamilton...
(3) describes the purpose of the "national inquest" of public men. The House's job is the determination of evidence to support such inquiry. He does not instruct the House to weigh whether or not the Senate will convict.
(4) The House should not avoid action out of fear that the Senate will not convict. Wrongdoing is wrongdoing. The most important act -- which you and so many others fail to comprehend, IMHO -- is the indictment for behavior violating the norms of the institutions, the laws
(5) of the nation, the strictures of society. In today's lingo, calling out bad behavior when it is egregious.
But let's move on. The impeachment process in the House is a standalone process. The House, having conducted its investigation may choose to draft
But let's move on. The impeachment process in the House is a standalone process. The House, having conducted its investigation may choose to draft
(6) Articles of Impeachment for any or all of the high crimes and misdemeanors or other matters. The House may debate those articles and may vote to accept those articles. Upon acceptance, the House has the option of forwarding those articles to the Senate for further action.
(7) If the House so chooses, it may apply whatever disciplinary procedure it wants, such as censure. It is only if, and when, the House notifies the Senate and delivers the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, that the Senate becomes involved.
(8) Nowhere in any of the House rules, scholarly treatises discussing impeachment are House members required, or even suggested, to defer to the inability or unwillingness of the Senate to do its job.
(9) Let me be blunt: if the Speaker of the House, having been advised of suspected high crimes and misdemeanors, having received a credible, fact-filled, impartial report from the Special Counsel outlining that said crimes would meet the threshold for prosecution,
(10) having the committees with jurisdiction conduct initial investigations which corroborate the Special Counsel's report, and having received requests from a substantial number of her caucus to proceed with opening an official inquiry -- if she chooses, in the face of all of
(11) that, to shirk her constitutional duty and avoid holding the accused accountable IN HER OWN congressional body for what can only be described as personal political ambitions, then all her protestations about the rule of law are as meaningful and useful as tits on a frog.
