That's Just Impeachy

Sure, we all know how we GET a president.  In November, we walk into a little cubicle with a curtain, color in a bubble on a form (a VOTE) and whomever has the most bubbles, erm, votes, wins!  Usually.  Ok, not if you're Al Gore.  Or Hillary Clinton.  See, they flunked out of the Electoral College.  Bet they both wished they had stayed awake in ol' Ex Proff's class, eh?  Then they too might have been president.  But who cares how we get 'em?  The hot topic today is how we GET RID of them.  Hypothetically, what if the man anointed by the Electoral College turns out to have, I don't know, colluded with a foreign power to steal the election through information theft and a massive campaign of propaganda and disinformation.  Let's say further that the "President" then used the office to enrich himself and his family at the expense of the national interest.  Oh, and finally, what if the individual in question is a real douchebag?

The biggest, best, most un-be-lievable douchebag ever seen...

Why, just impeach them, I hear you cry.  Weeelllll, not reeeeeaaaalllllly.  The real answer is that nobody's all that sure, because since our nation's founding, we've never had to get rid of a president before today.  Wait a minute, you say, what about Andrew Johnson?  Richard Nixon?  Bill Clinton?  Weren't they all impeached?  Wrong again.  Only Clinton and Johnson were impeached.  Nixon probably would have been impeached but he resigned first.  Clinton was acquitted, and so was Johnson, though the latter was just one vote short of being convicted.  But all this isn't to say we haven't gotten rid of presidents before.  The only problem is that they've all been assassinated.  And I don't care how big a douchebag anybody is, nobody deserves to be assassinated.  I think.  Unless you're talking about someone who's really, really horrendous -a complete threat to our democratic way of life.  And is a colossal douchebag, a literal douche-pontoon-aircraft carrier.  So, back to our original problem: how do we get rid of Tr-- err, a hypothetical Douche-Bagger-In-Chief?

I think it should start with Impeachment.  That much is certain.  That's how to get rid of recalcitrant executive department officials that won't leave when asked, and Federal judges who would rather take bribes than do their jobs.  Not just anybody can be impeached, however, The Constitution specifies that in order to be impeached, the impeachee must have committed a "high crime or misdemeanor."  What this means is that they had to break a law slightly greater than sidewalk spitting.  Heck, that's easy.  Any crooked cop can plant some pills on an unsuspecting traffic stop and presto, the defendant goes to trial.  However, what the Clinton impeachment shows us is that in order to get rid of the President, you have to have the votes in Congress --a super majority at that.

I was NOT convicted by THAT Congress

So, impeach, then try them by a Congress that will convict them, then,,, then what?  Again, nobody knows for sure because it's never gone this far before.  There are a few very important "what ifs?"  Let's start with this one: what if the President leaves the country for, I'm just spitballing here, Russia and claims that they're the victim of a legislative coup d' etat and they'd really appreciate Russia's help at getting them back in the driver seat over at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave?  What if a lot of other countries around the world believe it too?  What if the United Nations weighs in, calling the impeachment trial "problematic" or "of suspicious motive?"  Does Congress then defy the world?  What if the convicted president doesn't skip the country; who arrests them?  The Capitol Police?  Supposing they are arrested; where are they held?  Or is it enough that they have been kicked out of being president?  Do we just forget about those high crimes and misdemeanors that cost them the job, or does some attorney general or other indict them in front of a grand jury and then go try them --in which court?  Federal?  The state court where the crime took place?  The Washington DC Municipal Court if it happened in DC?

So many questions... I have the best questions... my questions are spec-tac-u-lar...

Once again, nobody knows.  We'd be making up all this shit as we went along.  That said, there have been judges who have been impeached and subsequently prosecuted for their crimes, so Congress could just copy what happened in those events and apply them to the problem of what to do to a wayward president.  But these questions pale in comparison to the one, big, unstated question:  what the heck do we do if he just won't go?

This is not as far-fetched as it seems.  At the beginning of our republic, John Adams was convinced that Thomas Jefferson was getting ready to unleash the horrors of the French Revolution --complete with guillotines in the public squares --onto the American people following his election in 1800.  There was talk, some of it quite heated and serious, of Adams barricading himself in the White House and summoning the army to arrest Jefferson and his supporters.  Adams took the high road, however, choosing only to leave tacks on all the seats in the East Room and swipe all the soap and monogrammed towels.  Jefferson did the same to Madison, by the way.

I also left all the chamber pots full.  Of poop.  Haha!

What I'm getting at here is the very real possibility that an impeached president just may try to brass-balls-it-out and go on national TV or, let's just see here, Twitter, and complain that it's all the result of a Deep State Conspiracy against him, engineered by Obama, with the collusion of the Fake News industry, and all True Americans need to help their legally elected president by taking their constitutionally protected guns and hurrying to Washington.  If this happens, about half of those NRA KKK MAGA* dipshits would head for Washington state and get arrested by a bunch of Washington State Police, but the other half would spread murder and mayhem all over the country until downtown Sheboygan resembled the Kabul Green Zone.  While they were doing that, their political allies and apologists would do everything in their power to aid and abet them from the sidelines, until the country settles down into a comfortable civil war.  And let's remember how much fun the LAST one was: 650,000 soldiers dead, famine, disease, social upheaval and foreign meddlers on the doorstep just itching to step in and carve the United States up into spheres of economic and political influence.  Planet Earth will then be lead by another power (China probably), while the United States enters a period of cultural, economic and social decline, from which it may take centuries to recover.

*National Riflemen's Association, Ku Klux Klan, and Make America Great Again

Introducing North America's next great Superpower...

But let's not let a little thing like uncertainty stop us from doing what needs to be done.  If a president acquires the office through the collusion of a foreign power, they must be removed.  If they use the office for their private enrichment and their family's gain, they must be removed.  If they are too dumb to do the job or too lazy, then they should resign.  Either way, Donald Trump should resign or else be impeached.  But that doesn't stop the problem that created Donald Trump.   If they want to hold onto their jobs, Democrats and Republicans need to see to the good of the American voter who voted for Trump.  Some meaningful constraints must be placed on the real fake news, ie., Breitbart, Fox and the dark, racist corners of the web, in order to silence the lunatic fringe's propaganda machine.  And finally, American politics needs to purge itself of rancour and ideology and raise high the moral standard of public service.  The American Presidency is not a prize to be fought over by billionaires.

I WON'T live in the White House, Mummy!  It's to old and small
and there are NO gold toilet seats!

Conventional Wisdom

Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?

Earlier this week, a friend posted a link to the movie by Robert Reich, Inequality for All.  Here's PBS' take on it: Reich.  All this got me to thinking: has the American Republic finally run its course?  Is it time to hang up the Stars 'n Stripes and tell everyone to go back to the countries their grandparents emigrated from --all that is except for the Native Americans, because that would just be silly!  Time to hang a "Closed" sign beside the Golden Door?  Well, I for one don't think so, at least not yet.  There's still one more tool in our toolbelt --one last arrow in the quiver our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us.  I am referring to, of course, the Constitutional Convention.

But wait a minute there, Ex-Prof!  I hear you cry.  There has already been a constitutional convention back in 1789, and it gave us the wonderful government we have today.  Besides, if anything ever goes wrong with the constitution, we can pass amendments to it and don't have to scrap the whole thing.  Well, to that I say that our present form of government might have worked well enough for an elite-lead, semi-slavery dependent European society perched on the eastern coast of North America in the 18th century, but too much water has flowed under Concord Bridge between then and now.  And amendments are not suited to such a fundamental restructuring of power as will be needed this time.  Besides, our Founders would be flabbergasted, if they were around today to flabb and gast, when we tell them there hasn't been a Constitutional Convention since the one they had.

One friggin' convention in over 200 years?!?  You lazy poops!

We need a new government, one that realizes that there are things like typewriters, telegraphs, this doohicky called the Interwebs or something like that --improved means of communication that can make us a much more participatory, real, actual democracy.  We also need a government that will safeguard those freedoms our founders saw as sacred, freedoms that indeed are sacred.

First, let's get the law down straight.  Article V of the U.S. Constitution states in part:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress  
Italics added.

What this means is that the several States of the United States (2/3 of them, to be exact) can cry "Shenanigans!" on the whole federal government, call a convention like the one pictured above, and set up a brand-new government.  Oh yeah, and then get 3/4 of the states to ratify it.  Sound difficult?  Well, it's supposed to.  Founding Father Thomas Jefferson wrote in his little pamphlet, the Declaration of Independence, that "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;" to this end, he and the original bunch in Philadelphia made it hard to add amendments and call new Constitutional Conventions --they didn't want us to turn into something like Italy became after WWII.

For the record, the slave's name was Sally Hemings,
not Prudence.  I don't recall any slave named --wait,
what?  I appear to have misspoken.  Y'all go back to
reading this fine blog.

But having a new convention would be scary, Ex-Prof!  What new kind of total buggery-factory-of-a-government would result from such a convention? Why can't we just let Congress, the President and the Courts fix things, just like they've done all this time?  Why rock the boat?  Why fix what isn't broken?

First of all, it just might be scary, especially if the proceedings are shrouded in secrecy just like the first convention was.  But if it's televised, the whole thing could become the reality-show-to-end-all-reality-shows and just might make C-Span bigger than HBO. Why not steal a bit from American Idol, Dancing with the Has-Beens and The Real Housewife Pawn Stars of Duck Dynasty: if the convention gets hopelessly deadlocked on an issue, such as how many parking spaces a Senator is constitutionally allowed within walking distance of their office, then they could open the phones and allow America to vote.  So yeah, it might be really exciting instead of frightening.

What kind of new government would emerge?  Be buggered if I know.  I can tell you that the government that emerges from the new convention would be acceptable to at least 3/4 of the state legislatures, which means it would be acceptable to roughly 3/4 of voting Americans, so at the very least it would have an approval rating higher than the federal government enjoys today.  Oh sure, there will be the discontented --Patrick "Give me Liberty or Give me Death!" Henry hated the first convention, and (I totally swear I am NOT making this up) the entire state of Rhode Island  boycotted it because somebody made a crack at how short Rhode Islanders' post-colonial schlongeroos were.  I suspect it was Alexander Hamilton who said that.  Also, Rhode Island was in a general sulk after the Revolution anyway.  Their entire state government was dominated by these ultra-radicals who pushed their agenda of having a simple, uncomplicated state of rural pastoralists and hearty fisher-folk, completely ignoring their neighbors in what would eventually become the United States of America, and take their place among the independent nations of the world.  

So yeah, don't expect the KKK, Idaho survivalists or the Westboro Baptist Church to be on-board with the new government, but at least there's a chance that fewer rational people will be against it.

"The Ocean State" because "The Tiny Suspicious State full of
Tiny Guys with Tiny Little Dicks" wouldn't fit on the sign.

Asking Congress, the President and the Courts to fix the problems with our present federal government is not such a good idea.  I suspect that they would all secretly like to quit or run the whole sorry business into the ground and then collect unemployment (from whom they would collect is unclear at the moment) --didn't Congress shut the government down a couple of times just recently?  Besides, asking government to fix itself is completely dumb.  I mean really, if somebody came to your company and told it to fix all the problems, even if it meant firing everybody and starting all over again back in the Stone Age, my guess is that everybody from CEO to janitor would say, "No problems here!  Everything is awesome!"  (ha ha, that stupid song from "The Lego Movie" is now bouncing around inside your brain, isn't it, bwa-ha-ha!!!)

Now on this question of rocking the boat and fixing what ain't broke: the only reason that the Ship of State is not on fire is that it sank sometime early in George "Dubbyah" Bush's first term and nobody really saw it.  We were too busy watching the Twin Towers fall and then searching for weapons of mass-destruction in Iraq to notice.  Case in point: Congress can't pass a law fixing immigration, so they instead grumble about impeaching the president for "failing to secure the borders" --is this a high crime, or a misdemeanor, as required by under Article II? --and THIS president has deported more illegal immigrants than any president before!  Oh, and all the courts are saying about illegal immigrants is that there are too few lawyers to represent the potential deportees, so they're holding deportation hearings in RFK Stadium now.

No caption needed

So, with all the free time you have now that you're out of work, or because the miserable job you have managed to somehow hang onto has now reduced you to part-time so they can stop paying your health benefits, you can pester your state legislature and its legislators to do this: call for a new constitutional convention!  And while you're at it, get yourself appointed to your state's delegation to that convention to make sure that a) nothing underhanded goes on; and b) you have a job for however long it takes to give this country a new government.  One that works.  And that isn't in the pocket of big business.  And that smells nice.  Ok, it doesn't have to smell nice, but it does have to have good hair.  And be fair and just and all that good stuff.