On its second try, the (bare, and shrinking) Republican House majority managed to pass a vote to impeach our reality-challenged Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
The vote was 214-213, the charge was not enforcing immigration law and breaching public trust, and the case will now move to the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Where it will fail to achieve the required 67 votes, exactly as happened in the two impeachments against President Donald J. Trump, when the Senate was led by Republicans.
I think Mayorkas is an incorrigible boob, but why bother, when the outcome will result in a predictable failure to convict?
I asked the same question when the Democrats went after Trump, another incorrigible boob.
They said they felt morally compelled to go after what they considered to be a vile character. They had to take a stand.
I can understand that, but their failure to convict led directly to Trump proclaiming, inaccurately, that he had been found “innocent.”
It was a waste of time and money.
Mayorkas is a deluded stiff, who has insisted — contrary to facts — that the border was closed, but he was hired by the President of the United States, and if anyone is guilty of ignoring immigration law it is President Joe Biden.
If anyone should be impeached on immigration grounds, it should be Biden — but I am not endorsing that.
Biden lost my vote last time almost exclusively because of his harebrained border policy, but even that does not rise to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required by the Constitution to remove a President.
Impeachment must be reserved for the most serious crimes against the American people. It should not be used as a political tool.
My belief is that impeachment must be reserved for actual crimes, and it must be bipartisan, coming as an expression of the will of the American people, not of a political party.
That’s a high standard, and deliberately so.
The other, more normal way, to get rid of a President is through the ballot box.
The American people will get their chance on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
In total agreement with you. I am no fan of this boob, but he committed no crimes. I just wish the party of Trump would actually do something besides grandstand and look stupid and subservient to their great leader. Alas, this is not the same GOP as in the past.
And, I’m also no fan of Biden, but the alternative is unthinkable.
I’m so pissed that he did not stand by his word to be a one term bridge president. The hubris must come with being in the office.
He said “bridge,” and many heard “one term.” He may have implied it, but did not say it.
And, IF he meant one term, he should have picked a better vice president. I am stll stunned that he picked a woman who called him a racist, in effect.
This is absolutely correct. However, I must disagree with regard to the Trump impeachments. If one believes that the orange asshat instigated an insurrection, or that he tried to pressure the leader of Ukraine into manufacturing dirt on the Bidens, or that he tried to bully the Georgia Attorney General (and many others) to not accept the results of a fair election, or that he participated in a scheme to produce fake Electors who would not accept the lawful decision of the people, or that he violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution and profited in a big way from the Presidency, THOSE, sir, is legitimate reason for impeachment. You may not agree that Trump did any of those things, but opinions on that clearly vary.
Freeze, each of your charges are questionable grounds for removal, and the Senate decided they were not. As we all knew it would. I understand the moral outrage, but in the end, Trump got a talking point.
What Abraham Lincoln did to get the XIII Amendment passed might have been impeachable offenses at the time. Bribery, threats, skullduggery. (I said “might.”)
I agree with you Freeze.
This is a stupid impeachment for mo other reason than it will go nowhere in the Senate just like the 2 Trump impeachments. I think impeachment should be easier than it is now, but I also agree with Stu that partisan impeachments are a waste of time.
Protecting the people and executing the laws of this country are the president job. Biden has put the whole country in harms way by allowing millions of illegals to enter the country.Anyone who doesn’t think that is not a high crime needs his head examined.
It’s a disgrace that the democrats in congress sit on their asses and do nothing about Bidens open borders. Vote them all out because they are destroying our country.
It’s the House Republicans who killed the bipartisan Senate bill at the urging of Trump. Get your ‘facts’ straight. The bill also included money for ICE which is running a $700 million deficit. They may have to release about a third of detainees if those Trumpican house clowns don’t get of their asses and pass a bill.
What a laugh. That shtick is over. The democrats in Congress came up with a bipartisan border security bill to shut down the border that the GOP was on board with until Trump said to kill it so he could continue to run on the border security issue. The pro-Trump Border Patrol union endorsed it. Every illegal who enters the country after Trump killed the bill is on Trump and the GOP. The last folks you want representing you are people who won’t take yes for an answer. They don’t want border security–they want to RUN on border security.
Oops. The above was a reply to Daniel
Biden opened the border his first day in office and allowed millions of illegals to enter our country. That’s a fact. And we are going to pay for this stupid move for years. And everyone with common sense knows it.
Trump’s stay in Mexico policy was working and should never been canceled. The security bill they presented was a joke. And 3 years to late.
What was the joke? Biden said he would shut down the border the day it passed. And better late than never is always true, especially if it is an urgent and serious problem.
It should have never happened.it was always urgent and serious. Biden opened the borders intentionally.
Which could be fixed by closing the border intentionally. I don’t get your point. Why wait for Trump being possibly, maybe elected? It looks like the House will likely flip dem in any case, so the likelihood of him getting anything more (and probably less) than the GOP got from Biden are slim to none. Unlike Biden, he won’t be able to strong-arm reluctant dems to vote for it. He blew off the opportunity to get the wall and all the border security he wanted in exchange for DACA, which is just like he couldn’t get infrastructure passed despite everyone wanting it. The MAGA right will go down in history as the new folks who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Trump will blow out any candle in order to preserve his ability to curse the darkness.
Well, one factor that differentiates this impeachment from the Trump impeachments is that Trump’s were bipartisan to a degree. Ten Republican House members voted to impeach Trump in 2021. Seven GOP senators voted to convict Trump (though if McConnell had it to do all over again, I suspect he would whip votes for impeachment). Notably, that was the most bipartisan Senate vote for conviction ever. Trump’s first impeachment was party line in the House, though it got one GOP vote (Romney) in the Senate. In this case, the opposition to Mayorkas’ impeachment was the vote that was bipartisan (3 GOP members voted against impeachment). In Clinton’s case, the House vote was bipartisan on both yeas and nays; in the Senate, the votes to acquit were bipartisan, while to convict, just GOP.
Absent a super-majority by one party in the Senate, any impeachment that is purely partisan is doomed to fail. But, given the numbers, you can’t say that either Clinton or Trump’s impeachment were “purely” partisan. Partisanship does play a role in any impeachment. The whole point of a two-party system is to keep the other side honest, and if one side hands the other a bludgeon, it is sure to be utilized. Generally, that is a feature, not a bug.
More importantly, in both the Clinton and Trump impeachments there was specific conduct that smacked of corruption; that is, the charged misconduct was done for personal/political gain. There is no hint of that here. This is clear to lawyers, as the “violations” charged are alleged to have been done “willfully.” As a legal term “willful” is something more than “reckless” and something less than “specific intent.” Usually it is applicable to acts that are intentional, but are done without intent to cause harm. To quote the DOJ: ” ‘willfully’ means no more than that the forbidden act was done deliberately and with knowledge, and does not require proof of evil intent.” The Articles of Impeachment claim that his “willful” acts harmed the country, but never allege that he did so IN ORDER to harm to the country, much less to gain some corrupt advantage for himself. In other words, the Articles purport to charge a “high crime and misdemeanor” without a motive, and without intent to do any harm.
The Articles are a generalized complaint that Mayorkas failed to “control the border” and did not detain ALL illegals (instead of the number ICE has room for) and did not continue Trump policies, such as building the wall and the Covid exclusion policies (which expired). This is well beyond expected “gotcha” partisanship. There is no “gotcha.” This “impeachment” is based on claiming bad policies and lousy administration as opposed to any type of identifiable misconduct with the slightest whiff of corruption or nefarious motive.
Every prior DHS head could have been impeached on the same basis. How the failure to detain illegals for which there is no room is even “wilful”–much less corrupt–is a hard one. It’s like court-martialing a general for treason for not having enough troops when he used all that were available. (ICE has a $700 million shortfall that the border security bill Trump and the GOP killed would have covered, along with adding more funding. The only way to cover the shortfall may be to release illegals already in detention–obviously another willful violation of the immigration laws!)
The Mayorkas impeachment articles have been lying around since 2021 in basically the same form (though someone noticed that the Constitution has “tenets” instead of “tenants” and got rid of the sentence implying the Constitution is a landlord). Since they followed Trump’s orders to kill the bipartisan border security bill, the House GOP has to signal that they are still rabidly for border security, and since they won’t pass border security–indeed, per Trump, avoiding doing so at all costs–they do this performative act.
As I have said before, MAGA is just the flipside of Woke: performative acts, cancel culture and virtue signalling are more important than anything substantive (not to mention civility and common decency). The big difference I see is that MAGA has a pope, and woke has a set of loosely affiliated congregations sharing the same beliefs. (By the way, for those who have not heard, Trump, speaking ex cathedra, has called for an end to the Bud Light boycott now that Anheuser- Busch dumped some money on him to purchase an absolution.)
👍Right on, Tom!
I think we should go back to separating migrant families. Inhumanity and cruelty often work. Let’s take it a step further and shoot those crossing below the waist. We need to rid our Country of these vermin.