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| Home Front: Politix |
| Fitschen: Gingrich is right |
| 2011-12-27 |
| If you’re a political junkie, you’ve got to love a presidential candidate who lights the fire Newt Gingrich has lit. Or at least you have to love the fire. Impeach judges? Subpoena them? Arrest them? Zany, zany, zany Newt. Or is that correct, correct, correct Newt? The case can be made that judges can be impeached for rendering unconstitutional opinions. But it probably can’t be made persuasively in an op-ed piece. I won’t try. But I’ll take on the other two. They can be subpoenaed, and, because they can be subpoenaed, they can be arrested if they refuse to comply. Yes, I know that former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said, “The only basis by which Congress can subpoena people is to consider legislation.” And, yes, I know that Andrew McCarthy, in a National Review Online article headlined “There Is No Power and No Reason to Subpoena Federal Judges,” claimed this action would violate “separation-of-powers principles.” Let me try to take this out of the realm of opinion, into the realm of fact. First, the only fair reading of Mr. Gingrich’s comments is that he advocates subpoenaing judges as part of an impeachment investigation. If so, this surely can be done. As background, Hind’s Precedents - the historical go-to guide, cited 20 times by the Congressional Research Service in “Impeachment: An Overview of Constitutional Provisions, Procedure, and Practice,” its publication prepared just last year in the midst of the investigation of Judge G. Thomas Porteous - cites many examples of Congress issuing subpoenas, summonses and, yes, arrest warrants after someone has been impeached, but before the trial begins. |
| Posted by:tipper |