http://www.wikio.com/search=Dann Impeachment Wikio - Dann Impeachment http://www.wikio.com/search/Dann+Impeachment?rinfoid=68544315 My first response was also geared to a 9th grader, according to the software. My second one was for a sixth grader ... Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:44:42 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Dann+Impeachment?rinfoid=68544315 2008-08-21T20:44:42Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Dann+Impeachment?rinfoid=68442516 First, learn to format. Your comment was impossible to read. 1) Tom Suddes is not infallable. He also advocated for Dann to be recalled through a judical removal process. Which has the exact same legal standard as impeachment. 2) Under the Constitution, the Senate decides if the impeached offenses are sufficient cause for removal from office or some other constitutionally provided punishment. They do not, as you incorrectly stated, set the standard for impeachment. The House impeaches; the Senate removes. The Senate, under the Constitution, is responsible for deciding if the grounds in which the House impeaches a public official is sufficient grounds to remove them from office. 3) The Democrats didn't pass anything. They introduced an impeachment resolution. The House passed legislation, introduced by the Republicans, to give the IG authority to investigate Dann. They were two separate pieces of legislation. 4) I don't know what the Ohio House Democratic caucus' position would be on impeaching Bush. Since they have no constitutional authority on the issue, it doesn't matter. You can't equate what the Ohio House Democratic Caucus does or doesn't do and compare it to what Democrats in Congress do and don't do. Competely different groups. Maybe SOME of the articles shouldn't be grounds for impeachment. But to assume that the articles would have passed through the legislative process "as is" is naive. Perhaps, some of the counts the House Democrats leveled wouldn't have passed the full House. But that doesn't mean the entire resolution had no constitutional grounds. The PD , again, said that Dann's offenses was grounds for Dann to be removed from Ohio's recall process. Despite the fact that the legal standard for removal is the same as impeachment. It's just a different process using different actors. 5(a) The equal protection clause has no bearing on Ohio's impeachment clause. Perhaps you should look up the Political Question Doctrine, and read my past posts on the issue. The U.S. Supreme Court made it pretty in U.S. v. Nixon that because the Constitution vests the power of impeachment in the legislative branch, the Court lacks jurisdiction to review the Congress' use of its impeachment powers. (b) Also, look up the term dicta. The Ohio Supreme Court did not say that in the context of Ohio's impeachment powers. BTW, the Ohio voters did not know, were not told, and could not have known what Dann did. Impeachment is an inherent recognition that a public official has breached the public trust given to him by the people's mandate. Impeachment of an elected official always means the removal of an official elected by the will of the people. If the Framers never intended for such officials to be impeached, then they would have limited the power of impeachment to appointed officials. BTW, this is the same argument raised by supporters of convicted Jim Trafficant when the Congress expelled him. It didn't work then. Your "retort" proves my point in the wisdom of vesting impeachment in the most politically sensitive branch-- The House of Representatives. As I said in an earlier post on the subject, if the House abuses it's powers, as voters felt in the instance of President Clinton's impeachment, the legislators know they'll pay a political price come the next election. So far, I haven't seen any evidence that Governor Strickland and the ODP is paying a political price for removing Dann from office. 6) There was already an ample record that Dann's supporters were trying to influence testimony. Destruction of evidence wasn't that far out of thinking given the circumstances. Shall I remind you about the temporarily missing Blackberry? Um, and by the way, the IG was already re-appointed by Strickland. He could only worry about re-appointment if Strickland wins re-election. And the IG has broad bipartisan support. If Strickland fired him for how he conducted his investigation, it would be a political nightmare for the Governor being accused of improperly influencing a critical investigation. By the way, normally it's the Governor's offices that the IG is investigating in the first place. That's why they had to introduce legislation to expand his authority. So if people have no problem with inherent conflict of the IG in essentially investigating the Governor's Cabinet, well, you get the point. 7) Everything you wrote was patently untrue, and utterly rebutted. Perhaps you can't defend Common Cause, because like me, you can't name one thing they've achieved in Ohio in recent memory. Thanks for playing, though. Maybe next time, I'll actually work up a sweat. Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:10:12 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Dann+Impeachment?rinfoid=68442516 2008-08-21T03:10:12Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Dann+Impeachment?rinfoid=68422775 I have the following comments about the points in the above article. (1) Former Cleveland Plain Dealer legislative reporter Thomas Suddes knows a lot about how the legislature operates. He wrote in the Columbus Dispatch about the Democrats' impeachment resolution: "House Democrats' written accusations against Dann were so irresponsibly elastic they set a terrible precedent for when the shoe is on the other foot, as someday it will be." In other words, there are plenty of legislators in both parties who are stupid enough and lazy enough to treat the resolution as precedent. Thus, the best way to kill that terrible precedent would be a resolution from both the House and Senate denouncing it. (2)The Senate should weigh in on the Dems' impeachment standards because a trial in the Senate is where any impeachment attempt would be decided. The Senate ultimately decides the standards for impeachemnt. (3)It was the Dems who acted in a rash and reckless manner in forcing Dann out. If they hadn't passed their absurd impeachment resolution, and sent the inspector general into Dann's office like the Gestapo to ransack the place, Dann would still be there. (4)The Cleveland Plain Dealer was correct in editorializing that the Dems' articles of impeachment "would have been laughable" if they were not "so offensive to the Ohio Constitution." According to the Dems' resolution, impeachable offenses include such acts as failing to secure the safety of state property, failing to exercise due care in the administration of the office, and failing to know that certain personal conduct undermined the effectiveness and efficiency of the office. The Dems consider those acts as impeachable offenses, but not acts such as lying to take the nation to war and causing the unnecessary deaths and maiming of tens of thousands of innocent people. Can any position be more absurd than that? (5)To apply a different impeachment standard to Dann than was applied to Taft violates the Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. and Ohio Constitutions. Those clauses require government officials to apply the same standards to people who are in similar circumstances. But the Dems want to be able to decide willy-nilly if someone should be impeached. They apparently forget that this is supposed to be a government of laws. (Not to mention justice.) (5)The Ohio Supreme Court has said: "The survival of our system of government requires that proper respect be given to the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box." After all, the U.S. Constitution begins by saying the government was established by "We the Peopld." In rushing headlong to remove Dann, the Dems weren't showing respect for the will of the people. They were determined to overturn the people's choice for Attorney General regardless of the law and facts. (6) The above article conveniently ignores Common Cause's point that the inspector general is not an independent investigator of the matter. The inspector general reports to Strickland, who was already doing everything he could to remove Dann from office. This conflict of interest was present regardless of what the inspector general was investigating at Dann's office. Moreover, the inspector general has investigated plenty of similar allegations in state government. I'm unaware of any instance where he did so in the manner he used for Dann's office. But I know of a number of cases in which he did not use such tactics to investigate serious allegatons of wrongdoing. In regard to Dann, the inspector general was clearly using strong-arm methods calculated to achieve by force the result his boss, Strickland, wanted. That way, the inspector general would please the boss and increase the chances that Strickland would reappoint him to another term of office. Amazingly, Strickland had the audacity and hypocrisy to criticize the AG's internal investigation as lacking independence. (7) The ad hominem attacks on Common Cause are unworthy of a response. They wouldn't be needed except in an attempt to bolster arguments that are weak on substance. Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:51:37 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Dann+Impeachment?rinfoid=68422775 2008-08-20T22:51:37Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Dann+Impeachment?rinfoid=68307103 Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:22:35 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Dann+Impeachment?rinfoid=68307103 2008-08-20T03:22:35Z http://www.wikio.com/search/Dann+Impeachment?rinfoid=68210154 The articles of impeachment against then-Attorney General Marc Dann earlier this year played a pivotal role in getting the scandal-scarred Democrat to resign. Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:59:00 GMT http://www.wikio.com/search/Dann+Impeachment?rinfoid=68210154 2008-08-19T08:59:00Z