On The Mayorkas Impeachment
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2024-04-18 07:00 by Karl Denninger
in Corruption , 432 references Ignore this thread
On The Mayorkas Impeachment
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The Senate appears to have a rather odd view of the Executive -- then again so does the House, and both are not only toxic they're demonstrably false.

Mayorkas is the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached in almost 150 years. House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas in February over his handling of the southern border by a narrow margin after failing to do so on their first try.

Democrats have slammed the impeachment as a political stunt, saying that Republicans had no valid basis for the move and that policy disagreements are not a justification for the rarely used constitutional impeachment of a Cabinet official.

The impeachment of Mayorkas has nothing to do with "policy disagreements"; it is first, last and only about a Cabinet official's deliberate refusal to enforce laws as written, including 8 USC §1324.

That statute mandates felony criminal penalties carrying prison sentences for anyone who assists, harbors or transports illegal immigrants.  Other sections of US law forbid the Federal Government and its agencies from "paroling" into the United States an illegal immigrant unless that have a facially-reasonable claim to asylum.  There is no capacity in the law to permit DHS to do so simply because there are a lot of people illegally crossing.

Policy is defined by legislation and thus has to pass both House and Senate and either be signed by the President or a veto must be overridden.  It is absolutely true that different Administrations will have different policies but the Constitution is clear and each person in all three branches of Government takes an oath to uphold and enforce all of the laws and thus the means to express policy isn't to ignore laws you don't like but rather to work to change them through the legislative process.

If you can't find agreement via that process then until you can the existing policy stands whether you agree with it or not and if you take an oath to enforce the law as written and you refuse to do so on a deliberate basis impeachment is the peaceful and appropriate action to remove you from said office.

Neither the House or Senate acting alone can change policy, no matter which party controls said chamber.  Only both, acting in concert, can do so.  This is intentional in the design of our Republic; policy changes of significant importance to society are described in our laws, and it is both wildly unreasonable and destructive to civil order to change them on a whim when one person wins or loses an office, no matter the office.

The Senate's Schumer led his caucus to toss the entire thing as "unconstitutional" on a part-line vote.  Big shock, right?

When you boil it down essentially everything wrong with this nation comes down to this same issue: Various politicians and paid employees of the government simply ignore any law they disagree with either in its entirety or as applies to some favored group while using it as a cudgel against anyone they dislike.  Our national foundation rests on that never being tolerated by anyone, anywhere and for any reason.

I fully understand that these policy matters have serious and vehemently-expressed opinions on all sides.  That's a good thing: Freedom of expression is in fact also a foundation of America.

But no public official is empowered to take that disagreement and turn it into a malicious abuse of existing law whether by intentional omission or weaponization against disfavored persons or those who hold a different point of view.  Down that road lies a line that cannot be foreseen in advance in that the people may, at some point, determine that the strictures of polite society no longer apply to them by that very example set by our officials.

You do not want this; it is precisely through that road that essentially every civil conflict and social destruction has occurred and if you believe you'll be immune to it if it happens, no matter how wealthy or poor you might be, you're wrong.