unasked questions
If the vice-president isn't subject to the rules of the executive branch because the Constitution gives him a function in the legislature as president of the Senate, does the chief justice of the Supreme Court similarly escape the rules of the judicial branch because the Constitution gives him a role in the legislature as the presiding officer in a Senate impeachment trial of the president?
posted by Chris Bray @ 6:33 PM
6 Comments:
Glenn Reynolds spots the killer in all this. Apparently, if the VP is impeached in the H of R, Cheney presides over his own trial in the Senate because the Constitution stipulates that the Chief Justice takes the place of the VP as presiding officer in the Senate only in the case of an impeachment trial of the President!
Even more fun if he broke the tie.
He could recuse himself (ROFLMAO)....
You know, sometimes you can only applaud. It takes a certain kind of eye to look at the US constitution and see that kind of weak spot where no one else did. 45 other men resigned themselves to the political equivalent of Dante's Purgatory for four to eight years: they worked on their golf swing and caught up with their reading. But where they all saw a powerless sinecure, Dick Cheney saw an opportunity. He saw a hole that he could enlarge. That, my friends, is talent.
Your homework for the evening: read Robert Caro's "The Power Broker", and consider where some of the other weak spots might be, hiding in plain sight.
A tie wouldn't do it. It takes 2/3's of the Senate to convict. If they fall short of 67 to convict, he doesn't need to vote. If they get 67 or more to convict, he doesn't get to vote. Sally Quinn, btw, has a very interesting op-ed in the WaPo this morning that sees John Warner going to Bush to urge Cheney's stepping down for medical reasons late this summer and the President appointing Fred Thompson as his replacement.
The "weak spot" or "hole" is a guy named George. Lots of references in the political literature of the early republic to the ultimate uselessness of "parchment protections" without virtuous leaders. And, well, yeah.
And my thanks to Ralph to reminding me of something I should have known. Which sucks, because 67 is a whole lot harder.
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