Charles T. Canady Quotes
Impeachment must not be a raw exercise of political power in which the House impeaches whoever it wishes for any reason it deems sufficient. Indeed, it is the solemn duty of all of the members of the House in any impeachment case to exercise their judgment faithfully within the confines established by our Constitution.
Canady, Charles T. "Articles of Impeachment Against William Jefferson Clinton." Congressional Record, vol. 144, 18 Dec. 1998, p. H11792.
The debate was about the unlimited pardon power of the President. Madison argued that the check was the impeachment power. However, Presidents had tended to make large numbers of pardons just before they leave office so the impeachment power works only as a check for the beginning and middle part of their term.
This was America’s first Presidential impeachment which occurred just a few years after America’s greatest crisis—the Civil War. It was handled in an orderly, serious manner following the law throughout.
Weyrich and many other extreme religious conservatives are often loose with legal and political facts. Actually President Clinton was impeached by the Republican Controlled House of Representatives, but was acquitted by the Senate which decided that he was not guilty of what his political enemies had accused him of or those things were not of sufficient import to warrant impeachment. What Weyrich probably meant was that if there had been a moral majority in America, Clinton would have been convicted and removed from office. Ironically, the Republican Speaker of the House which impeached Clinton had been Newt Gingrich, who abandoned his first wife and was having an affair with a staff member. Livingston who was then elected speaker of the House also was committing adultery as were many in the group who found Clinton morally wanting for his sexual activity with am intern and his attempted coverup. They too, tried to cover up their scandalous behavior.
The convention turned down the constitution and would not ratify it until the Bill of Rights was passed later.
Parliament had developed a formal mechanism of removing officials in extreme circumstances. It was borrowed for the U. S. Constitution. See {584256}.
In a celebrated case involving the right of the U. S. House of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee to "expose" someone as a Communist, Mr. Justice Brennan wrote:
This statement was an extension of the famous quotation of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. {603715}.
Charles Terrance Canady is an American attorney and judge serving on the Supreme Court of Florida since 2008, and has been its chief justice since July 1, 2018. He previously served a two-year term as chief justice from 2010 to 2012.
