Since dealing with the criminal takeover of our government will require resolving several constitutional crises in parallel, it occurred to me over the weekend that perhaps its time to invent a constitutional alternative to impeachment — annulment.
The Roman Catholic church has long distinguished annulment of a marriage from divorce. What if we make the same distinction for our government?
There is credible evidence of a widespread criminal conspiracy to illegally manipulate the 2016 election and resulting government. The evidence shows more than just “collusion” with the government of Mr. Putin — the unfolding evidence shows long-term and pervasive ties between organized crime and the Trump family. These ties expanded to include key players in the campaign and subsequent government.
Even if Mr. Trump himself is impeached and removed from office, he is by no means the only participant. Do we also impeach Mike Pence? There is ample evidence that Mr. Pence was “hip-deep in the Russia scandal”.
I suggest that it’s time to annul the 2016 election, remove the participants from office (including the entire current cabinet), revert the Supreme Court appointments, and start over.
Switching Cabinets and other political appointees would happen with a new President anyway, but the electors met and cast their ballots (Don’t forget that is the only election the Constitution actually recognizes.) and Trump/Pence got enough of those votes. Judges were nominated and confirmed by a likewise duly elected Senate and so long as they were not in on the conspiracy themselves they are legitimate. The Church has procedures for nullifying a marriage written into Canon Law. The Constitution contains no such procedure for nullifying an election.
I’m being mostly facetious.
The church didn’t have those procedures until it needed them. Canon law has evolved, and wasn’t written in stone and handed down from the heavens. The sources I found suggest that the process was codified in canon law around 1100-1200.
So far as I know, this is the first time in history that an American election has been manipulated by a foreign power. Your cite of the electoral college is unresponsive — in most (perhaps all!) states, the electors are required by law to cast their ballots according to the popular vote in their state. It is becoming clear that Russia and/or international organized crime manipulated that popular vote.
I agree that the Constitution contains no procedure for nullifying an election, that’s the tiny bit of seriousness in my thread-starter.
It needs one.
Yes. We also impeach Mike Pence if he was part of a criminal conspiracy.
Indeed. Pretty much the entire GOP leadership was in Moscow kissing Mr. Putin’s hand last Independence Day. THAT disgusting show left me wondering what Kompromat the Russians have on those figures.