Thirty-Three Years Later: A Statement on the Articles of Impeachment
Statement on the Articles of Impeachment delivered July 25, 1974, House Judiciary Committee by Congresswoman Barbara Jordan:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I join my colleague Mr. Rangel in thanking you for giving the junior members of this committee the glorious opportunity of sharing the pain of this inquiry. Mr. Chairman, you are a strong man, and it has not been easy but we have tried as best we can to give you as much assistance as possible.
Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: “We, the people.” It’s a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in “We, the people.”
Today I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.
“Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves?” “The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men.” And that’s what we’re talking about. In other words, [the jurisdiction comes] from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn’t say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive. The division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judgers — and the judges the same person.
We know the nature of impeachment. We’ve been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to “bridle” the executive if he engages in excesses. “It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men.” The framers confided in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive.
The nature of impeachment: a narrowly channeled exception to the separation-of-powers maxim. The Federal Convention of 1787 said that. It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors and discounted and opposed the term “maladministration.” “It is to be used only for great misdemeanors,” so it was said in the North Carolina ratification convention. And in the Virginia ratification convention: “We do not trust our liberty to a particular branch. We need one branch to check the other.”
“No one need be afraid” — the North Carolina ratification convention — “No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity.” “Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community,” said Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, number 65. “We divide into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.” I do not mean political parties in that sense.
The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation behind impeachment; but impeachment must proceed within the confines of the constitutional term “high crime[s] and misdemeanors.” Of the impeachment process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that “Nothing short of the grossest offenses against the plain law of the land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great as to overgrow party interest may secure a conviction; but nothing else can.”
Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot to do: Appropriations, Tax Reform, Health Insurance, Campaign Finance Reform, Housing, Environmental Protection, Energy Sufficiency, Mass Transportation. Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems. So today we are not being petty. We are trying to be big, because the task we have before us is a big one.
This morning, in a discussion of the evidence, we were told that the evidence which purports to support the allegations of misuse of the CIA by the President is thin. We’re told that that evidence is insufficient. What that recital of the evidence this morning did not include is what the President did know on June the 23rd, 1972.
The President did know that it was Republican money, that it was money from the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which was found in the possession of one of the burglars arrested on June the 17th. What the President did know on the 23rd of June was the prior activities of E. Howard Hunt, which included his participation in the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, which included Howard Hunt’s participation in the Dita Beard ITT affair, which included Howard Hunt’s fabrication of cables designed to discredit the Kennedy Administration.
We were further cautioned today that perhaps these proceedings ought to be delayed because certainly there would be new evidence forthcoming from the President of the United States. There has not even been an obfuscated indication that this committee would receive any additional materials from the President. The committee subpoena is outstanding, and if the President wants to supply that material, the committee sits here. The fact is that on yesterday, the American people waited with great anxiety for eight hours, not knowing whether their President would obey an order of the Supreme Court of the United States.
At this point, I would like to juxtapose a few of the impeachment criteria with some of the actions the President has engaged in. Impeachment criteria: James Madison, from the Virginia ratification convention. “If the President be connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him, he may be impeached.”
We have heard time and time again that the evidence reflects the payment to defendants money. The President had knowledge that these funds were being paid and these were funds collected for the 1972 presidential campaign. We know that the President met with Mr. Henry Petersen 27 times to discuss matters related to Watergate, and immediately thereafter met with the very persons who were implicated in the information Mr. Petersen was receiving. The words are: “If the President is connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter that person, he may be impeached.”
Justice Story: “Impeachment” is attended — “is intended for occasional and extraordinary cases where a superior power acting for the whole people is put into operation to protect their rights and rescue their liberties from violations.” We know about the Huston plan. We know about the break-in of the psychiatrist’s office. We know that there was absolute complete direction on September 3rd when the President indicated that a surreptitious entry had been made in Dr. Fielding’s office, after having met with Mr. Ehrlichman and Mr. Young. “Protect their rights.” “Rescue their liberties from violation.”
The Carolina ratification convention impeachment criteria: those are impeachable “who behave amiss or betray their public trust.” Beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in and continuing to the present time, the President has engaged in a series of public statements and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by government prosecutors. Moreover, the President has made public announcements and assertions bearing on the Watergate case, which the evidence will show he knew to be false. These assertions, false assertions, impeachable, those who misbehave. Those who “behave amiss or betray the public trust.”
James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: “A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.” The Constitution charges the President with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise a federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice. “A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.”
If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder.
Has the President committed offenses, and planned, and directed, and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the Constitution will not tolerate? That’s the question. We know that. We know the question. We should now forthwith proceed to answer the question. It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.
I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.
###
This historical statement was kindly submitted by Phyllis Stenerson.
“No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity.”
That was 1974. Today, I am afraid.
“My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.”
YES!
She was one of our greatest…
The ineffectual Pelosicrats have the House hobbled.
When duty was requisite, they refused to act.
Can we change the name to Chairman John Conyers and the date to 2007? That might be a good starting point.
Speaking strictly as a Native American.
When has this Nation ever followed the dictates of it’s Constitution? It is clearly a “document of convenience” to be used for whatever purposes the power brokers have in mind—. It only becomes a “sacred document” when THEIR rights fall under it’s authority.
Some things never change.
Yellow Horse
Rangel, drug warrior and DLC demagogue. Kind of hurts her cred.
I’ve started ‘bugging’ my congressional REp on this issue.
I am phrasing it ” Just because Pelosi is not following the wishes of her San Francisco constituency on impeachment does not mean that you should do the same. Support Impeachment! Let’s have a trial about the conduct of the presidency and vice-presidency! Let’s see if the Constitution is being followed”
I was in Washington D.C. at the time of the hearings, and watched many hours of it on television. Barbara Jordan’s comments were on target then, and would be most appropriate for this currentirresponsible, arrogant, dangerous administration.
I would love to know if there is a tape of her speech around somewhere. She was without doubt one of the finest speakers I have ever heard.
I see that I can forward this article. Will someone tell me how I can most efficiently forward it to Speaker Pelosi and the other Democrats in the House and Senate who are declining to move forward on impeachment?
It seems obvious to me that no legislation grounded in progressive ideals is going to get past the President’s veto. So, what do the Democrats who call themselves progressive have to lose?
Great comment, Yellow Horse. You are absolutely correct. Generalizing even further, the law only applies to those out of power. The Bush Administration and also the impeachment of Clinton demonstrate this in a spectacular display.
Clinton was impeached because the Democrats lost control of Congress. As soon as Republicans took control, they searched desperately for any possible pretext for impeachment. Whitewater and all that. Congress did nothing but go after Clinton for years. Finally, Henry Hyde, an adulterer, stood up and spoke solemnly about the “rule of law.”
Now, the same men who impeached Clinton for lying about a blow job have no problem with Bush’s defrauding the public into illegal war, the suspension of habeus corpus, torture, illegal wiretapping of citizens, criminal neglect in New Orleans — blah blah, you know the list.
One nice and clean explanation for this is what you have proposed — the Constitution and the entire system of law it spawned is an instrument to be applied to those that are out of power, out of favor. Those at the helm will always do as they please and answer to no authority, no law.
I’m sure countless examples could be rattled off, not least of which would include the treatment of native americans by “Christians.”
In Western civilization, those without power or losing power are lamb to the slaughter. It’s a savage business.
Martha, here are some sites for you to email.
Constituents:
http://speaker.house.gov/contact/ or via this email address: AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
Non-Constituents can contact Nancy Pelosi via her regular U.S. Representative website: www.house.gov/pelosi/ or via this email address: sf.nancy@mail.house.gov.
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov
Also email your Representatives:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/73″
Yellow Horse: Rights of Women and Black Americans and other disfranchised groups were eventually increased only by confrontation and overt struggle, including measures within the framework of the system, in the 20th Century. Native Americans must also speak up and use political counterbalance with the Rich Ruling Fraternities in the same way, in these times, and ask for help from other groups have have fought similar battles.
Cynical resignation will accomplish nothing. Study how other oppressed segments of society have succeeded, and work with those methods…. and stop using the old methods that don’t work.
The Constitution was originally intended to include people of all races and women; Native American languages were proposed as the national language of the new United States; but the Rich Ruling Fraternities maintained the conservative order over and over, until pressured to change.
Blacks, Hispanics, Women, Homosexuals, Native Americans, still have more rights to claim before true equality of opportunity from childhood onward is guaranteed by law…. and those rights will not just be handed over by the bullies of the Ruling Fraternities until they are pressured to relinquish some of their excessive privileges and power by some of the methods that have worked in the past.
Don’t Give Up.
“A President is Impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.”, Rep.Jordan directly quoted James Madison from the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The Woman was a Peace Warrior/Patriot the likes of which we sorely need today. Our current Prez called the Constitution,”….just a goddamned piece of paper.” If that is not a Direct Attempt to Subvert the Constitution I’ll kiss Cheney’s ass (shudder!). To all those idiot Dumbocrats(Ms.Pelosi & Co.) who think it is a good Strategy to just Step Aside and let the Repiglicans hang themselves for the next Election - THE BLOOD OF AMERICANS IS DRIPPING FROM YOUR FINGERS AS WE TREAD WATER.
Martha and santafebearclaw,
Oops! That’s backwards. Should be …
Non-Constituents:
http://speaker.house.gov/contact/ or via this email address: AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
Constituents can contact Nancy Pelosi via her regular U.S. Representative website: www.house.gov/pelosi/ or via this email address: sf.nancy@mail.house.gov.
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov
Also email your Representatives:
www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/73
Thanks!
Barbara Jordan’s speech at the 1976 Democratic convention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhAAha-UQdk
In thirty three years everything in the US has turned to shit.
Sure glad I don’t live there anymore.
yellowhorse
absolutely -
barbara jordan was a mesmerizing and pwoerful woman, but her faith in the so-called constitution was mis-placed -
the trend of late to behave as if the horrors of imperialism are all fresh and new is somewhat nauseating - what people reallymean is that they likeit better when the dirty work of empire happend farther from their backyards - like a t washita 1858, or wounded knee 1893, or the misery of the modoc under captain jack, or any of the africcan nations or the latin american nations or the asian nations that got all the US aid they needed as long as they were ruled by fascist coca-cola loving shitheels.
It shouldn’t matter that the Republicans are expected to block conviction in the Senate. The case for impeachment of both Bush and Cheney is overwhelming and includes war crimes and crimes against humanity under our own laws. The trial(s) would call forth evidence that could no longer be blocked. If the Republicans choose to hang themselves before the nation and the world in open court that’s up to them. What it would do is clear the air and prove who has done and is doing what. That might just be enough to empower the citizenry to take back our nation. Either that or there would no longer be a question about democracy’s status.
urthsong,
The Democrats are letting the Republicans hang themselves. The dam for Gonzales just broke, Miers and Bolten are being held in contempt of Congress. Everyone knows these people are incompetent, bumbling fools who are breaking the law. Look at the segments of Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown.” All of the evidence the Democrats need is there for IMPEACHMENT at the VERY LEAST! All of this stuff needs to come out in the wash. And yet there is another surprise coming. We all have heard about the story of Pat Tillman’s death. Well, the press somehow obtained a copy of the conversation among the defense attorneys for the military high-fiving each other because “we pulled off a lie on the public.” Also, the autopsy of Tillman showed that two bullets were fired from point-blank range instead of from long distnace. The evidence shows Tillman WAS MURDERED and it WAS NOT FRIENDLY FIRE! This story should be coming out in the media within the next day or two.
RESTORE DEMOCRACY:YELLOW HORSE and other Indigenous people do not need ANYBODY to teach/preach how to overcome OPPRESSION-This land was stolen from them w/lies,deceit,TREATIES,disease and the most hideous 500yr GENOCIDAL CAMPAIGN in the history of mankind.The EUROTRASH easily beat Hitler’s Record,who had a mere decade to achieve what most people smuggly consider the CHAMPION of GENOCIDE-Hitler modeled his Campaign by using our Conquest of the Americas-LOOK IT UP.Start w/the TOTAL EXTERMINATION of 2,000,000 TAINO INDIANS by CHRIS COLUMBUS&Co.
EZE:What the hell does Rangel have to do w/Ms.Jordan’s CREDIBILITY?
YELLOW HORSE:You speak well for ALL Native Peoples.I humbly ask what is your Nation?That is the main thing that most NonIndian People don’t understand-HOW WE MADE TREATIES W/SOVEREIGN NATIONS AND DID NOT ABIDE BY A SINGLE ONE.Your people will PREVAIL.I have no doubt that as we destroy all that there is before us,in the END we will turn to Indigenous Peoples here and around the world begging for INFORMATION ON HOW TO SURVIVE!Not everyone is going to make the Cut,Folks.
urthsong,
I stand corrected. They think the three bulletholes in his forehead were from an M-16 assault rifle less than 10 yards away.
Impeach Bush etal???? It would not help. The replacments are already picked…..
http://www.goodnewsaboutgod.com/studies/political/one_world_government/impeach_bush.htm
Since the constitution is now irrelevant, articles of impeachment would also be. No “legal” recourse is left to the American people. If you aren’t prepared to fight, be prepared to bow to your masters.
relayer@q.com
Well put SOUNDCHASER - YELLOWHORSE may be feeling truly EQUAL w/the REST OF US at this moment.This Administration has INCINERATED the BILL of RIGHTS.
How can it be that this discussion seems absurd? What assumptions am I making?
I’d like to see some more debate. For an example, In your minds, what are Pelosi’s reasons for not pursuing impeachment? And how do you counter her arguments?
I agree the president mislead the country and should be held accountable. But, we need to look at the larger picture. Instead of providing reasons for an impeachment maybe counterarguments would be better strategically.
Thank you, Ma’am.
Please infest Ms. Pelosi’s dreams so that she may better understand the law.
Cheney/Bush have nullified the Constitution, and their full dictatorship awaits the next terrorist attack, probably in August next month when Congress will be on summer break. In my opinion, we’re all toast.
moonraven July 26th, 2007 6:36 pm
“In thirty three years everything in the US has turned to shit.”
That’s because our corrupt government continues to “bail-out” the irresponsible dirtbags on Wall Street who have turned it into shit. The shovels keep getting bigger along with taxpayer debt, otherwise, nothing has changed.
I’m with Barbara Jordan on the Consitution. The problem isn’t misplaced faith in this brilliant document, it is with the people who refuse to uphold it. It has occurred to me that the Clinton impeachment, which made a mockery of the Constitution’s provision for it, in effect innoculated the GOP against exactly the current situation–a legitimate cause for impeachment which can nowbe too easily be labelled partisan “payback”, “politcal posturing” , polarizing, etc. However, Pelosi et al should not let this deter them.
domhan July 27th, 2007 6:06 am
“I’d like to see some more debate. For an example, In your minds, what are Pelosi’s reasons for not pursuing impeachment?”
Simple. The Demopublicans are naïve to imagine there will be one of theirs in the White House after 08. They are salivating over the thought of taking office with the same stolen powers that Bush has set precedent for. If Bush is impeached, they won’t be able to claim those powers. What they fail to realize is that, odds are, there won’t be any election in 08. Or anytime soon.
relayer@q.com
Wrong, Native Americans do not feel in equal conditions with you people just because the constitution of the US has been declared obsolete by Speedy Gonzalez.
There should have been no US to have a constitution in the first place.
You haven’t asked this Native American for her nation, but it’s the Mohawk.
MOONRAVEN:I would have been glad to inquire about your Heritage but this is the 1st time I have heard/read you make reference to it. And I do so w/respect. My comment was one of speculation as to Indigenous Peoples quietly laughing at Whiteman bemoaning the loss of Constitutional Rights. This speculation is derived from communicating w/Red Friends of Lakota/KiowaApache/Apache/Comanche and Cherokee Nations. I do not in anyway lay claim to being a spokesperson for them, you, YELLOWHORSE or any other American Indian Nation or Individual. MITAKEYU OYASIN KOLA (WE ARE ALL RELATED FRIEND-Lakota)
Russell Means was asked if he felt American Indians were benefitting from progress of Civil Rights. Russell said,”Fuck Civil Rights - I want my PROPERTY RIGHTS!” Gawd, I love that man like a Brother.
A serious question: If the administration of Chimpy and Snarly intends to “cancel” the ‘08 elections by whatever means is at their disposal….it scares me think of what the “whatever means” could be. Could one of you learned CD contributors (a genuine compliment) make an educated guess/stab as to what this could possibly be? Are there enough “Guard” units still stateside to support the Bushista manifesto? Remembering Kent State, I know “indoctrinated” young men can/did (will?) shoot their own! A veteran of the 82nd Airborne I know about the indoctrination schitt…