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Constitution Minute
March 5, 2017 It’s really funny to see the resisters trot out the Constitution when they’ve studiously ignored it the last eight years. Last week, I told you how they want to impeach Donald Trump for high Crimes and Misdemeanors under the Constitution. If you thought that was far-fetched, get a load of how they want him removed under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment for being unfit for office. The 25th Amendment deals primarily with presidential succession under unusual circumstances. It passed through Congress in 1965 and was ratified in the states two years later. The 25th Amendment has provided plot-lines for a number of books and movies over the years, including the TV series ‘24’ and a movie entitled ‘The President’s Plane is Missing’. George W. Bush used Section 3 of the Amendment to temporarily transfer power to Dick Cheney during two medical operations. Interestingly, Ronald Reagan did not use Section 3 after the assassination attempt, and there was some criticism about that. Section 4 of the Amendment allows the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet to declare to Congress that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office. If the President contests the declaration, the President stays in office unless the declarers dispute the matter further. In that event, the issue gets decided by Congress, where it takes a two-thirds majority vote of both Houses to remove the President. If the President is voted out, the Vice-President takes over as Acting President. Resisters are on social media saying President Trump is a mental case and should be removed under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. There have been some articles to the same effect. Incidentally, but coming from the same impulse, somebody in Congress wants to introduce a bill requiring a psychiatrist to be at the White House all the time. All of this far-fetched because Mike Pence is never going to invoke the 25th Amendment against Trump, the cabinet is never going to agree to go along with it, and two-thirds in Congress are never going to vote Trump out. Why? Because the resisters are light-years away from being able to show that Trump is unable to discharge his duties as President. Like I said, pretty funny to watch the resisters cite the Constitution on a whim and quote the Declaration of Independence that it’s the right of the people to change the government. Did they care about our founding documents when they were ramming Obamacare down our throats? To quote a certain former Speaker of the House when she was violating her oath and dismissing the Constitution out of hand – “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?” Links Wikipedia page on the 25th Amendment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution United States presidential line of succession in fiction – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession_in_fiction TV series ‘24’ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Palmer_(24_character) Articles calling for Trump’s removal under the 25th Amendment: - http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/news/local/u-s-constitutional-amendments-ratified-over-the-years-in-february/article_196d0f60-f9e6-11e6-af17-371a597cc37f.html - http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-19/democrats-go-there-invoke-25th-amendment-unless-trump-gets-grip?page=8 Comments are closed.
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August 2023
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