Latest / Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast / DDH - High Crimes or High Politics?
Transcript
- 0:00History is strange, it's alien, and it won't give us what we
- 0:04would like to have. Thanks for joining us here on
- 0:11Bill Mick live. Dave Bowman with us as he has
- 0:14been all morning and in our 8:00 hour of Tuesdays, he brings us
- 0:17Dave Does History coming up. Since every federal District
- 0:23Court judge in the country who gets a chance, it seems, is
- 0:26taking a shot at administration policy and trying to overturn
- 0:29it. Dave thought he would hit us up
- 0:31with judicial impeachment in this edition of Dave Does
- 0:35History. What's happening with all this,
- 0:37Dave? What are you seeing here?
- 0:40Well, it's it's an interesting topic.
- 0:44I asked Bill the question before the show how many justices, how
- 0:47many judges have been impeached in the history of the United
- 0:51States? And your guess, as I recall, was
- 0:545. Yeah.
- 0:56That was I figured it would be a low number.
- 0:58Which on a cosmic see, it is a low number.
- 1:00It's a little bit higher than that.
- 1:02It's actually 15 justices, they're judges, sorry, that have
- 1:05been impeached in the history of the United States, only one of
- 1:08which was a Supreme Court Justice, by the way, were lower
- 1:13Court justices. Of those 15 that were impeached,
- 1:1711 were either removed from office, removed from the bench,
- 1:23or elected to resign rather than face impeachment.
- 1:27So 15 times out of how many judges have we had in the
- 1:33history of the United States? You know, it's interesting.
- 1:35That nobody. Actually knows the answer to
- 1:37that. Today there are 890 federal
- 1:42judgeships. So if you just went on that #15
- 1:46out of that would be just a little over 1% of the judges
- 1:51have been impeached. It's not an accurate number
- 1:55because we've obviously had 250 years worth of judges, but you
- 1:58get the idea. It's not very many.
- 2:01It's a very. Unusual occurrence, yeah.
- 2:03It's a highly unusual occurrence, and yet it does
- 2:06happen. And so, as we heard last week,
- 2:11there are calls for impeaching judges.
- 2:14Now who are, what's the word for it?
- 2:17Oh yeah, interfering with Trump's agenda.
- 2:21Now, in fairness, I have not found where Trump actually said
- 2:25we need to impeach them. I have found where others have
- 2:27said so when we hear that. 1. Congressman has filed an act of
- 2:31impeachment. Whether it goes anywhere or not,
- 2:33who knows? And it.
- 2:34Won't it is. Not the tool for removing a
- 2:38rogue. Judge if if you're going to
- 2:41remove them, that's the. Tool to use.
- 2:43If you're going to, yes. But the problem is that
- 2:47impeachment is a political action, not a criminal
- 2:51proceedings. True.
- 2:53So and so is appointing them by the way.
- 2:56Right. So while some of these judges
- 2:58were impeached for what might be considered criminal acts, they
- 3:02were not charged with those criminal acts by Congress.
- 3:05They can only be removed from the judgeship.
- 3:07They could not be convicted of that particular act.
- 3:10I don't. Know that there's any criminal
- 3:11act alleged here other than extending the power beyond that
- 3:16that their particular district holds and trying to run the
- 3:20executive branch of government when they're not part of that.
- 3:24Well, there is that then. Keep in mind that impeachments
- 3:27could be, well, literally. I don't like the color of the
- 3:32robe he wears, which is kind of weird.
- 3:35Yeah. We think about impeachments.
- 3:36Most of us think of Presidents Sandra Johnson, Richard Nixon,
- 3:40Bill Clinton and, of course, Trump.
- 3:41But they do apply to other offices as well, particularly
- 3:47judges and an entire history. One Supreme Court Justice, one
- 3:52an associate justice, was impeached by the Congress of the
- 3:56United States. What do you think?
- 3:59If you had to just guess, I'll tell you that it was in 18 O 4.
- 4:03Anybody want to take a wild guess over what it was?
- 4:05Over we've talked. A lot about slavery.
- 4:08Slavery. No.
- 4:10This is over Marbury versus Madison.
- 4:13It's a fall out of that election of 1800 between Jefferson and
- 4:16Adams. You know, the most contentious
- 4:18election in our history Where? People.
- 4:22Got mad at each other and eventually Marbury versus
- 4:24Madison. The Supreme Court decided that
- 4:26it was the arbiter of what was constitutional.
- 4:30And believe me, the justice who's going to be impeached, he
- 4:34loves that ruling. He thinks that's the greatest
- 4:37ruling in the history of the nation.
- 4:38Of course, that point was only 17 years old, but he thinks this
- 4:42is fantastic. And by the way, his nickname is
- 4:46Old Bacon Face, and he is a federalist to the core.
- 4:52And of course, the new president and the new Congress are not.
- 4:58And we're back in 60 seconds, Dave.
- 5:00Does history on Bill Mick Live Back into the idea of judicial
- 5:04impeachment with Dave Bowman on Bill Mick Live.
- 5:06What are you thinking here, Dave?
- 5:08So impeachment exists because we needed a form of check and
- 5:13balance against particularly abuses by the executive branch.
- 5:18The the arguments over impeachment primarily focused on
- 5:21the presidential position. As as Franklin said, and I'm
- 5:26sure Steve would like this, how do you get rid of a bad
- 5:29president? Well, you can assassinate them.
- 5:33Or. You got to have some other
- 5:34mechanism. Well, that other mechanism they
- 5:36came up with was stolen straight out of England.
- 5:39And that, of course, was the idea of impeachment.
- 5:43Now, we limited impeachment compared to the English.
- 5:47The English were a little more broad in their way of it.
- 5:50But the problem is that when they wrote these things down.
- 5:57They wrote. Them in the language that they
- 5:59understood and to this day, if you were to say to somebody,
- 6:03what can you be impeached for? Well, high crimes and
- 6:06misdemeanors. OK, So what exactly is that?
- 6:15And you could have arguments for hours about that.
- 6:18In fact, if we opened up the phones early, we'd say, OK, what
- 6:20is a high crime and misdemeanor? What is to you might not be to
- 6:23someone else. By way of example, Bill, some of
- 6:26these high crimes and misdemeanors that were used
- 6:28against justices or judges. You ready?
- 6:31Mental instability. Intoxication on the bench.
- 6:37OK. Abuse of the contempt power.
- 6:41Is. Considered a high crime and
- 6:43misdemeanor. Here's one that actually is.
- 6:45You're ready. Waging war against the United
- 6:47States government. This guy joined the Confederacy.
- 6:50So yeah, that one. They removed the bench.
- 6:53Let's see. Intoxication on the bench.
- 6:57Contempt of power, Improper business relationships with
- 7:01litigants, abuse of power. You know, it's, it's very
- 7:06ambiguous as to what exactly this high crimes and
- 7:09misdemeanors. Offering around ethical
- 7:11concerns, though, right? Which would seem to be a
- 7:13reasonable thing to consider if you think somebody's unfit to be
- 7:17on the bench any longer. But again, these are just the
- 7:22charges. Are they necessarily?
- 7:26True. I mean, what exactly is, you
- 7:28know, abuse of the contempt of power?
- 7:31The one we're really going to look at today is charges of
- 7:34arbitrary and oppressive conduct, conduct of trials.
- 7:39What does that mean? Is that a high crime and
- 7:41misdemeanor? The framers debated this
- 7:44intensely. Madison and Hamilton both agreed
- 7:47it. Both discussed it in The
- 7:50Federalist Papers. But in the end, the framers
- 7:54would settle on a really delicate balance.
- 7:56Impeachment is available for. Treason, Bribery.
- 7:59Other hive. Crimes and misdemeanors, which
- 8:01makes sense. The House of Representatives
- 8:03would have the power to accuse and to impeach, to actually pass
- 8:08the articles of impeachment. But it would require the Senate
- 8:12to act as the judge and the jury.
- 8:16And it would require a 2/3 majority to convict, which is
- 8:20it's a very high standard. And this is what it's saying
- 8:23about impeaching this, these articles this week, you don't
- 8:27have 60 votes to convict anybody.
- 8:29So what exactly are you doing when you get right down to it
- 8:34and you know that you don't. The problem is, as Hamilton
- 8:37talked about in Federalist Papers 65, was that impeachment
- 8:41proceedings could be used to agitate the passions of the
- 8:44entire community. And in a way, that's what we're
- 8:47seeing. What's happening here.
- 8:48We're seeing this guy calling for impeachment, this
- 8:50congressman filing, he has no chance of actually getting this
- 8:55impeachment. So what is he actually doing
- 8:58other than agitating? Passions.
- 9:00What's that? It's a show trial to agitate
- 9:03folks. Yeah, absolutely.
- 9:04So is that really? What we want to be have
- 9:07happening Well, Once Upon a time, as all good stories start,
- 9:13the this this sort of took place 17 years after the founding of
- 9:17the country. We had a justice by the name of
- 9:18Samuel Chase, his associate justice.
- 9:21He was a Patriot Bill. He signed the Declaration of
- 9:24Independence. He had been.
- 9:27Part of the. The process of becoming a nation
- 9:30and he found himself as an associate justice on the bench,
- 9:34particularly when the ruling Marbury versus Madison, with
- 9:37which he agreed was mad. He thought this this ruling was
- 9:41fantastic. It gave the judiciary more
- 9:44power. It gave them more functionality
- 9:46as far as he was concerned. And because he was a Federalist
- 9:53in an era before there was this decorum that we think justices
- 9:58are supposed to have, he flaunted this ruling and he
- 10:03flaunted the fact that he was a Federalist and opposed to the
- 10:05Jefferson administration. And he made a point of pointing
- 10:08his fingers and going, you're wrong, Jefferson.
- 10:11You're wrong, Jefferson administration, and I'm going to
- 10:13oppose you at every opportunity that I can from the bench.
- 10:19And of course, Jefferson didn't like that.
- 10:22And so Congress impeached him upon charges of, as I said,
- 10:27arbitrary and oppressive conduct of trials.
- 10:33Well, if you tell a potential litigant in front of you, I'm
- 10:36going to do everything I can to you, you need to very least be
- 10:40knocked out of handling those cases.
- 10:42We're back with more. Stay with us.
- 10:43It's a take on history you won't find anywhere.
- 10:46Else. Dave does history on Bill Nick
- 10:49Live renewal by Anderson. Bringing you this hour with Dave
- 10:54Doug's history as we take a look at the idea of judicial
- 10:57impeachment, a pretty rare animal in the world of American
- 11:01politics. And Dave, we're talking about
- 11:03Samuel Chase, an associate justice of the Supreme Court who
- 11:06faced this thing. Let's get back into it.
- 11:08So in the early years of the Republic, keep in mind that
- 11:14judges were seen because they had this lifetime appointments.
- 11:18There was no direct electoral accountability.
- 11:22And so really for the first all more almost 100 years of our
- 11:27Republic, the only impeachment supplied were to judges because
- 11:33there was really no other way to deal with them.
- 11:35And so that it was actually believed for the longest time
- 11:38until Andrew Johnson's adventures, which perhaps we'll
- 11:42get into another day, that impeachment.
- 11:44Really only. Applied to judges, I mean, who
- 11:48else are you going to use it on the problem?
- 11:50With Samuel Chase of. Course is that.
- 11:54He is a federalist. He has federalist views that he
- 11:57is very outspoken about. He has federalist beliefs, not
- 12:02unlike some judges today who sit on benches and say, I have an
- 12:07opinion that this rule should be harsher, that these punishments
- 12:10should be more. Now the question you got to ask
- 12:13yourself, Bill, is does the judge have a First Amendment
- 12:15right? Can a judge have a political
- 12:18opinion? Absolutely.
- 12:20Is that a? Crime to share it.
- 12:23Is that a is that a crime? No.
- 12:27So when Chase starts doing these things, when he starts running
- 12:32his mouth and kind of getting into it with the Jefferson
- 12:37administration, sound familiar at all?
- 12:41And the, the reality is that the Jefferson administration is
- 12:45furious. But what do you do?
- 12:49I mean, the entire judiciary at that point, every judge on the
- 12:54judiciary from the Supreme Court all the way down was the
- 12:57federalist appointed by John Adams.
- 12:59He stacked the courts on his way out.
- 13:02So Jeffrey, then they just ruled the law unconstitutional in
- 13:07Marbury versus Madison Jefferson.
- 13:10Is that a really, I don't know, kind of a what do I do?
- 13:15How do I get rid of this guy? How do I stop this guy from
- 13:18doing these kinds of things? And of course, that's smacks.
- 13:23And we don't like to think of Thomas Jefferson this way, but
- 13:26it's smacks of politics rather than any actual crime.
- 13:33Is that kosher? I mean, is that the kind of
- 13:36thing that the president of the United States, who wrote the
- 13:38Declaration of Independence should be, Should be doing it?
- 13:42He views the court. I'm going to defend him and say
- 13:47yes, because you're talking about proper judicial conduct,
- 13:52you're not talking about criminal behaviour.
- 13:53Is it proper for a judge to do this?
- 13:55And if it's improper and he continues to do it, time to get
- 13:59him off. The tool we have to get him off
- 14:00the bench is impeachment. But you're basing that on your
- 14:05experience as the 20th and 21st century person.
- 14:10Did people feel the same way in in 18 O 5 about judges
- 14:15expressing political opinions? I'll.
- 14:17Do that they. Did not.
- 14:19Yet they did not. The problem Jefferson has with
- 14:23Marbury versus Madison is he doesn't see this as just a court
- 14:26ruler. He sees Marbury versus Madison
- 14:30as an absolute judicial coup. Those words sound familiar.
- 14:38Yeah, of. Course, it's Samuel Chase.
- 14:41Who really pushes this? Who really continues to openly
- 14:47criticize the administration? He attacks the repeal of the
- 14:51Judiciary Act of 1801. He presides over sedition trials
- 14:55in which he kind of acts more like prosecutor than jurist.
- 15:00In 1804, the Jefferson dominated House of Representatives draws
- 15:03up eight articles of impeachment accusing him of judicial
- 15:06misconduct, partisanship, bias and political trials,
- 15:11particularly those involving. The Alien and Sedition.
- 15:15Acts that sound familiar to anybody?
- 15:19These articles are going to go on trial in 1805, which will be
- 15:25overseen by the vice president. Anybody remember who that is,
- 15:29Aaron? Burr that was going Yeah.
- 15:33So Aaron Burr is on the prosecution side of this thing.
- 15:38And no, he's, he's right. He's.
- 15:42Presiding as the president of the Senate and the judge
- 15:44overseeing all the, of course, is the Chief Justice of the
- 15:48Supreme Court, who is John Marshall, the man who was the
- 15:53genius behind Marshall, You know, the Madison versus Marbury
- 15:58ruling. He's the guy that really legally
- 16:02noodled through all this stuff to decide that this was the
- 16:05case. The problem you have here, Bill,
- 16:09is you have a very fiery house which has just screamed about
- 16:14this judicial activism, this judicial interference, this
- 16:17judicial coup. And the house, as George
- 16:20Washington described it, was designed to be very heated, very
- 16:25hot, very rambunctious, whereas the.
- 16:30Senate is as. George Washington put it, It's
- 16:33the saucer for the cup of of tea or coffee.
- 16:37Now, this is an analogy that we don't really understand today.
- 16:41But in those days, you use the saucer to cool the coffee or the
- 16:47tea before you could drink it because it's too hot to drink
- 16:51like like at Starbucks or whatever.
- 16:54And so you let it cool in deliberation before you, before
- 16:59you consume it. And so while the House is gung
- 17:02ho on this, they want this guy impeached.
- 17:04They want this guy, you know, if they had their way, they would
- 17:07Steve him. But, you know, that may just not
- 17:11be, that may be just going too far.
- 17:15The Senate, however, has to consider all the elements of
- 17:18this. And the chief question you have
- 17:22here is, OK, this guy disagrees with the administration.
- 17:28There's no law that says he can't say that.
- 17:31There's no law that says how he's supposed to keep that out
- 17:36of his keep, you know, keep keep those words out of his mouth.
- 17:40And so are we putting this guy on trial because he's actually
- 17:44done something wrong, or are we putting this guy on trial
- 17:48because we politically disagree? If the Jefferson administration,
- 17:56which, you know, ran on the idea of getting rid of the Alien
- 17:59Sedition Act because he supposedly violated the First
- 18:02Amendment, if we really believe in what we say we ran on, how
- 18:08does that affect and impact this trial?
- 18:10Yes, the president's mad. We get it.
- 18:13But does the president being mad enough to say you got to get rid
- 18:16of that guy, justify getting rid of a justice?
- 18:23There's the these are the questions that are that are
- 18:26boiling around all this thing. And and you know.
- 18:28Chase isn't helping this thing because he's kind of, he's kind
- 18:32of rambunctious himself. As I said, he's very vocal, he's
- 18:35very obnoxious. He's very bacon based about the
- 18:40whole thing. That's a great nickname, by the
- 18:42way. It's got it.
- 18:44It conjures up some images in your head that that just, and at
- 18:49the end of the day, you've got to answer that question, do we
- 18:53really believe what we stably believe or are we just
- 18:56politically persecuting this guy because we disagree with him?
- 19:00Just because we disagree with someone?
- 19:03Is that a reason to get rid of them if they've committed, you
- 19:08know, there? Has to be no?
- 19:11Well, let's have a trial and see what the answer is.
- 19:14How's that? And we'll find out when we
- 19:17continue in moments right here with Dave does history on bill
- 19:20Mick live let's you in with calls on our next segment,
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- 19:31renewable by Henderson brings you this hour of the show.
- 19:33And don't forget the Florida round table this weekend.
- 19:36We're going to talk Florida homeowners insurance crisis and
- 19:40the legislative look at it from 2 state representatives, Monique
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- 19:53round table. Make sure you're here for that
- 19:55talking the idea of judicial impeachment with Dave Bowman,
- 19:58and Dave does. History so we.
- 20:00Had Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase with impeachment underway,
- 20:04Dave, and how did it play out? In 18 O five, they begin the
- 20:09trial and again, he's charged with eight articles, including
- 20:16judicial misconduct, partisanship, bias in political
- 20:20trials, and all of this is under his enforcement of the Alien and
- 20:26Sedition Act. Now, this goes to this speaks to
- 20:30something that we don't like to talk about though, which is that
- 20:33if you really believe what you say you believe, if you really
- 20:36believe that Tesla electric cars are going to save the world, why
- 20:39are you attacking them? If you really believe that the
- 20:42Alien and Sedition Act is unconstitutional, which you ran
- 20:46your whole campaign on, why didn't you repeal it, which the
- 20:52Jefferson administration did not do?
- 20:54They never repealed what they ran on, saying they were going
- 20:58to repeal it. And now you've got this judge
- 21:01who's conducting trials under this with people arrested and
- 21:04charged under this act. And instead of repealing the act
- 21:08and making it no longer a crime, they go after the judge to
- 21:12impeach him. It's certainly smacks of
- 21:16politics. I mean, it really does.
- 21:18And when you get to the trial in the Senate, as I said, the
- 21:23Senate has to consider some things number.
- 21:25One they consider. What real high crimes and
- 21:29misdemeanor are there? There's no treason here.
- 21:32There's no bribery. So what actual crime is there
- 21:36here that we can remove him from the bench for?
- 21:39He wasn't accused of crime. That they have to to use is is
- 21:43there a crime? Yeah, he was accused of being
- 21:46partisan, rude and overzealous. OK, bad judicial behavior.
- 21:51But is that, is that impeachable?
- 21:55The second problem is that if you remove him, what are you
- 22:00doing with the Supreme Court and the court system in general?
- 22:03You're basically telling them you are.
- 22:05You rule the way we want you to rule or we'll pull you off of
- 22:09there. You'll lose your job.
- 22:13And that creates a very slippery slope, doesn't it?
- 22:16Fantastic. If you if if the judiciary is
- 22:20under the impression that if we don't do exactly what the
- 22:23president and the executive wants us to do, that creates
- 22:28some major problems. The verdict in the trial?
- 22:32Even the separation of powers and that there are checks and
- 22:34balances to be had. There is that, but keep in mind
- 22:38that this separation of powers, this this belief, mistaken
- 22:43though it may be, that the Supreme Court is equal and Co
- 22:46equal in power and glory to the other.
- 22:48This is relatively new. This just came out of Marbury
- 22:50and Madison that the Supreme Court has the final say on
- 22:53whether something is constitutional or not.
- 22:56And that's the other problem Jefferson has if he tries to
- 22:59challenge the the constitutionality of the.
- 23:01Alien and Sedition Act. They're going to rule against
- 23:03him because they're all federalists and they're all in
- 23:05favor of it, right? It's it's a mess.
- 23:07So instead of just repealing it like they should have done, they
- 23:11go this route. But it's it's starting to really
- 23:14smack of politics. It's basically the Jefferson
- 23:18administration. And again, we don't like to
- 23:19think of Thomas Jefferson as well, but it's the Jefferson
- 23:22administration saying do what we want or else we'll find a.
- 23:27Way to? To get back at you, which again,
- 23:34you read the headlines today, what do you get?
- 23:39Chase is ultimately acquitted and it's not even close.
- 23:43It doesn't. There's only one article of the
- 23:47of the eight articles that actually gets even half the
- 23:50votes, it's none of them. None of them actually passed.
- 23:54They Chase is completely vindicated, completely acquitted
- 24:00and goes back to the bench for the rest of his term.
- 24:05The questions that it leaves us with, though, are are many Do we
- 24:12really want to be removing judges and justices for
- 24:15political reasons if this had succeeded?
- 24:19If they had. Convicted Samuel Chase.
- 24:23The general assumption is that John Marshall would have been
- 24:27next. They would have gone immediately
- 24:29into A to a impeachment of John Marshall, in which case the
- 24:35court system would have been essentially eviscerated and
- 24:39eventually just almost an afterthought, constitutional
- 24:44instead of what we know today. Would that have been better?
- 24:48Would that have been worse? Well, those are questions we'll
- 24:52be debating all the way to the end of time.
- 24:55You pick it up, take your call to 321-768-1240 when we
- 25:00continue. Dave does History in one minute
- 25:02on WMMB. Do us a favour.
- 25:04Take your presets on the top of the iHeartRadio app, set them to
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- 25:22where we are anytime you're ready.
- 25:24So Dave, this impeachment does not go the way the Jefferson
- 25:27White House wanted it to go. And what are we left with at
- 25:31this point then? Well, in a way, Jefferson wins
- 25:34the battle kind or loses the battle, Sorry, but he preserves
- 25:40the war I guess. Chase remains on the bench until
- 25:43he dies in 1811, but his trial kind of ensured that future
- 25:48justices would tread more carefully when blending politics
- 25:53with their judgments. At least until modern times, I
- 25:57guess he remains a cautionary tale.
- 26:00Impeachment is a very serious tool, but it's not a tool that
- 26:05should be used in politics. And unfortunately, I think every
- 26:11impeachment with the with the possible exception of Nixon, who
- 26:13was technically not impeached, although the articles passed the
- 26:16House, some of them did the House Judiciary.
- 26:21Most impeachments are political. Most impeachments are they're
- 26:27not for being drunk on the bench.
- 26:28They're not for taking bribes. They're not for, you know, being
- 26:32involved with Duis and tax evasion and that sort of thing
- 26:37most of you believe. What do you believe the recourse
- 26:40is if you have a judge who is conduct or justice or judge who
- 26:46is conducting himself inappropriately versus
- 26:49political? How about procedural?
- 26:51He's violating the rules of the court.
- 26:53He's violating judicial procedure.
- 26:55He is. It's overextending the authority
- 26:59of his office into areas where he should not be acting.
- 27:04The ultimate answer, Bill, is the 11th Amendment.
- 27:07The ultimate answer is Congress decides what the jurisdiction of
- 27:10the court is. And as we're going to see today
- 27:14with the, the court, with the Congress debating this, this act
- 27:19that they're, that they're talking about, which we we were
- 27:22talking about during the break, which is a complete word salad.
- 27:25But in essence, what it does is it limits what the court can do
- 27:29as far as injunctions go. The courts can no longer make
- 27:31national injunctions. They can only make an injunction
- 27:34that affects the actual person filing the case.
- 27:38The Congress has the right and the authority to limit that
- 27:42jurisdiction rather than going through this impeachment stuff,
- 27:46rather than going an impeachment, by the way, cannot
- 27:50pass. You do not have the votes to
- 27:52make it that you don't have 67 votes.
- 27:54It's it's not going to happen. So rather than doing all that,
- 27:59why not simply change the jurisdiction?
- 28:01Now they're going to run into problems with that too, as well
- 28:03with cloture and other things. But it certainly seems to me
- 28:10rather than feeding the fire of your persecuting judges for
- 28:13politics if they they disagreed with my political decision, you
- 28:19take the proper approach rather than simply trying to impeach
- 28:22someone because you don't like the ruling that they met.
- 28:28I can appreciate the stance. I still see impeachment as a
- 28:33tool, even though it would never pass it with Congress as it
- 28:37exists today. When you have these judges and,
- 28:42and they're actually Glenn Beck's going to talk about this
- 28:45in his program, which comes up after mine right here on WMNP
- 28:49about Congress looking to take act to restrict these District
- 28:53Court judges in issuing national or international as the case may
- 28:59be, injunctions that go beyond the jurisdiction of their court,
- 29:03that they, you know, those court districts are set up for those
- 29:07reasons and for those regions where they are.
- 29:09Well, that that's what I'm saying.
- 29:11That is the proper approach. The improper approach is to
- 29:15impeach because you don't like the rule.
- 29:18Congress has the authority and the ability to limit the court's
- 29:21jurisdiction. Take that approach now.
- 29:22You're going to have a political fight with that, but that fight
- 29:25will be in the Senate. And that's, that's the fight to
- 29:27be had. I I get that you're saying it,
- 29:29but if you have a judge that is constantly violating rules of
- 29:36procedure, rules of evidence, whatever it may be.
- 29:38Are they create? Contact from the bench, what
- 29:42impeachment exists for, for the judiciary if it's not that
- 29:45thing, right, but. You're assuming that they have
- 29:48done those things rather than showing me what happened.
- 29:52Over the last month and a. Half well, again, as I said the
- 29:55other day, are we absolutely certain that what these
- 29:59injunctions have said is wrong? How many of us have actually
- 30:04read them? I, I I am sure they're wrong,
- 30:07yes. On the basis of.
- 30:10My understanding of them. OK, but your understanding might
- 30:13not be. Wrong.
- 30:15Give me an idea what this is all about.
- 30:19I'm sorry I missed. That.
- 30:21From Asking Rock give me an idea what this is all about.
- 30:24About the trot, About the impeachment or the.
- 30:27No about the the the injunction. Well, the injunctions are issued
- 30:32nationwide, which has been again, of course, they've been
- 30:35doing that for a long. Time now we're.
- 30:37Saying that they shouldn't be done that way because they're
- 30:40interfering with the president's policy.
- 30:41It's also. Historically been done
- 30:43regionally, multiple courts or a Supreme Court has affirmed.
- 30:48Those things, but is But do we know that that can't be done?
- 30:53That's the. Question.
- 30:54And that's a. Question for the Supreme Court,
- 30:56which is the way we should be going?
- 31:00I'm not arguing that, but I'm saying there needs to be a
- 31:04mechanism for judicial malfeasance.
- 31:12Maybe. Maybe that's a good word.
- 31:14But those are political things, and they're not high crimes and
- 31:16misdemeanors. And ultimately, Bill, you don't
- 31:19have. The standard for removing a
- 31:21judge is the question does it have to be a high crime or
- 31:24misdemeanor? Is that what's stated there?
- 31:26That's what the Senate decided in 1805.
- 31:29That's what the Constitution says.
- 31:30Treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors.
- 31:33And that's for judges as well As for the other office.
- 31:38In that case, there is a bit of a problem.
- 31:40Yeah, I got you. Yep, and you don't have the
- 31:43votes. That would be so.
- 31:45What's it? What's it mean down the road
- 31:47here? I, I, I think it's going to be
- 31:51very interesting. It's going to come to the
- 31:52Supreme Court of the United States to decide whether that
- 31:55can be done or not. And the problem is you've got
- 31:58Amy Coma Barrett and John Roberts.
- 32:01So I wouldn't put your rigs in that basket, conservative.
- 32:04Yeah, I'm, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't do that either.
- 32:06That's going to do it for this edition of Bill Mclaw Renewal by
- 32:09Anderson brought you this hour. Dave Bowman brought you Dave.
- 32:13Does history link up to him on the show page today at
- 32:16billmick.com and tomorrow a wide open Wednesday.
- 32:20Where you going to take this? Wherever you like is what the
- 32:22day is about. And if you're not taking it
- 32:25somewhere, I may just sit here and be quiet for three hours to
- 32:27see what you guys have to say. I don't know.
- 32:29Dave Bowman, thank you. We'll see you next Tuesday, you
- 32:32know. Check out more stories from
- 32:37history@davedoeshistory.org.