The Democrats have achieved their goal. They have impeached the president. Never mind that they found no crime. But that didn’t stop Speaker Pelosi and her majority from proceeding. They haven’t yet gotten over Hilary’s loss in the 2016 election, a contest that Mrs. Clinton expected to win. Equally, they inwardly bristle at their inability to seize a majority in the U.S. Senate.
Meanwhile, anyone who can count knows that the two-thirds hurdle established by the Constitution for convicting the president in the Senate trial will not be achieved. Democrat conduct during the entire process smells of foul play. But something else emits even worse. It’s Democrats repeatedly relying on their phony reverence to “the Constitution.” If the Democrats had to pay a nickel for every time they pointed to “the Constitution” during this farce, they’d put a dent in the national debt. James Madison, rightly named “the Father of the Constitution” is surely flipping in his grave.
Yes, if the need to do so arises, the Constitution empowers Congress to impeach and remove a “President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States.” But that’s not the only clause in the venerable document, a point that has to made because most Democrats and more than a few Republicans pay no attention to the rest of the document they have sworn a solemn oath to honor. What they ignore follows.
The Constitution’s very first sentence mandates that all law-making powers shall be vested in Congress. That absolutely clear restriction gets trashed every time a president creates a law with an Executive Order. No cries from Congress can be heard when this unconstitutional process is employed.
The Constitution says that Congress alone shall have power to declare war. The last declaration of war occurred in 1941, and our forces won that enormous conflict. Wars since then, in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan, have been fought without the required declaration of war by Congress. Each ended either in stalemate or defeat at great cost in lives and treasure. But the supposed defenders of the Constitution went along and said nothing while they ignored the oath they had sworn.
The Constitution also grants to Congress the power to coin money, a power that does not include the printing of money. Nor does the Constitution grant the federal government power to bar the coining of money by private citizens and banks. And no one can find authorization for the billions of foreign aid dollars extracted from the American people.
In fact, the only powers the federal government may constitutionally exercise are those few powers that are enumerated in the Constitution. All other powers, as the 10th Amendment explicitly states, are reserved to the states or the people. But this limitation on federal power has not stopped the U.S. government’s uncostitutional overreach in such areas as education, healthcare, and housing.
Yet where legitimate authority is granted to the federal government by the Constitution, the government regularly ignores its responsibility. An instance of this deficiency is easily seen in the requirement “to protect each of them [the States] against invasion.” As many as 20 million have entered our country illegally, and this invasion has not properly been halted by the federal government. Rather, Democrat leadership has made illegal entry easier and even soaked the American people to pay provide benefits for the invaders. Nor has the federal government met its responsibility to stop states from entering into “any Agreement or Pact” with another state. The misguided Compact of the States seeking to add amendments or even create a new constitution has not been shown to be in violation of the existing Constitution.
More evidence showing that congressional leaders are failing to obey the Constitution can be shown. But our intention here is to show the glaring hypocrisy practiced by congressional leaders who claim to be defending the Constitution by impeaching the president. The case against President Trump amounts to no case at all, and there no secret about that. Meanwhile, disobedience to the Constitution or refusal to enforce action expected from those who claim to be its champions is easy to show.
Hypocrisy is winning. The Constitution is being trashed. And the American people are losing their freedom. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and their toadies need to be told that there’s a lot more to the Constitution than the power to impeach.
John F. McManus is president emeritus of The John Birch Society.
