Posted on 07/30/2014 11:32:05 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Wednesday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said President Barack Obama's lawless executive actions are not high crimes and misdemeanors worthy of impeachment.
"I see this as sort of a ridiculous gambit by the president and his political team to try and change the narrative, raise money, and turn out their base for an upcoming election that they feel is not going to go their way," Ryan said, according to the Wall Street Journal. "[Obama's executive actions do] not rise to the high crime and misdemeanor level."
However, as Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor and author of Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment, wrote in National Review, many politicians and pundits do not know what "high crimes and misdemeanors" actually are when it comes to impeachment.
"Contrary to some less than informed opinion, 'high crimes and misdemeanors' – the legal standard for impeachment – refers not to indictable criminal offenses but to profound breaches of the public trust by high-ranking officials," McCarthy wrote. "Once the standard is understood, it becomes easy to see that the president and his underlings have committed numerous, readily provable impeachable offenses. "
"Yet, even if a president commits a hundred high crimes and misdemeanors, impeachment is a non-starter unless the public is convinced that the president should be removed from power," he continued. "The real question is political: Are his lawlessness and unfitness so thoroughgoing that we can no longer trust him with the awesome power of the chief executive?"
Conservative scholar and talk radio host Mark Levin, who was the Chief of Staff to Ronald Reagan's Attorney General Ed Meese, also said that "a high crime and misdemeanor doesn't mean [Obama] goes out and robs a bank or knocks off a 7-Eleven...."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Sounds like he has been bought too...
Oh please Monsieur Ryan, go back to Wisconsin and get a real job!
I think of a real American like John Wayne and then I think of the ranking metrosexual from the 1st District in Wisconsin....
... and I can almost feel the big slurry of Boehner tears welling up in the eyes!
Please God, let us give some frickin shots of testosterone to these effete pretty boys in Congress. I can’t stand it anymore!
Wisconsin please take this prick back
He’s been a rhino from day one,
I don’t think Paul Ryan has recovered his Mojo yet after the 2012 disappointments. The process can be dispiriting. I would expect a year from now, that Pauls people will survey the typical gop voter and discover what we already know: there is not a great amount of voter passion around the country for Paul Ryan as a presidential candidate. We like and respect his accounting skills, but no longer expect much else.That would suit Paul fine anyway..I think he wants to be on a financing committee vs going through another fixed in advance horserace. Can’t say that I blame him. Gop is not great in supporting its leaders.
There was something about this guy that bothered me from the beginning. I think it was when he told us that, “We are going to give the people a choice” (a choice between Obama and Romney), when he was running for veep. He didn’t seem too worked up over what would happen if he lost and it seemed like he was already placing the blame on the electorate, as if he and his fellow pols had no responsibiity whatsoever.
We won't stop a lawless president.
We won't cut spending.
We won't freeze the national debt.
We have no serious plan to save - or replace - Social Security and Medicare.
We have no serious plan to stop ObamaCare.
We have no serious plan to stop the Border Invasion.
We have no serious opposition to Obama’s anti-Israel policy.
Why would anyone vote for us, except to possibly slow down our national suicide?
By the way - the economy grew 4% in the second quarter.
That's enough to guarantee that any GOP attacks on Obama’s economic policies will be met with yawns of indifference by the MSM and many voters.
You looking for an impeachable offense Paulie? Try this: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Now that’s impeachable because it’s a lie that advances a fraud and it’s a breech of the public trust.
He was only chosen for veep because he was young and in good physical shape. He was supposed to draw in the “young people” vote.
Oh reeeeelly?
So initiating an action that injures the public at large and blithely making himself to sole guarantor of that which is regularly unlawful not so is not a crime?
The President can manufacturer whatever law he merely deems, without origination in and by consent of the house is a freebie.
You are brilliant and obviously a closted homosexual.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Except your not wanting it to become public knowledge?
Got it.
Hey, maybe he can just start writing the budget from now on, go to war against nation states and other minor ambitions, so long as you don’t object.
Got it.
Though I had been given to think we are a constitutional republic.
Like France? Argentina? Or some other hapless, wreckless givernment immune nor constrained republic.
Nice job
I can understand the thinking that impeachment might backfire politically, as it did with Clinton, but I don’t agree that one should rule out a priori that if Obama were to trample the Constitution and the laws by enacting amnesty by executive fiat, that would not be impeachable.
That said, it's a bad idea unless there are 67 votes in the Senate.
Whether the President is impeachable and whether he should be impeached are separate questions.
Ryan obviously got the first question wrong. Zero's executive orders are an excellent cause on which to impeach and remove him. It's just that it isn't worth the trouble unless the removal can actually happen! For the first time in the history of the Republic!
Ryan understands the political order of battle well enough to realize that removal isn't going to happen. But he shouldn't let that political calculation cloud his answer to the first question.
"Henry, I don't care if you prove [the president] raped a woman and then stood up and shot her dead - you're not going to get 67 votes." Ted Stevens
That was the day Constitutional Checks and Balances in our three branches died.
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, President and Mrs. Ferdinand Marcos and LOTS of other leaders have found themselves fleeing the people. Anyone who says it cannot happen here is dreaming. Those folks, for the most part, were unarmed. We sure as hell are not.
Wow, words of wisdom from Paul, intervertant mistake, Ryan - what could possibly be wrong with that statement?
Someone must have offered him a penny for his support.
Paul Ryan has become a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT!!!!!
Obama is LAW-Less because Republican “leaders” are BALL-LESS!!!
Well, Paul, if you don’t think Obama’s deliberate importation of illegals is important, how about running guns to Mexican cartels and/or Muslim jihadists? How about using the IRS to target political enemies? How about going to bed and dreaming about the next fundraiser while Americans were dying in Benghazi? How about Obama’s deliberate and calculated lies concerning the Obamacare law? How about the DOJ’s political bias leading to selective enforcement of the law? How about illegal recess appointments? How about the payoff to the UAW in the guise of the GM bailout?
Isn’t that enough for you, Paul?
Oh, well, there are plenty more high crimes and misdemeanors, if you’d just take off your kneepads, stop servicing Obama, and do some research.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.