RSN: Mort Rosenblum | Lock Them Up. Immediately.
10 January 21
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RSN: Mort Rosenblum | Lock Them Up. Immediately.
Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News
Rosenblum writes: "Arrests need to begin today. Everyone who flouted the law in plain sight needs to answer for it."
he first thing a reporter learns when covering a gulag or shithole run by a mad king is how to read signals to the aroused rabble and gestures to the Gestapo. It’s harder in Romanian, Serbo-Croatian or Lingala. But Trump’s pidgin English is so unmistakably clear he might as well have bright red flash cards and an interpreter signing at his shoulder. I watched him on Fox, as usual, making sure no blunt movable objects were nearby to ruin yet another TV set.
As in every speech, he hammered away at a favorite line. Any anarchist commie terrorist who disrespected the statue of an America hero, enslavers and Indian exterminators included, would be jailed for 10 years. He berated the three Supreme Court justices he put on the bench for siding with the people over him. Then, after an avalanche of horseshit about a stolen election, he ordered his howling mob to the Capitol, saying he would likely be there with them. Fat chance. He went back to our White House to watch.
Throughout Trump’s term we’ve seen the Capitol cops operate with higher authority. Their favorite tactic is the “kettle,” herding protesters, reporters and hapless tourists passing by into clusters to be carried off in paddy wagons. Journalists only doing their jobs spent months on end fighting charges that could have put them away for decades. We all saw Trump’s insane foray to hold a Bible upside down, protected by a four-star general in combat fatigues, cops in riot gear flailing batons with high-tech sonic weapons at the ready.
Yesterday, the world watched, stupefied, as louts in battle costume swarmed into the Capitol unhindered, trashing our representatives’ offices, pawing through their files, taking selfies and exchanging high fives before filing out unhindered before ignoring a 6 p.m. curfew. Grinning assholes smirked at TV cameras, flipping us all the finger. Video shows lone cops fleeing in panic or, in an alarming number of cases, standing back in apparent approval.
In the District of Columbia, the National Guard responds to a Pentagon that Trump has packed with his shameless sycophants. As the mob ransacked America’s seat of power, Virginia state police eventually rolled up in soft cars. By the time serious reinforcements arrived, a woman was shot dead – no one gave reporters any details – and three people died of unexplained medical conditions.
Remember those fiery demands for harsh punishment when a handful of Portland protesters tossed the odd projectile at a federal building guarded by heavily armed DHS stormtroopers?
I watched Hong Kong protests erupt in 2019 and followed them closely. At the peak, crowds swarmed into the legislative council as disciplined police phalanxes stood by with shields – and cameras. They allowed protesters to wear themselves out, but every face was registered. When Beijing had enough, jail cells filled.
This was no movement of courageous citizens fighting to retain a modicum of freedom. It was a flat-out terrorism instigated by an elected president who should have been impeached or removed by the 25th Amendment years ago.
Congress did us proud by re-emerging from hiding to finish its ceremonial role of confirming the people’s choice. But still. It was an eerie scene of business-as-usual. Ben Sasse spoke with his usual folksy homilies. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and a few other faithless hypocrites continued their treacherous demand for a 10-day review of election results that 60-plus court cases upheld.
Arrests need to begin today. Everyone who flouted the law in plain sight needs to answer for it. On January 21, prosecutors in New York, Georgia, Florida – and Washington D.C. – need to hold Trump, his family and their criminal entourage to account. If not, our claim to “rule of law” government is a pathetic joke. None of our allies is laughing, but each of our adversaries is popping Champagne corks.
Mort Rosenblum has reported from seven continents as Associated Press special correspondent, edited the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and written 14 books on subjects ranging from global geopolitics to chocolate. He now runs MortReport.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, forcing their way inside the building and interrupting Congress's certification of electoral votes. (photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
What the 25th Amendment Says About Removing a Sitting President
Miles Parks and Mark Katkov, NPR
Excerpt: "After the violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol, calls have continued to grow from Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as former U.S. officials, for Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution and assume the powers of the presidency."
Wednesday's rioting was caused in large part by President Trump's rhetoric, experts say, and even after the Capitol was swarmed, Trump refused to condemn the mob, instead telling them in a video they were "very special."
That's led lawmakers to consider the easiest way to rid a president of his powers.
"The quickest and most effective way — it can be dTWO today — to remove this president from office would be for the vice president to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Thursday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also echoed Schumer's call Thursday that the 25th Amendment be invoked.
"If the vice president and Cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment," Pelosi told reporters.
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted a video urging Pence to act "to ensure the next few weeks are safe for the American people, and that we have a sane captain of the ship."
It's become a frequent topic throughout the Trump presidency, but the 25th Amendment has never actually been used before to take powers away from a president without his consent.
The amendment provides a framework for how that scenario should play out, but legal experts have spent decades wondering about the potential "constitutional crises" that could follow.
What the law says
The language of the amendment says if the vice president and either a majority of the executive Cabinet or a review body appointed by Congress declare in writing that the president is unfit for office, then the vice president immediately becomes the acting president.
But the law also gives the sitting president, Trump in this case, the chance to argue that he is fit for office.
In the case of competing arguments about the president's ability to lead, "Congress shall decide the issue," the amendment says. For the vice president to assume the power of the presidency, two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and Senate must vote in favor of that outcome.
If Congress does not have the sufficient majorities in both parties in favor of rescinding the president's power, then he remains in power.
At the time it was passed, the amendment was not intended to "facilitate the removal of an unpopular or failed President," according to a Congressional Research Service report. And such a move, the report says, could potentially "precipitate a constitutional crisis."
"[It's a] ... sort of nightmare scenario that scholars describe as contested removal, in which a president would object to the idea that he's been determined to be unwell," writer Evan Osnos said in an interview on NPR's Fresh Air in 2017. "It's kind of amazing to step back and think about what that would actually be like in practice, that you would have Congress actively, openly, publicly discussing the question of whether or not the president of the United States was mentally fit to return to the presidency."
How the 25th Amendment came to be
When he left office in 1961 at the age of 70, Dwight Eisenhower was the oldest president in U.S. history. And he had battled health problems. In his first term, Eisenhower suffered both a heart attack and a mild stroke, leaving a nation already jittery from Cold War tensions even more so.
He and his vice president, Richard Nixon, agreed to an arrangement in which Eisenhower would temporarily cede power should he again be incapacitated, but would himself determine when to reassume his duties.
It was an ad hoc agreement that left unaddressed a scenario in which the president is incapable of determining his fitness for office.
When the oldest-serving president was succeeded by John Kennedy, the youngest-elected president, concern over the issue "arguably eased," according to Thomas Neale of the Congressional Research Service.
That is, until Kennedy's assassination.
Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution says the vice president assumes the "powers and duties" of president in the event of the president's "inability," but it doesn't say how to determine the president is unable to serve.
Had Kennedy remained alive, but incapacitated, there might not have been a way for Vice President Lyndon Johnson to serve as acting president.
Hence the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress in 1965 and ratified in 1967 when Nevada became the 38th state to approve it. Sections 3 and 4 of the amendment fill that constitutional gap: how to ensure the nation has a chief executive when the president is incapacitated.
Section 3 addresses the simplest scenario: when a president determines he is incapacitated, and later determines he is able to return to the duties of the office. The president, in writing, informs the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate of his incapacity and informs them again in writing when ready to resume. The vice president serves as acting president in the interim.
According to Neale of the Congressional Research Service, Section 3 has been invoked three times:
- President Ronald Reagan arguably did so when he underwent cancer surgery in 1985 and put Vice President George H.W. Bush temporarily in charge (though Reagan maintained the drafters of the amendment didn't intend it to be applied in such a circumstance).
- President George W. Bush formally invoked the amendment twice, in 2002 and 2007, while undergoing routine colonoscopies.
Section 4 addresses the aforementiTWOd much more complex scenario: when a president is incapable of declaring his incapacity.
Below is the full text of section 4 of the amendment:
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-TWO days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-TWO days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
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