HOUSE RESOLUTION: "The Impeachment of Federal Officers" Amendment (to VP/PPT)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Sponsor: NC Yankee
House Designation: HR 1092

[NeverAgain]

Beautiful bill, entirely supported!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This was a problem discovered while writing the Senate rules.


2/3rds of the Senate is the same as a simple majority (4). So this raises the threshold for impeachments to require 5 Senators.

[Pragmatic Conservative]

5 Senators is too many for impeachment really, the problem stems from the fact if you have a Senator as a Cabinet member and they do something really bad all they need would be one of their friends to vote against impeachment ensuring that it never happens.

[Mike Thick]

Fully support, of course

[OneJ]

AZ does make a good point though. I'll decide carefully.

[Adam Griffin]

Yes, let's change all of the thresholds back to insanely large percentages like we did in the last rendition of the game so that we can never remove any derelict or irresponsible officeholders in the Fourth Constitution, too!

This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Poorly written, too: if the person in question is a Senator, then literally every Senator has to be in favor. Likewise, "sitting Senator" means all Senators, so you'll just need one MIA Senator to require a unanimous vote in every case. Ooh, here's a fun scenario: if a rapin' Senator is facing impeachment and another Senator is inactive, then congrats, the rapist gets to stay in office!

[OneJ]

Yeah raising the threshold for this situation definitely isn't necessary for reasons AZ and Adam listed above.

[Enduro]

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Adam.

[Representative simossad]

No solution is really satifying, but I feel more comfortable with the current process. We have decent people in the house and in the senate, and I trust everyone to not just vote partisan but to be aware of the fact that an impeachement is more than a mere trifle.

[Mike Thick]

As JTC said in a separate thread, how about a 10/15 threshold in a joint session of Congress?

[OneJ]

As JTC said in a separate thread, how about a 10/15 threshold in a joint session of Congress?

I'd support this as well.

[Pragmatic Conservative]

As JTC said in a separate thread, how about a 10/15 threshold in a joint session of Congress?

I'd support this as well.

[NeverAgain]

Sounds like a plan to me - y'all can edit however you want, here's this:

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Upon ratification by two-thirds of the regions, Article III - 3.5 shall be entirely amended to read:

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It's a WIP, but I tried to combine both Adam's and JTC's ideas.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

This is a good place to build from, at the very least. I would suggest striking III.2.v and III.3.v in their entirety and appending a new section dealing with impeachment. As for the proposal itself, I would recommend the following changes:

(1) If I understand this correctly, the motion of one Senator and/or one Representative would be sufficient to call a Trial of Impeachment; I would recommend setting the threshold much higher (ideally, a majority of the whole Congress, or eight total Senators and/or Representatives).

(2) Rather than randomly selecting a replacement for the Chief Justice in the event of the latter's recusal, I suggest simply naming the President of the Congress as the designated alternate (per the Senate Rules, the PPT would then be next in line).

(3) The phrase, "the House of Representatives and Senate shall jointly have the sole power of impeachment" makes no sense; how can two bodies have exclusive claim to the same power? I get what you mean here, but it would be far better to remove this sentence and simply add impeachment to the general list of Congressional powers in III.6.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Truman has a point about 3.

In our terminology we have referred to whole process as Impeachment.

But the reason the Constitution says "House has sole power over impeachments" is because "impeachment" refers only to the House portion of the process. The Senate then has the sole power to "try all impeachments".

Impeachment is basically the indictment that is then tried before the Senate, which is basically acting as a jury.

[Adam Griffin]

I really do believe the votes should be weighted in any case, and for that broader procedure, my amendment as offered will work best. Otherwise, we'll be taking a lot of power away from the Senate by going from 100% of the influence to merely one-third. I often don't care about these things but I do think this is one of those areas where the two chambers should have equal say in the outcome.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think Griffin is right on this one count.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So we going to have an amendment actually introduced at some point to this?

[NeverAgain]

So we going to have an amendment actually introduced at some point to this?

I will try to include everyone's thoughts, and propose something tonight.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Tonight was three days ago!

[Adam Griffin]

Guys, just introduce my proposed amendment, adopt it, and then put all of your fancy ramblings about trial procedure into it with another amendment.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

It's amendment time:

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Section 4. Article III of the Constitution of the Republic of Atlasia shall be amended to read as follows:

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[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Section 4. Article III of the Constitution of the Republic of Atlasia shall be amended to read as follows:

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[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Section 4. Article III of the Constitution of the Republic of Atlasia shall be amended to read as follows:

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