Impeach A Leech Reach ?

It has not escaped the old geezer's attention that a great many of these illiterate young reporters writing about "impeachment"  don't even know the difference between an IM-peach and a CLING-peach...AND that they were  yet unborn in 1980 and were still swaddling when Bill Clinton was impeached in the 1990s.

 

But Wild Waters from the Left Coast  is not the only screamer the Republic has had in the last 30-something years to fall madly in lust with the big "I" word.

 

By the count of Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit, various Democrat  vocalists-- sometimes in chorus and sometimes solo, have begged for the impeachment of every Republican

president since Ronald Reagan, who was threatened with impeachment before he had spent a year in office.

 

Oh yes,  the frothy-mouthed  hard left partisans have set up a caterwaul at least seven times in the last 35 years threatening impeachment of the nation's commander-in-chief in 1981, 1983, 1984 (Reagan); 1991 GHW Bush); and in  2004, 2005 and 2007  (Dubya Bush).

 

The Democrat partisans were mostly silent in the mid-90s when their president, William Jefferson Clinton WAS impeached by the House of Representatives and let off the hook by  the Senate. (It had something to do with soiling a blue dress.)

 

Many of us who remember all of this fruitless and fanatical fury to impeach Reagan and the Bushes cannot recall the specific complaint, but it all added up to the fact that the three GOP chief executives were... well... Breathing!!

 

In impeaching federal officials, the lower house of Congress brings impeachment articles and the Senate holds the trial and "disposes". 

We did some research on those impeached and convicted over the years, and found one strange anomaly of Wikipedia.  The Internet's sometimes sloppy but always available research resource  lists every high-level federal official found guilty by the Senate since 1788....EXCEPT  ONE !

 

That one is Alcee  Hastings, who now represents Miami-Dade Florida in Congress, despite the fact he was impeached and found guilty of bribery ($150,000) committed less than 

two years after his appointent to the federal district court bench for southern Florida by  Jimmy Carter.

 

Agile Alcee, as he is fondly known, avoided punishment in the South Florida courts, but fell victim to an outraged press, led by the then- fearless- and- distinguished Miami Herald.

 

"High crimes and misdemeanors" is the phrase used as criterion for charging and punishing in pursuit of impeachment. Almost all of those convicted of impeachment charges have been guilty of bribery-conspiracy involving  large sums, and in the past two or three decades, RICO racketeering charges.

 

So far as our research is concerned, no one has been successfully impeached and convicted for just being elected to high office... So don't bet the farm !!!