The Impeachment Process Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Impeachment Process - Essay Example Impeachment is a process intended to expose and correct political crimes (Gerhardt). Formally, impeachment can be defined as the â€Å"Constitutional process whereby the House of Representatives may accuse of misconduct high officers of the Federal Government for trial in the Senate† (Lectic Law Library). It is an exclusive congressional power, which is neither subordinate to judicial review nor it can be subjected to presidential veto. Whether the officer is forced to leave office or not depends upon the conviction of the Senate. SUMMARIZED AMERICAN IMPEACHMENT HISTORY: Article I, Sections 2 and 3 ensure the right of the House to impeach public officials, the President and the Vice President. The House of Representatives have instigated above 50 impeachment resolutions since 1789. Of these, the Senate received only 15 cases and from these 15 cases, only one involved a President. Two of the cases were dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, six ended in acquittal and seven in con viction (Kingsley). The most famous impeachments of the US history have been of: Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and William J. Clinton. Johnson was impeached in 1868 for defying the Tenure of Office Act but he was acquitted May 1868 by being one vote short of the two-thirds required Senate majority. This acquittal taught a lesson to the Congressmen that impeachment could not be used as a tool for settling policy differences with executives. Richard Nixon was impeached in 1974 on the basis of three articles of impeachment, involving bribery, treason, perjury and other executive power abuses. As conviction became inevitable for his high crime charges, to avoid the dishonor of trial, Nixon resigned from his post in August 1974. Clinton was impeached in 1998 for having improper relationship and issues of character. He was, however, acquitted by the Senate in 1999, because it could not gather sufficient votes for conviction. His impeachment was more recognized as political warfare rather than actual basis for impeachment. This precedent could be used by future House members to analyze critically the consequences of impeaching a President with substantial public support. THE IMPEACHMENT PROCESS: The impeachment process is a two step process: 1. The Impeachment Power: The House of Representatives: The impeachment process is initiated when a member of the House under oath declares a charge of impeachment against the president or any other civil officer. It is on the disposition of the House of Judiciary Committee whether or not to go forward with the impeachment based on the investigation and the charges filed. The resolution passed by the Judiciary Committee authorizes whether grounds exist for the investigation to proceed or not. A thorough investigation takes place before entertaining any votes whether the accusations hold any reality or not. If evidence of some kind of treason exists, by majority vote â€Å"a resolution impeaching the individual in question and se tting forth specific allegations of misconduct, in one or more articles of impeachment, will be reported to the full House† (Halstead). The House thereafter votes for each article of the resolution, and on the basis of

Cultures in Conflict Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Cultures in Conflict - Essay Example In the nineteenth century the Jews, like the Christians and the Muslims, went through a phase of conflict -- the struggle between reformers and conservatives. Among the Muslims, the Greeks, and the Armenians, the reformers won. Among the Jews, they lost. For this the Jews paid a price. Compared with their Christian neighbors they fell steadily behind. The Jews had cast their lot, not surprisingly, with the reactionary forces among the Turks. The destruction in 1826 of the Janissary Corps, the old military order, with which the Jews had important links, was a heavy blow. The rise of Russia and the growth of Russian influence were also not very helpful to Jews in the Ottoman Empire. Later in the century there was a certain upswing in the entrept trade of Salonica with its ties to the West, but despite improved education, which was fostered most notably by the Alliance Isralite Universelle, the effort came too late. They were caught in the circumstances which led to the end of the Ottoman Empire and the transformation of the entire region. Language has barely been mentioned in this discussion of the major communities of the Ottoman Empire. ... However, the language of ritual was not necessarily the language of the street or the home. While the hierarchy of the Greek Or thodox church was both ethnically and linguistically Greek, the parish clergy and flock was a polyglot mass speaking almost as many languages as were spoken in the empire itself. In the Balkans there were speakers of Slavic and, in the case of Rumanian, a Romance language. To the south of Anatolia there were Arabic-speakers. In Anatolia itself, according to observers during the nineteenth century, the majority of the communicants of the church did not know Greek at all, as their native language was Turkish or Armenian. In Anatolia the Greek Orthodox who were literate wrote in Greek script, but the language many of them transcribed was Turkish or Armenian. The Ottoman Empire was a classic example of the plural society. An acute observer of similar societies in South Asia defined them with the following description which applies equally well to the Ottoman world: . . . probably the first thing that strikes the visitor is the medley of peoples. . . . It is in the strictest sense a medley, for they mix, but do not combine. Each group holds by its own religion, its own culture and language, its own ideas and ways. As individuals they meet, but only in the market-place, in buying and selling. There is a plural society, with different sections of the community, living side by side, but separately within the same political unit. Even in the economic sphere there is a division of labor along racial lines. (Furnivall 304-305) For all their shortcomings, plural societies did allow diverse groups of people to live together with a minimum of bloodshed. In comparison with the nationstates