Impeachment: What are we waiting for?

Our Founders deemed a republic to be the best and highest form of government, ‘whereby men are endowed by their Creator with the inviolable and inalienable natural rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness’. These natural rights preceded those of government and ‘were granted by God, guaranteed by constitutional government, a government based on the judicious rule of law rather than the capricious rule of man,’ and ultimately enforced by the nation’s citizens.

As John Adams wrote in 1798: "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
The Founding Fathers wisely provided definitions for each of the terms used in describing the process. Treason, for example, was defined as the following: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

’High crimes and misdemeanors’ became part of the text of the Constitution thanks to both George Mason and James Madison. Mason had argued that the reasons having been given for impeachment - treason and bribery - were not enough. He worried that other "great and dangerous offenses" might not be covered, so Mason then proposed that ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ be added to cover any and all of these transgressions. ‘High crimes and misdemeanors’ was a phrase well-known in English common law in the late 18th century, and while ‘high crimes’ is easily understood, the lesser known term ‘misdemeanor’ was meant to describe a ‘mis-demeanor,’ or bad behavior.

‘High crimes and misdemeanors’ does not refer to a criminal act, as some over the years have mistakenly assumed. Our Founding Fathers fully intended to provide for the removal of a President whose actions were, according to a Constitutional scholar “… egregious, grossly incompetent, grossly negligent, outright distasteful, or which clearly show malevolence toward this country.”

Read it here