The most frustrating thing about the entire discussion over whether Blagojevich can be impeached is the mistaken notion by many that impeachment has some legal standards attached to it like criminial law. However, the very document giving the power of impeachment to the Legislature points out that impeachment cannot punish anyone beyond removal from office and barring someone from office in the future. That’s it.
Other than that, the requirements are just as President Ford said,
“The only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body [the Senate] considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office.”
And the Illinois language is looser than the federal language.
To fully understand the idea of impeachment, one has to understand the Constitution in it’s original form. Vice-Presidents weren’t elected with the President as a team, they were the runner-up essentially to the winner. Thus, impeachment was a far more political process to the founders. As Vasyl pointed out the other day:
There’s an additional factor to consider. Historically, impeachment was used by Parliament as a way to curb the abuses of the king’s appointed officials. The entire idea was that abuses of power should be curbed by a body not accountable to the king, but also one that is not hamstrung in its ability to curb abuse by the niceties of criminal law.
In this case, we have a public official who is clearly ready to abuse his power in a very vile manner — if the tapes are accurate and not wildly out of context, Blagojevich was ready to sell the office of US Senator. The legislature has the duty, I would argue, to step in and stop this abuse of power from happening. That means, as Archpundit has argued in several posts, that they must put speed above all. Every moment they delay, they risk the Governor abusing his appointment power.
Blagojevich will get all the due process to which he is entitled during the criminal trial. But we the people need protection now, even if that means that Blagojevich loses his job. Impeach him, and do it now.
The Lege can finish this up by tomorrow if they want. If they want to be deliberative, take the whole week. But get it done.