LETTER: Columnist missed mark
Columnist misses mark
Bruce Kauffmann’s “Why impeachment includes ‘high crimes and misdemeanors'” (Dec. 3) may be the single-most inept column I’ve ever seen in a newspaper.
He freely takes quotes out of context, but truth is, the Constitution limits impeachment to “treason, bribery, and OTHER high crimes and misdemeanors.”
So broad it can mean whatever Congress thinks it means at the time?
Uh, no. High crimes are crimes punishable by death; misdemeanors are minor crimes, and Congress can, and is supposed to, impeach for whatever crime a president is found to have actually committed. Nothing more. Nothing less.
High crimes and misdemeanors does not in any way, shape or form mean whatever ignorant people don’t approve of the president for, or as Kauffmann claims, “For something that is not a crime.”
I.E., Kauffmann turns impeachment into a vote of no confidence, and that is a process the Constitution wisely omitted.
Randolph Stewart
Valley Grove, W.Va.{&end}