January 22, 2021 1:07 p.m.
Republicans senators are beginning to coalesce around a new talking point: impeaching former President Donald Trump is now unconstitutional because he has left office.
“I think it’s obvious that the post-presidential impeachment has never occurred in the history of the country for a reason: that it’s unconstitutional, that it sets a bad precedent for the presidency and it continues to divide the nation,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters Friday.
Constitutional scholars of all stripes are dismissing that argument.
“I don’t buy that argument as anything other than an argument of convenience (e.g., looking for an excuse to avoid what should be easy and seemed politically hard),” Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School, told TPM in an email.
Senate trial of Trump depends largely on 145-year-old case By Bob Egelko
No impeached president has ever been tried by the Senate after leaving office. But the 145-year-old case of a Cabinet member accused of corruption could serve as a precedent for the trial of soon-to-be-former President Trump.
Secretary of War William Belknap rushed to President Ulysses S. Grant’s office and resigned in 1876 after learning that he was about to be impeached on charges of taking kickbacks at an American Indian trading post. But the House impeached Belknap anyway, and the Senate, by majority vote, decided that it had authority to bring him to trial. Later, senators fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Belknap and bar him permanently from federal office, though he never held office again.
The
San Francisco Chronicle is not holding back on its praise of Kamala Harris inauguration as vice president, including portraying her rise to power as “counterpoint to insurrection.”
The news outlet in Harris’ home state praised Harris as the antidote to a divided nation following a turbulent presidential election:
As images of white supremacists storming the Capitol sear into Americans’ minds, there is about to be another image that provides the case for optimism about the future: the moment when Kamala Harris, first Black woman and woman of color to be inaugurated as vice president, is sworn in.
Veterans of the civil rights movement and scholars of Black American history say there is no mistaking that the nation is in a moment of distress, as it grapples with a deadly insurrection that threatened the lives of the vice president and dozens of lawmakers as well as the constitutional process for the peaceful transfer of power.
UC Berkeley professor, activist Joseph Myers dies at age 80
Nicole Lim/Courtesy
Jospeh Myers was a professor in UC Berkeley s department of ethnic studies, known for his commitment to education, work promoting justice in Native communities and fighting for the preservation of California Native history.
Joseph Myers, who taught at UC Berkeley’s ethnic studies department for nearly 30 years, died due to heart complications Dec. 29, 2020, at age 80.
A leader in the Native American community both on campus and across the state of California, Myers was known for his work promoting justice in Native communities and fighting for the preservation of California Native history. As a lecturer, Myers introduced courses specifically tailored to Native American issues to the ethnic studies curriculum, leading courses on tribal governments and federal Native law.