Nancy Pelosi's Impeachment Letter Suggests Sh*t Is Getting Real, Constitution-Wise

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

30 October 19

The Speaker will make this examination of the president* seem as integral to the constitutional design as it was meant to be.

hit continues to get real, Constitution-wise. From Politico:

The resolution — which “establishes the procedure for hearings,” according to a statement by Speaker Nancy Pelosi — will mark the first floor vote on impeachment since Democrats formally launched their inquiry a month ago.

"We are taking this step to eliminate any doubt as to whether the Trump Administration may withhold documents, prevent witness testimony, disregard duly authorized subpoenas, or continue obstructing the House of Representatives," Pelosi said in a letter to Democrats obtained by POLITICO.

This is the way it works. The more votes they take, and the more procedures and details they authorize, impeachment moves inexorably away from having been merely something people talked about to a real part of the daily business of the House of Representatives and, as such, a real part of the daily work of the Congress as well, as though recommending the removal of the president* is just another bit of legislative business.

(For all the talk of things being "normalized" concerning this administration*, one thing it doesn't want is for the impeachment of the president* to seem as integral to the constitutional design as it was meant to be.)

One of the lesser-known—but nonetheless pivotal—moments in the pursuit of Richard Nixon came in October of 1973, when Peter Rodino and his staff at the House Judiciary Committee put together a book explaining the impeachment process and how it had worked down through the centuries, its basic principles, and how the Constitutional Convention had adapted it for use within the infrastructure of government. Because he knew the importance of how things work, Jimmy Breslin, in his terrific Watergate book, made a point of using the publication of Rodino's study as one of the first moments in which Nixon's blood was drawn, even though the cut was barely visible to the general public.

And on the cover it said, "Impeachment." It was 718 pages long. Jee-zus! Goddamn big book! Seven hundred-and-eighteen pages long. Keerist! This is gettin' to be important business now. Nobody read a line of the book, but everybody held it and looked at the last page and saw that it was 718 pages long.

After the publication of those 718 pages came a series of votes that nobody noticed—including one that allowed Rodino and his committee the power to subpoena anyone in government and any documents that the committee might deem relevant. It was a party-line vote but, as Breslin shrewdly noted, it was a vote. And it was on impeachment, which, at that point in history, had been a dead letter since 1868. It was a part of the business of the Congress for the first time since Thaddeus Stevens was whipping votes against Andy Johnson. Part of the business of government. Business, as usual.