RUTHFULLY YOURS

For months, I have been arguing that Hillary Clinton should be impeached. It is all well and good to prosecute a former government official for any crimes she has committed. Indeed, the Constitution expressly provides for criminal prosecution in addition to impeachment. Nevertheless, for the Framers — and, if we had common sense, for us — the imperative was to deprive a corrupt person of any further opportunity to abuse government power. Whether the official should also be convicted and sent to prison was not unimportant but, in the greater scheme of things, decidedly secondary.

Interestingly, the main pushback I received upon positing this argument was not that Mrs. Clinton is undeserving of impeachment. That, of course, is a measure of the seriousness of her high crimes and misdemeanors: the e-mail scandal; the reckless mishandling of classified information that has surely exposed our national-defense secrets to hostile powers; the mass destruction of thousands of government records after Congress asked for them; the obstruction of government investigations; the serial lies to Congress and the public; the shocking failure to provide security for Americans stationed in Benghazi and the failure to attempt to rescue them during a terrorist siege; the lies to the American people and to the families of murdered American officials about the cause of the attack; the trumping up of a prosecution against the video producer scapegoated for the Benghazi attack; the Clinton Foundation corruption involving the sale of influence for donations, the favors done for shady benefactors at the expense of national security, and the use of the State Department as an arm of the Clinton pay-to-play enterprise.

No, the main objection to impeachment is the claim that, because the former secretary of state does not currently hold public office, there is nothing from which to remove her. Hence, as a non-incumbent who merely seeks the nation’s highest office — after proving herself manifestly unfit in a subordinate office — she is said to be immune from impeachment. How could she be impeached from the presidency, the question is posed, if she is not president? How could she be removed from an office she does not hold based on offenses not committed while wielding presidential power?

These questions and the non-incumbency theory behind them fundamentally misconstrue the constitutional remedy of impeachment, which is not limited to removal from power but includes disqualification from future office. Moreover, their premise is wrong: The proceeding against Clinton would not be a presidential impeachment; it would be an impeachment based on her abuses of power as secretary of state, which would have the constitutional effect of disqualifying her for the presidency.

The Constitution does not limit impeachment to incumbent officials. Article I endows the House of Representatives with the “sole Power of Impeachment” — i.e., the power to file articles of impeachment. It further empowers the Senate with “the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Significantly, in prescribing the standard for conviction in the Senate, Article I, Section 3 states that “no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present” (emphasis added).

It literally is impossible to write quickly enough to stay abreast of the scandals engulfing Hillary Rodham Clinton.

After a delightful visit with my family and friends in southern California, I sat down at Los Angeles International Airport late Thursday night to await my flight back to New York City. I planned to write a recap of just last week’s news regarding Hillary’s e-mails, the Clinton Foundation, and several of President Obama’s policies that Clinton backs.

I jotted down a simple outline, to which I since have added a few details:

1. Gilbert Chagoury: The Lebanese/Nigerian businessman gave $1 million to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and pledged $1 billion more. The foundation’s Doug Band contacted Hillary’s top aide, Huma Abedin, to arrange a meeting for Chagoury with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon. The Los Angeles Times now reports that Chagoury “was pulled off a private jet in Teterboro, N.J., and questioned for four hours because he was on the Department of Homeland Security’s no-fly list. He was subsequently removed from the list and categorized as a ‘selectee,’ meaning he can fly but receives extra scrutiny.” Why? A “Homeland Security document shows agents citing unspecified suspicions of links to terrorism, which can include financing extremist organizations.” He later was denied entry visas because “the U.S. put Chagoury in its database used to screen travelers for possible links to terrorism.”

2. Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, which Hillary Clinton supports, reportedly includes secret side agreements that permit the ayatollahs to cheat on how much enriched uranium they can produce and how many radiation “hot rooms” they can operate. Codifying Tehran’s violations of this agreement made it easier for Obama to end sanctions, unfreeze Iran’s assets, and surge billions of dollars into the hands of Earth’s biggest state sponsor of radical Islamic terrorism.

All Never Trump conservatives maintain that their decision to never vote for Donald Trump is guided by their principles. I have no doubt that this is true.

But some of them — though by no means all — seem to imply, or at least may think, that conservatives who vote for Trump have abandoned their principles. Indeed, the charge of compromising on principle is explicitly leveled at Republican politicians and members of the Republican “establishment” who support Trump.

I cannot speak for all conservatives who are voting for Trump, but I can speak for many in making this assertion:

We have the same principles as the Never Trumpers — especially those of us who strongly opposed nominating Trump; that’s why we opposed him, after all. So almost everything that prevents Never Trumpers from voting for Trump also troubled us about the candidate. (I should note that some are less troubled today.)

So where do we differ?

We differ on this: We hold that defeating Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, and the Left is also a principle. And that it is the greater principle.

Obviously, the Never Trumpers do not believe that. On the contrary, some of the most thoughtful Never Trumpers repeatedly tell us that the nation can survive four years of Hillary Clinton–Democrat rule. And then, they say, conservatism will have cleansed itself and be able to take back the nation after four calamitous years of a Hillary Clinton presidency — whereas if Trump wins, he will be the de facto face of conservatism, and then conservatism will have been dealt a potentially fatal setback.

This argument assumes that America can survive another four years of Democratic rule.

So, it really depends on what “survive” means. If it means that there will be a country called the United States of America after another four years of a Democratic presidency and a left-wing Supreme Court for quite possibly another four decades (as well as dozens of lifetime appointments to the equally important lower federal courts), the country will surely survive.

But I do not believe that the country will surely survive as the country it was founded to be. In that regard we are at the most perilous tipping point of American history.

It is true that the country’s survival was threatened in the 1860s, and only a terrible civil war kept it whole. But, with the colossal and awful exception of slavery, neither side challenged the founding principles of America.

Donald Trump demonstrated true chutzpah in accepting an invitation from Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to meet with him.

On August 31, 2016 Trump met Peña Nieto just hours before addressing an enthusiastic crowd of supporters in Arizona where he laid out his ten-point plan to address the immigration crisis that impacts so many of the challenges and threats that America faces today.

It was politically courageous for Trump to meet with the Mexican President. After nearly eight years of the feckless Obama administration, his demonstration of strength and focus at that meeting was refreshing.

Peña Nieto has compared Trump to Hitler and Mussolini, and Trump has, for the past year, made it clear that he opposed the policies of the Mexican government that have resulted in so many criminals, gangs and narcotics flowing from Mexico into the United States.

The meeting was a gamble but it paid off. As President John F. Kennedy said during his inaugural address,

“So let us begin anew–remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

While President Kennedy was referencing the ongoing tensions with the former Soviet Union and our relationship with Mexico is hardly as adversarial as was our relationship with the USSR, Mexico is separated from the United States by the longest border that divides the First World from the Third World, thus creating huge economic pressures on that border.

Mexico is an important trade partner of the United States. However, a huge component of that trade is illegal and involves illegal aliens, narcotics, weapons and money flowing across the border in violation of our laws.