Lots of discussion of impeachment abroad these days. Most people apparently mean, "removal from office by impeachment," but that is a mouthful and saying just "impeachment" gets the point across well enough. "Impeach," in various forms, appears in the Constitution six times. The first is in Article I, section 2, paragraph 5, which assigns to the House of Representatives "the sole power of impeachment." This gets to why accuracy requires the full phrase, "remove from office via impeachment." "To impeach" only means to make an allegation. Just saying that someone has committed an offense is to impeach them. It is possible to impeach a person's reputation. The second use of impeachment comes in Article I, section 3, paragraph 6, which assigns to the Senate "the sole power to try all impeachments." Once the allegation gets made, the task becomes to establish if it is true or accurate. The Constitution consistently requires a trial, usually by jury, to determine the veracity of any allegation. Impeachment is unusual in the Constitution in giving the power to try impeachments to the Senate. The Supreme Court case, Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993), contains in the majority opinion an interesting and informative discussion of why the Founders chose to set the process of removal via impeachment the way they did. The third use of the word comes in the next paragraph, defining the penalty for a finding of guilt in an impeachment trial to be removal from office and disqualification from any office again under the Constitution. The guilty party remains liable to ordinary criminal prosecution for their alleged offenses, which further marks impeachment as a unique process. The fourth use of "impeachment" occurs in Article II, section 2, which gives the president the power to pardon, except in cases of impeachment. The Founders were emphatic that any person who suffered removal from office via impeachment should not hold office again in our republic.

The claim in the first image below is false. Both non citizens and criminals have rights under our Constitution. This is clear in at least two ways. First, the Fifth Amendment applies the right to due process of law to all "persons." "Due process of law" is an expansive concept that covers all government actions, starting with any interaction between a *person* and a law enforcement officer, although it applies to civil as well as criminal issues. Specifically, it is possible for land use regulations to violate the owner's right to due process of law. Any person the government wishes to deport is entitled to a hearing, except for specific cases of persons apprehended crossing the border. The immigration status of any individual who suffers arrest in the interior remains undetermined until a judge reviews the evidence. Otherwise, any citizen who gets arrested could undergo unlawful deportation without recourse. Secondly, the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments all address issues arising out of criminal prosecutions on their face. Nowhere are rights more important than in criminal prosecution. The Fourth Amendment obviously prevents criminal prosecutions by depriving law enforcement officers of access to evidence of crimes. The Founders were not stupid. They knew what they were doing. They chose to tilt the field slightly in favor of criminals as one way to maximize liberty. The Fifth Amendment requires a grand jury indictment for serious crimes, forbids more than one prosecution for the same crime and forced self incrimination, and guarantees due process of law in criminal and civil cases. The Sixth Amendment begins, "In all criminal prosecutions," and guarantees a speedy, public trial by an impartial jury. It also guarantees the right to confront witnesses, to have the power to compel witnesses, and to have a lawyer. The Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to trial by jury. The Eighth Amendment famously forbids cruel and unusual punishment.

Discussions of our Constitution as a whole often include the phrase, "checks and balances," often accompanied by references to "separation of powers." Neither of these phrases appear as such in the Constitution, but the concepts are clear from the structure of the document and of the government it creates. See, e.g., Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association, 575 U.S. 92 (2015). The powers in question are the powers of government as the Founders conceived them. Thus, Article I, section 1 of the Constitution reads, "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." Article II, section 1 begins, "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." Article III, section 1 begins, "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." That is, the Founders saw three powers of government, legislative, or the power to make laws, executive, or the power to enforce laws, and judicial, or the power to interpret laws. Checks and balances enter into this scheme via the observation that the Founders wanted to create a federal government that was more powerful than what they had, but still limited. They worrried that the people who exercised any of these powers might abuse them, so they defined each branch to have some power to check the other two. Thus, Congress has the unique power to remove any official via impeachment. Nixon v. U.S., 506 U.S. 224 (1993), contains an interesting, informative explanaation of why the Founders lodged this enormous, important power "solely" with Congress. It also has the sole authority to appropriate funds for expenditure by the federal government, meaning that it can, in theory, cut off funds to any person or agency that uses its power in an unlawful or tyrannical manner.

Please visit the Classroom tab for discussion of the question, is our federal government a republic or a democracy.

This is a story about a recent procedural decision by the Supreme Court. The source is a good one for anyone who wants to follow the Court: https://www.skool.com/skoolers/about?ref=b26c6b5e7b1840e0984a7a4e824b9e97