{"id":20238,"date":"2017-03-09T14:11:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T14:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20238"},"modified":"2017-03-09T14:20:24","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T14:20:24","slug":"here-comes-the-dreaded-i-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20238","title":{"rendered":"Here comes the dreaded ‘I-word’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

The “I-word” has entered the discussion of Donald J. Trump’s troubles involving the Russians, his use of Twitter and a scathing accusation he has made against his predecessor as president of the United States.<\/p>\n

One of the nation’s foremost constitutional scholars, law professor Laurence Tribe, believes the president’s reckless use of Twitter to accuse Barack Obama of tapping his phones might be grounds for impeachment.<\/p>\n

There you have it, correct? Not exactly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tribe, I\u00a0shall stipulate, is a liberal-leaning fellow who more than likely didn’t vote for Trump during the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n

But he’s no dummy as it regards the U.S. Constitution and what it allows or disallows.<\/p>\n

Tribe’s thesis simply is that the president’s use of a social medium constitutes a reckless disregard for due process and that it implies a certain unfitness for the office he occupies.<\/p>\n

Readers of this blog no doubt know what Trump did. This past weekend, he awoke at his Mar-a-Lago estate early one morning and blasted out a tweet that accused former President Obama of “ordering” spooks to tap Trump’s offices at Trump Tower while looking for proof that Trump was colluding with the Russians to swing the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor.<\/p>\n

Nasty stuff, right? You bet it is.<\/p>\n

It’s also unproven. You see, Trump didn’t offer a shred of proof to back up that ridiculous contention. He has accused President Obama of committing a felony, given that the president cannot “order” a wiretap, which must come from a federal judge, who must have “probable cause” to issue such an order.<\/p>\n

The rule of law doesn’t enter into Trump’s tendency to engage in these Twitter tantrums. He just fires this crap\u00a0into cyberspace. Consequences? Who cares about ’em?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress are demanding Trump provide some basis for this ridiculous assertion. None has been forthcoming.<\/p>\n

Spoiler alert: I don’t think we’ll ever see any such basis.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the meantime, the I-word is out there.<\/p>\n

I agree that the bar for impeachment must be kept high. President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 was based on a sex scandal and his failure to adhere to his oath to be truthful to a federal grand jury that questioned him about it. I don’t believe those events met the standard for impeaching a president of the United States … but that’s just me.<\/p>\n

This Trump story is far from being resolved. The president had better come up with something <\/em>provable to back up his contention that President Obama broke the law.<\/p>\n

Or else …<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The “I-word” has entered the discussion of Donald J. Trump’s troubles involving the Russians, his use of Twitter and a scathing accusation he has made against his predecessor as president of the United States. One of the nation’s foremost constitutional scholars, law professor Laurence Tribe, believes the president’s reckless use of Twitter to accuse Barack … Continue reading Here comes the dreaded ‘I-word’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[540,1035,1424,2253,6988,5043],"class_list":["post-20238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-clinton-impeachment","tag-donald-trump","tag-impeachment","tag-laurence-tribe","tag-us-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20238"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20243,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238\/revisions\/20243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}