To the Editor:

The ongoing travesty the Congressional Democrats have instigated drags on with acquittal a given. However, in the interim the United States moves right along with the economy booming and if anything with the cheap theatrics put on by the House of Representatives, all they have done is displayed their ignorance of the Constitution in that President Trump has not committed a single violation of any of the true articles of impeachment as set forth in the Constitution in Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1. The current Democrats are grasping for straws and their chief spokesman has even admitted that “the people can’t be trusted to remove Trump by voting him out and thus he must be impeached.”

There have been four presidents impeached by Congress throughout the course of our history. None convicted. The first was Democrat Andrew Johnson from Tennessee, who was President Lincoln’s VP in 1864 and became President upon Lincoln’s assassination. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives charged Johnson with 11 articles of impeachment on March 2, 1868 among which was he violated the Tenure of Office act by firing the radical Republican Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War and replacing him with General Lorenzo Thomas.

Under the Tenure of Office Act, the President could not remove a person from office without Congressional approval. Johnson contended this act was unconstitutional and the United States Court later ruled it invalid also. Johnson was acquitted on May 28, 1868 by a majority of one vote in the Senate. One of the ten Republican Senators voting against the impeachment, Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, had this to say about the impeachment: “Once set the example of impeaching a President for what, when the excitement of the hour shall have subsided, will be regarded as insufficient causes, as several of those now alleged against the President were decided to be by the House of Representatives only a few months hence, and no future President will be safe who happens to differ with a majority of the House and two thirds of the Senate on any measure deemed by them important, particularly of a political character. Blinded by partisan zeal, with such an example before them, they will not scruple to remove out of the way any obstacle to the accomplishment of their purposes, and what then becomes of the checks and balances of the Constitution, so carefully devised and so vital to its perpetuity? They are all gone.”

Senator Trumbull correctly summed it all up in 1868 and this article should be mandatory reading by all the current Congress; both the House and the Senate. In fact all Congress should be mandated to enroll in United States Constitution 101. Particularly the junior Democrat Representative who when questioned stated in all sincerity, “the three branches of the United States government are the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives.”

Charles David Sliger

Shelbyville