Grounds for Impeachment – Part I

by

Howard Adelman

1. It is not an impeachable offence to comb your corn-coloured hair forward.
2. It is not an impeachable offence to be a blowhard.
3. It is not an impeachable offence to be a bully.
4. It is not an impeachable offence to be a braggart.
5. It is not an impeachable offence to be an egotist.
6. It is not an impeachable offence to be an egomaniac.
7. It is not an impeachable offence to engage in willful ignorance.
8. It is not an impeachable offence to be self-contradictory.
9. It is not an impeachable offence to be emotionally erratic.
10. It is not an impeachable offence to be temperamentally unfit.
11. It is not an impeachable offence to fail to be reasonable.
12. It is not an impeachable offence to fail to be self-effacing.
13. It is not an impeachable offence to fail to be considerate of others.
14. It is not an impeachable offence to fail to be knowledgeable.
15. It is not an impeachable offence to fail to be cautious and modest.
16. It is not an impeachable offence for a liar to lie and claim not to be a liar.
17. It is not an impeachable offence for an aspirant to high office to hope to lose.
18. It is not an impeachable offence to be bored at cabinet meetings.
19. It is not an impeachable offence to be “post-literate.”
20. It is not an impeachable offence to obtain all one’s news from TV.
21. It is not an impeachable offence to tweet your most important messages.
22. It is not an impeachable offence to not even read a policy brief.
23. It is not an impeachable offence to not even read a one-page memo.
24. It is not an impeachable offence to be called by your senior subordinates an idiot, dumb, stupid, a dope or a moron.
25. It is not an impeachable offence to be an idiot, dumb, a dope and a moron.

Grounds for Impeachment – Part II

26. It is not an impeachable offence when, in 1973, as President of a corporation having discriminated against black tenant applicants wanting to live in one of your apartments, calling charges that it did “absolutely ridiculous.”
27. It is not an impeachable offence when, in 1973, as President of a corporation having discriminated against black tenant applicants wanting to live in one of your apartments, copping a plea bargain when presented with the incontrovertible evidence.
28. It is not an impeachable offence when, in 1973, as President of a corporation having discriminated against Black tenant applicants wanting to live in one of your apartments, to sign a consent decree and pay a fine.
29. It is not an impeachable offence as a casino owner not to hire a Black accountant because Blacks are allegedly lazy.
30. It is not an impeachable offence to stiff your suppliers when you were in business.
31. It is not an impeachable offence for one’s companies to go bankrupt five times.
32. It is not an impeachable offence to call five young Black and Latino teenagers muggers and murderers even before they were convicted.
33. It is not an impeachable offence to take out full page ads in four New York newspapers at a cost of $85,000 (tax deductible) calling for the death penalty to be restored.
34. It is not an impeachable offence to take out ads demanding that the Central Park five be executed.
35. It is not an impeachable offence to demand the Central Park five be executed for allegedly assaulting and raping a woman jogging in Central Park.
36. It is not an impeachable offence to demand the Central Park five be executed when, several years later, it was proven that they had been wrongfully convicted based on DNA evidence and the confession of a serial rapist.
37. It is not an impeachable offence to apply to build a 150-storey building on the West Side of Manhattan so that you can occupy the highest apartment in the world.
38. It is not an impeachable offence to have become the loudest voice promoting the Birther Movement.
39. It is not an impeachable offence to wrongly insist Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
40. It is not an impeachable offence to wrongly insist that Barack Obama was not born in the United States even after a birth certificate was produced.
41. It is not an impeachable offence to call Obama’s birth certificate a fraud.
42. It is not an impeachable offence to finally admit that Obama was indeed born in the U.S.A.
43. It is not an impeachable offence to admit, contrary to a long campaign claiming that Obama was not born in the U.S., but not issue an apology.
44. It is not an impeachable offence when presented with incontrovertible evidence that Obama was born in the U.S.A. to immediately blame his opponent, Hilary Clinton, for initiating the misinformation.
45. It is not an impeachable offence to never apologize even for your grossest and most egregious mistakes.
46. It is not an impeachable offence to have a private affair and lie about it.
47. It is not an impeachable offence to boast about assaulting women sexually.
48. It is not an impeachable offence to pay a former lover to keep silent during an election campaign and deny doing so.
49. It is not an impeachable offence to pay a former lover US$130,000 to keep silent during an election.
50. It is not an impeachable offence to deny paying a former lover US$130,000 to keep silent during an election and then admit it.

Grounds for Impeachment – Part III

51. It is not an impeachable offence for someone campaigning for the U.S. presidency to offer to pay the legal bills of those who beat hecklers.
52. It is not an impeachable offence to be dismissive of a great American war hero because he was captured.
53. It is not an impeachable offence to denigrate the handicapped.
54. It is not an impeachable offence to be a serial liar.
55. It is not an impeachable offence to call Hillary Rodman Clinton “’lyin’ Hilary.”
56. It is not an impeachable offence to hire as your spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders who, without any sense of irony, insisted that, “The president believes in making sure that information is accurate before pushing it out as fact.”
57. It is not an impeachable offence to call the esteemed New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN producers of ‘fake news.’
58. It is not an impeachable offence to try to stop publication of a personally authorized book on oneself that is scathing in its treatment.
59. It is not an impeachable offence not to disclose your business affairs.
60. It is not an impeachable offence to urge owners of football teams to fire players who express their right to protest guaranteed by the constitution.
61. It is not an impeachable offence to fail to provide adequate aid to Puerto Rico after a devastating storm and floods.
62. It is not an impeachable offence to be complicit in the death of many.
63. It is not an impeachable offence to be reckless in office.
64. It is not an impeachable offence to disregard the law of the land when in office.
65. It is not an impeachable offence to have done business with Russian billionaires.
66. It is not an impeachable offence to admire Vladimir Putin.
67. It is not an impeachable offence to try to get Russia readmitted to the G7 and withdraw from the boycott of Russia because Russia occupied Crimea.
68. It is not an impeachable offence to fire James Comey, the F.B.I. Director, in May 2017 for mishandling the Hilary Clinton file.
69. It is not an impeachable offence to contradict yourself and admit that James Comey was fired because he would not ease up on the Russian probe and his inquiries into the activities of Michael Flynn.
70. It is not an impeachable offence to not condemn white-supremacist protesters in Charlottesville.
71. It is not an impeachable offence to call racists “very fine people,”
72. It is not an impeachable offence to insist; “that there are good people on both sides,” the racist protesters and the anti-racist protesters.
73. It is not an impeachable offence to call Black states “shithole countries.”
74. It is not an impeachable offence to insult Mexicans and call them rapists and drug traffickers, though admitting there may be a few good ones.
75. It is not an impeachable offence to admit banning migrants and visitors to the U.S.A. because they are Muslims, as long as you do not include that reason in your Executive Order.
76. It is not an impeachable offence to claim a judge in a court case against you was biased because he was Mexican.
77. It is not an impeachable offence to claim a judge was a biased Mexican when he was born in the U.S.
78. It is not an impeachable offence to continually quote racist and xenophobic websites as a source while not acknowledging them.
79. It is not an impeachable offence to call oneself “the least racist person.”
80. It is not an impeachable offence to prevent transgender people from serving in the armed forces.
81. It is not an impeachable offence to discriminate against transgender people in spite of American laws requiring equal treatment of all.
82. It is not an impeachable offence for delaying indefinitely measures requiring communities to analyze how their housing policies might be fostering racial and economic inequality.
83. It is not an impeachable offence to allege “millions of votes” were cast illegally.
84. It is not an impeachable offence to dissolve a commission inquiring into voter fraud on one’s initiative.
85. It is not an impeachable offence to dissolve a voter fraud commission that one initiates when documentation emerged that, of a billion votes cast over 15 years, there were only 15 allegations of voter fraud.
86. It is not an impeachable offence to allow your Attorney General to unilaterally rescind an Obama directive backing off legal enforcement of marihuana laws in states that have legalized pot.
87. It is not an impeachable offence to appoint an inexperienced 24-year-old campaign worker to lead the White House drug policy office.
88. It is not an impeachable offence to impose tariffs on Canada, America’s closest ally, for “security reasons.”
89. It is not an impeachable offence to promise that tariffs will create jobs for America.
90. It is not an impeachable offence to claim that a steel company was opening new plants because of those tariffs when it was not.
91. It is not an impeachable offence to threaten imposing taxes on a famous motorcycle company for considering moving jobs offshore because of those same tariffs.
92. It is not an impeachable offence to use administrative efforts to undercut the Medical care system even though one is unable to pass legislation to undermine that system.
93. It is not an impeachable offence to issue orders to separate asylum claimants from their children.
94. It is not an impeachable offence to issue an Executive Order to rescind the separation of migrant families.
95. It is not an impeachable offence to rescind the separation of migrant families without providing a system for reuniting the 2,300 separated children with their parents.
96. It is not an impeachable offence to threaten to turn asylum claimants back from the border without a hearing.
97. It is not an impeachable offence to deny asylum claimants a hearing in spite of American laws requiring granting a fair hearing.
98. It is not an impeachable offence to deny asylum claimants a hearing despite the requirements of treaties to which the U.S.A. is a signatory.
99. It is not an impeachable offence to be Donald Trump.

To be continued

With the help of Alex Zisman