I am sure, if you do nothing but peruse my categories and a list of my postings, you will come to the realization that I enjoy the study of history and historical characters. I have spent quite a bit of time studying and writing about our Presidents. I have even gone to the lengths of rating them from best to worst. Many people will be surprised at my ratings, however, I have defended my reasoning behind each decision that I made. Some may correspond to existing rating charts. While I may be a little partial to my rating chart, I think it is the most accurate one based on revisionist writings and research. I also have an extensive library on the presidents and not just popular biographies but multi volume works by respected historians and scholars.
Having reviewed my list of categories, you may be struck by the lack of historically distinct ones. Well, you would be right in noting that seeming aberrancy. I assure you it was by intention that I did this. I did it this way because I wanted to have more flexibility in my writing. Also many historical articles fall into different categories. So that is what I did when I placed them where they fit or made sense. You will find them just to name a few of my categories, “Soul Series,” “Race Relations and Slavery,” “President Series,” “What’s Wrong”, and “Governmental and Political Both National and International” to name a few.
I found out that the more research I did for my articles the more ideas I came up for additional ones and whole new categories of postings. When I first started this blog, I thought that eventually I would run out of ideas for my articles. What is amazing is the exact opposite has taken place the longer I work on my blog the more ideas I come up with.
People might find it strange that I keep a notepad and pen by my seat in the living room. My wife and I enjoy watching the news as well as shows on Fox Nation, YouTube and other live streaming channels. You would be surprised on how much you can learn from some of these shows. I even take notes from some of them, I also take notes from some of the books I read. I use these notes not only to help in my research but also to give me ideas for new articles.
Several of my longer articles have table of contents because of their length and the number of parts. I currently have over 460 articles… there is no way that I can keep them all current. I, however, do the best I can to keep my more important articles updated. My article on slavery is one such article. It is a very lengthy article that covers the origin of slavery in the world and in the United States.
There are a multitude of articles related to racism in the US in my blog. I wrote a multi-part series on each of the major ethnic groups and how they have been treated in the last 100 years. I did this to show the black people in this country that they are not the only racial group treated poorly. The Native American Indians, with the exception of the black population have been treated the worse. The Chinese and the Irish were also treated pretty poorly as well. Having studied history like I have, it has become pretty apparent that we treated anyone that did not fit in a certain mold like crap. A lot of people on the left point to this tendency as a reason to destroy our country and history. I want you to know that we are not alone in history. Pretty much every country at some point in time abused the minorities or enslaved them. This is mainly ignored because it does not meet with their agenda.
I investigated two presidential assassinations, that of Lincoln and Kennedy. I did so, to see if I could settle once and for all if there was a conspiracy in these assassinations. I read quite a few books on the subject and I came to the conclusion mainly by using something that few people have used over the last 60 years and that is common sense. By using common sense, I found that it was quite easy to determine that there was a conspiracy in the Lincoln Assassination and that there was no conspiracy in the Kennedy Assassination, as much as I would like there to have been one. There is a lot of data out there but you have to look at human nature. Once you do so, you are able to come to the conclusion that it is impossible just because of the sheer number of people that would have had to have been in on it. There was, however, a lot of negligence involved and a lot of destruction of evidence mainly to cover up that negligence.
Sure, the mob hated the Kennedys but they were pissed more at Robert than Jack. Besides, Robert was a much easier target for them. Castro hated The Kennedys as well, but he knew that if he killed the president his country would be crushed. LBJ was both a loud mouth and a coward but he also was not stupid. He knew that he would be the first and most obvious suspect because he had the most to gain from the death of his boss. It was not the Russians either because Khrushchev liked and respected JFK, mainly because he did not rub his nose in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He gave him a way out which allowed him to save face. Besides, he actually cried when he heard that Kennedy was dead. Certainly not the action of an individual that had ordered the assassination of another head of a state.
Obviously, I consider having and using common sense to be quite important hence I used the term in both my blog and my podcast. I tend to use common sense as an investigative tool.
In the next section of this chapter, I will include some excerpts from my historical postings just like I have for my two previous chapters.
How Does FDR Compare With Biden? You Will Be Surprised.
Biden opened up this can of worms, by comparing himself to FDR. In previous articles I have written about our presidents. When I first started working on this blog I made the statement that I would let the facts lead the path of the narrative. I would not allow past preconceptions taint the path and the destination of these articles. While I might start out trying to prove a preconceived supposition, if the facts prove otherwise, I will go down that new path. I also on a regular basis upgrade many of my postings as new information becomes available. This is especially true in my articles on the COVID-19 Pandemic. As I stated I have written several articles on our presidents, so many in fact that they now have their own category in my blog. I have written one article in particular where I compare and rate all the presidents. Since its first inception and than completion I have edited it and have altered the ratings on several presidents based again on new information. I am an avid reader, so I never know what I will find out. I am also not too proud to correct mistakes that I have made. So having said that, no president has been affected as much by my research as has FDR. I originally rated him along with the vast majority of American historians, very highly. However his rating have been slipping. He has fallen all the way down to the low end of the list. His rating went from 4.5 stars to 2.5 stars. With the most recent book I am reading on Pearl Harbor, it may even drop more. So this brings me to this article. It is no secret that I am a conservative and a pro Trumper. There is also no love lost with how I feel about Biden. You may also notice that I rarely call him president. That is because I don’t think he is a legitimate president. He only won by thievery and chicanery.
Unless you have been living under a liberal rock, there is no question that the Biden family has been guilty of some highly unethical behavior and finances. However what I did not know previously is that the family of FDR was also guilty of similar behavior. Most of the people in our country today believe that Biden handled the Afghan withdrawal poorly. What most Americans don’t know is how poorly FDR handled WWII. I will discuss this in depth a little later. I am sure that all but the most diehard supporters of Biden will agree that our country is in a much worse place than we were in just a year ago. He has bungled just about everything that he has touched. I know that I am not alone with my supposed knowledge on FDR and the great depression. What is not known by most of us is that his new deal program(s) were a total failure. The only reason that we ever got out of the great depression is due to WWII. Finally I will compare both of their relations with the presidents they followed and how their campaigns were run. Both future leaders used highly unethical practices to attain the highest office.
What Happened to Vice President Hannibal Hamlin?
Hannibal Hamlin was an American attorney and politician from the state of Maine. In a public service career that spanned over 50 years, he served as the 15th vice president of the United States. The first Republican to hold the office, Hamlin served from 1861 to 1865. He is considered among the most influential politicians to have come from Maine……
In the 1860 election, Hamlin was the Republican nominee for Vice President. Selected to run with Abraham Lincoln, who was from Illinois, Hamlin was chosen in part to bring geographic balance to the ticket and in part because as a former Democrat, he could work to convince other anti-slavery Democrats that their future lay with the Republican Party. The Lincoln and Hamlin ticket was successful, and Hamlin served as Vice President from 1861 to 1865, which included all but the last month of the American Civil War. The first Republican Vice President, Hamlin held the office in an era when the office was considered more a part of the legislative branch than the executive; he was not personally close to Lincoln and did not play a major role in his administration. Even so, Hamlin supported the administration’s legislative program in his role as presiding officer of the Senate, and he looked for other ways to demonstrate his support for the Union, including a term of service in a Maine militia unit during the war.
For the 1864 election, Hamlin was replaced as Vice Presidential nominee by Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat chosen for his appeal to Southern Unionists.* After leaving the vice presidency, Hamlin served as Collector of the Port of Boston, a lucrative post to which he was appointed by Johnson after the latter succeeded to the presidency following Lincoln’s assassination. However, Hamlin later resigned as Collector because of his disagreement with Johnson over Reconstruction of the former Confederacy.
Not content with private life, Hamlin returned to the U.S. Senate in 1869 to serve two more 6-year terms before declining to run for re-election in 1880 because of an ailing heart. His last duty as a public servant came in 1881 when Secretary of State James G. Blaine convinced President James A. Garfield to name Hamlin as United States Ambassador to Spain. Hamlin received the appointment on June 30, 1881, and held the post until October 17, 1882. Upon returning from Spain, Hamlin retired from public life to his home in Bangor, Maine, which he had purchased in 1851.
Hamlin’s demise marked an unfortunate turn of history that might well have changed the course of the critical Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. Sharing Lincoln’s abhorrence of slavery as he did, one can only speculate on how as president Hamlin might have smoothed the path to reconciliation with the South in that turbulent period of the nation’s history.
In time, members of both political parties—and, a century later, a remarkable crusade for racial equality and justice—moved the nation closer to Lincoln’s dreams and aspirations. Through all this, Lincoln’s legacy was greatly enhanced, though not yet fully achieved, even 150 years after his death. Historians, however, can only ponder how the course of Union reconstruction might have been altered had “Honest” Abe Lincoln not abandoned his first vice president, an outspoken champion of slave emancipation, for a defender of the Union who was determined to preserve the social, cultural and racial ways of the Old South.(1)
Was the Country Better off with LBJ than JFK?
The assassination and death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy(JFK) was a great tragedy and ended the love affair the American people had with the Camelot like presidency. The Kennedy’s were as close to royalty as America would ever get. However, what is posed here is whether or not the country was politically speaking better off with Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) than with JFK? While there is no denying that LBJ was a despicable person, he was a master politician with 12 years of congressional experience. He was also a pragmatist, he knew in order to have a successful presidency that was not be tainted by comparisons JFK he had to not only compete all the unfinished goals of the previous president he had to complete them quicker and accomplish more than JFK would ever conceivably be able achieve. LBJ had an ego so big, he even compared his sexual prowesses to JFK’s. So much so that he even showed his genitalia to both men and women in the white house. What is impressive is that he actually accomplished that goal in less than 1 and 1/2 terms. The Johnson Administration submitted 87 bills to Congress, and Johnson signed 84, or 96%, arguably the most successful legislative agenda in US congressional history. Something that the more popular Kennedy had no hope of ever accomplishing.
Among historians and some authors, there has been detailed debate and discussion about what would have happened in the event that Kennedy wasn’t killed in November 1963. The three main topics of debate have been the outcome of the 1964 presidential election; the escalation of the Vietnam War; and the finality of the historic Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. All three of those items were in process when Kennedy died when he visited Texas as part of the run-up to the 1964 presidential campaign. Kennedy was committed to running again in 1964 and based on the theories among historians, he had a good chance of winning. His popularity rating was at 58 percent right before the assassination, just after he served 1,000 days in office. That number was higher than similar ratings for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, five presidents who won re-election bids. The presumptive presidential nominee for the Republicans in late 1963 was Senator Barry Goldwater. He was friends with Kennedy and briefly dropped out of race after Kennedy’s death, only to re-enter it to oppose a man he disliked, Lyndon Johnson.
Kennedy and Goldwater had reportedly agreed to debate, while Johnson had no interest in debating Goldwater. The closeness of an election between Kennedy and Goldwater would have been decided by two big issues looming over the year of 1964: civil rights and Vietnam. On taped recordings made in the White House just before his death, Kennedy told advisers he expected a tough re-election campaign because of his support of civil rights. President Kennedy had introduced his historic Civil Rights Act in June 1963. It was stalled in Congress when Kennedy died. The Civil Rights Act faced fierce opposition in Congress, mostly from southern Democrats. Kennedy rejected an attempt to substitute a bill that would allow segregation at public facilities to continue. After Kennedy’s death, President Johnson told the nation that passing the Civil Rights Act would be the best way to honor Kennedy’s legacy, but it took until July 1964 for Johnson and his allies to get the act approved.
If Kennedy had lived, the debate over the Civil Rights Act would have occurred during an election year—or maybe not. One theory is that Kennedy would have waited until after the 1964 election, with the hope of having more leverage in Congress to pass the act. The combination of Kennedy and Johnson would have tackled the bill, which would have been a protracted battle. In reality, President Johnson was able to get the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964 and Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 using his mandate from a landslide election, Kennedy’s legacy, and his considerable powers of persuasion in Congress. So we see that LBJ accomplished all of Kennedy’s major goals for his second term, and did so in record time.
There also remains the question of how Kennedy would have handled the Vietnam issue?
The president’s brother, Robert Kennedy, did an audio interview for the Kennedy Library in April 1964 that recounted the thinking about Vietnam at the time of the president’s death: that Vietnam couldn’t fall to the Communists. “He had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam,” Robert Kennedy said about his brother. The reason was the Domino theory, “Just the loss of all of Southeast Asia if you lost Vietnam. I think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall,” Kennedy said. Just three weeks before President Kennedy’s death, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem was killed in a military coup indirectly supported by the United States. In August 1963, Kennedy said in another taped conversation that Congress would be mad if it found out about a proposed coup in Vietnam, but Congress would “be madder if Vietnam goes down the drain.” The situation rapidly deteriorated in Vietnam in the year after Kennedy’s death and in August 1964, Congress approved by a near unanimous vote the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave President Johnson the ability to commit massive amounts of U.S. troops without a war declaration. In 2009, filmmaker and visiting Brown scholar Koji Masutani took on the subject of Kennedy and Vietnam in Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived. The film was based on a book and considerable research on the subject by academics at Brown and the University of Toronto, who looked at large amounts of data and transcripts from the Kennedy administration.
Masutani and the researchers concluded that Kennedy would have sought a more diplomatic solution than Johnson, who committed more troops to the Vietnam War in 1964, and that Kennedy wanted to be out of Vietnam entirely by 1966. Their theory was that Kennedy had a pattern of behavior, established in his handling of crises like the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile situations, which usually had the president going against the advice of his military advisers to find a diplomatic solution. Planning documents from November 20, 1963 show that the U.S. had hoped to have all military personnel out of Vietnam by the end of the 1965 calendar year, unless there were “justified” exceptions. But the fallout from the Diem coup was unknown at the time of the Kennedy assassination, so how the president would have handled Vietnam during an election year remains a mystery.
It was said that the day that Kennedy was assassinated America lost its innocence. I am not sure if this was the case or not. America had just finished a decade with McCarthyism and the advent of the cold war, and the 1960’s saw us firmly entrenched in this war with the Soviet Union, so I don’t think the American people were that innocent. We were also embroiled in a crisis with race relations that had been percolating for decades and was just coming to a head in the 60’s. But it can’t be denied that it was a major blow to the country. JFK and his wife Jacqueline Kennedy were much loved by the people. However, that is far as it goes. I think the country was politically speaking based on sheer congressional accomplishments far better off with LBJ in office.(2)
Which Assassination Was the Biggest Loss to This Country, JFK’s or RFK’s ?
Your probably asking yourself how I could possibly compare the two brothers? One was a president and the other just ran for the office. They were both great men, they were also serial womanizer’s. You might also ask the question with their checkered pasts would they have made it so far in politics. The press in the 60’s were much more forgiving then they are today, maybe. If you are a democrat they are even more forgiving, if you are a republican you are “SOL”. What I am basing this comparison is on accomplishments and untapped potential. Another question you can ask, would JFK have made it as far as he did without his wing man, RFK? Prior to his death in World War II Joseph Jr. Kennedy was being groomed by his father to be a future President of the U.S. With his older brother’s untimely death, JFK took his place, and became the political hope of the family. How fickle history is. All the family were driven by their parents, and second place was never an option for their children. This was especially true of the eldest surviving male. JFK was sickly most of his life, he had to work especially hard to overcome this impediment. He took up swimming to help with his health. He was involved in politics at an early age, and as a result of his experiences he won the Pulitzer award in literature for his book “Profiles in Courage“. In WWII, his PT boat was struck and sunk by a Japanese gunboat, the accident had a two-fold affect on his life, the accident injured his back, and this injury caused him to be in great pain for the rest of his life. The pain was so great that he had to wear a back brace most of his waking life. Second of all, his actions to save his crew made him a immediate hero and catapulted him into the limelight. This was probably the single most important factor in the winning of his presidential campaign in 1960. His brother RFK was his campaign manager, and was also instrumental in his successful campaign. RFK was appointed the Attorney General, and became his most trusted senior adviser while he was President.
Jfk’s first year as president was very rocky. His previous experience in the House of Representatives (1947-1953) and in the Senate (1953-1960), did little to help him as a new President. He was unsure of himself, he allowed himself to be bullied by his military advisers and subsequently become involved in the Disastrous Bay of Pigs, and our initial involvement in the Vietnam Conflict. In his second year, he was more sure of himself and with his brother’s help he was able to conclude the Cuban Missile Crisis successfully. He had little interest in the civil rights movement, until RFK prompted him to take up the call. He than became an avid supporter. Unfortunately his presidency was cut short by his assassination on November 23, 1963 in Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald. It is hard to know what the rest of his presidency would have been like. It is obvious that he was a quick learner. Many historians believe he would have been able to accomplish great things. There is also a question if his health would have hampered his presidency. He also could have become mired in scandal, by his second year his sexual appetites seemed to have lessened and he became more of a family man. So hopefully it philandering would not have become an issue, though again we simply don’t know. It is believed he would have won his second term. So he would have had over 5 years to make positive changes. In a future article I will discuss what his future presidency might have been like, in comparison to his replacement, LBJ. It however, can’t be denied that he had a great, virtually untapped potential….
Kennedy was committed to civil rights enforcement to such a degree that he commented in 1962 that it seemed to envelop almost every area of his public and private life, from prosecuting corrupt Southern electoral officials to answering late night calls from Coretta Scott King concerning the imprisonment of her husband for demonstrations in Alabama. During his tenure as attorney general, he undertook the most energetic and persistent desegregation of the administration that Capitol Hill had ever experienced. He demanded that every area of government begin recruiting realistic levels of black and other ethnic workers, going so far as to criticize Vice President Johnson for his failure to desegregate his own office staff. Although it has become commonplace to assert the phrase “The Kennedy Administration” or even “President Kennedy” when discussing the legislative and executive support of the civil rights movement, between 1960 and 1963 a great many of the initiatives that occurred during his tenure were the result of the passion and determination of an emboldened Robert Kennedy, who, through his rapid education in the realities of Southern racism, underwent a thorough conversion of purpose as attorney general. Asked in an interview in May 1962, “What do you see as the big problem ahead for you, is it crime or internal security?” Kennedy replied, “Civil rights.” The president came to share his brother’s sense of urgency on the matters at hand to such an extent that it was at the attorney general’s insistence that he made his famous June 1963 address to the nation on civil rights. Kennedy played a large role in the response to the Freedom Riders protests. He acted after the Anniston bus bombings to protect the Riders in continuing their journey, sending John Seigenthaler, his administrative assistant, to Alabama to attempt to secure the Riders’ safety there. Despite a work rule which allowed a driver to decline an assignment which he regarded as a potentially unsafe one, he persuaded a manager of The Greyhound Corporation to obtain a coach operator who was willing to drive a special bus for the continuance of the Freedom Ride from Birmingham, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama, on the circuitous journey to Jackson, Mississippi. In September 1962, Kennedy sent a force of U.S. marshals and deputized U.S. Border Patrol agents and federal prison guards to Oxford, Mississippi, to enforce a federal court order allowing the admittance of the first African-American student, James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi.
Of the two brothers, I think RFK had the most potential, he accomplished everything with out a RFK of his own. Edward (Ted) Kennedy tried to support his brother, it just wasn’t the same. Robert also had the moral compass that his older brother simply did not have. The plight of the people affected him. He didn’t need somebody else to tell him that he needed to be concerned and to show compassion, he just came naturally to him. I believe JFK was a showman and RFK was the real deal.
Certainly, there is no denying that history would have been different if Kennedy had survived to win in November, and especially if he had managed to fulfill a campaign pledge to quickly wind down the Vietnam War. “If he gets to be president, then there’s no Nixon,” said Peter Edelman, a professor at Georgetown University’s law school who worked as a legislative assistant to Kennedy. “I know this as much as anybody could know, because he was gone, but he had every intention of ending the war right away.” “And of course then there’s no Watergate,” he added. When Thurston Clarke, author of “The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America,” promoted his book in 2008 people told him that Robert Kennedy’s death still haunted them. “I heard again and again that they felt the loss of Bobby Kennedy more keenly even than the loss of John F. Kennedy,” Mr. Clarke said. “That they felt the country would have been even more different had Robert Kennedy been president than if John F. Kennedy had lived.”
In the half-century since his death, Bobby Kennedy has come to embody the Democratic Party’s lost dream. He alone, it seemed, could draw working-class white, black and Latino voters into an umbrella coalition. He was an “activist champion of the country’s disinherited,” argues Chris Matthews, the MSNBC host and longtime political observer. He seemed uniquely capable of preaching a message of reconciliation in a country violently torn at the seams in 1968. Or, if he was not singular in this ability, then his powerful message of “inclusive patriotic populism,” as Richard D. Kahlenberg has argued. Repeatedly, Kennedy appealed for an America which transcended selfishness and materialism. “The gross national product,” he said, “does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It allows neither for the justice in our courts, nor for the justice of our dealings with each other. [It] measures neither our wit nor our courage, nor wisdom nor learning, neither our compassion or devotion to country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile; it can tell us everything about America ― except whether we are proud to be Americans.”
On June 4, with overwhelming support from blacks and Hispanics, Kennedy won California decisively. “Bob,” the playwright Bud Schulberg told him, “you’re the only white man in the country they trust.” An hour later, he was shot. Lying in a pool of blood, he asked: “Is everyone all right?”
We weren’t all right ― then, or now. The wounds and divisions Robert Kennedy hoped to heal are with us still. In 1978, Tony Lewis reminisced: “He had a capacity to reach out to disparate groups in our society: black and white, young and old, middle-class and poor, blue-collar workers and intellectuals. There is no political figure now, and none on the horizon, with whom so many Americans can identify.”
If not for LBJ the answer for the initial question would be a dead even tie. But the presence of Johnson changes the picture completely. So the answer becomes quite clear. The country lost more with Robert F. Kennedy’s death. Amazing since Johnson hated the Kennedy’s. And even some conspiracy theorists feel , he was responsible for JFK’s death.
Impeachment Dissected
The Constitution of the United States gives Congress the authority to remove the president of the United States from office in two separate proceedings. The first one takes place in the House of Representatives, which impeaches the president by approving articles of impeachment through a simple majority vote. The second proceeding, the impeachment trial, takes place in the Senate. There, conviction on any of the articles requires a two-thirds majority vote and would result in the removal from office (if currently sitting), and possibly debarment from holding future office.
Three United States presidents have been impeached, although none were convicted: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. Trump is the only president (and only federal officeholder) to be impeached twice. Richard Nixon resigned as a result of the Watergate Scandal in 1974, after the House Judiciary Committee passed articles of impeachment
Impeachable offenses
The Constitution limits grounds of impeachment to “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”, but does not itself define “high crimes and misdemeanors”.
Types of conduct
Congressional materials have cautioned that the grounds for impeachment “do not all fit neatly and logically into categories” because the remedy of impeachment is intended to “reach a broad variety of conduct by officers that is both serious and incompatible with the duties of the office”. Congress has identified three general types of conduct that constitute grounds for impeachment, although these categories should not be understood as exhaustive:
- improperly exceeding or abusing the powers of the office;
- behavior incompatible with the function and purpose of the office; and
- misusing the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain.
High crimes and misdemeanors
“High crimes and misdemeanors”, in the legal and common parlance of England in the 17th and 18th centuries, is corrupt activity by those who have special duties that are not shared with common persons. Toward the end of the 18th century, “High crimes and misdemeanors” acquired a more technical meaning. As Blackstone says in his Commentaries: The first and principal high misdemeanor…was mal-administration of such high offices as are in public trust and employment.
A common question regarding the impeachment process is what it takes to see a president face trial in the Senate. When there are leaders of the free world that appear to be involved with criminal activity, what actually qualifies them for impeachment?
Is the president guilty of:
a) treason
b) bribery
c) high crimes and misdemeanors
d) a combination of the above
e) none of the above
The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” was a common phrase when the U.S. Constitution was written and did not require any stringent or difficult criteria for determining guilt, but meant the opposite. The crimes are called “high crimes” because they are carried out by a person in a position of public authority, or by misusing the position of public authority they have been given. It does not mean that the crimes themselves are unusual or “higher” types of crime. The phrase was historically used to cover a very broad range of crimes. In 1974 the Senate’s Judiciary Committee’s stated that “‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’ has traditionally been considered a ‘term of art‘, like such other constitutional phrases as ‘levying war’ and ‘due. (3)
I think the excerpts that I included at the end of this chapter help to show the variety of historical subjects that I write about. I hope you found them as interesting I have.
Resources
(1)en.wikipedia.org,”Hannibal Hamlin,” By Wikipedia Editors; politico.com,” Lincoln Successor Problem,: By Jules Witcover;
(2)Article By Scott Bomboy, the editor-in-chief of the National Constitution Center, “What if JFK had survived his assassination?”
(3)en.wikipedia.org, “Impeachments of presidents of the United States,” By Wikipedia editors