A Jury of Accomplices: The Framers’ Mistake.

I wrote awhile back that the Framers and Alexander Hamilton made an error. It has now some 230 years later proved to be a grave error. The Senate lacks the political courage or capacity to temper the overweening power of an Executive in an age of powerful media and mass communications — in an age of the cult of personality.

Once an unchecked and lawless executive has found common purpose with even half of the legislative branch by dint of political corruption and convenience, he or she can paralyze the legislative ability to carry out oversight, legislation or removal.

We now see in our own time that the purgative of Impeachment will fail even as means of publicly exposure for political corruption and constitutional overreach where the Senate majority has endeavored to conspire with the same corrupt Executive and his minions.

By these cross-branch construction conspiracies, the sole power of the Senate to try a corrupt president turns a Trial by the Senate into a gathering of accomplices. America has witnessed a jury of accomplices now refuse to hear from witnesses who might not only accuse the constitutional defendant but actually denounce the jurors themselves.

In this, the Framers failed. For they could not anticipate the scurrilous and pusillanimous choice the Senate would one day make. To acquit a President they have declared as guilty of the articles of impeachment.

-Albert Turner Goins