There are a lot of impeachment petitions floating around online. Most of them are the work of opportunists trying to build up e-mail lists, and this one, from a new Fox Nation/Blaze-wannabe sight called Capitol Hill Daily, is no exception. What sets it apart is the imaginative impeachment scenario:
By signing this petition, you're demanding, alongside us here at Capitol Hill Daily, that Congress place President Obama's powers under immediate suspension, that they conduct a thorough investigation of every scandal his administration has faced, and that his high crimes be judged before a court of law.Yes, they're telling the rubes -- you know, those rubes in the tricorn hats who tell us that the main thing we need to do is go back to the strict principles of the Constitution -- that this is how impeachment works:
Ummm, folks? That's not how impeachment works. Go read Article I, Section 3, and Article II, Section 4, of your beloved Constitution. No one gets to put the president's "powers under immediate suspension." And there's no trial "before a court of law" because the trial takes place in the Senate. That part is the trial. Was 1998 that long ago?
According to Right Wing Watch, Capitol Hill Daily comes to us from Charisma Media, a Pentecostal publisher best known for a Christian periodical called Charisma Magazine. Charisma Media recently began moving into secular politics with a e-mail asserting, with no actual evidence, that "Obamacare Just Killed its Millionth Person." An anti-Obamacare petition, naturally, was attached -- gotta collect those e-mail addresses!
The "chief political analyst" of Capitol Hill Daily is Floyd Brown, the co-founder of Citizens United, who's best known for his Willie Horton ads against Mike Dukakis in 1988, and for years of anti-Clinton work in the 1990s. I don't know if Brown is involved in the ad, but hell, you'd think he'd know how impeachment works.
