{"id":8918,"date":"2017-10-29T14:22:35","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T19:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/?p=8918"},"modified":"2017-10-31T09:46:31","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T14:46:31","slug":"dr-bass-addresses-loose-talk-about-impeachment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/archives\/8918","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Bass addresses ‘loose talk’ about impeachment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dr.
Dr. Patrick Bass<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

by Christina Vazquez–<\/strong>Impeachment in America has, historically, not been about actually removing someone from office, but rather to send a message.\u00a0 History professor Dr. Patrick Bass delivered a lecture Tuesday (10.24) about the historical precedents impeachment has in America.<\/p>\n

\u201cLoose talk does not equal real action,\u201d Dr. Bass told a crowd of about 40, made up of mingled students, faculty, and community members.\u00a0 He went on to tell several stories of impeachment\u2014or rather, almost impeachment, as only in one of the cases he spoke about was the indicted actually removed from office.\u00a0 The majority of the time, when impeachment is attempted, it is more of a power play than anything else.<\/p>\n

The sheer number of conditions needed to be met to remove a high-ranking official from office are immense.\u00a0 On paper the conditions are great enough, but in practicality, when no politician wants to vote him or herself out of a job, they become even more strict.\u00a0 According to Bass, these conditions include: an indictable offense for a crime that has constitutional ramifications, a divided government, popular public support for the person\u2019s removal from office, and a viable replacement for the individual.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe institutional barriers to the removal of the president are so immense,\u201d Bass says, \u201cI can\u2019t see it ever happening.\u201d\u00a0 But why is there so much talk about impeachment when it is so unlikely to happen?\u00a0 The answer comes down to political parties.\u00a0 It is hard to craft a political group to be entirely for something, but it is easy to find a common cause that they are against.\u00a0 Talk of impeachment stirs up the proponents of the party crying out for it, and as Bass says, \u201call that really matters is making sure the base stays in line.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Historical Background to Impeachment: Presidential and Judicial Precedents\u201d was presented by the Col. Bud Day Center for Civic Engagement in conjunction with the Morningside College History Department.\u00a0 The director of the Center, Dr. Valerie Hennings, says that as the event series is in collaboration with the History Department, History faculty are often asked to present, and that \u201cthe faculty choose their own topic.\u201d\u00a0 Bass says he chose his topic precisely because there is so much loose talk about impeachment, and he wished to address it.<\/p>\n

Among the crowd of attendees was second-year History major Jordan Yawn.\u00a0 Like many students, she received extra credit for attending, but \u201cI was planning on coming anyway,\u201d says Yawn.\u00a0 \u201cI like learning and absorbing knowledge.\u201d\u00a0 She said she was glad to learn more about the impeachment in America, being deeply interested in history and the interweaving storylines it creates.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Christina Vazquez–Impeachment in America has, historically, not been about actually removing someone from office, but rather to send a message.\u00a0 History professor Dr. Patrick Bass delivered a lecture Tuesday (10.24) about the historical precedents impeachment has in America. \u201cLoose talk does not equal real action,\u201d Dr. Bass told a crowd of about 40, made…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":8919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8927,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918\/revisions\/8927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}