Obedience To Law Quotes
This was America’s first Presidential impeachment which occurred just a few years after America’s greatest crisis—the Civil War. It was handled in an orderly, serious manner following the law throughout.
The dictator that he thought Russia needed, Stalin, turned on him in 1937 for not agreeing with Stalin enthusiastically enough, had a 1 day trial for treason, and executed the best military man in the country despite the fact that Russia would need its military to fight the German invasion.
At the time many of the powerful and influential upper class felt that some of the laws did not necessarily apply to them or their corporations. They bribed legislators to change laws when they were inconvenient to ignore. Roosevelt was the first President to take them on.
Gaming the system is the process of finding loopholes or arranging things so that you can get around the law and usually do just what is prohibited in a way that is not a criminal offense. It is done mostly by corporations trying to avoid laws and regulations, but government officials in the Executive Branch often do the same thing to get around the laws which have been passed but the current administration now finds inconvenient.
President George W. Bush had ignored a federal law and tapped the phones of Americans without probable cause and a warrant issued by a court. The President’s defenders argued that the President, as Commander in Chief, has the Constitutional responsibility to lead the military and protect the nation. Intelligence gathering is part of military activity. Therefore the intelligence gathering is a Constitutional duty and the Congress, under the separation of powers doctrine, may not interfere with the President’s Constitutional Duty to conduct intelligence. Under this doctrine, the President need not obey laws that he believes impinge on his management of the war effort and the defense of the nation. Most legal scholars believe that this argument is nonsense, but the George W. Bush administration has stated the doctrine and it was the subject of much litigation.
In the vernacular of the times, "printing" meant newspaper and pamphlet publishing.
Webster had been a lawyer his entire professional life and served as a distinguished Federal Judge and later as Director of the CIA and FBI. He was a stickler for adhering to the law. Casey, in contrast, was very frequently trying to get around any legal or Constitutional restrictions that might prevent him from doing what he liked. Since most of the CIA activity is secret and not amenable to oversight, his violations were not known to Congress and the public until years after his service.
In the spring of 1800 New York State legislators were elected. The legislators were then to choose the presidential electors. If New York's electors voted for Jefferson he would likely beat the Federalists, who had just lost their majority in the legislature. Alexander Hamilton wrote to fellow Federalist Governor John Jay proposing to have the sitting legislature change the law to select Presidential electors by popular vote:
