Going Over the President's Head

"I don't know that being able to impeach the president makes Congress the highest power in the land." - Uncle Ken

Well, maybe not, but that's not the point I was trying to make. The Constitution is not clear about this, but it does say, in Article II, Section 4: "The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." It doesn't say exactly who does the impeachment, conviction, or removal but, traditionally, the job has fallen to Congress. My reasoning was that, since Congress can fire the President but the President can't fire Congress, then Congress must be a higher authority than the President. Ergo, Congress would be the logical place to lodge an appeal of a presidential action that you believe is illegal. Specifically, if the President ordered me to torture prisoners of war, and I reported that to Congress, I think Congress would have something to say about it. The President would likely fire me over it, and Congress might not order him to reinstate me, but I think I could sell the book and movie rights to my story for enough money to fund a comfortable retirement for myself.

The Constitution isn't very clear about congressional authority over the Supreme Court either, but I did find, in Article III, Section 1: "The judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior," and also, in Article III, Section 2, Paragraph 2: "In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make." Since it appears that Congress can fire justices of the Supreme Court, and put limits on their authority, it seem logical to me that Congress is the Supreme Court's boss.

I have already told you everything I know about that California investigation. As I said twice before, it is my understanding that the Birchers asked the California legislature to investigate them because Congress declined to do it, and they wanted to have some forum to challenge the allegations that had been made against them. Now that I think of it, they might have been further ahead if they had sued the allegators for slander in civil court, but the Birchers never sought my counsel at the time. The fact that I was 16 yeas old and unknown to them might have had something to do with that.

I don't know if the Birchers were in league with Joe McCarthy when he went on his commie witch hunt, but they did say, after the fact, that McCarthy had been right and that people should have listened to him.

Lady Bird Johnson could not have been responsible for the billboard regulations because First Ladies have no authority to pass legislation. Congress or the state legislators must have done it. I do remember that there were a lot of billboards and then there weren't so many, but the ones that were there were larger and farther back from the road than the old ones used to be. This must have given an advantage to the bigger advertisers over the smaller ones. So what else is new?