Blog 1.5 Congress and POTUS

1. Nancy is the Speaker of the House. 
2. Alleged Trump engaged in an improper conversation with a foreign leader was made public last week. 
3. Congress should push to amend the Justice Department’s guidance that says a sitting president cannot be indicted by passing a law that makes the procedure for indictment explicit. “A president should be indicted, if he’s committed a wrongdoing — any president,” Pelosi said.
4. Nancy Pelosi did put her support behind current investigations being carried out by various House committees, saying Congress has a duty to abide by “the facts and the law.” She said that the investigations have been stymied by the executive branch’s lack of cooperation and by the White House’s declarations of executive privilege, arguing that both are simply more evidence that new laws are needed. 
5. Pelosi said that this case already reveals at least one violation of the law, because Joseph Maguire, the director of national intelligence, declined to relay the whistleblower’s complaint to Congress, as is required by law.
6. Adam Schiff is the House Intelligence Committee chair. 
7. Moderate Democrats and those representing swing districts have warned the speaker that moving forward on impeachment would alienate their voters.
8. American voters, including Democratic voters, are themselves divided on the subject of impeachment. According to recent polling by Politico and Morning Consult, 37 percent of voters support impeachment, while half outright oppose it. Predictably, the support comes nearly entirely from Democratic voters: about 70 percent of Democratic respondents said they support impeachment proceedings, while just 6 percent of Republican voters said the same.

Judicial Impeachmet

1. A majority of the House must approve an indictment to impeach and two-thirds supermajority of the US Senate must convict for the judge or justice to lose their office. 
2. The House has, in the course of federal history, impeached 13 judges, and the Senate has convicted and removed eight. Of those convicted, seven were district judges.
3. Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution provides for the removal of “the President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States … on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
4. Focusing on the five most recent cases in which judges were impeached, from 1986 to present, impeachment and removal typically comes in cases of clear, criminal wrongdoing. Harry Claiborne was impeached and removed in 1986, two years after receiving a two-year prison sentence for falsifying income tax returns. Alcee Hastings, who has since become a representative from Florida, was removed in 1989 for receiving a $150,000 bribe to reduce prison sentences for members of the mob. Walter Nixon was removed in 1989, three years after receiving a five-year prison sentence for perjury. Before his impeachment in 2009, Samuel Kent pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and sentenced to 33 months in prison for lying about his sexual abuse of female employees. G. Thomas Porteous stood accused of accepting bribes from lawyers with business before him, and of failing to recuse himself from cases involving people who allegedly bribed him.
5. Kavanaugh and Thomas both have enthusiastic supporters in the Senate, and it’s doubtful that enough Republicans would defect to make removal viable.
6. The precedents in this country, as they have developed, reflect the fact that conduct which may not constitute a crime, but which may still be serious misbehavior bringing disrepute upon the public office involved, may provide a sufficient ground for impeachment. What constitutes an impeachable offense is less than completely fair so it may be whatever the House and Senate think it is. 

preparing for the Iowa caucus

1. The Iowa Democratic Party planned to hold a "virtual caucus" over a phone system alongside the regular caucus this February.
2. The DNC will recommend rejecting, per a statement from the Democratic Party, since these phone systems could be susceptible to hackers. 
3. The reason a virtual caucus system came into existence in the first place was the DNC responding to longtime criticism that Iowa’s caucus should be accessible to voters who can’t show up in-person. The DNC mandated that Iowa and Nevada — the two early states left with caucuses rather than primaries — find a way to become more accessible. Now, the national party is nixing its virtual caucus plans. Some fear the fallout could end the Iowa caucuses as we know them and have dramatic effects on the nomination process as a whole.
4. Iowa is the first state to vote in the primary calendar, which shows which candidates have momentum and which don't. Iowa also does not decide who will be president, but they decide who will not in part because of the media narrative that is shown after the primary election. 
5. Caucuses have always been controversial because they are long, complicated affairs where caucus-goers meet and literally sort themselves into groups based on the candidates they support. Unlike the relative ease of a primary election, caucuses can take hours and exclude people who cannot show up on caucus night if they have disabilities, are elderly, or just have job or childcare commitments. 
6. More people participating in the caucus process in recent elections has led to an accessibility issue for many and the caucuses are getting unwieldy due to the number of people coming. 
7. Many are arguing that this new form of caucus could be manipulated because of the voters voting over the phone and the risk of hacking as well as how these votes would be counted and how they would be accounted for. When the Rules and Bylaws Committee in San Francisco met earlier this month they tested the system and found it could be easily y hacked, a major worry for many people. 
8. Iowa loves its first-in-the-nation caucus status, and there’s a huge barrier to Iowa moving to a primary: New Hampshire. New Hampshire has long claimed the nation’s first primary (which Iowa has worked around with a caucus), something it’s been able to hang onto for years because of a certain state law. 
9. New Hampshire ensures it is the first primary with a law that saw that if any other state tries to move its primary before New Hampshire, it allows New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner to change the primary date, moving it a week before the other state, which causes a problem for Iowa to change to primary. 

Marijuana Law Issues

1. More than a quarter of the US population now lives in a state that allows marijuana for nonmusical purposes. 
2. In 2012, Colorado and Washington state became the first states to vote to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes. 
3. Vermont and Washington, DC do not allow marijuana sales for recreational purposes, meaning it's not legal to buy and sell pot in either jurisdiction, although residents in both places can legally grow it. In DC, the allowance of "gifting" has led to some vendors selling products like  Each state where marijuana is legal has laws for people 21 and older. They allow marijuana, with a limit on how many plants are allowed and there is variation in how much someone can legally possess. In the other states that have legalized marijuana, legal sales are on their way or already underway; however, local jurisdictions can decline to allow marijuana sales within their borders. Some states that have legalized marijuana have also erased criminal records for past marijuana offenses. 

4. Marijuana legalization is generally taken to represent the removal of all government-enforced penalties for possessing and using marijuana. In most, but not all, cases, legalization also paves the way for the legal sales and home-growing of marijuana. Decriminalization generally eliminates jail or prison time for limited possession of marijuana, but some other penalties remain in place, treating a minor marijuana offense more like a minor traffic violation. You would still get a fine for possessing or selling an amount within the decriminalized limits. States with stricter decriminalization laws can also attach some jail or prison time to possessing larger amounts of marijuana, sales, or trafficking. 

5. The ACLU found that there are several hundred thousand arrests for marijuana possession each year and these arrests cost law enforcement time and money, as well as damaging the government's credibility. 

6. A major concern if marijuana is legalized is that letting for-profit businesses - "Big Marijuana" - market and sell cannabis may lead them to market aggressively to heavy pot users, who may have a drug problem which. is what happened in the alcohol and tobacco industries. 

7. Support for marijuana legalization rose from 12 percent in 1969 to 31 percent in 2000 to 66 percent  in 2018. A 2014 survey found 63 percent of Americans agree states should move away from harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, and 67 percent said drug policy should focus more on providing treatment over prosecuting drug users. Overall this shows, Americans are fed up with drug and criminal justice policies that have contributed to higher incarceration rates while doing little to solve ongoing drug crises. 

8. The federal government classifies marijuana as a schedule 1 drug, meaning it's perceived to have no medical value and a high potential for abuse. That classification puts marijuana in the same category as heroin and a more restrictive category as heroin and a more restrictive category that schedule 2 drugs like cocaine and meth. This means that the federal government doesn't see marijuana and heroin as equally dangerous or that it considers it more dangerous than meth or cocaine, this means that marijuana has a high potential for abuse. 

9. The Obama administration, thought the federal government has also taken a relaxed approach to marijuana legalization at the state level, generally letting states do as they wish as long as they met certain criteria (such as not letting legal pot fall into kids' hands or cross state line.) The Trump Administration suggested it would take a tougher line under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, but current Attorney General William Barr backed off the tougher approach and said he would more ore less go back to the Obama-era policies. 

10. Pot’s criminal classification at the federal level has other serious ramifications for marijuana policy even in places where state law says the drug is legal. Many state-legal marijuana businesses, for instance, must function as cash-only enterprises, since many banks are nervous about dealing with businesses that are essentially breaking federal law. Businesses also can’t file for several deductions, and, as a result, their effective income tax rates can soar to as high as 90 percent or more.