Reuters Oregon Moves to Impeach Justices PORTLAND, Ore --The Oregon Democratic Party today endorsed a
drive to impeach five U.S. Supreme Court justices for the decision that
effectively gave President Bush his office last year. The party's central committee voted overwhelmingly to begin a campaign
it hopes will take the issue to the House of Representatives, which has
the authority to impeach justices. The resolution passed by 66 Oregon party activists called for the
"immediate investigation of the behavior" of the five justices who voted
to stop hand recounts of Florida ballots. The decision gave Bush Florida's electoral votes, which brought him the
majority of electoral votes and the presidency. Then-Vice President Al
Gore won the popular vote. The justices who voted to stop the hand recounts were Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor,
Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. "This is the first organized effort to advocate impeachment of five
justices," said former representative Charles Porter (D-Ore.), who first
raised the issue with Lane County Democrats and then persuaded the state
party to adopt the resolution. Porter accused the five of "egregiously bad behavior, high crimes and
misdemeanors." Neel Pender, executive director of Oregon's Democratic Party, said
party officials would ask its congressional delegation to begin
investigating the matter. The delegation has four Democratic House members
and one Democratic senator. Neither the delegation nor national Democratic Party officials had any
immediate comment. There has been no response yet from the high court on the Oregon move,
but the justices have defended their December ruling. Recently, Thomas
said at a conference in St. Louis that any suggestion of partisanship in
the decision was wrong. "I think one of the ways our process is cheapened and trivialized is
when it's suggested we have a way to make decisions that have more to do
with politics," Thomas said. Oregon has long been known as a maverick state in U.S. politics. It was
the home of some of the earliest official opposition to the Vietnam War,
and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader won 5 percent of the vote in the
2000 election. Only one Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached. In 1805, Samuel
Chase survived a Senate trial after he was impeached on chrges of
discriminating against supporters of Thomas Jefferson. Copyright © 2001. Reuters. All rights reserved. saved from url: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/A35486-2001Jul22.html
July 23, 2001
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
