芭芭拉乔丹对弹劾的文章声明(英文版).doc

1、Barbara Charline JordanStatement on the Articles of Impeachmentdelivered 25 July 1974, House Judiciary CommitteeThank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I join my colleague Mr. Rangel in thanking you for giving the junior members of this committee the glorious opportunity of sharing the pain of this i

2、nquiry. Mr. Chairman, you are a strong man, and it has not been easy but we have tried as best we can to give you as much assistance as possible.Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: We, the people. Its a very eloquent beginning. But when tha

3、t document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that We, the people. I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have final

4、ly been included in We, the people.Today I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution

5、, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves? The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men.鹿 And thats what were talking about. In ot

6、her words, the jurisdiction comes from the abuse or violation of some public trust.It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should b

7、e removed from office. The Constitution doesnt say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive. The division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assi

8、gning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judgers - and the judges the same person.We know the nature of impeachment. Weve been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designe

9、d for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to bridle the executive if he engages in excesses. It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men.虏 The framers confided in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the Pre

10、sident in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive.The nature of impeachment: a narrowly channeled exception to the separation-of-powers maxim.聽 The Federal Convention of 1787 said that. It l

11、imited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors and discounted and opposed the term maladministration. It is to be used only for great misdemeanors, so it was said in the North Carolina ratification convention. And in the Virginia ratification convention: We do not trust our liberty to a particul

12、ar branch. We need one branch to check the other.No one need be afraid - the North Carolina ratification convention - No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity. Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, said

13、Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, number 65. We divide into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.鲁 I do not mean political parties in that sense.The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation behind impeachment; but impeachment must proceed within the confines of the cons

14、titutional term high crimes and misdemeanors. Of the impeachment process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that Nothing short of the grossest offenses against the plain law of the land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great as to overgrow party interest may secure a co

15、nviction; but nothing else can.Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot to do: Appropriations, Tax Reform, Health Insurance, Campaign Finance Reform, Housing, Environmental Protection, Energy Sufficiency, Mass Transportation. Pettiness cann

16、ot be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems. So today we are not being petty. We are trying to be big, because the task we have before us is a big one.This morning, in a discussion of the evidence, we were told that the evidence which purports to support the allegations of misuse of the CIA by the President is thin. Were told that that evidence is insufficient. What that recital of the evidence this mor