The nation overwhelmingly objects to Obama’s immigration lawlessness, but it has no stomach for the only effective counter to it — the plausible threat of impeachment.
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Fully within his constitutional authority, President Obama could, right this minute and without any congressional approval, pardon every illegal alien in the United States — indeed, every illegal alien anywhere who has been deported after violating federal law. He could do it by executive order and, while outrageous and condemnable, it would indisputably be within his Article II power.
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The president’s pardon power is nearly limitless. There is a single exception, explicit in the Constitution’s Article II, Section 2: “Cases of Impeachment.”
The president can prevent incarceration and other legal punishments for any unlawful acts; but he cannot prevent impeachment — his own or any other official’s — based on the abuses of power that flow from those acts. Impeachment is a political remedy, not a legal one. It is about the removal of political power because of breaches of the public trust, not legal prosecution and punishment. Indeed, the Framers considered narrowing the pardon power to prevent the president from granting amnesty for his own lawlessness; they opted against it precisely because they believed the specter of impeachment would be sufficient disincentive.
As we’ve seen, the president’s pardon and prosecutorial powers are formidable. They do not, however, exist in a vacuum. They exist in a constitutional framework wherein the president’s core duties are to execute the laws faithfully and preserve our system of government. The fact that an act is within a president’s vast lawful power does not make it a faithful, constitutionally legitimate use of that power. An act need not be criminal or indictable in order to be impeachable. There is far more to fiduciary responsibility than acting within the margins of technical legality.
To offer an analogy, a judge who sentenced a defendant to 20 years’ imprisonment for handing someone a single marijuana cigarette would be imposing a legal sentence (i.e., within the governing statute) but would demonstrate himself unfit to be a judge. Likewise, lawmakers have the power to impose a 100 percent tax on income, but doing so would be an intolerable abuse of power. Similarly, a president who uses the pardon power and prosecutorial discretion as pretexts for usurping Congress’s power to make immigration law, for encouraging law-breaking, and for remaking the country in a manner that imperils the economic and security interests of American citizens, commits grievous impeachable offenses.
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Absent a credible threat of impeachment, President Obama cannot and will not be stopped from granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, who will in short order be awarded citizenship and voting rights. You can call that a plea for impeachment if you’d like. I call it a statement of fact.
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