Barack Obama has Violated the US Constitution and Should be Impeached

I'm going to rebut PRO point by point. PRO's fundamental argument is that if President Obama has violated the US constitution, then he should be impeached. If PRO fails to offer evidence that Barack Obama has violated the US constitution, then President Obama should not be impeached. PRO has offered no evidence whatsoever that President Obama or his administration has violated the US constitution. Therefore, President Obama should not be impeached. Now, let's explore where PRO's logic falls short. .. The First AmendmentPRO has claimed that I straw-manned his first amendment argument. I simplified it, but have not straw-manned it. In the interest of further explicating what I said, let's revisit the previous round. PRO implied Obama's culpability for actions taken against the occupy movement, without evidence. This is the case because (1) there is no mention of anyone's first amendment rights being violated in the article, (2) even if there was a mention of first amendment rights being violated, there is no evidence to suggest that Obama is or would be culpable for that violation. But, the question of 'what first amendment rights were violated' and 'whose rights were violated', PRO leaves unanswered. PRO has not even proven 'that' first amendment rights were violated, PRO's suggestion that Obama was accountable either for his complicity or obliviousness to a CIA plot (if that plot even existed) is moot. PRO has lost this argument. (And let's talk about the CIA plot PRO refers to. Wolf's article makes no mention of the CIA, but rather focuses principally on the FBI -as I said. PRO complains about my "blatant" misquoting. .. when he should focus on what his own sources actually say. )In any event, PRO ignores my argument that even if 'someone's' first amendment rights were violated, culpability for that violation falls not on the president, but elsewhere, because the president is not accountable for the FBI's actions. After all, the FBI's being a distinct entity from Barack Obama and his administration render's incoherent PRO's argument. This is the case because even if Occupier's First Amendment rights were violated, because the FBI rather than the president and his administration is even accountable. The Fourth AmendmentPRO alleges that I have once more misled potential readers, but his charge is incoherent because his evidence doesn't ground his claim that Obama has violated individual's fourth amendment rights. I think this is because he didn't get what I said. .. maybe. To reiterate, since PRO completely ignored my response, PRO argues that "under Obama" the NSA was "able to conduct unreasonable searches and seizures. " PRO contends that the President knew of the NSA's activities, and that Obama is culpable because he "had the power to stop it and didn't. " PRO's second source from the BBC just reports on some of what the public learned following Edward Snowden's releases. While it may very well be the case that the scope and magnitude of the NSA's surveillance of American citizens manifestly violates the constitution, the NSA's authority to do so was not conferred by the President, nor could Barack Obama have reasonably been expected to stop it. This is because the NSA's authority to conduct the vast surveillance that it does stems from a perniciously broad interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which was passed by Congress. (7, 8) Section 215 is ambiguously worded and its interpretation in FISA courts is startlingly obtuse. Insofar as the president lacks the authority to legislate and the authority to review, and is only constitutionally authorized to execute laws passed, the president cannot be held responsible for the NSA's having the authority in question nor can he be held responsible for failing to restrict the NSA's use of congressionally granted authority. Those duties fall chiefly with our nation's legislature and judiciary, respectively. Accountability for those violations, then, cannot fall on the Oval Office. Accordingly, PRO's argument that Obama violated the fourth amendment fails. The Sixth AmendmentPRO argues that "(At least) One US citizen has been detained without due process in Guantanamo. " To ground this claim, he cites a DOD list of all detainees at Guantanamo Bay through 2006. The list does not serve as proof that any of those detainees' 6th amendment rights were violated. And yet, PRO further speculates without evidence that there are others who have too. Maybe that's the case, but until PRO cites real evidence to prove it. But, even if he did, it wouldn't matter. This is because there are differences in due process rights between regular criminals and terror suspects, even if they are US citizens. And, even if those citizen's sixth amendment rights were violated, that doesn't make President Obama accountable. PROs rebuttal in the previous round is more interesting for what it is not than what it is because even in this third contention PRO has consistent in that he ignores the vast preponderance of what I've said against his case. And yet, PRO still fails to provide even one example of a US Citizen who has been deprived of his or her 6th Amendment rights. Mere speculation that a law might violate citizen's rights, absent proof of such violations, is not sufficient to justify presidential impeachment in the United States. And it is significant to reiterate that even given such evidence, that alone would still be insufficient because it does not rise to the constitutionally required threshold as stipulated by Art. II, Sec 4 because such an offense would not necessarily constitute public misconduct, abuse or violation of public trust. Likewise, in the event that a US citizen were to be unconstitutionally deprived of his or her 6th amendment rights, his or her remedy lies not with the president's impeachment but with a plea for review of his case by the judiciary. This is not irrelevant because it proscribes how a citizen whose rights were violated might seek a remedy for that violation. That remedy is not in President Obama's impeachment, but through the US court system. Similarly, PRO doesn't even acknowledge his basic factual error in claiming that Obama "has not made any attempt to close guantanamo bay. " Once more, President Obama did try to close Guantanamo Bay. (9, 10, 11) But, the president's efforts to blocked by House Republicans. (9,10,11) Responsibility for Guantanamo's remaining open, then, lies not with the White House but with congress which "has used its spending oversight authority both to forbid the White House from financing trials of Guant"namo captives on U. S. soil and to block the acquisition of a state prison in Illinois to hold captives currently held in Cuba who would not be put on trial -- a sort of Guant"namo North". (12)In summation, PRO has offered no evidence that Obama has done anything worthy of impeachment. Once more, PRO's fundamental argument is that if President Obama has violated the US constitution, then he should be impeached. But PRO has failed to even offer evidence that Barack Obama has violated the US constitution, so by his own logic President Obama can not be impeached. But, as I said in the previous round, "impeachment. .. is only for "those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust" against the federal government. As Hamilton explained in the Federalist 65 and buttressed by Michael Gerhardt, "impeachment" is "to deal with official misdeeds of a high order, not with petty squabbles" -and perhaps especially not spurious and ungrounded allegations of constitutional violation. Hamilton's cautionary warning in the Federalist 65 resonates here, in this debate, as the intent for my opponent's argument for Obama's impeachment at least ostensibly stems more from political disagreement than an actual legal basis on which to justify his proposition. In doing so, PRO ignores the reality that impeachment is not a political tool that exists to "vindicate political whims" but is something that is sharply limited, and reserved only for abuses of "public trust" or of the "executive power," such as procuring office by unlawful means or using presidential authority for ends that are treasonous.