The phrase does not reappear in impeachment proceedings until 1450. In that year articles of impeachment against William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (a descendant of Michael), charged him with several acts of high treason, but also with "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," including such various offenses as "advising the King to grant liberties and privileges to certain persons to the hindrance of the due execution of the laws," "procuring offices for person who were unfit , and unworthy of them" and "squandering away the public treasure."
I am sure you will allow that we could find quite a number of candidates to fulfill the second of those high crims and misdemeanors :- ) I believe that there are a number of recent examples of the first as well, Ms Miers and so on.
Do we have a equivalent in Australia? No confidence votes? Or do we just inherit the English version of impeachment?
Must put the cite tag in as allowed html. Executive privilege in the US is not judicially tested. So Bush is fighting over convention and asserting sovereignty over a grey area. They have been pretty careful how they have legally exposed themselves and most of their attempts to expand executive power have been in the conventions. So the subpoena issues would have to be tested by the judicial first to determine if executive privilege applies (I dont it does) before Congress got dibs on it.
Because of the checks and balances in the Washington system a lot of the placement of executive positions is done with the Senates approval. So Congress is just as much responsible for the bad governannce of the Bush Administration as the executive itself. It is supposed to act as an energetic branch to stop this kind of thing. They have not in so many areas. It is only recently they got the (populist) courage to act energetically. It is party-machine based to an extent but separating the legislative from the executive enables those types of electoral outcomes.
Isn't the GG our assertion of sovereignty over the parliamentary executive who says, "Nup, election time you bunch of hopeless losers." No confidence too, as adam argued in the past that assertion of sovereignty ends up in an election in a parliamentary system. There are arguments against that due to democracy's morality, but it is probably the only way to hold an executive accountable when they control the House.
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