“We are a nation of laws.”
“No one is above the law.”
“Equal justice before the law.”
The majority of us embrace these as core truths of our unique American experiment, yet their regular flaunting, and at the same time abuse by those who should be their guardians, erodes their meaning and value. Most often, we find those who proclaim them most loudly are the very ones who least believe in them.
Which begs the question of why members of Congress aren’t held to the same standards as those who come before them. Various individuals are indicted, convicted, and sentenced for “lying to Congress.” Yet we’ve also seen Senator Harry Reid lie through his teeth in public on the Senate floor about Mitt Romney’s failure to pay his income taxes. And Adam Schiff invents his own version of the transcript of the phone conversation between President Trump and the President of Ukraine. Yet each is immune from any consequences for such barefaced public lying and/or fabrications.
How can this be, when “no one is above the law?” I refer you to the Speech and Debate Clause of the US Constitution (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1) which reads “….for any Speech or Debate in either House, [Senators and Representatives] shall not be questioned in any other Place.”
The Supreme Court has upheld the Clause in multiple cases. In Doe v. McMillan (1973), “….the Court has held that the clause protects such acts as voting, the conduct of committee hearings, the issuance and distribution of committee reports, the subpoenaing of information required in the course of congressional investigations, and even the reading of stolen classified materials into a subcommittee’s public record.” (The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, page 81)
If there was ever a need to amend the Constitution, this seems like more than enough reason.
Pem Schaeffer,
Brunswick
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