Constitutional Thoughts

The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall
be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery,
or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

This is Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, the Impeachment Clause, and I have been thinking about this lately. The "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" phrase is more of a "catch-all" to include any offense the House and Senate deem worthy of impeachment. However, the Founding Fathers were clear that two deeds not to be tolerated by officers of the United States were treason and bribery. One of the things I find interesting about how bribery is included is that it does not specify the direction, or in other words, it may apply to both the person offering a bribe or the person accepting a bribe.

Obviously, we are still at the beginning of the scandal involving Mr. Blagojevich, but it does raise some interesting issues. Did someone representing "The Office of the President-Elect" offer Mr. Blagojevich any sort of bribe? Since there really is no such office for the President-Elect and the Impeachment Clause is generally considered not to apply to members of Congress, did Senator Obama get lucky in that all this happened before he actually took the office of President of the United States? Does it matter that Article IV, Section 14 of the Illinois Constitution does not specifically condemn bribery?

Mostly, I am just curious about the fact that the U.S. Constitution is so clear that bribery is not to be tolerated. This is not about a President lying under oath or having sexual relations outside of marriage, which would be actions that would have to fit under the "high Crimes or Misdemeanors" category (thereby allowing Senators do debate whether such actions were really high crimes or misdemeanors). This about the President-Elect allegedly being connected to or condoning bribery, an action clearly not to be tolerated by officers of the United States under the Constitution.