American Press

Impeaching presidents is both a serious and dangerous power of the U.S. House of Representatives and should never be used on a purely partisan basis.

And yet that is exactly what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat majority did earlier this month to President Trump. It was voted entirely on a partisan basis — which is exactly what Pelosi herself said earlier this year shouldn’t be done.

The Constitution gives the House of Representatives the sole power to impeach the president and other government officials. But it also gives the U.S. Senate the sole power to try all impeachment cases.

But Pelosi is now withholding the impeachment case from the Senate because she wants approval over the Senate’s trial process before she’ll turn it over.

That bit of political gamesmanship shows just how blatantly partisan the Democrats have made the impeachment power. That is not what the founding fathers had in mind when that power was put in the Constitution.

The whole political process that preceded the impeachment was also hyper-partisan in the House, ignoring precedents set in other impeachment inquiries, and using secret hearings to pick only witnesses that would support the Democrat case. Then, exculpatory evidence and witnesses weren’t allowed in the public hearings.

The political tradition of “loyal opposition” — where the party out of power cooperates with the party in power for the good of the nation until the next election — is long gone.

The tradition also included a “100-day honeymoon” period for the new president, but that tradition was shattered by the current hyper-partisan House Democrat majority, as well.

This is not good for the nation and is downright dangerous for national unity. We’ve seen in our own national past how destructive such hyper-partisan division can be. Do the years 1861-1865 ring any bells?

We need to learn from our past national mistakes, not repeat them, like the House Democrats are currently doing. If Pelosi intends to hold those impeachment counts — and adds new ones she is now fishing for — over the head of the president until the November election, it will only add confirmation to the public perception of how hyper-partisan, unfair and unjust the whole process has become.

Pelosi needs to immediately turn the case over the Senate, with no strings attached. The nation is divided and angry enough already and that is not good for America’s future.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais