Again, the republicans were forced to orchestrate a sham trial with no evidence and no witnesses.
The idea that because it was essentially a party line vote means that both groups of senators are just partisan hacks doesn't add up. It was a binary choice and one choice was (more) right. I'm fine disagreeing about which choice was right, but your claim that a party line vote indicates everyone's vote was based solely on their party bias simply doesn't make sense.
The idea behind a majority vote to impeach and a 2/3 vote to convict is that it should be harder to convict than to bring charges. It's mirrored in the criminal justice system. It's relatively easy to indict a person as compared to convicting them.
As far as costing the the American taxpayer money, uh, yeah, it's the government. The government is funded by taxes. An explicit part of their duty is oversight. It's like saying the DA wasted taxpayer money in the OJ trial. If you stop and think about it, there was almost no chance the state could assemble a jury that would convict. Yet we all know OJ is a murderer.
Also, you keep bringing criminality into it. The charges were not criminal in nature and they needn't be. Impeachment is inherently political. It is a political remedy because this is a weird spot where the American system of justice breaks down. The president has vast powers that cannot be effectively constrained by legislation, and possibly can't even be constrained due to their being granted by the constitution. The judicial can check the president by clarifying the extent of the presidents powers and congress can check the president through impeachment should the president use his powers in an egregious way.
A clarifying example: the president could lawfully pardon all pedophiles with the stroke of a pen. For this lawful use of his power to pardon, he should be removed from office.
A point of clarification: it's not that the president hasn't committed crimes, therefore making him a criminal, but these were not included in the articles of impeachment brought against him.
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Originally Posted by boost
