Should the citizens of Connecticut recall Joe Lieberman?

[LoZoccolo]

[Forkboy]

1. I don't believe they can.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. CAN the citizens of Connecticut recall Joe Lieberman?

--d!

[CreekDog]

3. No and in fact they should give him a monument

[Luminous Animal]

4. They can't. Superfluous question.

[Ken Burch]

5. If they could, it would be great.

Unfortunately, they can't.

Tarring and feathering is still an option, however.

[Crabby Appleton]

6. They can't

[yurbud]

7. if they can't recall him, they can certainly show up whenever he's in state and shower

him with gifts of overly ripe fruits and vegetables.

[yurbud]

8. Did you see what the Bolivians did to their president and Bechtel in THE CORPORATION?

I'm afraid that's what it's going to take--we'll have to literally run the corrupt scumbags out of DC before we'll get anyone who will actually represent us.

[Selatius]

9. Under the Constitution, there is no recall provision for federal offices.

Even if a state does have a state constitution with a recall mechanism, Joe Lieberman's seat is a federal-level office, not a state-level one. They couldn't recall him even if they wanted it.

[winyanstaz]

10. I don't think they can..but I think they should ...

[elleng]

11. Sure, and others should recall others

(if only they could.)

[MineralMan]

12. Unrecommended, due to abysmal lack of knowledge of

the Constitution and how things actually work. 9th grade social studies.

[pipi_k]

13. Let's be fair

and give the OP a bit of a break for not knowing that there are only 18 states which do allow for a recall of one of their senators, according to:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2201861




and according to this, the original:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2096900_recall-us-senator.html



So some states can do it. It's not a Constitutional issue involving the entire US.

[WeDidIt]

15. It IS a constitutional issue

The power to remove sitting Congresspersons and Senators is RESERVED TO THE CONGRESS BY ARTICLE I. SECTION 5. OF THE CONSTITUTION!!!

No state has that power.

18 states have laws which allow the recall of state and local officials, but it is unconstitutional for a state to recall a federal official.

[MineralMan]

19. OK, let's do be fair.

Your information is incorrect. A United States Senator may only be removed by a vote of the senate. Any state law that purports to allow the recall of a Senator is patently unconstitutional.

Now, that's fair. You are incorrect.

[MineralMan]

27. Here is more information, and not from some ehow.com

website:

"United States Senator Frank Church of Idaho was the subject of an unsuccessful recall effort in 1967.<9> Courts ruled that a federal official is not subject to state recall laws. See also the similar unsuccessful effort in 2009 to recall Anh "Joseph" Cao, U.S. representative for Louisiana's 2nd congressional district."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_election

"In 1967, a recall campaign was waged against Church by Ron Rankin, a Republican county commissioner in Kootenai County in northern Idaho. Rankin unsuccessfully sued Idaho's secretary of state to accept recall petitions. The U.S. District Court for Idaho ruled that the state's recall laws did not apply to U.S. senators and that such a recall would violate the U.S. Constitution. Allan Shepard, Idaho's attorney general at the time, agreed with the court's decision."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church

The Frank Church recall attempt has never been appealed, and is accepted as precedent. State laws that allow recalls of federal officers are unconstitutional.

Information found on ehow.com pages is not written by professionals and often includes errors. If you wish, you can get an ehow.com page and write pretty much anything you want. There is no fact-checking. The internet is notoriously unreliable unless you're careful with your sources.

[MineralMan]

28. From the ehow.com Terms of Use page (my emphasis):

"However, the Site is for general research, informational, and entertainment purposes only. We publish video, audio, articles, or other content from current and past contributors (collectively, "Contributors"). The information on the Site represents only the opinions and perspectives of the Contributors and not us. You should assume that we have not independently verified the accuracy, thoroughness, or relevance of the content available on the Site. Our publication content is not our endorsement of any Contributor or the content submitted by any such Contributor. Furthermore, we have not verified the identity of each Contributor, and the extent of each Contributor's license (if licensed) or any other credential checks.

http://www.ehow.com/terms_use.aspx

[WeDidIt]

14. NO STATE CAN RECALL ANY SENATOR OR CONGRESSPERSON

What a fucking idiotic poll.

CONNECTICUT CANNOT RECALL LIEBERMAN!!!

United States Constitution

Article I.

Section 5.

...
Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.
...

The power to remove a member of Congress is EXPLICITLY reserved by the constitution to the house of Congress in which they serve, thus no state can ever have the power to recall a sitting US Congressperson or Senator.

If you want to change that, you must first amend to constitution to explicitly grant that power to the states.

[BolivarianHero]

16. No...

CT should do away with the secret ballot so taht we can find which "Democrats" are traitors.

[WI_DEM]

17. No, because there is no recall law in CT. Pass one and then maybe.

[WeDidIt]

18. First, you must amend the U.S. Constitution to allow states to recall Senators

Then you could pass a law in Connecticut to allow it to happen.

[WI_DEM]

23. Like I said there is no recall law in CT

[WeDidIt]

25. Even if there was, it wouldn't matter

because you must first amend the constitution to make the recall of Senators by their states constitutional.

[Dr.Phool]

21. In Florida, Liebermoron couldn't have run as an independent, after the primary.

Qualifying for the ballot is in May, and after that, no changes. You even have to file to run as a write in by then. Any vote for a write in candidate who didn't file then is discarded.

I guess they had too many votes for Mickey Mouse, who would be better than a lot of candidates down here.

[NashuaDW]

20. I'm not sure they would if they could

Ya gotta remember that the people of CT elected him by a 10 point margin.

I haven't seen anything to indicate that his rating have dipped in CT.
All of the polls I've seen have HCR only getting between 35% - 45% approval nationwide.

I think he uses this to re-enforce his independent status.

[tonysam]

22. Voters cannot recall anybody in federal office.

There are elections. I believe since Lieberman has been in office for years, he will never be turned out before he retires.

[WeDidIt]

24. Right now, 87% of DUers responding to this poll demonstrate their ignorance of the constitution

This is really one of the most basic things in the constitution, people. This power is explicitly reserved to the Congress in the second sentence of the fifth section of the first article. Heck, you don't have to read very far into the document to know this stuff.

It saddens me that people with a major voice, like Michael Moore, don't even have a basic understanding of how our government functions.

[racaulk]

26. I don't think the OP cares.

Posting meaningless polls on DU is clearly more fun.

[WeDidIt]

29. I think the OP is having fun at the expense of ignorant DUers

I think the OP is well aware of the fact that no state has the power to recall a sitting Senator.

[racaulk]

30. You could be right.

But after seeing how many pointless polls and "K&R" posts this OP has made over time, I'm not so sure.