Impeachment of Aggie, Togas and Arnelos

[Togas]

*sigh*

Perhaps it would be useful if someone from The Court could PM Davout and sit down with him to explain in greater detail what the holding of Case #7 was about. There seems to be a general malfunction in the lines of communication that has driven him to this call for this absurd and reckless impeachment simply because he disagreed with the decision.

Personally, I think Pardoning Aggie was the right thing to do, it just wasn't something the Senate could do. But that's what I would have done if I could and that's what the majority of Apolytonians wanted to do. I took responsibility for my role in the whole silly affair and apologized, but my role was merely advisory and one has to break the law to be impeached, I didn't personally break the law, nor did Arnelos, so neither of us are going to be affected by this.

The one who is affected is Aggie. Davout is going to drag Aggie back into this stupid mess again and for what? To get revenge on The Court for coming to a unanimous decision that he didn't agree with? Come on, this is petty and irresponsible! Davout, if you wanted to make a pointless stand on an issue that is not in dispute you should have just called for my impeachment and left Aggie out of it. You could have made a sarcastic argument and forced The Court to make findings on the issue of impeachment of non-ministers if it would have made you happy.

But calling for impeachment of a guy like Aggie when your intent is not to impeach but to create an issue for The Court is an abuse of our system of law, and a grave injustice to Aggie. I hope that The Court quickly comes to a decision that this farce should be found without merit.

--Togas

[DAVOUT]

It is unfortunately quite common that when somebody says something unpleasant, instead of analysing what he says, people start criticizing his person, his intents, his behaviour. It is quite desappointing from you Togas. You are probably right that I am very petty, and totally irresponsible, and you could have added that I am not clever enough to discuss difficult subjects like this, but why publicy humiliate me like this; is it not hard enough to be so weak all day long ?

[Togas]

Davout,

You're an important member of my team in the PTW Demo Game and a longstanding part of the CivIII Demo Game and I doubt anyone is going to think less of you when this whole silly affair is over.

But I think we all can agree that this needs to be over.

This is not meant to be personal at all. My criticism and argument has to do with a decision that you made, one that I hope you will reconsider as it affects not just you and The Court, it also affects other people.

An impeachment is a public affair as it is ultimately decided by a vote of the people, which is why all of this is public. I suppose I could have tried to convince you to change your mind via PM and in the future I may try to.

I think your point has been made about how absurd an impeachment would be, and in the case of Aggie it does seem absurd to throw out the law that pardons him and the rest of the administration, especially after the administration has left office. I didn't personally write the majority opinion of Case #7 but I agreed with it. We all agreed with it. The real issue was precident: whether the Senate could excuse someone from being impeached via a bill in the future. We all felt that such a policy would violate the Constitution.

Anyhow points made and damage done. Why pursue this any further? I don't think there's a person in our game who wants to see this dragged on. I don't think you really want to see this dragged on, do you? Why put Aggie through this? Why put yourself through this?

Sorry if I seemed offensive or insulting to you. It was responding to being impeached that caused me to seem so hostile, but it had nothing to do with you personally.

--Togas

p.s. Forgive and forget. Let's put back on our Roleplaying Masks and head out to Spain where you can continue to ferret out disloyal citizens and I can go back to giving GodKing a hard time about his poor chamber pot cleaning performance.

[DAVOUT]

No damage still done. The case #7 is not written in the marble. It has a basic technical flaw which is your participating in the decision. It can be rewritten in meeting all aims you described : lets the pardon, invalidates the first part only, and if you so desire stresses the fact that The Court cannot tolerate the Senate excuses someone from being impeached.
Every citizen must serve the community, and the Court also; The Court could best serve the Community in perfecting his decision. After having heard so many complaints that the Demogame was becoming too bureaucratic, I strongly believe that The Court should not continue to apply abstractly our laws; consideration must be given to the Apolytonian circumstances which are what people are interested in.
Would my suggestion be followed, my impeachment case must be given up since I would never have sued executives pardonned by the Senate.

[Arnelos]

DAVOUT,

What you seem to be missing that we seem to be "getting" is that while we'd REALLY LIKE (on a personal level) to side with you and allow the Senate to go beyond its constitutional mandate and pardon ministers who have committed such crimes, we seem to recognize that this would set a horrible precedent for the application of the rule of law.

So we don't want to prevent you from pursuing your Court action - go right ahead. We fought to defend your right to press charges and you certainly have always had that right.

It is YOUR choice whether you will use that right in a responsible or irresponsible manner. We (those arguing against you) and the members of the Court can then continue to pursue the law as it was written.

If you have a problem with the constitution as it is written, you have at your disposal the ability to propose ammendments... not that that is a good idea here... it clearly isn't. Though something being a bad idea hasn't stopped you yet

[civman2000]

What do you mean ? I have the right but I should not have use it?

Of course! Just because you have the right to do a lot of things doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea to do them. If you really want to go ahead, I can't do anything to stop you, but in my opinion it is something that you shouldn't do.

And if in the future the Court upholds retroactive laws, pardoning will be effectively be possible. We just retroactively give them the power to do whatever illegal thing they did and then there is nothing they can be impeached for.

[DAVOUT]

Arnelos,

A horrible precedent ? I am a bit lost; I understood that the horrible thing was the claim for impeachment. Anyway this is just your opinion, respectable, but nothing more, since you bring no argument or demonstration that a precedent which can have no consequences at all can be that dangerous.

Thank you for not willing to prevent me from pursuing the Court action, but I have really nothing to do : the case is in the hands of The Court.

May I correct you on one point : It is not my choice to use my right in a responsible or irresponsible manner, it was. I have not changed my mind, and I probably will not untill I am given some rational that I can understand. You could possibly help everybody in explaining to the judges that the argument of authority does not work in a democracy.

I have no problem with the Constitution as it is written, only as it is applied. The Court is not ruling in a far away country, in time and space, and need not to mimic the Supreme Court of a 300 millions people country; it is ruling in Apolytonia, with a reduced set of laws, and its use must be as clear and rational as possible. The present case is a perfect example that it is not done.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by civman2000

Of course! Just because you have the right to do a lot of things doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea to do them. If you really want to go ahead, I can't do anything to stop you, but in my opinion it is something that you shouldn't do.

.

May I summarize ?

You made a case asking the invalidation of a Senate bill on the ground that this bill waived the right to sue the Governement.
Then The Court invalidated the bill, authorizing again the citizens to sue the Government.
Then one citizen (myself) sued the Governement.

And now you tell me that it was just for fun and that I should not have !!

[adaMada]

** If I am speaking out of turn -- for I am merely a citizen of Apolytonia, and not a participant in this case -- please correct me, and I'll quiet myself **

DAVOUT,
I believe everyone (or nearly everyone, anyway) wants to pardon the government -- with the possible exception of yourself. I've not heard anyone say anything different, and that is the opinion I hear scattered throughout the forums.

The problem is that the law that you were defending took away the people's right to hold the government responsible. An individual cannot be prevented from suing the government -- it is contrary to both the spirit and word of the CoL. The court was right to overturn that law.

Having said that, I do not feel that there should be an impeachment over this crime. Firstly, Arnelos had nothing to do with this manner. He informed the public of the mistake that had been made; He basically stopped the chat; and He even went as far as advising the public on the manner. There can be no question (in the mind of anyone that was there) that Arnelos is completely innocent -- and indeed, did a service to the community by bringing the facts forward, when it would have been within his rights to remain silent.

Togas is also guilty of no crime, any more than any other citizen in the chat was. He was serving in no special capacity of the Vice Presidency, and did nothing that many other citizens in the chat did not do. Again, there is no case against him.

Aggie is the hardest case. Clearly, he did break the law. He admits he broke the law, and there can be no excuses for it. Having said that, most of the citizenry do not want to impeach Aggie. A vote of impeachment would signify that the citizens no longer trust him, when it's been made very clear by those who have posted on the issue that there still was trust. I cannot and will not say if he was right or wrong, but I'm confident that any impeachment poll posted by the court will be overwhelmingly defeated by the citizenry.

DAVOUT -- I've nothing against you. Having said that, I disagree with this call for impeachment. I respect your right to call for it, and agree with the court's recent decision, but I don't feel it serves any purpose. This can produce no result. If you wanted to put forth a measure I could support, you could post a Senate bill calling for censure on Aggie for his actions. This would be appropriate, and would serve far more purpose than this case does.

Again, my apologies to the court and all involved if I've spoken out of turn.

-- adaMada

[Panag]

hi ,

great we are going nuts , .......

have a nice day

[DAVOUT]

adaMada,

As always your are polite and non-aggressive, thank you.
You should not worry about Arnelos, Togas and Aggie, if you rely, as much as I do, on the wisdom of The Court. If I am as wrong as you say, which is possible after all, otherwise we would not need a Court, The Court will say the truth.

I have the feeling that I did something against the etiquette. Citizens rights are written in the law, but just for show; using these rights is not correct, not fashionable, not responsible or whatever you like. And you need not to explain or argument, it is just incorrect, full stop. Social pressure, moral harassment, most often it works, sometimes not.

As for your suggestion to post a Senate bill for censure of Aggie, I would rather post a new bill pardonning the Governement, for this bill should never have been invalidated in a reasonnable course of the Justice.

[civman2000]

You made a case asking the invalidation of a Senate bill on the ground that this bill waived the right to sue the Governement.
Then The Court invalidated the bill, authorizing again the citizens to sue the Government.
Then one citizen (myself) sued the Governement.

And now you tell me that it was just for fun and that I should not have !!

Correct, though the way you put it makes it sound bad. Perhaps I ought to clarify my position with a quote from Voltaire:

I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it!

BTW, I will be going on vacation tomorrow morning so will be unable to say any more on this issue.

[DAVOUT]

Ah, I did not know that Voltaire inspired your action.

I am surprised.

He would be too.

[DAVOUT]

To all those showing some interest for the case

It has been stated in several occasions that The Court was obliged to invalidate the first part of the Senate Bill pardoning the Government because not doing so would have set a precedent.

What is a precedent ?

A court decision becomes a precedent when it applies the relevant law in a way different from what has been done so far, generally on the basis of a new reasoning based on original or new circumstances. After that, all the Courts will be able to make or accept reference to the precedent in cases presenting a high degree of similarity with the case which generated the precedent.

How does this definition affect the case #7 ?

The Senate Bill, dated 16.12.2002, reads as follows, and lasted 3 days :

1. We the Senate of the Apolytonian Republic waive rights to bring about any court action against any member of the Term 6 administration for entering into MMPs with Russia, Greece or Japan.
The senate may still pass bills officially censuring any or all members of the term 6 administration. It was an unfortunate and unnecessary event. This bill only applies to actions taken from 1230 AD through and including 1250 AD.

From the definition, we deduct that, if the bill had not been invalidated, a precedent would have been created for cases presenting the following similarities :
- it should concern only the case of illegal MPP
- it should limit the period where faults were committed
- it should enter into effect (in case #7: 19.12.2002) when the Government concerned is no longer in office.

As you know, the punishment, if and when the impeachment is finally voted by the Senate, is the removal from office.

This is the exact nature and value of the horrible precedent.

[notyoueither]

Davout, why are you the only one who cannot see the reason for the ruling?

I am not poking, nor trolling. I am asking. I would like to be enlightened where no one else has enlightened. I live to learn.