Word: impeach
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Here is how the process works: the House of Representatives votes on whether to start an inquiry into the possibility of an impeachment. It forms a special committee to gather information and evidence (or, in the case of Clinton, reviews the Starr report). The committee then presents the information to the House, which mulls over the evidence and votes on whether or not to impeach. If the vote passes, a formal trial is held in the Senate. If the Senate finds the official guilty of any of the House's charges, he or she is booted from office. (If this...
Tennessee Senator William Blount was the first person impeached - in a manner of speaking. In 1797, Congress found out that Blount had been conspiring with the British to take Florida and Louisiana from Spain, and the House immediately voted to impeach him. The Senate was so excited to get rid of Blount that it forgot to hold the trial and instead just voted him out of office. When the Senate realized its own error it was too late; the government couldn't decide to remove him from an office he no longer retained. Instead, the Senate cut its losses...
Congress tried the process again in 1804, when it voted to impeach Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase on charges of bad conduct. As a judge, Chase was overzealous and notoriously unfair; he ordered a Revolutionary War veteran hanged for treason after he refused to pay taxes, and he found the author of a book critical of President John Adams guilty of sedition. But Chase never committed a crime - he was just incredibly bad at his job. The Senate acquitted him on every count...
...President the next morning. Because Johnson hadn't been elected to office, Congress became very angry whenever he vetoed a bill - who did he think he was, anyway? - and in 1867 the House Judiciary Committee drew up a long list of complaints about him and recommended that he be impeached. The vote never passed and was shelved until 1868, when Johnon fired a political rival, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton - in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, which said that the President couldn't remove a Senate appointee without the Senate's approval. The House voted to impeach...
...federal government ran fairly impeachment-free for the next century or so - a corrupt judge here, a kickback-receiving Secretary of War there - until the epochal undoing of President Richard Nixon, who avoided the indignity of being called to account for the Watergate conspiracy by resigning before Congress had a chance to impeach him. Then, in 1998, came President Bill Clinton, with the Blue Dress and the cigars and the statement, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman...