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I would ask “How did he manage to become a Senator without even knowing about this stuff?” but I suspect the answer would just make me cynical.
I watched a similar hearing not long after scripting this, where the politicos not only moved, but actually voted to hold someone in contempt for properly asserting the Privilege.
A law degree is not a prerequisite for political office.
Hell, depending on where you are, a law degree may not even be prerequisite to be a *judge.*
The Constitution doesn’t require a person to have a law degree before becoming a Supreme Court Justice. It also doesn’t require that you be of a certain age or even a US citizen. All you need to be appointed to the Supreme Court is to be nominated by the President and approved by the Senate. There are no other qualifications.
Does it at least require you to be human? Or alive? Can a computer program be a Supreme Court Justice?
Nope. All it requires is that the president nominate them and the senate approve them(Article 2, section 2). If the president and a majority of the senate both wanted to make the same fictional character a supreme court justice at the same time, then nothing in the constitution would stop them.
Surely they must at least be a US citizen?
It’s not a requirement. Practically speaking, a non-citizen’s unlikely to be nominated, but it wouldn’t be unconstitutional.
After he threatened to hold her in contempt, if she yielded and answered the senators questions would she not be able to have anything said suppressed at trial? She was just coerced by the state.
Isn’t Ron Paul a medical doctor?
What’s sad is that many politicians *do* have law degrees. I suspect it’s brainpower they are deficent in.
Those who can, advise others on the law. Those who can’t, just make up new ones.
The Constitution specifies minimum requirements for Senators and Representatives: age and citizenship. I suppose each state could specify their own restrictions.
Yet so many of them HAVE a law degree….
And then proceed to break the law daily… And twice on Sundays, just for good measure… /sarcasm.
When a member of the House moves over to the Senate, he raises the IQ of both bodies. –Everett Dirksen
Question: What happened in said hearing? Was the vote passed? Was the person convicted?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
– Mark Twain, a Biography
That would imply that NON-Congressmen CAN’T be idiots, which sadly is not true.
No, you only need one of the two to be true.
Eerie how close this strip matches up with what is going on right now with how Republicans are grilling the IRS in Senate hearings. But then, I would also imagine that any hearing being undertaken by Congress would end up being an echo of this strip.
Yeah, Issa the car thief. What a great guy…/barf
It should be noted that prosecutor and senator play to quite different “juries”. The prosecutor usually gets nowhere when the witness invokes the 5th, but the senator can have a field day. “Are you the creator of these immoral and illegal comics that are corrupting our youth?” Great for inflaming the voters and no judge throws it out. Nor is there a risk of his throwing out the entire case. The senator doesn’t get a conviction, but he can get a law [named after him] passed, and lots of votes. So our senator here is probably to be praised for even caring about the answers.
Now on the point of the Republicans and the IRS, the IRS spokesman has virtually no chance to assert the 5th. He is, ultimately, an employee of Congress, and so to invoke the 5th is grounds for his being fired. Even if he can’t be fired, he might as well resign. So it just about never happens. Instead he invokes executive privilege.
Man, State looks mad, you never want to mess with her after she double dog darws you.
I hope he’s sincere in that last panel, because the alternative would be the “regal” attitude that since they make the laws, they shouldn’t be held to them. That’s about the worst attitude possible, and the root of all the problems that lead up to the English Civil War. (Almost just said “The Civil War” there. Boy, would that have been confusing or what?)
They already assert that WRT Obamacare, insider trading, and now, even answering to the law. (Something along the lines of, “investigating us is in fact illegal”, IIRC?)