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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

“Beyond a reasonable doubt” does not apply to removing the President from office. The applicable standard is “whatever will convince half of the House and two thirds of the Senate.”

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The Constitutional criteria for removal of the President from office are "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors." Here's a good short description:

http://www.crf-usa.org/impeachment/high-crimes-and-misdemean...

Yeah, which feels like a slippery slope into political takeovers, especially since the speaker of the house is 3rd in line.

If Republicans were guaranteed to keep the President and VP slot, you'd see an impeachment much more easily. I don't think any Republican will want Pelosi a heartbeat away from the Presidency unless Trump's crime was so clear and egregious that 2/3 of the country wanted him gone.

That’s been the standard since the adoption of the Constitution. If it was a slippery slope, you’d think we would have slipped down it at some point in the past 230 years.

Seems like we're always finding new precedents to set like the "nuclear option" in the Senate.

And 230yrs is pretty young for a country.

The "nuclear option" is just a senate rule. It's not a law, it's not in the Constitution.

Young for a country, pretty old for the same base set of rules within that country.

Removal requires 2/3 votes of the Senate, so that seems pretty much like what you are asking for here.

It's pretty damn hard to slip down a slope that requires 2/3 of the senate to agree with each other.

...by design.

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