Meaning of the Words Sole and Chutzpah

According to the on-line Merriam-Webster dictionary, when the word “sole” is used as an adjective, it means “one and only.” The word “sole” occurs only twice in the U.S. Constitution. Both are in reference to legislative powers which suggests how careful the Founding Fathers when they wrote the document.

The first use is in Article 1, Section 2, paragraph 5 with the words: The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment. In Section 3, Paragraph 6 of Article 1, our Founding Father’s used it a second time when they wrote: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all impeachments.

Speaker Pelosi has not sent the two articles of impeachment to the Senate because she wants to negotiate the rules by which the trial in the Senate should be conducted. Obviously, she has not read Article I, Section 5, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution which states in its first words, “Each house may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, …”

These words give Senator McConnell and its majority leader every legal right to tell Speaker Pelosi to go pound sand. Her response is to stamp her foot like a spoiled brat and withhold the articles. This is called chutzpah which is defined by Merriam-Webster as “supreme self-confidence, gall, nerve.” The dictionary lists 18 synonyms for this Yiddish word – audaciousness, audacity, brashness, brass, brassiness, cheek, crust, effrontery, face, gall nerve, nerviness, pertness, presumption, presumptuousness, sauce, sauciness, and temerity. Most of which apply to Speaker Pelosi.

Her refusal to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate is another example of the Speaker’s failure to execute the oath of her office which requires her – and every member of the Congress – to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Speaker Pelosi doesn’t have the constitutional right to do so which begs the question as to why. Let’s start with a few maybes, as in the Democrats:

• Don’t want their evidence or lack of it exposed for what it really is?
• Realize that a fair and open trial in the Senate will cost them seats in the House, maybe even its majority?
• Expose their witnesses to cross-examination (which didn’t happen in the House hearings) and cost them credibility?
• Know that their chances of getting a conviction in the Senate is somewhere between zero and slim. Slim left town the day after the Republicans increased their majority in the Senate.
• Can now say to their left wing base that they have impeached the president, now let’s move on.

Whatever Pelosi’s reason, it is galling and insulting that she (and the Democratic leadership) assumes that We the People have not read the Constitution. Many of us had and we vote.