Incomplete Impeachment

For the second time in seven months a Governor of North Dakota last week called armed soldiers into the skyscraper Capitol at Bismarck to protect himself against forcible ejection from office. With a court action to oust him already in progress, the Nonpartisan League-controlled House had impeached Democratic Governor Thomas Hilliard Moodie twelve days after his inauguration for unspecified "crime, corrupt conduct, malfeasance and misdemeanors in office." Everyone knew the real charges were that: 1) having admittedly voted in Minnesota in 1930, he was ineligible for the governorship under North Dakota's constitutional requirement of five years' continuous residence: 2) Canadian-born, he had never been naturalized a citizen of the U. S.

On the advice of his Attorney General, who declared the House's action "incomplete" until it should appoint a board of managers and submit articles of impeachment to the Senate, strapping "Tom" Moodie kept his broad beam firmly planted in the Governor's chair.

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