Aah, what utterly splendid commentary! It's just so true; the readership here is wicked sophisticated.
I agree with most of you that the process needs to begin with Gonzo; he's committed enough crimes (no one ever talks about the torture business anymore) to keep hearings up and running for decades. Then Cheney (thankfully Kucinich submitted those articles last winter), and only then, Bush.
And yeah, kudos to the Dem leadership. I suppose those insiders in the know who understand more of the maneuvering that must be navigated on The Hill might be able to claim a better strategy. But right now, I agree we need to be letting them know we appreciate their hard work and encouraging them to do more of it. Lots more of it.
And yeah; ignore Faux Snooz.
All that being said, I have to respectfully (in the fullest sense, as your input is always so valuable) disagree with Sofia regarding the down side of impeachment, and for several reasons. First, that attitude would get us nowhere in law enforcement, to our great peril. Ah, we'll never get a conviction in this town, so why bother? I know that happens all the time, but is that the zeitgeist we wish to promote here?? To my mind, we need the courage to stand up to that zeitgeist, the courage to follow our convictions on this matter, and the courage to uphold the Constitution.
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
Sofia, if you have not seen that Moyers interview with John Nichols and Bruce Fein, do not miss it. I predict you'll be convinced, especially after hearing from Fein, who drafted the articles of impeachment against Clinton. To Fein, that was quite simple; Clinton lied under oath, and that is a crime. It was a stupid issue to be pursuing, as it had nothing whatsoever to do with Clinton's ability to govern, but it exposed the craven desperation on the part of the Republicans to get anything on Bill they could possibly dig up. Tabloid oversight, if you will.
But listen to Fein make the comparisons; it's a real rallying cry to hear the guy who wrote Clinton's impeachment papers note just how much worse this administration has been, and specifically in terms of governance, which is what really matters.
I do not mean to pick on you, Sofia, as I know you give a lot of thought to all your comments. However, you and everyone else should know the reasons why I'm so charged up about this point. One reason is that I got into the exact same debate with an old friend last weekend, and was surprised because he and I have rarely disagreed on any political issue we've discussed. My position is this: Impeachment is our duty in situations such as we now find ourselves.
The other reason is that another old friend of mine (well, at this point it's likely best to say "acquaintance," as so many many years have passed), Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) is actually working with Bruce Fein to draw up articles of impeachment against Gonzalez. I'm pretty excited about this, and right proud of ol' Steve for seeing impeachment as a duty to the country and the Constitution.
But back to my list of reasons why impeachment is such a good idea and why we can't take a defeatist attitude toward it. My second reason has to do with that duty thing; to act (or not) on the defeatist concerns is a political position, whereas we need to be taking a principled position. The political position is precisely where Rove has taken politics, although he's had a lot of historical help along the way; it's a human inclination to be so manipulative, but we should always strive to overcome it. When the Democratic party starts deferring to the more politically expedient position in matters of such grave consequence as these, when we allow ourselves to become more concerned with winning than in holding to our integrity, then we will have succumbed to their level. I say we should resist this inclination with every fiber in our bodies (without being utterly foolish, of course).
Yet another reason we should avoid the defeatist attitude about impeachment is that we really do not know what kind of numbers we'd have after the hearing starts up. If you're too young to know or remember, the polls for impeachment of Nixon were very low early on in the hearings. It was only after more and more evidence kept turning up that not even the Republican loyalists could risk staying with Tricky Dick. If you look at the polls since all these recent hearings started up - and I remind you, that was only seven months ago - more and more people are getting the message, and it is decidedly not good for Bush. If the numbers continue to rise as more damning evidence pours in, the politicians will have to rethink their position, just as they've had to do with their stance on our occupation of Iraq.
Furthermore, impeachment is successful if the House votes to impeach, and that would seem even at this early stage to be a fait accompli. The vote for removal is another matter, of course, but I hardly think that we should be using the public backfire and reversal of fortune we saw with Clinton as a predictor for what might happen with Bush. Indeed, I'm of the opinion that, should the Senate vote not to remove him, it is those Senators casting nay votes who will suffer, not the ones who vote yea, the opposite of what happened with Clinton.
Finally (at least for now), I'm frankly undeterred by an acquittal in the Senate, in that there are so damn many crimes on which we could pursue an impeachment, we can always move on to the next one. This will be especially possible if there is a huge public outcry if the Senate does not vote to remove from office. And this goes for the lot of 'em, and there will of course be plenty of crimes left after the processes are spent to enable trials within the court system.
In other words, impeachment does not have to stand for the address of each and every violation of Bush's oath of office, or Cheney's or Gonzo's. These hoodlums have committed so many crimes they'll keep the courts busy for a long while to come. Provided, of course, the international courts don't hang them first.
So this is good, right; start small, work our way up, nail Gonzo first, then Cheney, then Bush, build each case, keep it narrow and clean, don't try to pull in every hangnail and parking ticket, just target the most egregious. And do our duty:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. (emphasis mine)Most important, keep calling your reps to let them know where you stand and to show your appreciation of their work. Call early, call often, and point out only one heinous crime at a time so you can spread your outrage around. If the duty of the Congress is to impeach for these crimes, then it is our duty as citizens to make our voices heard.
5 comments:
Can you hear the drums? I can and they are getting louder
http://impeachbushcoalition.blogspot.com/
Impeachment!
The issue is not original. Among the charges approved by the House Judiciary Committee when it recommended its articles of impeachment against President Nixon was "illegal wiretaps." President Nixon, the bill charged, "caused wiretaps to be placed on the telephones of 17 persons without having obtained a court order authorizing the tap, as required by federal law; in violation of Sections 241, 371 and 2510-11 of the Criminal Code."
I agree with you, Joe. Or half of me does, or something like that! Both our peripatetic impeachment positions seem to change with the weather! Yours, by self-admission, varies with the company that the impeachment drive keeps.
My just prior post on this subject did not commit me to an anti-impeachment position so much as it mused on some significant issues with it that, I argued, create room for disagreement with doing it.
These are not especially political, at least in the near term time frame (meaning the '08 election), or tactical political sense. They are rather, chiefly, that an impeachment passed out of the House that fails to reach conviction and removal in the Senate vote might join the judgment of history as to its impropriety (as the other two have), and additionally, re-set the bar of acceptable presidential behavior far lower than it stands now-- wherein lies under oath (at least in certain de minimus cases) are not removable offenses for the POTUS. Bringing an illegitimate impeachment against Clinton for that created the unfortunate precedent that presidents may lie under oath, provably, without necessarily being convicted of impeachment charges. I would hate to see a new precedent under which the kinds of truly high crimes against our nation and the Constitution Bush/Cheney have committed are construed as non-removable offenses.
However, Bruce Fein's position is compelling as well, that failing to bring impeachment charges in this case would mean that these are not even certainly impeachable offenses (when they are actually the quintessential high crimes envisioned by the Framers, rising to the very level of treason against the country, I would argue).
I watched the Watergate hearings with great interest as a college sophomore, so I was of an adequate age at the time to semi-understand what was going on. You're right that impeachment was far from the public mind to begin with, but later, as the affair evolved, it was widely supported.
And perhaps that will be the case now. However, as the last impeachment showed, even having a 2-1 majority against impeachment did not rein in the Republican leadership to prevent voting out impeachment charges, even when they had to use the very end of their lame duck session to do it. Perhaps, a 2-1 public margin in favor of impeachment, achieved down the road when some of these crimes are publicized more widely, would still fail to move the Republican leadership to support conviction. While this development of public support could prevent political damage to the Democrats for voting impeachment charges out of the House (and deal the Republicans who voted no on conviction a large political downside), an acquittal on these charges could still color the original charges as illegitimate, and set the precedent bar entirely in the gutter.
sofla
My apologies for answering 'Joe' when I was actually answering dr. elsewhere, whose impeachment position has not varied, to my recollection, nor changed with the identities of those advocating impeachment.
sofla
I like and admire Scott Ritter, not just bcz he has stood up to Bush since before standing up to Bush became fashionable, but bcz he knows what he is talking about.
So here is his take on Rove's resignation:
" Karl Rove, interchangeably known as "Boy Genius" or "Turd Blossom," has left the White House. The press conference announcing his decision to resign has been given front-page treatment by most major media outlets, but the fact of the matter is the buzz surrounding Rove's departure is much ado about nothing, especially in terms of coming to grips with the remaining 16 months of the worst presidency in the history of the United States.
Rove is a domestic political marauder, the personification of a conservative movement which lacks a moral compass and has a complete disregard for facts. The master of exploiting mainstream America's predilection for news-as-entertainment, under which the likes of Rupert Murdoch can manufacture headlines out of thin air, Rove helped turn "fair and balanced" into a national joke which everyone laughs at but few actually comprehend. Rove served as the maestro of a political-smear orchestra composed of such intellectually challenged muckrakers as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, manipulating the NASCAR/professional wrestling crowd's addiction to seedy gossip in an effort to maintain the all-important 51 percent majority needed to win elections.
Perhaps if the Democratic Party had possessed a semblance of organization and cohesion (not to mention a post-Clinton message that could be sold to a majority of America), then Rove would be but a footnote in history, known simply as the man who helped the worst governor in the history of Texas get elected. Even the self-destructive campaign run by Al Gore in 2000, in which he distanced himself from a sitting president who, despite all of his faults, would have defeated Bush in a landslide if the Constitution permitted a third term, was enough to deny Rove his beloved 51 percent-it was Gore, not Bush, who won the majority of votes in that contest. It took a Republican governor of Florida, backed by a compliant Supreme Court, to put George W. Bush into the White House, not any genius on the part of Rove.
"Bush's Brain" may claim that it was his careful manipulation of fiction over fact that carried the 2004 election, in which the term "Swift-boating" became synonymous with political character assassination, but it was the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq which sank the Democratic Party and its candidate for president, John Kerry. It is very difficult to unseat a president in a time of war, especially when so many Democrats voted in favor of the concept, first by buying into every post-9/11 policy put forward by the Bush administration (find me one Democrat who actually read the Patriot Act in its entirety before it was voted into law) and second by rubber-stamping the lies that led to Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003. Remember, it was Kerry's inarticulate defense of his decision to vote in favor of granting war powers to the president that sank his election hopes, not his Vietnam War record.
Certainly, Karl Rove played a significant behind-the-scenes role in supporting Bush's war policies. The perjury trial of "Scooter" Libby forced the collective of deaf, dumb and blind pseudo-journalists who populate what is known as the mainstream media in America to recognize how pathetically duplicitous and petty the Bush administration could get when it came to defending the policies propping up the so-called Global War on Terror and the awful tragedy of Iraq. Rove's fingerprints were all over the decision by Vice President Dick Cheney to leak CIA officer Valerie Plame's name to the media in an effort to thwart the truth-telling of her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson.
But that is about as deep as Rove's involvement in the two issues that will define the presidency of George W. Bush gets. While Rove might be the "genius" behind the kind of winner-takes-all dirty politics that won the Republicans a majority in Texas (and brought down the likes of Tom "The Hammer" DeLay), he was way out of his depth when it came to the reality of national security policy. Unlike unsubstantiated rumors of wrongdoing which can stain a political opponent's record for the brief moment needed to gain political advantage, regardless of what the actual truth is, the never-ending flow of dead American service members from a war based on a foundation of lies cannot be overlooked indefinitely, even by the most subservient of media outlets."
And this is what he has to say about Cheney:
" Being the Brain of the most vapid, intellectually shallow president ever creates an apt epitaph for Rove's tenure at the White House. The Bush administration has never won accolades for its substance. Its best frontman, Colin Powell, self-destructed in front of the U.N. Security Council in February 2003. Powell's nemesis, Donald Rumsfeld, followed suit shortly thereafter, unable to coherently explain where Saddam Hussein had hidden all those WMD we went to war for, and ultimately telling the average foot soldier to pound sand when it came to the lack of adequate equipment needed to fight and survive in occupied Iraq. Bush's singular appeal has been the impression of steadfastness in the eye of the storm, even if the storm is for the most part self-created. For this we must look not to "Bush's Brain," but instead peer deep into the dark recesses of the White House, where we can glimpse the awful "soul" of the president-Dick Cheney.
The vice president is the single greatest threat to American and international security in the world today. Not Osama Bin Laden. Not the ghost of Saddam Hussein. Not Ahmadinejad or Kim Jung Il. Not al-Qaida, the Taliban, or Jose Padilla himself. Not even George W. Bush can lay claim to this title. It is Dick Cheney's alone. Operating in a never-never land of constitutional ambiguity which exists between the office of the president and the Congress of the United States, Cheney's office has made its impact felt on the policies of the United States of America as had no vice president's office before him. Granted unprecedented oversight over national security and foreign policy by executive order in early 2001, many months prior to the terror attacks of 9/11, Cheney has single-handedly steered America away from being a nation among nations (albeit superior), operating (roughly) in accordance with the rule of law, and toward its present manifestation as the new Rome, a decadent imperial power bent on global domination whatever the cost.
The absolute worst of the rot that has infected America because of the policies and actions of the Bush administration has originated from the office of the vice president. The nonsensical response to the terror attacks of 9/11, seeking a "global war" versus defending the rule of law at home and abroad, taking the lead in spreading the lies that got us involved in Iraq, legitimizing torture as a tool of American jurisprudence, advocating for warrantless wiretappings of U.S.-based communications (regardless of what the Fourth Amendment says against illegal search and seizure), and pushing for an expansion of America's global conflict into Iran-all can be traced back to the person of Cheney as the point of origin."
And this is what he has to say about Congress:
"America today is very much engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the forces of evil. The enemy resides not abroad, however, but at home, vested in the highest offices of the land. Neither Osama Bin Laden nor Saddam Hussein threatened the life blood of the United States-the Constitution-to the extent that Cheney has. Not Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Ho Chi Minh. Not since the American Civil War has there been a constitutional crisis of the magnitude that exists today, threatening to rip the very fabric of American society apart at the seams, courtesy of Dick Cheney.
That Congress today remains relatively mute on this crisis is one of the great mysteries of our time. Perhaps the vagaries of national politics can be blamed. The Democratic majority in Congress appears to have ceded its leadership role to unelected presidential candidates who seem solely empowered to comment on current events, domestic or foreign, and who, out of fear of any misstep which could hurt their chances to seize the White House as their own, refuse to actually take a substantive stand against the policies of the Bush administration. In an effort that is curiously Rovian in the quest for electoral victory, the Democratic candidates (with a few notable exceptions) have been less than bold in their opposition to the heinous policies that are currently in place concerning Iraq, Iran, the war on terror, torture and constitutional violations-unless you count empty rhetoric.
In many ways, the leading Democrats, both those running for office and those currently holding office, are a far greater insult to American values than the conservative standard-bearers for the policies of Cheney. No one of substance takes seriously the manic ranting of the Hannity/Limbaugh/Coulter triad. These Democrats, on the other hand, have mastered the art of compromise to the point that they stand for nothing at all-this at a time in American history when the policies of the administration, derived from the dark abyss of Bush's soul, Cheney, provide the most concrete example of what we as Americans should be standing against.
The Democrats need to stand for something. Cheney has provided the sort of political ammunition that would enable them to fight, and win, a constitutional battle over the heart of America, the kind of defining struggle which I believe the vast majority of Americans would rally around. Unless the Democrats start separating themselves from the policies of the Bush administration, and take an active role in outing and suppressing the true evil that is Dick Cheney, all they will achieve in the coming years is a change in the titular political orientation of America, without the kind of deep-seated break from the failures and crimes of the past six-plus years that have taken our nation, and the world, right up to the edge of chaos."
And here is why impeachment of Gonzo and Dick matter more than impeachment of Bush:
""Bush's Brain" may be gone, but his "Soul" lives on. It is high time all of America put Dick Cheney fully in the spotlight of collective accountability, purging our nation of this scourge which has harmed us in so many ways. If there is any case for impeachment to be made against any member of the Bush administration today, it can be made against a vice president who has shamed our nation, destroyed our moral standing and broken our laws."
The POTUS is standing on a three legged stool that is begging to be kicked from under him (lawless AG and evil VP and enabler REPUB majority). There is no need to impeach Bush, all we have to do is kick the stool. If impeachment of Bush is not advisable (at the moment, I think he can be impeached even after he is no longer in office?....do I have it wrong?) how about starting with Gonzo and Cheney and getting rid of the Repubs!
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