I'm with Josh, almost to the word.

I hate the idea of impeachment. I don't like overturning elections, even elections I disagree with.

I can't name 17 Republicans who would convict.

It's late in Bush's term and he'd just run the clock anyway.

I'd rather we work on getting us out of Iraq than Bush out of the White House (though I accept the counter-argument that those might mean the same thing).

And, as I accept that counter-argument above, I also have the same feeling that Josh does -- I might not like or want an impeachment but the Gonzales hearings and other matters seem to be revealing a criminal enterprise at work. Have things gone so far that even impeachment skeptics like me are going to have to get on board?

Like I said when MJ Rosenberg brought this up: I don't want it, but if it happens, I'll support it.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I am beginning to fear that we are in the worst of all possible worlds. I had hoped that once the obstruction and constitutional issues started to emerge that the traditional media would pick up the story and start working it. But as far as I can see the WaPos and Joe Kleins of the world are still entranced by "emanations from the President" (wonder if that has anything to do with Thompson's odor) and are still going straight to "senior administrations officals" who happen to be members of Rove's and Cheney's staffs for their lead paragraph quotes. And these stores are buried on A23 when they appear at all.

So I am now forced to ask: what if they gave an impeachment and no one came? What is the Bush Administration simply ignores every document request and subpoena from here on out? And refuses to recognize the jurisdiction of any court over any member/activity of the Executive Branch?

The result would be catastrophic, but at this point I don't see even that extreme getting any traditional media coverage. And clearly there are enough true believers among congressional Republicans to block any direct action by Congress.

sPh

=== There is only one way to deal with a bully- bloody his nose. You will find out very quickly that bullies are also cowards, and when hit they run. George Bush is both bully AND coward- not the kind that I want to "have a beer with" or that I will let trample the constitution. ===

Yeah, not every direct confrontation winds up in a victory for the underdog.

You have to know who your opponent is and what you're getting into.

Sometimes it's a guy nobody's ever hit before, he has not friends and will back down the moment you bloody his nose.

And sometimes you're saying "Tony Soprano, you big bully, I'm gonna pop you one."

You gotta know the difference.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Well, I overstated with my analogies. I do think he'd be able to mount more of a counter-atack than some people think.

So the question becomes, is that the battle we want to have right now? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Here is the problem. More and more Americans are against the war in Iraq. More and more passionately hate Bush and the neocons and the Republicans more generally. More and more want change and are frustrated,very frustrated with their inability to effect change despite a watershed election. That means we are sitting on a seemingly calm yet beneath the surface a fairly serious discontent that can burst into social disorder. The Bush authoritarians push back on everything, stonewall everything, lie about everything. Under such circumstances the question naturally arises...how can change occur? Clearly the civic course answers about the flexibility of the constitution, the blather about checks and balances is exposed as poppycock and we see instead the naked power grab of Cheney-Bush and their goosestepping (if they could learn the step) minions. In the face of this problem one needs a constructive channel to focus the anger. I do not claim impeachment is necessarily the course; but some serious focus needs to be forwarded and I do not think the election 08 necessarily will do the trick; in fact, it does not seem to me to expect an extra-constitutional effort by the right even if the elections swing dramatically (as they now seem likely) to the left.

If they can blatantly steal an election, not once, but twice, invade and occupy a country for no reason whatsoever and then lie about it, expose a covert CIA agent, torture people, lie with impunity to congress, render one citizen from a country to another country by using the planes of the worst black market gun merchant in the world, deny the right of habeus corpus to American citizens, eavesdrop on their conversations, refuse to submit to subpoenas from congress, set aside lawful jury decisions by commuting sentences of their friends, shoot someone in the face and refuse a police interview until it was convenient for them, tamper with government records by purging phone and visitor logs, refuse to submit to congress and the public the names of those people they employ who receive a government pay check from the taxpayers and do all of this while the press investigates haircuts and wardrobes of politicians, well, impeachment will be just another blood sport for them.

As crazy as this might sound to regular TPM readers, I think there is something that many of us, and people like Josh Marshall in particular, are missing, and it is this:

Most people in the country are still largely unaware of the extent of criminal wrongdoing of this administration.

As much as this stuff is talked about here at TPM and on sites like Eschaton, DailyKos, etc., the bulk of U.S. citizens still get information from TV and the local paper.

Now, I myself am guilty of not watching network news or even the cable news channels, but I did check in last night to see how Gonzalez et. al. are being covered. The answer, not surprisingly, is not much.

Without that coverage, there really isn't much pressure on Congressional Republican's to stand up for what's right.

If nothing else, impeachment proceedings would greatly raise awareness of the level and amount of criminal wrongdoing by the administration, and that would create pressure of its own.

All that aside however, there is a much better reason for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings, IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

The thing that really irks me is that 90% of the arguments against impeachment come down to:
It's too hard.

That is a terrible reason, and considering the gravity of what we're talking about, no reason at all.

Josh, and everyone else who don't think impeachment is appropriate right now need to think about their own values. It is far better to lose defending what is right then to keep your head down and hope for a better day. We can have a better day right now, we just have to act.

I want the Republicans who would not vote for impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate on the record not doing so. If any of you good folks think the case for impeachment is not there just say so. Personally I think it is the best case in the nation's history, and not doing what is called for will be surrendering the republic to a small click of fanatics who besides being light years from being any kind of majority are also crooked as hell. My opinion is that there ought be some trials for high treason and the convicted stood up against a wall and shot by a legally authorized military firing squad. I think impeachment is letting the preps off light as well as the letting off puppet masters behind them.

As for fearing these . bullies, complete and public investigation of impeachment charges will strip them of the support of most of the backers they and their friends in media land have been pushing patriotic and religious buttons to produce and maintain. At this point if the establishment could pitch GW and Cheney under the bus without a public investigation the goon and the goof would be history yesterday. The problem is the corruption and unrepresentative policy rot permeates both parties and their all too similar backers. The insiders have gone too far this time and are frightened to death, with damned good reason, of open investigations.

I say bring it on and let the chips fall where they may.

Very good point.

It argues that impeachment should be invoked soon, because that would, in fact, get these stories into higher profile, so that TV actually discusses them.

spHealy

The bully you describe is Cheney and the person who is the running this adminisration and it's attack on the constitutional governance of law. After all, he asserts his office is not even part of the executive branch.

The bully in your caption box is GWBush and if he was running things, this might be solvable, the truth is he is being bullied by the real bully in the administration Cheney and the henchman Rove, who is power crazed and thus aligns with Cheney to keep Bush where they need him.

The impeachment issue is somewhat analogous to the Iraq war in this sense:

We should never have gone into Iraq, we should have gotten out a long time ago, we are still there, so how are we going to get out cleanly?

Bush should never have been elected, he should have been impeached long ago, he is still here, so how are we going to undo the damage he has done cleanly?

I am curious if people will break on the impeachment issue the same way they break on the issue of getting out of Iraq?

My opinion is that we should eliminate the root cause as quickly as possible. The imperial presidency of George Bush is the root cause. Get Bush out of office and a lot of other things fall into place.

Lindsey,
Just a note: "Unproductive" means unproductive to the conversation, not unproductive to your view of how US politics should operate. I am sorry if my posts are making you uncomfortable, but I suggest you read the liveblogging of yesterday's contempt hearings over at Firedoglake. In particular read the Republican committee members' statements and check the final vote tallies. Even if the core Congressional Democrats were willing to take contempt and impeachment to the wall (and I am in no way convinced that the Democrats who gave Joe Lieberman a standing ovation are in fact willing to do that) it is very difficult to see how they could gain sufficient support of the whole Congress /and the traditional media/ to make that happen.

sPh

George Bush and Dick Cheney and their whole crew have been a disgrace to their offices and to our nation. However, would it not be better if Democrats in Congress stop Bush's initiatives and keep on investigating his administratins actions including forcing out the documents that they are hiding?

The notion that the American people are waiting to impeach Bush seems wishful thinking. They want him to go away not to be driven away. If support for impeachment starts to wane as it gets underway then what? Won't the Democrats and the nation be worse off than now?

How long will impeachment and trial take? Weeks, months? If so it will run right into the election season. Isn't better to hold up the Democratic candidates, and even some of the Republicans as what we want as a President rather attempt to toss out Bush?

Lastly, Bush is a disgrace, an embarrassment an evil, but Bill Clinton was none of those things yet he was impeached. How soon will Republicans attempt to impeach the next or some future Democratic president. The execution of Charles I and the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson took impeachment for presidents off the table. Do we want every election to be undoable by a Congressional majority that can negate the will of hte people?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

You're misreading the arguments, no one is complaining that it's "too hard". This is a far more complicated and nuanced problem than you're considering. The other problem with this impeachment is that Cheney would become president and he is far more dangerous than Bush.

Legal challenges, protocol, discovery, evidential evaluation , charges voted upon in the house, committee hearings, all have to be decided within an appropriate time frame in which to impeach these men. Never in our history have we had a double impeachment of the two highest office holders, there is no precedent for it. It's easy to be high-minded and principled when you're calling for impeachment, but there is a far greater challenge and that is to make it constitutionally fair for all parties involved.

In the end, its going to be about what kind of country you want.

Nixon got pardoned, Reagan wasn't even touched. Their behaviour, their henchmen, even their actions were ultimately legitimized.

If you won't stop Bush, then he won't be stopped. Game over, its finished, file quietly down the aisles and out the doors marked exits.

Do you want to be America? Or do you want to be something else?

The choice seems to be something else, so far.

Maybe you should start importing sand from Saudi Arabia. Doesn't seem to be much of it in the United States population.

"Cheney ... is far more dangerous than Bush"

Yes, although I do not want to make glib comparisons with Nazis, when I saw the documentary about Goering at Nuremburg, it struck me that the main difference between Cheney and Goering is that Cheney has less charm.

This is not unimportant, however, since Goering had a real politician's knack for winning people to his side. Cheney's weakness is his lack of charisma, which, from a practical standpoint, would make it easier to impeach him. There is not going to be a lot of deep-seated emotional support for Cheney, apart from the hard-core right-wing base.

As a start, Cheney could be charged with directing Libby and others to mislead investigators about the Plame affair. The hoped-for outcome would be Cheney resigning.

I know what you mean about the nazi comparison, but I too saw some really frightening parallels in the behavior of those people and this administration. It may not compare with nazism, but it certainly compares with their authoritarianism. Of course the question in any impeachment is would you want Cheney acting as president even for a day? It's bad enough that he thinks he's the president.

I think Lindsey makes the strongest argument here: "If nothing else, impeachment proceedings would greatly raise awareness of the level and amount of criminal wrongdoing by the administration, and that would create pressure of its own." Moreover, "IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. . . .The thing that really irks me is that 90% of the arguments against impeachment come down to: It's too hard.

"That is a terrible reason, and considering the gravity of what we're talking about, no reason at all."

I think is very important to focus the public's attention on George Bush's criminal activity.
If we don't do that, Josh is right: there is a
real danger that Bush's imperial presidency will
"congeal into precedent."

Imagine what Rudy G. would do with that precedent.

What are people afraid of? That Joe Klein would
disapprove? Do you know how much Time magazine's circulation has fallen in the past 45 years? People don't read any more. Most people have never heard the name "Joe Klein."

Joe K. really does not speak for the nation.

Of course the public would be divided on the issue of impeachment. AndI doubt that there are enough votes in Congress to actually expel the president. (So we don't have to worry about Cheney becoming president.)

But the debate could focus the public's attention on what Bush has done. And the mainstream media would have to cover impeachment proceedings--and discuss the issues--if only to say "on the one hand, on the other hand."

I actually do watch NBC's nightly news--just to get a feel for what Americans outside of NYC are
hearing and thinking. And I've been impressed by how that news show has been moving, very quietly, to the left. I'm not suggesting that it's as far left as Fox is right . . But there has definitely been movement. Somebody there is not as afraid as they have been. Probably they are trying to draw more of CBS's old audience. I can imagine them covering a dbate over impeachment fairly well.

And I do think that if we focused the public's attention on what the Bush administration has actually done--and Republicans tried to stand up for him--we could set off a landslide victory for
Democrats in 2008. Then we could get something done. (I think of Johnson's landslide).

Once again, I have to ask: what are we afraid of?
I can't help but think of the Frenchman in Michael Moore's "Sicko" who said that "In France,
the government is afraid of the people" (that they will march, protest, etc.) But in the U.S. the people are afraid of the government."

Hear, hear, for the quote from "Sicko."

Instituting impeachment really puts the question to the People, eliciting many more calls and letters to Reps and Senators. The verdict for Clinton was "WTF? Get back to work." The verdict on Bush will be heard. The question is not about who should be President, but the extent of executive Power.

What could be more important? Is there any reason to believe that exeuctive power will fade in the future? All indications are for continued increase of presidential and executive power, with worries about terrorism. Letting things stand means a difficult precedent to fight when the next usurpation comes down the pike.

The expansion of privilege, the signing statements, the executive orders, the corruption of Justice, are transforming and supremely dangerous. 

As stupid as the impeachment charges were against Clinton that has zero do with bring charges against Bush and Cheney. Tell me Daniel do you want the right wing nuts who have been cozened by this crowd calling themselves conservatives to at some point not too far down the road to open this can of worms up...or would it be better of Kennedy, Biden, Dorgan, Kucinich and their ilk did the needed surgery. Personally I'd rather have liberal minded men do the work so it did not get out of hand and punish the innocent.

If the issue is executive power, then the solution is in amending the constitution, enacting legislation and making laws. If Nixon usurped power and used the executive office for his personal agenda, and the Bush administration has done the same thing, then the problem isn't the individual, it's the system that allows it.

There is a reason why the duties of the executive branch are somewhat vague and interpreted loosely - no one wants to hamper the executive branch in time of national crisis. Unfortunately, if congress does not exercise their power and enact their duties, then the power is up for grabs. If congress hadn't abdicated their responsibilities in declaring war, declaring contempt for congress, ensuring that subpoenas would be obeyed,then what would we expect to happen? Nature abhors a vacuum - it will be filled by the executive branch.

If the press fails to fulfill their duties and responsibilities then the people must amend the constitution as a solution.

I'll say it again, this isn't about "getting Bush,"
political expediency, education, or anything but the rule of law.

When you think of it in other terms you are saying it's all about political calculation and what might happen.

Also, give people some credit; they may not all be geniuses or political junkies, but they are more than capable of understanding what has gone on, what is at stake, and what needs to be done. This is not politics as usual, whether Congress acts or not, what has happened over the last 7 years is going to stay with the country for a long time, it can be a sign of our strength, or a sign of our weakness, it's up to Congress to decide which.

ITMFA

Somehow I don't see the exchange between Schumer and Abu as all that breathtaking or camel back breaking. It's just another in a string of incredible outrages that in a "normal" America would each have inspired a storm of protest and initiation of impeachment proceedings.

As Glenn Greenwald recently pointed out (re-related over again - forgive me Yogi), on December 17, 2005 the President of the United States of America boasted in a national radio broadcast that he had broken a law and would continue to break that law, ostensibly in defense of the constitution, Americans and America. The law was put in place specifically to prevent a president from abusing power. Bush had a rubber stamp congress that he could have asked to change the law. A law that had been changed many times since its original passage. But whatever the changes Bush wanted could not survive the sunlight of congressional examination. Even a congress Bush virtually owned. So law breaking was a point of choice and pride. It was also easily within the realm of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Hey. Whatever finally spins your wheels. Impeach anyone and everyone. For America's sake do something other than posture towards an election in 2008. What's left of American democracy may not make it till then.

It isn't a solution, Tom, if it can be abused again and again. It certainly didn't stop Reagan, did it?

It didn't stop Reagan because not enough people were opposed to what Reagan wanted. That more people were not opposed, perhaps because of poor reporting, is another issue, (the Fairness Doctrine, maybe).

Power is politics, or vice versa. Similarly to Breyer's points in "Active Liberty", some issues will always be gray, always contentious and not adressable through mechanical application of statute. I'm OK with the Constitution as is, if enforced.

So which trial would you like to be held first, Bush or Cheney?

Who says anyone is afraid?

And if you think CBS, CNN, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, FOX or any other medium is going to cover a debate over impeachment "fairly well" then I urge you to examine the press's record for the last ten years. They're not "moving" anywhere.

Only because no one is asking questions. Fiztgerald stopped at Libby because he knew he couldn't fight the White House to get testimony from Cheney or Rove. Libby was just a decoy.

In a sense, all resistance is doomed. I mean seriously, think of the model of the Vietnam anti-war movement, think of the women's movement, the civil rights movement.

Each of these movements dealt with massive social inertia. They were scorned, mocked, ignored. Their members were pilloried or murdered. The entire weight of society was against them.

The truth is that nothing worthwhile has ever been achieved by moderates waiting for the right time or the right conditions.

Instead, it has been achieved by idealists good and bad facing certain failure, but pressing on in the face of adversity.

Most people in the country are still largely unaware of the extent of criminal wrongdoing of this administration.

Exactly right, and that includes Congress. The only people aware of the extent of criminal activity are the criminals and they intend to keep it that way. The only way the people will ever know the extent of criminal wrongdoing is through impeachment. Also, as Lindsey says, it's the right thing to do. If survival of the democratic state is not enough, justice demands impeachment. While we don't know the extent of crimes, we do know that the highest crimes (subverting the constitution) have been committed. The country gets outraged when Paris Hilton is let off lightly for a DUI. Does anyone really think the country will not demand a conviction when all of the wrongdoing is put on the table?

This is a good debate - in my view just about all the positions that are crystalizing here have much merit.  I wonder if a good exercise would be to create a shopping list of positions such as 1) impeachment is bad for the republic, 2) the administration would retaliate effectively, 3) impeachment would fail due to lack of Republican votes, and so on.  I would add that it looks to me like each commentor takes this issue very seriously and express their views on the matter in a very sincere and genuine manner: so I'm a little concerned with using our rating system as argument instead of the evaluation of a contribution.

I also think it would be valuable to consider that aspect of the Constitutional principle of impeachment as a deterrent force - a "threat" against the abuse of the Constitution by public officials.   Of course the Bush Administration would defend itself by spinning the Constitution in a way that would seem to support the Constitution - let's call it the "Al Gore invented the Internet" syndrome.  This brings to my mind Ron Suskind's fascinating '04 essay "Without a Doubt":

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend - but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

    The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

The burning question is how one "creates reality", especially a non-empirical reality.  I submit that the only tool available for this is language, or more accurately, semantic distortion.  It is a value issue: not  value in the sense of morals, ethics or national values, but the value content of words themselves - call it meaning value.  Holding that the terms "creating the internet" is equivocal to "sponsoring legislation that created the Internet" is a prime example of semantic distortion.  The alarming thing, in my mind, is that so many buy into that sort of abuse of language.

I've read non-clinical definitions of functional illiteracy by some social scientists that sum up to the loss of words ability to mean anything.  We are confronted with an array of consumer products that are labeled "professional" - as if anyone would want to purchase, say, amateur toilet bowl cleaners or amateur weed eaters. How do we deal with deciding to purchase regular duty, heavy duty or super-heavy duty quarts of motor oil?  What do the terms mean, if anything?

I believe that if an imminent impeachment threat was percieved by the Bush Administration their initial retaliation would be within the venue of semantic distortion.  And I believe it has a good chance of success.  How many of us accept the new definitions of torture, for example, that this Administration has offered us?  A huge number, I fear.  And by folks who dispise torture, are very uncomfortable with it - how easy it is to uncritically accept that waterboarding is something else than torture when it offers a workaround to the moral equation.

Collectively, I don't think that Americans are keen on examining language issues.  There have been attempts in the past to popularize such issues, especially in a political venue, that failed miserably to interest the public at large.  General Semantics, for example.  It didn't fly and only attracted a small following.  Certainly Semiotics is an effective tool to confront and defuse propaganda, but the political right through the aegis of the academic culture wars, effectively villianized that body of linguistic concepts, even significantly among the political left.  

Critical Thinking curricula is also a good anti-propaganda tool.  I'm curious how funding for this has developed in the course of the Bush Adminstration.  I worked in education during the Clinton adminstration, and Ed offered quite a bit of funding for Critical Thinking courses.  Across the educational board, that is funding for Critical Thinking in Liberal Arts and Social Sciences as well as the Science and Math.   Just googling and all I see is programs in Critical Thinking in Science and Math.  I'm very curious about this.  Since republicans seem so interested in uncritical thinking, it doesn't make sense that they would promote it in our school, especially in the Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.

That's basically how I see the impeachment issue.  I think that the Administration has a strong possibility of clipping it off with propaganda.  All they have to do is convince us that Executive Privilege is in fact implied by the Constitution under separation of powers. But remember, Nixon lost the executive privilege arguement and resigned four days after he had to surrender the tapes to  Leon Jaworski.

Neoboho

Look, my son is headed to Iraq in the next couple months, so don't tell me I don't have my priorities straight and don't put up strawman arguments that do nothing more than inflame the situation. Every single day prosecutors in this country make decisions about trying murderers without sufficient evidence to secure a conviction, and yes, financial wherewithal is part of that decision making.

The priority right now should be finding away out of Iraq and to waste valuable resources on something that cannot be accomplished is a waste of time and resources.

Grow up.

The Iraq war and how we were led into it is one set of issues which I'd like to separate from the Constitutional issues, which include:

1. The suspension of habeas corpus.
2. The warrantless wiretaps (and likely other activities that violate the spirit of the Constitution)
3. The authorization of torture.
4. The undermining of Congress's Constitutional mandate of oversight of the Executive by a variety of methods.

The Iraq war is contentious - e.g., leading Democratic candidates for President supported it. However the above cannot pass muster given any objective reading of the Constitution.

The desired results are
1. A rollback of these atrocities.
2. Clear markers set for now and the future that these are fundamentally wrong and should not make any kind of precedent for a future President.

Is impeachment the only method to achieve #2? Is it the best method to achieve #2?

In a townhall meeting held by Rep. Rush Holt (D)(NJ 12th district) I attended, the Congressman argued that impeachment was not the best way to achieve #2. People in general do not understand the harm that has been done. Our Republican half does not admit to these violations of the Constitution being impeachable. Holt said his election in 1998 was a response to the impeachment of Clinton - he campaigned that it was wrong - and said that the country will be in trouble if the attitude is that, oh, we lost the last election, lets try impeachment; and currently that is how the Republicans will interpret any impeachment effort. The wrong that was done with the Clinton impeachment should not become a political custom (my phrasing of what he said).

Seems to me that the argument for impeachment should continue to be made and refined, and the particular charges for impeachment should be refined to a point where the reason for impeachment is blindingly obvious to everyone. Rush Holt said that the case has to be made like the Declaration of Independence, which was understandable to everyone at that time.

Also seems to me that given that impeachment is iffy, other remedies should be pursued in parallel.