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Impeachment
i am concerned that RepWexler and two other Representatives recently submitted a resolution to impeach Cheney but there has been no comment on it from Congress or the media.It should be debated in the halls of Congress and the Senate with national coverage on major stationsand in the press. .
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Comments (12)
I'll take your post seriously:
We have 11 months left of this administration. It would take that long to even move to impeach, and I'm sure you know that removal from office would take even longer -- assuming he is removed.
Is that how you want to tie up Congress right now?
There is more important business for the nation than worrying about something that will be self correcting in 11 months.
February 26, 2008 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Feel free to post again with something that resembles some scholarly work, leadership, and problem solving. Your comments appear to be part of the problem, not solutions. There is one roadblock to impeachment: The Speaker. She needs to be removed as Speaker to make way for impeachment.
You're asking we believe, on blind faith, that something "more important" needs to be confronted, but you fail to explain how the plan going forward would be supportable without reviewing the impeachment-related issues. You're making excuses to do nothing. That's not an agenda, but an apologist for alleged war crimes, unconstitutional conduct.
You appear to miss the point related to impeachment proceedings: The War Crimes-Enabler in Chief, once subject to those proceedings, regardless whether he is removed, would be forever denied any pardon. It doesn't matter how many months we have left; the question is why we shouldn't deny him any chance of a pardon. You failed to justify inaction. The Framers' intent of having elections wasn't to create an excuse for inaction, but to inspire the leadership to respond. The threat of elections means nothing to this leadership; then impeachment must be used.
You also failed to explain why a "fast impeachment" isn't possible. We don't need endless investigations; we merely need an impeachment proceeding. You keep focusing on 11 months. That is irrelevant. Why are you making excuses for inaction?
- What is the basis for your stating that it will take "at least" 11 months to conduct an impeachment proceeding?
- Why are you implicitly arguing for "inaction," yet you're apparently convinced removing the President -- based on a conviction -- is still an option that might succeed?
- How do you justify inaction on impeachment given the still-open-option of having sufficient evidence to warrant removal?
- Why are you unwilling to make the GOP Senators explain their refusal to convict someone for activity you apparently believe would justify removal?
The Congress is tied up now responding to non-sense excuses for war crimes, illegal FISA vioaltions, and Presidential incompetence. "Forcing" the House to focus on these issues isn't new: It would formalize the process. Rather than calling it "tie up Congress," refer to as the Framers' intended: Providing the House with the needed oversight, guidance, land leadership.
- What is your plan to provide leadership to the House that appears to be unresponsive to its oath of office? You have no plan, but excuses. That's not leadership.
- Why are you reluctant to force the House to formally do what it would ask that "it's doing": Conducting oversight?
- You like to make excuses, but you want us to "follow" you?
- Why do you believe that impeachment is 'all or nothing'; do you honestly believe that Congress will be unable to do any other business except impeachment?
- If, as you suggest, it does require the entire Congress to focus on this issue, then why are you asserting that anything but impeachment should be done to ensure we put the most important agenda item first: Defense of the Constitution, as required by 5 USC 3331?
The number one job of the United States government is to defend the Constitution. Everything else is under that objective. To suggest that there are "more important" issues misses the point: Those "other issues" are getting blocked.
- What, specifically, are you saying is "more important" than the Constitution, the oath of office, defense of the Constitution, or fact finding to establish the basis for reforms?
- How do you propose providing "solutions" to these "other" issues if we don't take the time to look at the core problem: What got in the way of all US government officials fully putting their oath of office 5 USC 3331 first?
- How do you propose to "lead the change" or "support new leadership" or "lead the way to new things" unless we take the time to examine where we've come from, how this mess unfoled, and what needs to be considered as options to implement the most prudent change?
February 26, 2008 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Enough, already.
Impeachment at this point is a non-starter. There will never be the votes for a conviction in he Senate, and you know it. All a Bill of Impeachment voted by the House along straight party lines, with a few "outliers" on either side of the aisle, will provide is a few moments of political theater.
If there was any realistic probability of the Senate returning a conviction, I'd say fine, go ahead. There is not. Time to get on with things we can actually do, and at the same time keep in mind that our successes, even with a larger majority in both houses next year, will likely be incremental. And that's OK by me. We take the first steps, and they bring us closer to our goals. Our next steps are the beginning of a shorter progress.
Only truly immature minds want to waste time on spectacularly unachievable things, or demand immediate gratification of their other impulses.
February 26, 2008 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, in addition to throwing down 1 gauntlet, you've thrown down about a million. But there is a forest for your trees.
The first thing is that you want to remove another elected official to remove an elected official. You've now cascaded miracles.
Go back in the last few years and check out how long the impeachment proceedings took against Nixon and Clinton.
You have a purely political agenda which yields no practical results. Do you honestly think you can get Congress -- before it recesses for Christmas -- to kick GWB out of office?
IN AN ELECTION YEAR?
I should like to know how you earn your living. Unless you are a philosophy professor, I doubt you would run your every-day affairs in this type of manner.
Here are a few things more important than your Hatfield/McCoy exercise:
a) Get the Dept of Homeland Security back on track.
b) Start thinking about the credit crisis that we are about to have and the lost faith in the dollar.
c) Right the economy to ensure that oil is not sold in Euros which would totally deflate whatever is left in our economy.
d) Start girding our infrastructure for the loss of private automobiles when cheap energy is no longer available. Start rebuilding local manufacturing infrastructure for when foreign manufacturing is either too expensive or too far away to support the US needs.
e) Enact legislation to prevent privacy issues (rights ;-)) from slipping away.
You need to get Realpolitik.
The Feds responsibility is to serve the people. While defending the Constitution is part of that, there is a practical side as well.
You would rather waste time to show that somehow you were "right" when the clock is already ticking down on this administration.
Astounding!
PS If I ran the zoo, I'd start by getting many people together to move in the same direction. There is nothing inclusive about your posting -- except if I agree with everything point-for-point to begin with.
February 27, 2008 1:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think that from a pragmatic perspective you have a point. However, this rightly leaves people with a prevailing sense of injustice.
I'd like to point out that people were making this same argument a year ago, during the first 100 days of the 'New Direction' Congress. What work has been done in the last year by this Congress that was more important than upholding the fundamental rule of law? Rubber stamping more money for Iraq? Rolling over on FISA? Being played for fools by the entire Department of Justice and then confirming Mukasey? Admonishing Roger Clemens?
The same argument was posed during the Nixon administration. Nixon was also in the second half a term as well. It's not any more true now than it was then.
It's not simple about removing Bush and/or Cheney from office. It's about preserving the nation's fundamental principles without which our union is nothing but a racist, sexist, plutocratic oligarchy.
Pragmatism is well and good for pursuing your principles, but it shouldn't be your principle. Some things are are worth going to the mat for. I thought that the freedom that comes from living in a nation ruled by laws and not men was one of them.
February 27, 2008 12:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just to be clear, my rage is directed at the lack of political will in Congress and not at you, ct. :)
February 27, 2008 1:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think people, if they feel hopeful about building a future, can forget the injustices of the past. Sort of how you handle a bad break up.
I believe this is part of what Obama touches in the electorate. We can fret about past mistakes, or we can concentrate on making the future better. Energy and time are finite quantities, so how best to use them?
By the way, no offense ever taken from you, DF.
PS: Watergate already opened up before the 2nd term started and got a good head of steam. Also, at the end of the day, they "nailed" Nixon on some very specific things -- regardless of how broad the overall abuse of power was. Without, for example, the "smoking gun" -- and the taping system to back up Dean's testimony -- the Watergate hearings would never have snowballed.
To see the difference, look at Iran/Contra where there was never a smoking gun. It's very hard to prove things like this definitively. It's like you have to get Al Capone on tax evasion rather than the real set of complex racketeering.
February 27, 2008 1:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
We may come to forget these injustices, but only if our system hasn't bee damaged so much so that, as Bruce Fein argues, these transgressions become loaded weapons laying around for the next abuser of power.
Even so, I hope that we don't forget these injustices. If no other good comes from any of this, there is a still a valuable lesson here about the vulnerabilities of our system. As though it even needed to be illustrated, this is positive proof that the fulfillment of the oath of office by proper exercise of the powers of Congress is not merely a suggestion, but a requirement for the health of our system.
Personally, I think there actually a number of smoking guns here, one of them being the George Bush has publicly admitted to committing a felony in ordering illegal surveillance activities.
I do understand the need to be practical in order to accomplish one's goals, but neglecting to enforce the law simply because it doesn't seem quite expedient enough strikes me as a pragmatic compromise of the most disappointing variety.
February 27, 2008 2:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Amen.
February 27, 2008 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have a feeling it won't get any traction in the media.
The real stories over the last 8 years have gone largely unpursued by the media.
Maybe Obama can ask the media if they want to join all the other people who have been inspired to participate in the national political conversation.
It would be nice to have the media get back into politics in a meaningful way.
February 26, 2008 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
as long as shrub doesnt go down at the same time there is no reason to continue,,,, wait til the shrub is out of office ... open up the vault all these tidbits are being stored in and nail em .... after shrub cant pardon any-one ... think ole waxman thought of that?
February 26, 2008 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
The root of this dispute as far as I’m able to judge, lies in the question of the depth of the pit into which the administration has pitched us.
If Bush is only a statistical anomaly that will dissipate quickly, a minor divergence from acceptable norms, then all that is called for is patience and caution.
On the other hand, if the entire world can see we have lied, cheated, and murdered, for exclusively political reasons and personal vindictive advantage; if we as a nation are responsible for our leaders, being an at least nominal democracy; if the corruption is so widespread and runs so deeply as to render expectations of justice and liberty moot, and questions of competence and authority terminally suspect; then making no fundamental and visible effort to set matters right will leave us so thoroughly soiled, so patently and irretrievably corrupt, that all we will get, and deserve from other members of the world community will be enduring contempt and at best pitying revulsion.
Moreover, the things preoccupying Congress now are primarily components in the impeachment portfolio, already filled to overflowing with indictable offenses. Might those proceedings be expedited by raising the stakes and giving Congress the power to extract the appropriate testimony and push aside the roadblocks they face at every turn?
All this could conceivably be effected after the fact, as hunter suggests; but for all my depth of admiration for Obama, I’m afraid his push for consensus will forestall exposure of deeply disturbing realities that might weaken the shreds of national pride he hopes to mobilize for healing. If that’s the case, I presume to think he’s wrong.
Remedies for cancer don’t include unreasoning hope it will just go away.
Refusing impeachment is begging for business as usual. That option is unavailable.
February 27, 2008 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
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