Failure to impeach Bush will haunt Democrats and the country

Weldon Berger in BTCNews:

Nearly a decade of investigations, a lurid final report and a concerted campaign for impeachment left Bill Clinton among the more popular American presidents, with the majority of Americans unconvinced of any need to impeach or remove him from office. Nearly a decade of no investigations, with no coherent summary of misdeeds and no institutional effort to impeach, has left George Bush among the most unpopular of all presidents with a large minority, possibly a plurality, of Americans believing he deserves impeachment.

Clinton was impeached for personal reasons, on both sides of the equation: it was his personal behavior that provided whatever basis for the charges existed, and the desire to impeach him was intensely personal as well. However much impeachment proponents dislike Bush and Cheney—often considerably—the rationale for impeaching them is their official behavior. Consequently, any indictment of the two, whether for repeatedly breaking the law with respect to warrantless surveillance, or violating the Geneva conventions, or politicizing the Department of Justice or any of a number of other crimes, would constitute an indictment of their Congressional enablers as well.

No doubt that’s among the reasons some Democrats in Congress are dead set against the idea, since many of them can be counted among the enablers. But in the long run, Democrats are missing an opportunity to methodically expose the scofflaw nature of the Republican party and to decertify it as a legitimate participant in governing the country until it reconstitutes itself in a more palatable form (or until Democrats implode, whichever happens first).

Nancy Pelosi recently restated her opposition to impeachment, saying that it would be divisive. As I noted at the time, she’s absolutely right. On one side of the divide would be those who support the Constitution and the rule of law, and on the other, whether from party loyalty or personal philosophy, those who don’t. It’s a division that, were it to be explicitly drawn, would benefit the country and those Democrats who stand on the better side of it even if impeachment were to fail, which is possible, or if impeachment succeeded and the Senate voted, as is all but certain, to acquit.

Should the next president be a Democrat, he or she would benefit considerably from serving with a Congress in which Republicans were stigmatized by having been forced to side with Bush and Cheney against the Constitution and Democrats were clearly identified as standing with it. A Republican president would be constrained by the same circumstances.

Wexler Gets Serious

Raw Story:

Spurned by major newspapers, Dem Congressman takes 'impeach Cheney' appeal to Web

Nick Juliano Published: Friday December 14, 2007 del.icio.us
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As the House Judiciary Committee continues to refuse any action on proposals to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, three of that panel's members tried to take their case to influential op-ed pages of the nation's largest newspapers.

They were turned down by every one -- including the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald -- so now one of the lawmakers has taken his campaign to the Internet.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) on Friday launched a new Web site, WexlerWantsHearings.com to advance his call to impeach Cheney. The site hosts an op-ed article censored by the nation's major newspapers and outlines the case for impeaching Cheney.

"The truth is the mainstream media have no interest in this issue," Wexler said Friday.

"They have bought into the notion that impeachment hearings are outside the bounds of what the congress ought to be doing," the six-term Congressman elaborated during a conference call Friday.

The House Judiciary Committee has before it a resolution introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) calling for Cheney's impeachment and accusing the vice president of a raft of high crimes, including manipulating intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, obstructing federal investigations and conspiring to expose the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment in strictly off the table, and the Judiciary Committee seems unlikely to move forward with any hearings. Wexler encouraged impeachment supporters to sign a petition on his new site to allay the notions of Democratic leaders that impeachment supporters are little more than "a fringe, marginal group of people."

Wexler said the House has the constitutional obligation to begin impeachment hearings to investigate malfeasance within the Bush administration, and he blamed the lack of enthusiasm thus far on the "bad taste" left by the GOP's last impeachment crusade.

"People are just afraid that we would just be putting the shoe on the other foot and just doing ... what the Republicans did to Bill Clinton," Wexler told the conference call, which was organized by Democrats.com.

The "kangaroo court" Republicans used to impeach Clinton, on grounds that he lied about his liaison with an intern, cannot become the precedent by which the constitutional tool is judged, Wexler said.

Although Bush and Cheney will be leaving the White House for good in 13 months, Wexler said impeachment hearings were necessary because of the need to ferret out possible criminality in the administration.

"We have to follow the evidence where it leads," he said. "We have an obligation to do it, and to do it as thoroughly as possible."

Wexler posted the following video appeal on his impeachment Web site.

Three reasons Congress is wrongheaded in Iraq

This is from an email from Cindy Sheehan, commenting on an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which Karl Rove complains about how Congress is threatening to screw up Iraq and the Middle East by trying to end the War in Iraq. Cindy agrees they're screwing up, but for failing to end the War...

There are at least three errors with the Congressional “New Direction in Iraq.” First of all the timelines are again “non-binding” and not worth the breath it takes to talk about them, or the ink and paper that it takes to write them (or the headache one gets to think about them). With 2007 being the deadliest year for our US troops and the people of Iraq (did anyone not see---except Bush and Congress that a “surge” which Karl says is working in his laughable op-ed---would not increase the bloodshed?) and the violence predictably picking up after the holy month of Ramadan, by the end of 2008, we should tragically witness the deaths of hundreds of more US troops and thousands of more Iraqis, with even more fleeing their homes to take an inhumane refugee status.

The second thing wrong with a short-term handover is that any amount of money for a war that is wrong, is also wrong. Using the drug addiction illustration again, if one of my children asked me for money to buy crack, but I told them abusing crack is wrong, but “I will give you more money to abuse crack: but only until March! By March, you must have your crack addiction under control because I won’t give you one more penny to abuse crack!” My child would take the money with relief to continue his/her habit knowing that by March (from my past performance of always- buckling under to his/her pressure) I would give him/her more money, anyway. Then between now and March, I could not once tell my child that abusing crack is “harmful/illegal” because I have given my “implied consent” by funding his/her habit. Congress is reaffirming the implied consent theory of war continually by feeding George’s habit for chaos and killing.

The third reason the offer of partial blood money to George is a mistake is that the Constitution divides powers between the branches. Congress (read—Democratic Leadership) has forgotten that the institution is a co-equal branch with the Executive and Judicial. I studied the Constitution in Civic class for my entire eighth grade year and it has only been amended twice since then, once granting suffrage to 18 year olds in 1971 after they had been dying for years in Vietnam (27th Amendment) Incidentally, with the Every Child Left Behind Act, our children, today, learn very little, if anything about civics, history, or critical thinking---that’s education in a fascist state, my friend. Anyhow, in eighth grade I learned that Congress has the power and duty to declare war and pay for war and the Executive has the duty to wage the war. In Congress’ New Direction, the bill has elements that “redefine” the mission in Iraq. I agree that the mission needs to be radically redefined to no mission at all. However, the president, who is clearly irresponsible, to say the very least, is well within his Constitutional right to veto any bill like this and within his Constitutional powers to wage the war as he sees fit. Have I said lately, that he isn’t fit, at all?

The only power that Congress has to end this war (and effectively and affectively redefining the mission), to the chagrin of Karl who is clearly out of step with reality and the country, is to not give George Bush one more penny of China’s money, let alone 50 billion more of Chinese dollars.