I assume by now everyone is aware of Seymour Hersh's story that the White House neocon cabal is making plans to nuke Iran. This diary is meant as a suggestion for one way to pressure Congress to stop these bugfuck insane maniacs in their tracks. I don't expect Congress to cooperate even if the Democrats win control this fall, but pressure of this sort may be useful in other ways to slow the criminals down, if not stop them altogether.
The 25th Amendment provides a process for Congress to declare a President unfit to serve:
Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
More below the fold...
OK, so obviously ditching Bush for Cheney is no help. But immediately finding Cheney unfit (because anyone who would seriously consider pre-emptive use of nukes is clearly bugfuck insane) would throw the presidency to the Speaker of the House. Bingo.
I would strongly object to using the 25th Amendment this way for any reason less than a major emergency -- this smells strongly of coup d'etat. But if there's a bigger emergency than pre-emptively nuking an innocent civilian population, I can't think what it may be. I think it's no hyperbole that it just doesn't get any more urgent than this.
So I think we start now with the GOP. By "now" I mean immediately, this week, while the Hersh story is hot. Start faxing Congresscritters and Senators of both parties with a message like this:
"If the story in The New Yorker about the administration's plans to use nuclear weapons in Iran is true, the President and Vice President are clearly mentally unfit to serve. I call on the Congress to exercise its duty under the 25th Amendment to find them unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office of the President, using the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 to name an Acting President. I understand that such use of the 25th Amendment is unprecedented, but so is the crisis brought on the United States and the world by the failing mental health in the executive branch."
Or somesuch.
Probably what we get out of this, at best, would be political space to actually get more oversight out of Congress, but I think it's going to take pressure of this sort just to make that happen. Clearly, though, we can't sit on our hands on this one. Personally, I'm scared shitless.