Thanks to a diary earlier that asked us for our current representative I started thinking about one of the greatest voices to grace Congress in the last fifty years, if not ever.
Barbara Jordan had a voice that demanded attention. I remember crying when she died in 1996. She was thrust on the national stage in 1974 during hearings held by the House Judiciary Committee concerning the Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States.
There are words in her statement that resonate from that time to this one. And they need to be heard by all politicians, both Democratic and Republican.
My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.
"Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves?" "The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men."
As we learn more and more about the abuse of the Justice Department in transforming it into a political arm of the GOP that, in my opinion, rises to the level of impeachment of Alberto Gonzales.
However, it is the Iraq War and how we as a nation were led to believe that we had to go to war that begins to meet the burden of impeachment. There are many things that this Administration has done that could have it called into account, but this war demands that we call George W. Bush to account.
We know the nature of impeachment. We've been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to "bridle" the executive if he engages in excesses. "It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men."
Of the impeachment process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that "Nothing short of the grossest offenses against the plain law of the land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great as to overgrow party interest may secure a conviction; but nothing else can."
Consider her words to the Judiciary Committee on July 25, 1974: Impeachment is to bridle the excess of the Executive for the grossest offenses of the plain law. Certainly there are grounds for the House to impeach and the Senate to remove Alberto Gonzales in that context. It should also serve as a warning to Condi Rice that Congress is not to be trifled with.
However consider her words and think of what has been spelled out in diary after diary of the battles over subpoenas concerning Karl Rove and Senior Administration Officials testifying before Congress:
There has not even been an obfuscated indication that this committee would receive any additional materials from the President. The committee subpoena is outstanding, and if the President wants to supply that material, the committee sits here. The fact is that on yesterday, the American people waited with great anxiety for eight hours, not knowing whether their President would obey an order of the Supreme Court of the United States.
I was two years old when she spoke those words and yet they now haunt me with the coming political battles for Congress to get at the truth that this Administration has fought so hard to hide. Would this Administration listen if the Supreme Court compelled it to deliver material and persons to Congress?
There was a Constitutional crisis in 1973-74 the likes of which we may see again soon. I have not been an overt supporter of impeachment for a variety of reasons, but I now feel that posterity demands that We the People have George W. Bush removed from office for lying to the American people and sending thousands of soldiers to their deaths. We must stand up and make sure that this Administration is held to account for all its crimes.
Listening and reading Barbara Jordan's words fills me with the resolve that we must rise to the occasion and preserve the Republic for future generations.
James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution."
The grossest violation of law and subversion of the Constitution is to lie to the nation about going to war. There is a laundry list of of other things that can be added from signing statements to voter suppression, but America has ben betrayed by Bush. He must go.