From time to time I wander off my series on the Culture of Corruption, Jack Abramoff and the abuse on the Marianas Islands.
I have been following the Impeachment arguments pro and con.
Many great points have been raise, but I find myself to be Impeachnostic.
Yes they deserve to be impeached, and it may be worth doing even if time, political reality and media narratives will doom the effort to failure.
But is this the best way to justice? Will it bring accountability? Or will it let another generation of sleazeballs off the hook.
I do not know and so, I’m Impeachnostic.
One of the best things I’ve read on the topic was (of course) by Digby:
So the question I ask is this --- is a failed impeachment going to hold them accountable? If so, then I'm for it. But if it actually ends up getting them off the hook, then not so much. It's not such an easy call.
And then there's the bigger question. What's the alternative?
Any ideas?
Let’s talk about "Plan B"...
Impeachment is a tactic. What is the goal?
Are there other tactics that might also work towards that end?
My goal for Impeachment would be justice and accountability. I know that there are also other ways to get justice and accountability, so I am Impeachnostic.
If I was certain that an attempt—successful or unsuccessful—would bring accountability and a measure of justice to the criminal conspiracy popularly known as the Modern Republican Party then I would be all for it, without reservation.
I’m not certain that would be the case and I worry that many, many of the criminals toiling under the marquee names of Bush and Cheney would go unpunished.
And I want to underscore this point; almost fifteen years ago the Republican Party was taken over by a gang of criminals. They had influence before that, but with the Gingrich led take-over of Congress in 1994, the gang seized control of the Party. Throughout the 1990s they solidified their power. By the end of a decade, an internal coup d'etat replaced Gingrich with DeLay. Then they took control of the White House in a stolen election and installed an incurious man of narrow morals and vision. After that, all bets were off. Tens of thousands of crimes have been committed. Some are big, some small, a few crimes are know, but most are waiting to be exposed.
I have been tracking the Republican Culture of Corruption for some time now. For almost three years, my Diaries have focused on the growing Jack Abramoff scandal. I think of this scandal as just a core sample taken from a glacier of Republican corruption. Drilling down a few feet over would hit Plamegate, Cunningham, Haliburton, Stephen Griles, Walter Reed, Iraq, Gonzales or any of the endless entry points into the Republican Culture of Corruption.
Any one of these pathways (and hundreds more) that you follow into this massive criminal conspiracy will yield hundreds, if not thousands of crimes.
At best, Impeachment will only scratch the surface—even if it works.
It may be a great tool for stopping the Madness of "King" George, but I have concerns about its effectiveness when it comes to Justice and Accountability.
Another great post on Impeachment was Weeding the Rose Garden: Thoughts on impeachment by occams hatchet. It really addressed my concerns about rooting out the corruption of the criminal conspiracy. He used the metaphor of removing deeply embedded crabgrass from his yard to lay out why we must clean out this nest of criminals:
Like most people my age, I remember exactly where I was when Nixon resigned. [snip]
What I couldn't have known at the time was that, buried in the old Nixon administration, and subsequently in the new Ford administration - and not even buried very deeply, mind you - were the seeds of the Bush II administration and its insane "unitary executive" doctrine. Those seeds were fertilized by the resentment they soon felt when, in reaction to the excesses of the Nixon administration, Congress convened the Church Committee and passed laws designed to rein in presidential power run amok. (One of those laws was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, better known today as FISA.)
In what at the time no doubt appeared to be a sensible, pragmatic, realistic decision, the entire cabal behind the classically tragic and venally criminal Nixon administration was essentially left in place when Nixon left office, and in turn inherited by Gerald Ford. Ford quickly pardoned Nixon pre-emptively, and thus ended the possibility that any measure of justice would be done to those who perpetrated such high crimes upon the Constitution and the people of the United States of America.
Instead, many of those responsible - as well as their acolytes - were left in the soil of American politics, free to send out roots, and, when Republics were turned out of the White House two years later, to lie dormant for a while, or to position themselves in friendlier soil, to bide their time, and eventually to work their way toward the surface, finally to emerge, first in a limited way during the Reagan years, and then full-blown in December 2000, when George W. Bush was elected President of the United States by a one-vote margin.
He goes on to make a strong case for Impeachment as the best tool to remove the gang of criminals from our politic life. It was a good argument and ended with this:
So - why use impeachment now? Why not just let these issues run their course through the legal system?
It is clear - and has been ably pointed out by Major Danby, Kagro X, and others on this site - that the Republics would loooooove for the whole "subpoena the White House and the Department of Justice" thing to "go to the courts" - they know that that will (a) take a long time, and (b) give the Republics a better-than-even chance - actually, I'd be willing to bet right now that their odds would be, oh, say, 5-4? Mmmm? - of winning, in the event that whatever the legal question is having to do with executive privilege, makes it to the Supreme Court.
That's why I said above, impeachment is the one unassailable tool available to us to halt this malfeasance and restore the possibility of a government that works for the benefit of the general public; it is beyond the reach of Republic influence. With a simple majority in the House, Cheney and Gonzales can be impeached.
I don’t want my children and their children pulling the weeds from the U.S. government that our generation has been given the opportunity to dig out. Congress must begin impeachment proceedings against this administration now.
I have been thinking about this post, the one by Digby and the many other thoughtful arguments for and against Impeachment.
For me it still comes back to the goal of Justice and Accountability.
Like occams hatchet, I do not want future generations to be burden by the high, mid and low-level political hacks behind the Bush Administration and the criminal conspiracy popularly known as the Modern Republican Party. I wish I could believe that Impeachment would do that, but I don’t. It might help, but many of the weasels would escape justice. Time would pass and one day they would be back in power.
Digby’s post asked the important questions for this discussion (emphasis added):
So the question I ask is this --- is a failed impeachment going to hold them accountable? If so, then I'm for it. But if it actually ends up getting them off the hook, then not so much. It's not such an easy call.
And then there's the bigger question. What's the alternative?
Any ideas?
We need some ideas. We need some new thinking on how to hold them accountable and how to pursue their crimes once they are out of power.
Congressional Oversight is a good tactic. It has and it will help.
Real journalism and investigative reporting is a good tactic. It has and it will help.
Then there is the use of the Department of Justice to pursue these Crimes. The record is spotty at best. The same is true for the FEC, and the Ethics panels of the House and Senate. Perhaps after Bush leaves office this will improve, but as the delays scroll by more and more crimes will go unpunished due to the passing of the statues of limitations.
Take this recent example concerning Congressman Don Young of Alaska. TPM Muckraker reported on a story in Roll Call where:
Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) has acknowledged taking more than $5,500 in illegal campaign contributions from a seafood trade association since 2001, but he has informed federal officials he will only pay back a portion of those funds because some of the violations fall outside the statue of limitation for campaign finance violations.
In Republican World, if you can run out the clock, it’s not a crime. That means most of the crimes committed by the Republican Party since 1994 will go unpunished. Already it is too late for most crimes committed before Bush took office and the clock is running out on many crimes committed in the first two years of the take-over.
These crimes need to be brought to justice. There needs to be accountability. I’m for ideas that will serve those goals. For me, Impeachment is still a question mark. It might help. It might not. Even if it does work, even if we are able to overcome the odds and remove Bush and Cheney from office, it will still leave most crimes unpunished and hundreds of flunkies free to do it again.
We need a Plan B.
Here is mine:
The 110th Congress should pass a law that there will be no statue of limitation on any crime committed by a Members of Congress, the Senate, their staffs, the President, the Vice-President and all political appointees of the executive branch while they are in office. Any pass criminal action still prosecutable within the statue of limitation on the date this Bill is signed into law will be covered by this provision.
We could call it The Don Young Act.
Such Legislation would be good politically as Bush and the Republicans would be forced to argue why their crimes should have the protection of a statue of limitation. Democrats would be passing meaningful reform. And a future, renewed and energized Department of Justice could pursue the criminal conspiracy popularly known as the Modern Republican Party.
I am Impeachnostic because I am not sure that the tactic will bring justice and accountability to the many crimes of the Bush era. We need other tools. A law removing the protection of a statue of limitation for crimes committed by elected officials and appointed staff would be another good tactic to use.
I’m sure there are other ideas as well.
occams hatchet is correct. We must remove these criminals from the political life of our Nation. Impeachment might be part of that effort, but it won’t do it alone.
As Digby said we need ideas. We need alternatives.
As we all know, we need justice and accountability. It is way past time to take this Country back..
2007 is now.
Let’s work together and do it.
Cheers.