Impeachment: Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right
Mon Mar 05, 2007 at 11:16:41 PM PDT
Back in December, in the middle of the "impeachment wars," there was a compelling "cooler heads" argument against calling for impeachment. The crux of it was that Congress didn't have sufficient grounds to impeach the President because Congress hadn't tried to take back the powers the President had stolen and abused. That, and to ask Congress to impeach before trying to reassert its constitutional role was to set a precedent for hair-trigger impeachments in the future.
It's a process argument, and I'm all about process. But what rankles in my brain is the denial of the logical end of the process.
Big Tent Democrat put it this way:
To now argue that it is impeachment that is the bulwark against the abuse of Executive Power is to hand the Right a gift, for that is the argument they make. They argue that Congress and the Courts can only resort to the most dramatic of remedies against Presidential wartime power - the power of the purse, the power of impeachment. It is wrong to argue this line in order to foward the preferred course on impeachment.
Liberals and Democrats must resist this impulse for two reasons -- (1) it is simply incorrect, and (2) it is extremely dangerous. In arguing in this fashion, the Liberal strips the Congress and the Supreme Court of the powers granted it to separate the immense powers of the federal government and allows for the abdication of the responsible role of an overseeing Legislature and a reviewing Court.
So by all means, argue your views on impeachment but let us not throw over the separation of powers in the bargain. It is inaccurate and dangerous to do so.
Major Danby had something eloquent to say on the matter (second comment) a month ago:
As a legal matter, that makes sense, but
as a political matter, I don't see how Congress now impeaches the President for an action that Congress has itself endorsed. It might make sense if combined with a mass seppuku of members of the 110th Congress who voted for the offensive measure while in the 109th -- which would be fine with me -- but short of that I just can't imagine it.
Please take the above comment as stand-alone, apart from the rest of this diary -- I do not pretend to represent Major Danby's views on impeachment.
Here's the thing. The President broke the law and broke his oath to the Constitution:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Take your pick of offenses -- warrantless domestic spying, violating the Geneva Conventions on torture, you name it -- we know, today, that the President committed impeachable offenses, and that he deserves removal from office and criminal prosecution for those offenses.
The fact that Congresspeople broke and continue to break their oath to the Constitution (hello, Military Commissions Act) as well does not mean that it's premature to call for impeachment. Of course the odds are heavily against it. But impeachment is Congress reasserting its rightful power. Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
says nothing about what Congress has done. In fact, "shall be removed" is not optional, it is mandatory.
To say that, sure, Congress ought to take on its proper constitutional role, but that impeachment must be "off the table" for now is to feign ignorance. It is to pretend that we don't know what we know. And even if Bush were to all of a sudden start complying with the law, it does not erase all of the past grievances. The Supreme Court already said the President broke the law in Hamdan V. Rumsfeld. The Court, though, has no powers to reprimand the President for crimes of office. Only Congress can do that, through impeachment (or censure). Congress exercising oversight and making law, in general, is the regular business of elected officials. By itself that does not a free society make.
Of course there is a process -- to say otherwise flies in the face of the rule of law we're trying to establish in the first place. That process is to hold hearings in the House of Representatives to determine whether this President and his administration committed offenses rising to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, followed by a House vote on impeachment, a Senate trial and vote on conviction, and then criminal indictments, trials, convictions, and sentencing. To open hearings with impeachment "on the table" is little different from convening a criminal grand jury and acknowledging that a possible outcome is conviction and sentincing.
We are not politicians here. We ought to say what we think. Let the politicians spin and strategize. How will they know how to represent us if we muffle our true thoughts, values, beliefs, and principles? Here, on this liberal blog, to dismiss talk of impeachment, the logical end to the application of the law and the Constitution, is to belittle the idea of impeachment ever getting started in the first place.
I call upon members of the House of Representatives to open hearings into the conduct of the Bush administration, with the express possibility of impeachment openly articulated from the start. Help us uphold the rule of law, and therefore our freedom.
[Title changed 11:37 PM PST.]
[Title changed again Mar. 6 1:20 PM PST. Original text below the title: No, this isn't an attempt to bring him off his GBCW ledge. This is a substantive post about impeachment that I meant to write a bit ago, and now's a better occasion than never. Plus, great title, eh?]
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