Jerrold Nadler needs help finding his impeachment mojo!

The other day some folks visited Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY, member of the House Judiciary Committee) at his office to ask him to support Rep. Robert Wexler's call for impeachment proceedings to commence. I wanted to send him an email, however he does not accept emails from constituents outside his district.

I will snail-mail a version of this; however, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says on its contacting congress page that it may take as much as 3 months for postal mail to reach a congressperson due to homeland security measures. So, I figured I'd post it here in hopes that Mr. Nadler may perhaps see it while Homeland Security is reading it, cataloging my views and cross-referencing them with my grocery bills to see if I support impeachment and eat falafels.

If there's somebody in Nadler's district that would like to pass on a link to this by email click here. Or, if you feel moved you could call him at 202-225-5635 or write him at 2334 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Nadler,

I received an email the other day suggesting that you needed encouragement as a member of the House Judiciary Committee to join with your fellow Representatives Robert Wexler, Luis Gutierrez, Tammy Baldwin and Anthony Weiner in calling on the committee to take up the issue of impeachment of Vice President Cheney that was referred to the committee by Congress in November 2007.

I was somewhat surprised to hear this since I recalled reading last summer in an interview with Josh Marshall from TPM media you called the administration's warrantless wiretapping, "worse than Watergate." In fact, your statements in that interview seemed to implicitly require that Congress take up impeachment hearings:

"From my point of view, if the executive branch is contemptuous of the power of Congress, and is going to go above the law, and ignore the law, you have to use whatever weapons the Constitution gives Congress."

In the period since you made that statement the contempt for law and for Congress of the administration has become even more apparent as the administration has stonewalled the congressional investigations of its nearly innumerable questionable activities. Further evidence of Mr. Cheney's devious behaviors has also surfaced with the release of the Iran NIE. Contemporaneous news reports stated that Vice President Cheney had for more than a year held back the NIE about Iran while he and the President, "beat the drums" for a war in Iran, with Mr. Bush going so far as to publicly suggest that World War Three might be ensuing. These reports suggested that the findings of the NIE, among them that Iran had ceased its pursuit of a nuclear weapon in 2003, were only made public because the administration had reason to fear that the information would be leaked if they did not.

I was dumbfounded to find out recently that your staff was saying that you are not in favor of impeachment hearings in light of your previous statement. Then, I decided to research your position and found a recent interview you gave to Jay DeDapper at WNBC on December 28, 2007 wherein you said:

"On the merits he [referring to Bush] should've been impeached, but I oppose impeachment because it would just divert everybody's attention and you'd never get the votes. But the fact is impeachment is not a punishment. It was intended as a protection of liberty. It doesn't work."

I agree that the President (and I'd throw in the Vice President and a number of other high level officials) should be impeached on the merits. Your other assertions surprise me.

What could be more important than preserving the rule of law and protecting our civil liberties that, "everybody's attention" would be drawn away from?

Punishment is not relevant. The imposition of punishments is the job of the courts, not of Congress. The job of Congress in this matter is protecting the Constitution and the liberty of the people. The Constitution gives Congress two potent tools for this job, the power of the purse (to defund improper activities and programs) and the power of impeachment - both of which in my opinion have been largely overlooked.

I also think that you underestimate the power and efficacy of impeachment procedings when they are based upon matters of real import. Being old enough to remember President Nixon's brush with impeachment, it seemed to me then (and now) that those proceedings had a useful and salutary effect.  

The most salient of your objections is that partisan concerns could prevent a vote for removal from office from materializing. Sadly, this is a possibility, but we cannot know this with any certainty before the case is laid before Congress and the public. You have noted that the current administration's wrongdoing is, "worse than Watergate." It seems hard to imagine any member of Congress wishing to face his constituents and admit that there was virtually inarguable evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the Vice President and President, yet the member of congress did nothing to hold them to account.

Surely it must cross the minds of those who obstruct justice to protect their party's President that, while an impeachment conviction requires a two-thirds majority, congressmen are elected (or not) by simple majorities of their constituents.

I urge you to reconsider your position and join your colleagues in protecting the Constitution and civil liberties.