The Washington Post has a front-page article on Impeachment today.
Near Paul Revere Country, Anti-Bush Cries Get Louder
MSNBC has the same article with a different headline and sub heading.
Dems split as impeachment whispers get louder
Some see anti-Bush movement as distracting from key issues, boosting GOP
The article begins with the reporter's description of the political mood and activism of citizens in small towns in Massachusetts and Vermont followed with the pro-impeachment opinion of a window cleaner.
To drive through the mill towns and curling country roads here is to journey into New England's impeachment belt.
Three of this state's 10 House members have called for the investigation and possible impeachment of President Bush.
... residents in four Vermont villages voted earlier this month at annual town meetings to .... impeach the president for lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and for sanctioning torture
The article proceeds to report on the politics of impeachment and to explain it as being years in the making.
It would be a considerable overstatement to say the fledgling impeachment movement threatens to topple a presidency -- there are just 33 House co-sponsors of a motion by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) to investigate and perhaps impeach Bush, and a large majority of elected Democrats think it is a bad idea.
He allows, though, that there is talk of impeachment within the country and on the internet.
A large majority of elected Democrats? Is there a poll of them? Are a large majority of elected Democrats the only ones not interested in talking about impeachment?
... where several Web sites have led the charge, giving liberals an outlet for anger that has been years in the making.
Is it only liberals that are angry? Which anger are you talking about? Could, just perhaps, this anger be about all of the lying, fabrication and misuse of intellegence by almost every person in this "MalAdministration", including the President, to get our country into an unnecessary war that has almost ruined our military, injured thousands of our soldiers, killed several thousand other soldiers, undermined the moral authority of the U.S. in the world, made the country less safe and almost bankrupted the nation. Could it be because those same geniuses who got us into this Iraq mess - those geniuses who can't admit it's a mess and quickly devolving into the worst-case scenario - yep, those geniuses, the ones who can't admit they were wrong ... on everything, are the same ones who are using this war on terrorism to spy illegally and unconstitutionally on the same citizens that they claim they must spy on in order to protect them from the terrorists? Could it be that perhaps a "silent majority" might just want an out-of-control Executive branch brought back into its proper Constitutional balance with the other branches of government?
He goes on to quote Bill Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents Guantanamo Bay detainees, on why impeachment is a "powerful idea." He cites the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' vote last month to impeach Bush, votes by numerous state Democratic parties for impeachment, the Zogby International poll that showed that 51 percent of respondents agreed that Bush should be impeached if he lied about Iraq and the Harper's Magazine cover price on impeachment as examples of the stirings of impeachment in the land.
He then reports on elected Democrats and their reactions to all the impeachment talk and activism.
Democrats remain far from unified. Prominent party leaders -- and a large majority of those in Congress -- distance themselves from the effort. They say the very word is a distraction, that talk of impeachment and censure reflect the polarization of politics.
O.K. Which party leaders said that? Who were the political geniuses on the Democratic side bemoaning the politicization of politics by discussing the clearly illegal and unconstitutional activities of an out-of-control Executive? Excuse me, but why must Democrats always fall for using Republican frames? The "Clinton Impeachment" was clearly political. The Republicans misused the impeachment process to try to bring down a President that they could not defeat at the ballot box. That was politicization of the impeachment process. It took the last and most effective means to bring an errant Executive branch back into its proper Constitutional balance with the other co-equal branches of government and turned it into nothing more than a political WMD to destroy a Presidency they couldn't defeat using the legitimate electoral process.
Censure and/or Impeachment is warranted when a President violates the law and/or the Constitution. Censure may be the appropriate reaction to a single violation of the law but when a President makes it a habit to routinely trample on the Constitution and to thumb his nose at the law then it is incumbent upon the Congress to perform their Constitutional role and to use the most effective and final Constitutional means at their disposal to bring that egregiously errant and out-of-control Executive branch to heel, to bring it back into its Constitutionally-mandated role as a co-equal branch of government and into compliance with the Constitution and the laws of the land which said Executive branch officials swore to uphold. This is the legitimate and intended use of impeachment. Why can't more Congressional Democrats understand this? If they don't understand it then how can we ever expect the media or the American Idol-public to grasp the difference?
And what do elected Democrats think of all those activists who keep pushing them on the issue of impeachment?
Activists spend too many hours dialing Democratic politicians and angrily demanding impeachment votes, they say
How dare those nasty activists demand that their elected Representatives actually represent them.
"Impeachment is an outlet for anger and frustration, which I share, but politics ain't therapy," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts liberal who declined to sign the Conyers resolution. "Bush would much rather debate impeachment than the disastrous war in Iraq."
If Barney Frank doesn't understand it, there may not be much hope for many of the other Democrats in the House getting it. Impeachment is not about politics. I'm amazed that Barney Frank doesn't understand this. Impeachment is a Constitutional process, the last means to bring an Executive branch run amok back into Constitutional balance and to force it into a law-abiding mode of operation. It is the most effective and the last tool that the Legislative branch can wield against an Executive branch bent on breaking the law and/or ignoring the Constitutional limits on its powers and/or violating the Constitutional rights of its "consent-to-be-governed" populace.
What do the Republicans say about impeachment?
With midterm elections in the offing, Republican leaders view impeachment as kerosene poured on the bonfires of their party base.
Oh those Republicans, there they go again. Congressional Democrats refuse (even if the activist base should attempt to drag them kicking and screaming) .. yes, refuse ... to stoop to politicizing the misdeeds and possibly illegal and unconstitutional activities of the Republican President by avoiding any hint or mention of censure or impeachment, forgetting for the moment that these are the Constitutional remedies to bring an out-of-control President back into Constitutional balance. While those political animals, the Republicans, find it to be the one thing they can use to energize the base.
Ken Mehlman fund-raising on the dangers of a Democrat takeover of the Congress:
"Take the House and Senate and impeach the president. With our nation at war, is this the kind of Congress you want?"
Well, what can one expect. They're still insisting that 9/11 made Bush invade Iraq to strike a blow at the heart of the terrorists. What was the purpose of the invasion of Afghanistan?
If you can't run on competence, you can't run on foreign policy, you can't run on domestic policy, you can't run on foreign affairs and you can't run on making the country safer then I guess you're left with running on the platform of keeping the Congress in the hands of Republicans so the President can't be held accoutable for impeachable activities. In an Administration that is known for setting new records (lows), this must surely be a new one for the electoral history books.
The article moves to the Constitutional arguments for and against an impeachment inquiry.
The argument for an impeachment inquiry -- which draws support from prominent constitutional scholars such as Harvard's Laurence H. Tribe and former Reagan deputy attorney general Bruce Fein -- centers on Bush's conduct before and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
So, the support for an impeachment inquiry is bi-partisan and across the political philosophical spectrum.
The article then explains that not all scholars agree that there is a justification for impeachment. In fact, even some liberals don't see one.
Not all scholars, even of a liberal bent, agree that Bush has committed "high crimes and misdemeanors." Bush's legal advice may be wrong, they say, but still reside within the bounds of reason.
Ah, I see. So it's O.K. to do something illegal or unconstitutional as long as you are only following bad legal advice? That's a novel concept.
Cass R. Sunstein, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago dismisses the idea of impeachment against Bush for either the Iraq lying or for spying on U.S. citizens without court approval. To balance it out, Professor Sunstein claims he was also against the Clinton impeachment.
Sunstein argues that Bush's decision to conduct surveillance of Americans without court approval flowed from Congress's vote to allow an armed struggle against al-Qaeda. "If you can kill them, why can't you spy on them?" Sunstein said, adding that this is a minority view.
O.K. Well, maybe scholar is a term that is used loosely in this article. The good Professor performs an amazing illogical leap that conflates spying on and killing al-Qaeda with spying on Americans. But at least he admits this is a minority view, perhaps of one? Can Congress give the President the power, if not the right, whether explicitly or inferred, to ignore the Constitutional limits on the power of Government to strip the citizens of their basic constitutional rights?
The article closes by reporting the discontent with Bush among those in these areas in and along the little towns and back roads of Massachusetts and Vermont. A discontent caused both by the lying about Iraq and its effects, the residents coming back wounded or dead.
The article ends with Colleen Kucinski, a mother, talking about impeachment:
"This is far more serious than Clinton and Monica. This is about life and death. We're fighting a war on his say-so and it was all wrong."
While I understand the political argument that the elected Democrats are making with respect to impeachment, I do not understand why they cannot grasp the difference between using the censure and impeachment process in a legitimate constitutional means and the illegitimate political impeachment WMD that the Republicans used against President Clinton. This is not about political payback. The issues are too serious for that. It is about bringing an out-of-control Executive branch back into its constitutional balance and to hold them accountable for their actions.
If the Democrats were afraid that bringing up censure or impeachment now would give the Republicans ammunition to energize their base for the fall elections, they were wrong. The Republicans have demonstrated often enough that they are quite adept at developing issues to run on or against out of the ether itself.
Like the war in Iraq, perhaps the public are ahead of the elected politicians on the need to bring this Administration to heel and hold them accountable for their misdeeds.