Being snowed in, I had nothing to do but catch up on work and watch the ticker at www.wexlerwantshearings.com The ticker is now at 62,622 signatures and rising by the second.
But I started thinking that if Congress received 62,622 callers, faxes, emails, or mail each day would they begin to listen to their constituents?
And what about the corporate media?
Would they be able to maintain the silence on impeachment if people were snapping at their heels too?
It brought to mind some of the words during Clinton's impeachment from the corporate media and their Republican sponsors.
Let's take a look at some of them... (from The Bulldog Manifesto in 2005)
Tom Delay (R-TX)
"This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law. Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us, when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth.
No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country."
Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Il)
"I suggest impeachment is like beauty: apparently in the eye of the beholder. But I hold a different view. And it's not a vengeful one, it's not vindictive, and it's not craven. It's just a concern for the Constitution and a high respect for the rule of law. ... as a lawyer and a legislator for most of my very long life, I have a particular reverence for our legal system. It protects the innocent, it punishes the guilty, it defends the powerless, it guards freedom, it summons the noblest instincts of the human spirit.
The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door."
James Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
"What is on trial here is the truth and the rule of law. Our failure to bring President Clinton to account for his lying under oath and preventing the courts from administering equal justice under law, will cause a cancer to be present in our society for generations. I want those parents who ask me the questions, to be able to tell their children that even if you are president of the United States, if you lie when sworn "to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," you will face the consequences of that action, even when you don't accept the responsibility for them."
Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
"There can be no shading of right and wrong. The complicated currents that have coursed through this impeachment process are many. But after stripping away the underbrush of legal technicalities and nuance, I find that the President abused his sacred power by lying and obstructing justice. How can parents instill values and morality in their children? How can educators teach our children? How can the rule of law for every American be applied equally if we have two standards of justice in America--one for the powerful and the other for the rest of us?"
Bill Frist (R-TN)
"I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the President. He is not above the law. If an ordinary citizen committed these crimes, he would go to jail."
Lamar Smith (R-TX)
"When someone is elected president, they receive the greatest gift possible from the American people, their trust. To violate that trust is to raise questions about fitness for office. My constituents often remind me that if anyone else in a position of authority -- for example, a business executive, a military officer of a professional educator -- had acted as the evidence indicates the president did, their career would be over. The rules under which President Nixon would have been tried for impeachment had he not resigned contain this statement: "The office of the president is such that it calls for a higher level of conduct than the average citizen in the United States."
Heaven help me but the memories are surging. All those Republicans in the Judiciary Committee standing up for the rule of law in 1998, but AWOL on it in the last six years.
Now if only we could get all the members of the Congress to stop the obstruction of justice and really commit to the rule of law.
Usually we focus our actions on getting Democrats to listen. But I say it's time to start calling the Republicans and making them abide by those words they said in 1998. I also say it's time to get our Republican friends and neighbors to hear these words and join us in our actions too.
Imagine if we could do this and get the beltway-blobs to listen, we could have a new kind of surge
We could have a surge in Congressional integrity.
Imagine that!