For lying to Congress, for condoning treason in the White House, for kidnap and murder in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
Impeach the whole lot of them while we still have a country to save.
Impeach them.
John Sundman
Founder and domain owner of Wetmachine
(I speak for myself only and not necessarly for the other active Wetmachiners who blog on this site.)
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Being an incompetent and uncaring wanker is not a high crime or misdemeanor.
I’m sorry, but my love for the constitution and for the future of our country pass any anger over the handling of this disaster. The constitution is quite specific — we only impeach for high crimes or misdemeanors. The Republicans pushed this well beyond the meaning of the phrase in 1998, IMHO. But at least the Senate drew back from altering the nature of the spearation of powers.
We have always had those in our history who would like to think that impeachment is the equivalent of a recall. From Jefferson’s attempt to impeach MArshall to the signs saying “impeach Earl Waren” To the attempts to impeach Bush or Clinton. The stability of our government depends in no small part on the fact that the President gets four years and, unless he is guilty of actual crimes, not merely incompetence, he stays for the four years.
1) Bush lied to congress about the most serious topic there is: war. This alone is impeachable, or what’s impeachment for? I’m not talking about lies that need careful parsing; I’m talking about whoppers.
2) Between the outing of Valarie Plame and the pattern of systematic disclosure of national security secrets to another state (Israel), Bush has presided over an administration that routinely places political or other agendas over American law and the security of the American nation.
3) Being an incompetent or uncaring wanker is not a high crime, but dereliction of duty can be a capital offense. Furthermore, I’m not accusing Bush of being incompetent or uncaring. I’m accusing him of extortion. According to published news accounts, Bush told the Governor of Louisiana that he would only send aid if she agreed to his terms, terms that would were tantamount to political tribute and that would have threatened constitutional rule (by instituting martial law).
As I wrote in my early post, the consequence of Bush’s DELIBERATE action was kidnap and murder.
Let’s say I’m a mafia goon who owns a hotel. The hotel catches fire. People are trapped in a burning building and I have the keys but won’t give them to you until you pay me my “tribute.” People die. Tell me that I wouldn’t be prosecuted for felonies. This is what Bush did.
I understand the dangers of trivial impeachment. That was why the impeachment of Clinton was such an abomination.
And I don’t want to see the USA become a defacto parlimentary stystem without parlimentary infrastructure, where governments routinely fail “confidence” votes.
I don’t have the legal training that you do, and as you know, I highly esteem your opinion on legal matters. But I cannot think of a time since 1861 when the republic has been in such danger.
I am so afraid of these clowns that I cannot sleep nights. They’re half insane, and I mean that in a literal sense. Many of these people, for example, believe that Armageddon, “the End Times” are coming, and that it is God’s Will that the world be destroyed. Bush is evidently a sociopath, and both he and Cheney have delusions of graduer.
The latter reasons are not enough to impeach them, of course, since their scary personalities were on full display when they were (ostensibly) elected.
Both you and Gary have weighed in on the side of “don’t ascribe to malice that which can better be explained by incompetence.” But I don’t think the “incompetence” hypothesis holds up. I’m working on a little essay to develop this argument; perhaps we can revisit this topic after I’ve fleshed out my thesis a little more.
I don’t think they are insane. Actually, the thing that frightens me is that they really do believe their own press releases.
Remeber how Bush and other administration officials always say they don’t care about opinion polls because they don’t watch TV. Well, apparently, it’s true. They _don’t_ watch TV. That means that they apparently really didn’t know that things had gone into the crapper in New Orleans, because they have set up their internal communications to discourage the delivery of truthful bad news or contradictory views.
It’s scary that those charged with leading us have so little real info about what goes on in reality or the consequences of this ignorance.
I look forward to your essay.
John,
I agree completely about the necessity for impeachment.
Last night on PBS’s NOW, Kurt Vonnegut read an “open letter to President Bush” and demanded his impeachment. Perhaps as many as 2 million Americans are now on notice that we do need to impeach Bush and his criminal junta.
http://www.pbs.org/now/arts…
I assume they will post a transcript soon.