City Belt: IMPEACHMENT BEGINS AT HOME

08/29/2006

IMPEACHMENT BEGINS AT HOME

Guest Commentary
By Stuart Hutchison

The great Thomas Jefferson had the vision to anticipate a time when a Congress became so corrupt, bribed, or decadent, that it was no longer responsible to the needs of the people it serves. In Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Practices, part of the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives, he created a mechanism by which a state legislature can transmit a resolution to impeach directly to the House of Representatives in Washington, and effectively force the Congress to address the question of whether to impeach a civil officer of the United States, a judge, or a president.

There is abundant evidence and indisputable documentation that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney subverted the Constitution and engaged in conspiracy to impose fraud and deceit on the United States.

We believe our country is in a state of serious crisis, but we do not believe the situation is hopeless. As citizens of our troubled, great, beloved country, we have an obligation to fix it. We can do this in New Jersey.

Accordingly, people in our state are joined in a campaign to pass in the fall session of our state legislature, A Resolution to Impeach the President and the Vice President.

We wonder what future generations will think if we continue doing nothing, when we know that the White House consciously and deliberately lied in order to wage war on Iraq. That's a violation of our Constitution: an impeachable offense.

Remember the Downing Street Memo -- the memo of a meeting of the British Prime Minister and his ministers documents that the Bush team "fixed" the intelligence on Iraq so it would support the president's desire for war? Another violation of our Constitution: another impeachable offense.

Enough is enough. There are 1000 days left. Honesty, integrity and trust really matter now and are more crucial than ever.

The Bush administration initiated programs of wholesale spying on Americans without justification, let alone warrants. Yet another Constitutional violation: another impeachable offense.

We are citizens who have sadly come to the conclusion that the present leadership of the United States has betrayed its people, and the Bush administration must be investigated for criminal actions and treason against the United States.

The bottom line for us all is the fact that just because success is not guaranteed, we are not relieved of our obligation to do all it possibly can to defend the United States Constitution.

We believe our legislators can meet this obligation and offer a real profile in courage. But the politicians cannot meet this obligation by themselves. It requires large and vocal support from us.

If you're fed up, it is time to put aside the fear this administration manipulates us with, and speak up for a democracy in danger. It's time for action to save our country.

On the Web:
North Jersey Impeach Group

E-mail the group

E-mail the editors

Posted at 07:30 AM in VIEWS | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83452817b69e200d834e2ff2069e2

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference IMPEACHMENT BEGINS AT HOME:

Comments

The problem with impeachment is that it requires a high crime or misdemeanor on which to hang it. Bush's performance in office is certainly reprehensible, and may be a "crime" in a moral or ethical sense, but it is uncertain that it rises to the legal definition of a crime, much less a "high crime."

Likewise with treason, which is the only crime specifically delineated by the constitution, article 3, section 3

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

We tend to use "treason" or "treasonable" in a colloquial sense, and in this sense Bush's behavior is likely treasonable, in that it undermines the safety, security, prestige, and core values of this country.

But impeachment is a real legal action, and must be based on actionable criminal behavior.

By calling for impeachment we essentially, as liberals, embarrass ourselves and allow the right to lampoon us as crazy political witch hunters. The right is very effective at this, and it is easy to do, because calling for impeachment (though viscerally satisfying ) is actually rather silly. Because it is a political witch hunt tactic, like that employed by Ken Starr and his like. At the very least, the Starr commision had a president who actually had comitted an actionable crime (perjury).

These kind of actions by certain factions of the left indicate that those factions and their members prefer "being in opposition" to actual political change, or the betterment of society. We have twisted the marxist-leninist "permanent revolution" into "permanent self-rightousness." Being in opposition is certainly fashionable, but I would rather be "in power" as a party and enact some socially useful legislation, and adopt a sane and reasonable foreign policy.

Instead of frothing at the mouth, chaining ourselves to things, blocking manhattan traffic with thousands of bicycles, howling for impeachment, and generally scaring middle America into voting for our political enemies, perhaps we ought to be working at a grassroots level to convince people that we are calm, reasonable, have good political ideas, and can be entrusted safely with the leadership of this nation.

But its far more fun to be an activist, isn't it?

Posted by: Justiceiro | 08/30/2006 at 03:13 PM

I think that whether or not you think calling for impeachment is a good idea politically (I myself am still making up my mind on this point), I do think that there is quite a strong legal case to be had against the president.

I agree with you on the "treason" point -- but that's not where the legal case for impeachment focusses.

According to the legal group the Center for Constitutional Rights: "While bribery and treason were technically defined crimes that would inevitably subvert the Constitution, the more general and less defined concept of high crimes and misdemeanors was intended to identify that activity whereby the executive overstepped the bounds of public office or failed to faithfully execute the laws."

They go on to cite the example of the case for impeachment against Richard Nixon.

"Those articles [of impeachment -- which never saw a vote since he resigned first] accused him of violating his constitutional oath 1) to faithfully execute the office of the president; 2) to protect and defend the Constitution; and 3) to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He did this by means of false and misleading statements, withholding information from Congress, condoning false statements, misuse of the CIA, and deceiving the people of the United States, as well, with false or misleading statements."

The parallels here with Bush are a bit overwhelming.

On withholding information from Congress...

It's been shown that, in the march to war with Iraq, Congress was not given full and generally true intelligence information by the White House. The Senate and House Intelligence Committees saw the full spectrum of intelligence, but the reports disseminated to the full Congress removed the details and grounds for skepticism.

As Sen. Bob Graham of Fla. noted in a 2005 Washington Post op-ed, the information he saw as a member of the Intel. Cmte. -- a National Intelligence Estimate -- regarding the rationale for preemptive war, "while slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed WMD...contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy...As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked."

As for the declassified document, which could be used by the full Congress and the public, "it represented an unqualified case that Hussein possesed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version."

So what started out here as an example of one of the aforementioned categories ends up really being three-in-one:
-Withholding information from Congress
-Misusing the CIA
-Deceiving the people of the United States with false or misleading statements

And this is just one example, of what we've come to know is par for the course in the Bush White House -- manipulating intelligence and entire federal agencies, privileging instinct and faith over fact and science, and so on.

Now, as for the best course of action, I'm not sure. But I do doubt you'd have snarkily suggested to Rosa Parks or Coretta Scott King that the tactic of civil disobedience makes you look "crazy."

Posted by: Editor | 08/30/2006 at 05:42 PM

"I do think that there is quite a strong legal case to be had against the president."

I agree, but first we have to make that legal case. This involves sweaty, boring, hard, legal work. The problem I ahve with current calls for impeachment is that they tend to fall in with the calls for impeachment that started two weeks after Bush was elected- before he had done any of the dastardly stuff that he later did.

As liberals, we have spent the last few decades alienating most Americans (the folks that live in the red states). We need to win back their trust, and we need to put our noses to the grindstone in order to do it.

The republicans are giving us rope, let's hang them with it, not ourselves.

Posted by: Justiceiro | 08/31/2006 at 02:44 AM