The world can be a crazy place.

(That, by the way, is a rare video of a 1976 rehearsal of the tune “Changes.”  It’s raw and groovalicious.)

                                                    . . .  . . .  . . .   . . .

Shortly after 9/11 I stopped watching television completely.  Sure, I watched it while the towers fell, and in the days that followed I remember being very impressed with the coverage.  My ex-husband and I, both avowed haters of Rudy Guiliani, liked him fine when he appeared on TV.  Rudy did his job when it came to communicating with us, he didn’t pull any punches, and we had a single moment of not hating him.  During that time people pulled together, it was a moment of awful grace after such a huge trauma.

Neither my ex-husband or I, or anyone else I encountered either at work or at play, had any regard for George W. Bush when he came to Ground Zero and shouted out meaningless slogans through a bullhorn.  We knew he didn’t care about New York and wouldn’t do anything except attack Iraq.  It was no big secret.  And we knew Schumer and Hillary would get NYC lots of federal dollars that wouldn’t heal us.  We still have a hole in the ground downtown.

The  New York Times had an awesome series of little vignettes and pictures of each of the victims who died that day.  It was a labor of love.  I read the New York Times then.

But within a very short time, it appeared to me our media simply went  insane.  No, not in some grand dramatic fashion, but just a matter of complete removal from reality.  Of course, all too many Americans, with sincere and honest desires to help our country were instead lured by the siren call of “go shopping!” — and also went similarly insane and became dysfunctional as citizens.

So I stopped watching TV, and for several years stopped reading the Times, and to this day I don’t read any of the magazines I used to enjoy (except my science fiction magazines, lol — Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog and Isaac Asimov’s).

Two things stood out for me during that time.  One was the eerie and kind of creepy popularity of the television show The West Wing.  I saw young intelligent lawyers at work speaking of the show in ways that made me realize their yearning for a different occupant of the White House as well as the momentary comfort it gave to escape into a fantasy of some kind of parallel universe in which George W. Bush had not stolen the 2000 election.  I also saw the rise of The Daily Show as an equal fantasy that the news could be real instead of the surreal fake garbage that was being shown.

Many good Americans turned to this televised parallel universe for sanctuary during those days.

The other thing that struck me was that even though I no longer watched television or read the newspapers and magazines, I still always knew what was going on in both popular culture and current events (and this was before I started blogging) by some kind of wierd osmosis.  I’m sure it was that I overheard folks talking, unconsciously read the headlines as I would walk by the city newsstands, etc., but it was a strange realization to me, a realization of how ubiquitous our dysfunctional media is, how hard to be independent of.

I still don’t have a television, but because I blog and surf the net, I see a lot of things on YouTube which keep me from being totally isolated from the medium.  And I have gone back to reading the New York Times because of my political blogging, though I still do not read any magazines except when articles are excerpted on the web.

We’ve had a good dialogue here about the lamestream media (h/t lasthorseman) and how we can break out and influence folks who are being fed such propaganda.  I think it’s instructive to realize just how powerful that media is and what we are up against.

It is amoral … the corporate bosses don’t mind showing, say, Keith Olberman, if he makes them money.  The pinheads upstairs are vulnerable that way, as their greed outweighs even their corrupt and rotten ideologies.  On the other hand, it is of limited value to show valuable insights within the very medium that is betraying us, and that media’s amorality will always do everything it can to coopt even the best shows, keeping us glued to those cathode rays.

We saw through ek hornbeck’s McCain / Iseman Open Thread the fascinating progression of a breaking news story that, in the face of the devastations of our times was no story at all, a real distraction which could never provide us with the true and substantive reasons McCain should not be President.  We saw how the media feeds upon itself like a dumb animal, and I think there is a vulnerability there as well which could be contemplated.

Barack Obama’s popularity, and conversely, Mister Bush’s 19% approval ratings, seems to me to show that Americans have been hit where they live by the excesses of this misAdministration.  Folks are losing their homes, their jobs, their hopes, and in that dash of cold reality are reassessing the false promises of neoconservatism.  They are hungry for a change, pretty much any change.  Some are more aware than others of what shape that change should take, but this desire for change also shows a vulnerability in our media, which is scrambling to stay profitable by pandering to the American people instead of doing their duty as watchdogs of the public weal.  (What is weal, anyway?  That’s the first time I’ve ever used that word!)

I think the monolithic power of the media has begun to show areas of vulnerability.  Reality can be kept at bay only for so long.  Although to our great shame many Americans have not resisted the immoral War in Iraq, the mess we’ve made in Afghanistan, the abandonment of New Orleans, the worldwide contempt in which America is held due to the gang of criminals and thieves in the White House, they now are experiencing real pain in their own pocketbooks, over their own health and that of their children.  Americans are ready for something new.

These are the things I’ve been thinking about during this blog-week.  And I offer my gratitude to all those both here at Docudharma and on the blogosphere’s other excellent websites who have been writing such interesting and provocative ideas about and analyses of our media in this crazy 2008 election season.

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

“I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

                         — Congressional oath of office

In the flush of excitement after the November 2006 elections, when Democrats had taken control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 12 years and anything seemed possible, there was much discussion in the progressive blogosphere about the tantalizing prospect of finally holding to account the criminals in the BushCheney administration through the use of the constitutional mechanism of impeachment. (This in spite of the fact that incoming House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi had taken impeachment “off the table” half a year earlier.)

To some who had worked so hard to get Democrats elected to Congress, impeachment seemed the most obvious and necessary thing in the world now that BushCo’s Republican accomplices were no longer in the way to stop it – a natural process that would follow the administration’s criminal misdeeds as surely as night follows day.

Others argued against impeachment. Let’s not focus on the past, they said; we need to move our Democratic agenda forward. If Congress spends all its time on impeachment, it won’t get anything else done. Besides, they would argue, Republicans will spin it that we’re just out for revenge. It will hurt our chances in the 2008 elections. Anyway, we don’t have the votes to guarantee success. Not to mention that the Clinton fiasco cheapened impeachment forever in the minds of the public.

The arguments were heated and prolonged. November and December 2006 were interesting months in the blogosphere – and there was nary a candidate diary in sight.

Time passed. Tempers cooled – and so did expectations. The new Democratic Congress was seated in January 2007 amid high hopes. But as the year progressed and most of the bills forming the vanguard of the “Democratic agenda” died slow, ignominious deaths – some cowering in fear of a Republican filibuster or a presidential veto, others mortally wounded at the President’s desk, returning to perish on the Senate floor, still others abandoning their earlier brave promises to the electorate by fleeing Capitol Hill altogether, their places taken by Republican-friendly bills that funded the Iraq occupation or enlarged the president’s power to illegally surveil, imprison or torture – it became apparent that the hopes of both those who counseled patience on impeachment and those who breathed fire for it were to be dashed. The prognostications of many were to be proven wrong, both those which favored impeachment –

December 14, 2006:

And, frankly, I think, upon much reflection these past few days, that Nancy Pelosi’s assertion that impeachment is “off the table” was a brilliant political move. “Off the table” doesn’t mean it’s out of the Constitution . . .

No, Speaker Pelosi will lead a House that will do its job under the Constitution.

– d’oh! – and those which counseled against it:

December 7, 2006:

We have one year to make our case for 2008 to the American people. We need to show not just that we deserve to hold on [to] the Congress, but that we should be given the White House as well . . .

We can spend 2007 either pushing impeachment . . . or we can use it educating the American people about what a Democratic government would look like — passing meaningful legislation that would improve their lives like the minimum wage, health care reform, ethics reform, stem cell research funding, policies that help families and the middle class.

Impeachment does none of that.

– and neither, as it turns out, does a Democratic Congress. Well, almost none of that – the Democrats in Congress did manage to slip a minimum wage increase into a bill authorizing another $120 billion for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, sort of the same way I slip my daughter’s pills into a dish of applesauce. Oh, and ethics reform – don’t forget ethics reform.

More:

Don’t worry about Bush and company. Congress will pursue its oversight duties. Waxman and Slaughter and Conyers and the rest of those guys aren’t about to take the next two years off. People will be held accountable. Impeachment isn’t the [only] path to accountability.

– except, when current and former administration officials defy congressional subpoenas – thus obstructing investigations into White House wrongdoing – and the White House refuses to turn over evidence, or “destroys” it, or suffers a world-record case of collective amnesia – how is “accountability” possible?

Kagro X, within days of being handed his new responsibilities as a front-pager at DailyKos, circumspectly answered the question, “But what can Congress do when the executive branch defies congressional subpoenas, and the administration’s Justice Department refuses to enforce them?”

So if you’re conducting oversight of, say, the NSA spying program, and you want answers from Gonzales regarding the program’s legality, and you subpoena him and he tells you to take a flying leap, what do you do?

You could try going to court, but not only will that pretty much run out the clock, but the courts are quite likely to tell you, “What are you crying to us for? You have your remedy. If you’re too chicken to use it, that’s your problem.”

Kagro goes on,

[I]t’s about contemplating the place of impeachment as a procedural tool. Just as it’s the threat of a filibuster that ultimately provides the “power” that makes the “Senatorial hold” possible, so is impeachment the power that makes Congressional subpoena power possible for use against the executive branch.

And whereas the Democratic Congress has demonstrated its willingness to cave in the face of mere threats of obstruction by Republicans, the White House on the other hand has shown that it will stop at nothing – the so-called “cataclysmic fight to the death” promised shortly before the November 2006 elections – to keep Democratic efforts to hold the White House accountable from moving forward.  This Democratic Congress, truly, is left with only one option to enforce oversight, an option clearly spelled out in the Constitution: impeachment.

With that context in mind, let us examine some of the major objections to impeachment that have been voiced by those who have argued against its pursuit:

Objection: “We need to look to the future, not rehash the past”

This statement reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of this impeachment:

Impeachment of the BushCheney administration is not about the past, it’s about the future.

If we have learned anything about the failures to impeach Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, it is that the incremental damage to the Constitution caused by such laxity is not only significant at the time, but will be built upon by each successive mendacious regime to occupy the White House.

John Conyers, 1974: Why Nixon Should Have Been Impeached:

[T]he process of impeachment is not, and was never intended to be, familiar, convenient, or comfortable. It was framed with the intention that it be used only as a last constitutional resort against the danger of executive tyranny . . .

Whether intentionally or not, the Congress has participated in the degeneration of its power . . .[N]o legislation is self-executing. Whatever its limitations and faults . . . legislation, and the constitutional provisions on which it is based, will only have meaning to the extent that the Congress invests them with meaning . . .

If we do not now fully dedicate ourselves to regaining every bit of constitutional ground we have surrendered, then – to paraphrase one of the President’s men – we shall have lost our constitutional and moral compass.

Charles Pierce, July 2007:

I was in the late, lamented Eliot Lounge in Boston, chewing it over with a friend who’d reported extensively on the scandal. I told him that the country was going to pay a fearsome price one day for having let these crimes go unpunished. That the whole business lodged something malignant deep in the government that needed to be roughly, and bloodily, excised. I believed an impeachment inquiry should have been opened on both the president and the vice-president . . .

Tell me we’re not paying for that now. Tell me we’re not paying for tolerating a renegade theory of Executive power. Tell me we’re not hearing how inconvenient and cumbersome and counterproductive the impeachment process of the Constitution is. Tell me the Democratic candidates aren’t soft-pedaling the whole issue, preferring to micromanage the end of the kind of war that the renegade theory of Executive power makes not only likely, but inevitable. (Go back and read the minority report of the Iran-Contra committee. Go see who wrote the part about how the president has an inherent right to do stuff like this. Hint — he has a lesbian daughter, a bad heart, and lousy aim.) Tell me the press isn’t running away from the gravity of the whole business. Tell me you haven’t heard some anchor-drone or another sigh about how hard it all is to understand. Tell me that Bush presidencies don’t invariably come down to buying the silence of the people who can put you away. Tell me Alberto Gonzales isn’t Edwin Meese, except less competent. Tell me that Elliott Abrams, John Negroponte, Michael Ledeen, and the rest of the Iran-Contra Legends Tour ever would have found their bloody hands back on the levers of government if we’d done what we should have done as a nation 20 years ago.

The current administration has thumbed its nose repeatedly and in every way possible at Congress’s authority.  To let that stand, as Conyers so brilliantly pointed out in his 1974 essay, would undermine Congress for many generations to come.  Dick Cheney’s cockamamie ideas about a “unitary executive” were encouraged by his experience in the Nixon administration, festered for many years after the Ford administration (until Cheney was named secretary of defense under Bush the First), and only fully bore fruit upon the inauguration of George W. Bush.  And Cheney was not the only money-grubbing neocon sleeper to awaken with the utterance of those magical numbers, 5-4.

December 2006:

The criminals at the heart of this administration did not suddenly spring from nothingness into being with the appointment of George W. Bush to the presidency in December 2000. No – the maggots that eventually became the noisome blowflies spreading filth, disease and death around the world from the White House got their start long ago, and were nurtured and fattened by many years of feeding in the dank, fetid corners of American government. They and their foul belief systems should have been exterminated from politics long ago, but few people recognized them for what they were – and so they were allowed to go on propagating, getting fatter, rubbing their filthy little fly hands together in preparation for the day when they would be able to feed out in the open, defying anyone to point out the obvious: That these tiny little men were and are nothing more than vermin, spreading decay and attracted by the scent of death, whose political existence, if not eradicated once and for all, will continue to befoul the world for years to come. Like a malignant tumor, this cancer must be removed utterly, leaving no trace; otherwise, it can metastasize and spread, only to show up again later and in another location.

Cheney’s wet dreams of a “unitary executive” with the powers of a king should have been dashed with a bucket of cold water by the impeachment of Richard Nixon and a thorough discrediting of the entire criminal, monarchial, “if-the-president-does-it-it’s-not-illegal” doctrine under which the Nixon administration operated.  Conyers, in his 1974 essay, was right: by not addressing the issue head-on, Congress in 1974 made possible the abuses of the current BushCheney administration. Far from having been cut off at the knees, this administration has – most recently and perhaps most egregiously with its defiant, up-is-down, black-is-white declaration that torture is not illegal – acted as though it has no brakes on its power. It has told the American people and the world, “We can do anything we want, and you cannot do anything to stop us.”

Objection: “It will take too long”

Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on December 19, 1998 and acquitted by the Senate on February 12, 1999. Fifty-five days. Granted, the fishing expedition boondoggle witch hunt investigation that finally resulted in impeachment charges took almost five years, but BushCheney have made the job easy for those seeking impeachment against them – they have admitted, very publicly, to several impeachable offenses, and have very publicly committed others.

• The BushCheney administration is on the record as having tortured prisoners and repeatedly lied about it – indeed, it has now defiantly stated that torture is legal, in contravention of many treaties to which the United States is a signator.
• It is on the record as having illegally wiretapped Americans  from the very first days of the administration.  
• It is on the record as openly defying established laws written by Congress and signed into law by the administration itself.  
• It is on the record as defying multiple congressional subpoenas stemming from investigations into executive branch wrongdoing (this is known in the vernacular as “obstruction of justice”).  
• It is on the record as being “unable” to produce evidence in congressional investigations into administration malfeasance, often claiming that the evidence was “destroyed” or “lost” (this, too, is commonly known as “obstruction of justice”).  
• It is on the record as having repeatedly lied about the threat posed by Iraq with respect to weapons of mass destruction and connections to terrorists, in order to mislead the American public and members of Congress into support for an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq (such an invasion and occupation being known in the vernacular as a “war crime”).
• It is on the record as having facilitated the the misappropriation of hundreds of billions of dollars during the illegal invasion on and occupation of Iraq, and shielding criminal and murderous acts by agents acting on behalf of the U.S. government during that occupation.
• It is on the record as having lied about the potential threat posed by Iran with regard to nuclear weapons.  

• It is on the record as having lied to Congress about a whole range of activities, from the firing of U.S. attorneys to illegal wiretapping of Americans to the threat posed by various nations.
  

With all of this evidence already on the record, an impeachment investigation should not take very long – and with respect to at least a few cases, probably isn’t even necessary.  

Objection: “We don’t have the votes”

Well, duhhh! Of course we don’t! How many votes did Barack Obama have when he began his run for the presidency? Nobody has the votes before they start:

It makes no more sense to argue against impeachment by saying we don’t have the votes right now than it does to argue against universal healthcare or campaign-finance reform because – let’s face it – We Don’t Have The Votes Right Now.

But let’s look at this from a different point of view: Any potential impeachment of George Bush or Dick Cheney, once the investigations and hearings have run their course, will place current-day Republicans in a terrible quandary: they will be faced with a choice between: (a) standing side by side with a president and vice president who will have been demonstrated to have been thoroughly corrupt and criminal – an act of political self-immolation; or (b) facing the music, and choosing to preserve not only their own political hides, but the future existence of the Republican Party. They will be forced to choose between supporting torture, illegal wiretapping, lying to Congress, war crimes, obstruction of justice, politicization of the judiciary, and violation of literally hundreds of federal laws – or supporting the rule of law. And if any senator voted “guilty” in the Clinton impeachment but “not guilty” in the BushCheney impeachment – well, not even the Tasmanian Devil can spin that fast.

January 2007:

The lawlessness, avarice, petty criminality, barbarity, arrogance and contempt of the Republicans in charge the past six years will be revealed in all of their horror. What will follow those revelations is almost inevitable – although I have no doubt the current thugs leading the Republican mafia will put their own hoodlumish spin on it.

And as soon as that jagged gash has been torn in the once-seemingly impenetrable hull of the ship of Republican state – the S.S.Titanic Clusterfuck – and the ship has taken on enough water, all the little rats who have been trying to stay out of sight during the past six years as they gnawed gaping holes in Americans’ safety, security, financial well-being and international respect, will rush pell-mell to the lifeboats.

And when that surge of craven cowardly rats gets to the gunwales and looks up, whiskers twitching, the only lifeboats they’re gonna see – the only way they’re not going down with that doomed fast-sinking ship that is The Republican Party As We Know It – are all gonna have one word emblazoned across their transoms:

IMPEACHMENT

Think those Republican rats are gonna hesitate for even one second to get on board those boats to save their little rodent hides?

Heh. There won’t be enough lifeboats for ’em.

Objection: “Let’s implement our Democratic agenda first”

Yeah. How’s that workin’ for ya so far?

December 2006:

[T]he presence of George Bush in the Oval Office is the biggest stumbling block there is to fulfillment of the Democratic Party agenda in this country. If George Bush will not observe – never mind actively enforce – laws that have been duly passed by Congress and signed into law – signed, in many cases, even by himself – what possible reason on earth does anyone have to believe that he will (a) approve, or (b) abide by, laws over which he has veto power and with which he fundamentally disagrees? To believe that fulfillment of a Democratic agenda is possible with George Bush in the White House is as delusional as the man himself.

Thirteen months after the 110th Congress was seated, can anyone seriously debate that?

Objection: “Nothing else will get done in Congress”

In the 93rd Congress – the one that prepared articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon – 17,690 bills were introduced in the House. So far, more than halfway through the 110th Congress, somewhere around 5,500 bills have been introduced in the House. Maybe 1970s congresspeople were better able to walk and chew gum at the same time, what with all the disco dancing, streaking and bra-burning. Maybe; I don’t know.

Objection: “The Clinton fiasco cheapened impeachment in the minds of the public”

I would like to believe that thinking Democrats have not fallen victim to the belief that the Clinton impeachment set the standard for impeachments.  I rather would like to believe that the Clinton impeachment brought into stark relief the difference between a farcical impeachment and a serious one, the serious one, of course, being that of Richard Nixon.  Here’s how serious the Nixon impeachment was: Nixon resigned from office rather than be impeached, because he knew that the case against him was solid, and he would go down in defeat, dragging the Republican Party with him.  Clinton, on the other hand, knew that the case against him was a joke. And so did the American people:

December 2006:

Let’s not run away from this talk of impeachment because of something the Republicans did. The group of vermin that has been the Republican leadership over the past 12 years didn’t just sully the good name of “impeachment” and “investigation” through their mind-boggling dereliction of duty since 1994 – they sullied and devalued the very idea of governance, of “democracy,” of “national security,” of “patriotism.” Does that mean we should abandon talk of governance, of democracy, of national security, of patriotism? Hell, no – of course not. No one would argue that. So why are we having this discussion about using the word “impeachment” just because the Republicans made a mockery of it?

The Republicans have made a mockery of everything having to do with good government – that doesn’t mean we should abandon good government. The Republicans have made a mockery of the Constitution – that does not mean we should abandon the Constitution. There is much that is good that the Republicans have made a mockery of, that should not be abandoned. Compassion. Family values. Christianity. Education. Free enterprise. Democracy itself.

July 2007:

Oh, but don’t get me wrong; I get it: Those Republics are clever bastards, for sure. For more than 30 years, they have been successfully eroding public confidence in government and the tools of government to the point where now, with an administration in office that has arguably done more to harm this country than any other administration in history, people are seriously maintaining that we should not use the one unassailable tool available to us to halt this malfeasance and restore the possibility of a government that works for the benefit of the general public . . .

See, the truth is, the Republics’ impeachment of Bill Clinton succeeded brilliantly – the fact that anyone is even seriously discussing the advisability of impeachment, given the misdeeds of the current crowd in power – not just in the White House, but scattered throughout the federal government and the judiciary – is astonishing. The Overton Window regarding the use of impeachment as a tool of governance was ripped out, plastered over, and moved to the other end of the house, in a project begun by the Republics in 1974.

Seen in that light, the so-called “failure” of the Clinton impeachment was no more a “failure” than a sacrifice fly in baseball is a “failure.” Sure, the sitting Republics in the House lost a little ground – though they kept the majority – but more importantly for the Republic agenda, they advanced The Cause of Eroding Public Confidence in The Government. Cynicism cranked up several notches. As a direct result of the circus that the Republics turned the Clinton impeachment into, more Americans – including many on this site – saw impeachment as merely a political tool that essentially should never be wielded, because of all of the (newly added) negative connotations it (newly) carried.

Objection: “Democrats will be labeled vengeful, divisive and politically motivated”

Of course we will – that goes without saying. Any Democrat drawing breath is labeled divisive and politically motivated by the right-wing sockpuppets at Faux Snooze and their ilk. So what? The louder they scream about something the Democrats are doing, the more correct it is, of that you can be sure. Besides, there’s a vast difference between being “labeled” divisive and being perceived as divisive. How much of the American public do you think will swallow the line that these hearings are a partisan witch hunt? Whoever does buy that line most likely is not a potential convert, in any event.

The tiresome Democratic refrain, “Oh, dear – the Republicans might say bad things about us!” has, I hope, been pretty well discredited.  Remember all the hand wringing about skipping the Fox news debates?  How much flak have the Democrats gotten from the right wing noise machine for standing up to the FISA travesty?  What was the downside in public opinion for the Democrats refusing to back down on SCHIP?  The fact of the matter is, public opinion has tilted toward impeachment for a couple of years now, and public opinion looks favorably upon a Democratic Congress that stands up to executive malfeasance.

But the most effective defense against the “vengeful political theater” meme is a sober, respectful, serious impeachment proceeding. One that opens, say, with a statement from Chairman Conyers that might go something like this:

Three months ago the House of Representatives considered H. Res. 803. The resolution read as follows:

“RESOLVED, That the Committee on the Judiciary, acting as a whole or by any subcomnlittee thereof appointed by the Chairman for the purposes hereof and in accordance with the rules of the Committee, is authorized and directed to investigate fully and completely whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States of America. The Committee shall report to the House of Representatives such resolutions, articles of impeachment, or other recommendations

as it deems proper.”

The House adopted that resolution by a vote of 410 to 4. We are proceeding under the mandate of that resolution.

I do not need to stress again the importance of our undertaking and the wisdom, decency and principle which we must bring to it.

We understand our high constitutional responsibility. We will faithfully live up to it.

For some time we have known that the real security of this nation lies in the integrity of its institutions and the trust and informed confidence of its people. We conduct our deliberations in that spirit.

                                                 — Rep. Peter Rodino, Chairman,

                                                    House Judiciary Committee, May 9, 1974 (PDF file)

– as opposed to the pathetically banal opening statement by the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Clinton impeachment – an opening that told everything that needed to be known about the sham that was to follow.

An impeachment proceeding that is couched – rightfully so – in terms of protecting the Constitution of the United States of America will be respected and its importance understood. The difference between a John Conyers-run impeachment hearing against the current administration and the absurd political theater of the Clinton impeachment will be obvious to the American people from the moment the first gavel falls.

No, it is not “vengeful” to investigate impeachment – it’s responsible, and adult, and democratic, and law-abiding. In much the same way that the administration’s fevered pursuit of “telco immunity” in a revised FISA law is a desperate move by desperate people, “vengeful Democrats” is a meme cooked up by scared-shitless Republicans who know their ass is grass if any investigations go forward – and bought into by querulous Democrats who still haven’t figured out that the American people are clamoring for accountability. No, what investigating and not following up is, is ineffectual and impotent, and, since that’s just what the Democrats in Congress have done – investigated and not followed up – that’s just how they’re perceived as a result: ineffectual and impotent.

Objection: “It will hurt Democrats in the 2008 elections”

Oh, yeah? Based on what?

Back during the Impeachment Wars of ’06, some folks actually posited that Republicans’ poor showing during the midterm elections in 1998 (elections that were essentially bracketed by the unfolding of the Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent impeachment hearings) was due to their pursuit of impeachment per se. That position is utterly wrong. If impeachment per se were enough to disenchant voters to such an extent that they would manifest their dissatisfaction at the voting booth, an identical phenomenon would have shown up during the November 1974 elections – an election which, had Nixon not resigned a few weeks earlier, would have been taking place during the middle of his impeachment hearings.

But no such phenomenon took place: Democrats picked up 49 House seats and three Senate seats in that election.

It is worth noting that in November 1972, Richard Nixon won the presidency in one of the biggest landslides in the modern era. Fifteen months later, in February 1974, 51% of Americans opposed the impeachment of Richard Nixon. In May 1974, the House Judiciary Committee began its hearings. By July 30 1974, the Committee had agreed upon three articles of impeachment, which it was preparing to present to the full House of Representatives. On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned. On November 5, 1974, voters expressed their disgust with the Republican party by taking 48 seats in the House and three in the Senate away from them (one former House Independent switched to the Democrats as well).

I would instead posit that Republicans’ poor showing in the 1998 midterm elections was due to their transparently political pursuit of impeachment of a very popular president on utterly specious grounds.

You can’t have it both ways: Either: (a) Democrats are not going to win the White House in 2008, in which case this Democratic Congress had better do everything it can to keep the next Republican president from inheriting all of the unchecked powers grabbed uncontested by the BushCheney cabal; or (b) Democrats are going to win the White House in 2008, in which case the “ruining our chances in 2008” argument goes out the window, and Congress is freed to Do The Right Thing.

If one were able to remove all of the “political factors” that have led Nancy Pelosi, John Conyers and other congressional Democrats to declare impeachment off limits – to strip away the fears about November’s elections, the fears about timing, the fears about what others might say – if one were able to decide whether to pursue impeachment strictly on the basis of whether it were the right thing to do, would one do it?

I hope that no one reading this hesitated for even a moment before answering, emphatically, “Yes!” If ever a president and vice president deserved impeachment, George Bush and Dick Cheney do.  

So – at what point does this stop being a political calculation for Democrats?  At what point does it become a question of right versus wrong? At what point does the sworn duty of every member of Congress – the defense of the Constitution – actually begin to matter?

All of the above “reasons” advanced for avoiding the constitutional duty of impeachment are merely conjectures, all of them unfounded fears about some terrifying future event – all of them, in other words, fears about a future that no one can foresee based loosely on events of the past that have little or nothing to do with today’s reality. And sitting here in February 2008, at the start of the eighth and final year of the BushCheney administration, one would think that Americans in general and Democrats in particular would have had enough of being paralyzed into inaction by the fomenting of inchoate fear, that Americans would know the difference between allowing the Constitution to be rendered meaningless by irrational anxiety over some perceived existential threat, and doing the right thing because one realizes that, in fact, that very same Constitution forms literally the foundation of the republican democracy that hundreds of thousands of Americans have given their last full measure to create and defend over the past 232 years.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified, terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

                                           — Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

                                               first inaugural address,

                                               March 4, 1933

Franklin Roosevelt spoke those words at a time when this country was in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis.  We now are in the midst of an unprecedented constitutional crisis and the words that John Conyers wrote 34 years ago ring truer now than ever:

[T]he process of impeachment is not, and was never intended to be, familiar, convenient, or comfortable. It was framed with the intention that it be used only as a last constitutional resort against the danger of executive tyranny. The Congress should not lightly interpose its judgment between the President and the people who elect him, but we cannot avoid our duty to protect the people from “a long train of Abuses and Usurpations.”

In stark contrast to the ephemeral “what-ifs” that have to this point paralyzed congressional Democrats and prevented them from carrying out their sworn duty to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic, here are the facts – the unimpeachable facts, if you will – about the misdeeds of the current criminals who have been allowed to continue occupying the White House in spite of the overwhelming evidence of their criminality:

This administration is guilty of

• torture;
• illegal wiretapping;
• open violation and defiance of duly enacted laws;
• defiance of congressional subpoenas;
• obstruction of justice;
• lying to Congress and the American people in order to launch an illegal invasion and occupation;
• negligent or criminal maladministration of contractors during the occupation of Iraq; and

• lying about the threat posed by Iran.
  

And those are just the ones we know about.

As the first year of the Democratic Congress has shown, this administration has no intention of cooperating with congressional investigators in any way, shape or form.  It has defied subpoenas, destroyed or withheld evidence, instructed administration officials at all levels not to cooperate with Congress, and generally shown that it believes that Congress does in fact have only one tool with which to enforce its oversight authority.  Whether this defiance is a result of Congress’s own self-declared unwillingness to use that one tool is irrelevant: what matters is that, by its actions, the administration has left Congress with no other choice.

And that choice is simple: either Congress enforces its oversight authority through the use of impeachment, since all other tools have been exhausted by the administration’s unwillingness to recognize Congress’s authority; or Congress abdicates its responsibility to check executive power run amok, and thus removes the single greatest remaining hurdle still standing in the way of the monarchial, delusional, corporatist unitary executive fantasies of a small cabal of anti-democratic modern-day fascists, fantasies that come closer to fulfillment with every administration – Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II – that passes without their being stopped and destroyed.

Also available in Orange

Third in a series on impeachment. Others in the series:

John Conyers, 1974: Why Nixon should have been impeached

Impeachment: Conyers Ulysses

I have video of them eating dead babies

Sixteen years ago, when I was 44, I started transitioning.  Oddly, fourty-four years ago, I was 16.  It was also a transitional year, in many ways.  I have spent the week trying to remember it, perhaps with hindsight that is quite more myopic than 20-20.

It was a time…

It’s hard growing up knowing that there is something so terribly wrong that it must be hidden from everyone.  It would have been best at the time if I could have hid it from myself as well but, as I’ve said before, ideas cannot be unthought.  I was, in my mind, a pervert.  Nothing was going to change that.  The best I could do was to try to hide it.

On Wednesday I posted my poem about my obsessive-compulsive disorder.  I spent an equally absurd amount of time trying to disguise that.

Thus began a freakingly weird progression of choices and compulsions.  In junior high school I had to have a girlfriend.  Someone my age who played sports had to have a girlfriend or people were going to talk.  I could possibly have passed it off like Mike Smith did by being even smarter than me and therefore allowably asexual.  Maybe it helped that he didn’t play baseball.  He was the best shortstop around, but no junior high school coach wanted a left-handed shortstop.  I heard at my tenth high school reunion in 1976 that Mike was gay and working as a waiter when he committed suicide.

It didn’t matter if someone was queer or not in high school in the mid-60s.  Perception was everything.   I had stopped hanging around Terry Bean, my nemesis at intelligence challenges at Forest Hills Elementary School, because people knew he was queer.  (I’m not outing Terry here:  he’s one of the founding members of the Human Rights Campaign Fund).  I was not like Terry.  I was, however, still a pervert…in my mind.

But as long as I didn’t do anything about it…

And I needed a girlfriend.  Junior high school was so hard.

In elementary school the majority of my friends were girls.  I don’t know how it appeared to other people, but my best times were with Lisa Summers, Kathy McGuire and Suzy Phemister, Carol Duddleston or Sharon Royal, Toni Rushlight or Lloyce Sefton, or hanging with Trudy Settergren when I went to visit Terry.

And I played sports.  There was no choice.

And I needed a girlfriend.  Did I mention that junior high school was hard?  I made some friends.  We were certainly not the popular kids, but we formed a group.  WHAFF.  Western Hemisphere Association for Fun.  How lame is that?

I went to some parties.  At Nancy Marmont’s house and Pat Kirkpatrick’s and Carol Keith’s and Sandy Steen’s.  And I met Bonnie.

Bonnie Rose.  The girl I wanted to be.  Smart.  And athletic.  She later became a member of the tennis team in high school.  And we managed to become boyfriend and girlfriend…for whatever that was supposed to mean.

I have since heard that she was tossed out of Brown with the lowest positive GPA ever (her words, I’m told), but managed to become something like Director of Academic Computing at UCLA, or so I heard from another friend at another reunion.  

Bonnie became the name of my sorrows…through no fault of her own.

At least I don’t think so.  I wish I could remember our time together.  But that has all been replaced with memories of my obsession with her.  

I remember the day our relationship ended.  I was goofing around and she gave me a strange look and said, “Don’t walk like that.”

And high school became so very much harder.

I was still a pervert.

I spent as much of that time as I could in my room.  It’s not like my brother Jack was home much.  As the years passed, I chose not to spend very much time at home myself.  I’d spend the time walking the streets of Lake Oswego, especially passed the homes of the girls who I wanted to be my friends, just hoping to run in to them “accidentally.”  And I dated a few of them, sort of (you know, study dates, hanging out together at the after game dances).  There are memories of Sue Dehner and Joy Cronn, Nikki Tangen, who was a year older than me, Hester O’Malley, and Marylou Green, who was my girlfriend when senior year ended.

But they weren’t Bonnie.  Even after Bonnie moved away to the Bay Area, they weren’t Bonnie.

I wanted to be their friend, whereas I wanted to be Bonnie.  And she didn’t deserve that.

And it became so all screwed up.

I won a scholarship to Penn…with the understanding that I would row lightweight crew while there.  The family went in hock for that.  So I was taking a class in Eastern Religions taught by this visiting professor named Alan Watts.  I concentrated on that because German class involved reading pretty depressing stuff by Berthold Brecht, Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka.  And I was a physics major who couldn’t stand going to physics labs, who should have been a math major but there wasn’t a 2nd semester calculus class available for first term freshmen.  I ended up more screwed up.

I might have held it together if I had let Coach Harter steal me from the crew team to play college basketball.  But I didn’t.  So I had to spend large portions of my time obsessing about getting my 6’4″ frame down to 145 pounds (which, come to think about it, might very well have influenced the fact that I became such an overweight older person).  And I shouldn’t have started drinking, but that happens when one tries to pledge a fraternity in order to “fit in.”  Fortunately, that stopped.

College was hard.

I made a huge mistake because of my obsession.  I traveled to Providence and visited Bonnie at Brown, staying with a classmate of ours named Craig Carr.  It was a nearly terminal path, which ended with me trying to step in front of the Norristown train in Bryn Mawr a couple months later, after what can only be described from this vantage point as a nervous breakdown.  In between I wrote to the women I dated in high school with existential apologies for my having taken advantage of them, which were liberally sprinkled with what I thought I had learned from Alan.

Returning home after I having been such a failure that I couldn’t even kill myself effectively, I couldn’t stay.  I had squandered my existence, for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises.  And the family’s fortune.

I saw Bonnie once again…in Golden Gate Park, probably after she flunked out of Brown.  I stalked her until I lost the trail leaving the de Young museum, when I thought she had noticed the dirty, long-haired hippie freak following her.  My second suicide attempt was later that night.  Fortunately I was too stoned to successfully accomplish the feat.

Life was hard.

And I was still a pervert.  And nobody should ever know that.

Distortion on a Gray Day Memories With any luck the ragged people discover how to sing on the countless gray days which occupy time between those occasional days of sunshine In a better world one not consisting of lies and jest going away is not necessary or required or even desired –Robyn Elaine Serven –February 22. 2008

Note: I did decide to use the real names. We were real people. And the events were real. And who knows? It could just put me into contact with some of them.