Tag: impeachment

I could not believe my eyes. Elected officials are finally beginning to seriously contemplate impeachment of the president for abuse of power and violating the Constitution. Concern over “deposed judges” is one of many issues that is causing leaders of both political parties to consider the issue of impeachment. This must-read article suggests that “debate on possible impeachment may gain currency in the days to come.” It evens quotes some high profile Democratic lawmakers, who have been reluctant to press for the impeachment of George W. Bush in the past.  Senator John Kerry, pointing to a clause for impeachment in the Constitution, said this was a “great opportunity to work together to strengthen democracy.”  Not to be outdone, Senator Joseph Biden also got into the act.

“This is an opportunity for us to move from a policy that has been focused on a personality to one based on an entire people,” Biden said.

A powerful editorial also pushed for impeachment.

But if he is reluctant to call it a day voluntarily, the choice will be between banding together and getting rid of him or letting him stay as a lame duck president.

Could it be that the rule of law may finally be defended by members of the Democratic Party and the media?  

Dismantling the arguments against impeachment

The time for impeachment is NOW

“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 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 who 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.

– and those who 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 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, 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 Republicans on the other hand have shown that they will stop at nothing – the so-called “cataclysmic fight to the death” promised shortly before the November 2006 elections – to keep Democratic initiatives from moving forward.  This Democratic Congress, truly, is left with only one option, an option clearly spelled out in the Constitution: impeachment.

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

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, probably 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.  

“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 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 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.

“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.

“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.

“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 200:

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.

“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:

[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 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 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.”

“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?

“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.

Let’s put political considerations aside, and just consider what the right thing to do is.  Is there anyone reading this who would dispute that the right thing to do is to hold the criminal Bush Cheney administration to account for its perversions of the last seven years?  We have to get passed that threshold before we can continue this discussion, because the only objection is that it avoids about impeachment are that it would be politically inexpedient.

The idea that people are not interested in seeing an impeachment proceeding: at what point does this stop being a political calculation for Democrats?  At what point does it become a question of right versus wrong?

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:

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:

and here list the “on the record” stuff

Americans are running away from Republicans in droves.  Why is that?  Could it be because Republicans and unfailingly demonstrated themselves to be awful managers and venal criminals?

kagro’s excellent prognostication Nov 12, 2006

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

bullshit markos . we get it

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

kos’s posting

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

btd argues the “separation of powers”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

– only problem is, Congress has been shown exactly what its power is, even when in the majority

conyers’s “constitution in crisis” (WARNING: 27Mb PDF file)

http://www.afterdowningstreet….

conyers’ diary in aug 2006

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

We have seen so many transgressions by this Administration that it is easy to forget last week’s scandal amid this week’s new outrage.  I am hopeful that compiling all of these events of the last few years will help wake all of us up to the gravity of these matters and the cumulative damage to our country. . .

All the while, the Republican Congress sits idly by.  Rather than performing its constitutional duty as a co-equal branch, it has chosen to stymie any and all efforts at oversight.  After six long years of deceptions, attacks and yes, outright lies, I am convinced the American people have had enough.

“I’m not doing this to fail,” he said. “This goes back to a little bit of my civil rights background. We were in an impossible situation. The civil rights leaders came to Martin King and said, please, we hear you’re going to start a civil rights movement in the South, you’ll get all of us killed, Martin, don’t do that!” But if he hadn’t, said Conyers, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would never have passed.

“We’ve lost more rights and constitutional prerogatives in this short period of time than under any president that my studies reveal,” he continued. “So now’s the time. What we have to do is, we have to work on faith. We have to believe that there are enough American people who will agree with us that enough is enough. We’ve got to believe that, and we’ve got to work on that between now and November, and I think we’ll win.”

        – John Conyers, March 2006

http://www.salon.com/news/feat…

As the first year of the Democratic Congress has shown, this administration has no intention of cooperating with congressional investigators on any level.  It has a 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.

Put the you can’t have it both ways argument at the end, along with the idea that these objections are mostly based on fear of the future.  Then put in the argument about the constitutional ramifications and ask how anybody now after a year of the Bush Cheney administration can seriously argue that the damage to the separation of powers could be any worse than it already is and that in fact impeachment is the only way to address that damage.  Which is why the framers put it in the Constitution the first place-as a last resort when the executive branch refuses to act in good faith and that’s prevented the normal exercise of the balance and separation of powers.

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 concerns about November’s elections, the concerns about timing, the concerns 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.  

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.

about winning the 2008 elections: what if we DON’T win? What then? We will have left in place a criminal administration, and enabled – indeed, sanctioned – its criminal behavior. No, to avoid impeachment in the hopes that the criminals will be thrown out in 2008 is absurd, and based on a future that no one can foresee. The affirmative step of impeachment, on the other hand, is a known quantity that we can control, right now.

The same mindset that would justify immunity for the telcos in FISA would justify forgoing impeachment: perpetrators of crime should not be held accountable for their crimes.

Some would argue that all that is needed to deal with this criminal administration is the result of a new general election.  And, of course, at this point, it appears likely that-absent election fraud-id. the Craddick administration will take its place in the White House next January.  This argument, of course, holds no water.  Because of the magnitude of the crimes that were committed to, both against many peoples of the world and against the Constitution of the United States, the many many wrongs of the Bush Cheney administration cannot go unaccounted for., anymore than good for crimes of any other war criminal.  Think about it: much of the rest of the world wants to put Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney on trial as war criminals, yet there are those in this country seriously propose to let them off scot free, as if they had done no wrong whatsoever.

First page of argument re: Nixon indictment

http://amhist.ist.unomaha.edu/…

second page of argument re: Nixon indictment

http://amhist.ist.unomaha.edu/…

http://amhist.ist.unomaha.edu/…

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

Impeachment Oldies But Goodies:

C mon, Nancy the Republics are falling apart

Weeding the Rose Garden: Thoughts on impeachment

Impeachment: You’ll NEVER fit in those pants

Running in ’08? Try Impeachment(r), now with added Pragmatism(r)!

Support our troops: Impeach

Neocons at the helm: There won’t be enough lifeboats

On Gettysburg, impeachment, and the left flank

We must not pursue the “i”-word

Boston Globe: Cheney seeks return to Nixon era

C mon, Nancy the Republics are falling apart

Etc.

Page 15

Separate the diaries: why the time for impeachment is now, or the time for impeachment is now..  In the “now” diary, include snippets from all of the previous diaries.  And finish with Conyers is quotes from his essay.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Those who would use the Clinton impeachment as precedent for a reluctance to run through another impeachment process might want to consider the precedent being set by ignoring congressional subpoenas.  You can’t have it both ways – if, in fact, precedent is being set, that it has been set in both cases.  The other possibility, of course, is to weigh each case on its merits.

Arguments against impeachment: some have even argued (Armando) that resorting to impeachment will weaken the relative standing in Congress to check abuses of the executive branch.  The power of future congresses to check the abuses of the executive branch.

I completely disagree. Like John Conyers in his 1974 essay, “Why Nixon Should Have Been Impeached,” I would argue that failure to impeach weakens the power of the legislative branch, for the very reason that Kagro alludes to: as long as the executive branch knows that the legislative branch is not willing to use its own mechanisms of enforcement, the executive branch knows it can act with utter disregard of the legislative – a fact that has been thoroughly borne out over the course of the 110th Congress so far.

conyers’ lame-ass excuses

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

rahm emanuel’s lame-ass excuses

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

I would like to move forward on our common challenges rather than tearing the nation apart.

lawyers’ letter to lahy, conyers

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

This is for the separation of powers paragraph:

Another argument cited by impeachment opponents is the belief that the use of impeachment will send a message and establish a precedent dangerous to future generations.  That is to say, that the only way to for Congress to exercise its oversight authority over the executive branch is through the use of impeachment.; in other words, impeachment will be seen as a tool of first resort rather than a tool of last resort.

But, to repeat what Kagro X so eloquently pointed out,

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.

http://www.watergate.info/judi…

Mentioned Bush’s approval rating in the ARG poll. 2/19

For the paragraph concerning Democrats being labeled as vengeful: the American people are bright enough to understand a significant threat to the Constitution, when it is brought out and laid out before them.  To this point in this administration, all of the damage to the Constitution has been wrapped in rhetoric painting the theft of civil liberties as “protecting our way of life”.

Tell me: do you honestly believe that Americans cannot tell the difference between the so-called “impeachment hearings” held during the Clinton administration and the type of hearings that will be held regarding the Bush Cheney administration?  And here you might want to run graphs showing presidential approval ratings during Clinton’s and Nixon’s impeachment proceedings.

wsj graphs

http://online.wsj.com/public/r…

clinton

http://online.wsj.com/media/in…

nixon

http://online.wsj.com/media/in…

George W. Bush

http://online.wsj.com/media/in…

it’s too politically risky.  (Put this one last).  

It will take too long.

Democrats will be seen as partisan, vindictive, and or vengeful.  This is actually a subset of the quote “politically risky” argument.

We don’t have the votes.

patrick henry’s speech

http://www.historyplace.com/sp…

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth — to know the worst and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House?

Include Pelosi’s quotes about it not being worth it.

cite the January 1974 poll that showed that 51% of Americans opposed the impeachment of Nixon; contrast that with recent polls regarding potential impeachments of Bush and or Cheney.

It will diminish the effectiveness and value of impeachment.  This is an argument that is ridiculous on its face.  Compare the process that led to the near impeachment of Richard Nixon to that of the process that actually led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

During the Republic Congress’s impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton, not a single witness was called to testify at the trial.

Do you think that the man who wrote these words about the impeachment of Richard Nixon (CITE CONYERS’ ESSAY) and sat through committee hearings which were opened with these words (CITE RODINO OPENING) would stand for a circus of an impeachment hearing?

The only thing standing in the way of such process might be the Bush administration’s intransigence regarding revelation of evidence.  This is a lesson that Cheney and his ilk learned while during the Nixon administration.

, when he was finally forced to turn over his tapes, made the case against him; it was only a few days later that the articles of impeachment were prepared for the house.  The Bush Cheney administration has steadfastly refused to to provide the evidence that would make it possible to impeach them and convict them.  Congress must know this.  By refusing to prosecute and hold accountable the Bush administration for its defiance of congressional subpoenas, the hundred 10th Congress has taken impeachment off the table not only for this administration, but for every future gym and administration.

Diary title: Conyers, Leahy: impeachment off the table for ever

If any reader of this site to has any doubts that substantive hearings would reveal wrongdoing on a scope heretofore unprecedented in American history, then I do not know what to say to them.  Further, if any reader of the site believes that revelation of such wrongdoing, and solid, bulletproof documentation of such wrongdoing, will not prove politically fatal to Republicans, then I also do not know what to say to them.

Once hearings are held, and even more damning evidence is revealed about this administration, no senator who voted in favor of Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 could possibly vote against impeachment of these criminals.  And if they did, we would use that vote as a cudgel to beat them about the head and neck electorally next November.

New diary title: the time for impeachment is now.  Make the case that the transgressions are so great that certainly the threshold has been crossed.  Also make the case that the outcome of the 2008 elections is not a certainty, and the risk of not doing anything to address the problem now is too great.  If nothing else, the threshold for public awareness of the Constitutional destruction that has been wrought will be raised to the point that in the event of John McCain wins the presidency, at least Congress will most likely still be controlled by Democrats, who by that time, after having will have public backing in its efforts to fight in the further destruction of the Constitution.

OK, so this is what pisses me off.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey (thanks for that one, Schumer and Feinstein) says that waterboarding would be torture if it were done to him.  And Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell says that waterboarding (you remember, something that the Attorney General would say is torture if done to him) would require the president’s consent and legal approval from the attorney general.  Oh yeah, CIA Director Michael Hayden said that waterboarding (again, something that the Attorney General not only would say is torture if done to him, but also something that both he and the president would have to personally sign off on in order for the CIA to engage in such acts) was actually done to three detainees while in US captivity.

By the way, all of those statements were made before a Senate committee and presumably none of the three individuals were lying when they made those statements.  

But wait, there’s still more here.  

cross posted at The Dream Antilles

Waterboarding (read: torture) is nothing new.  It’s been around since the 15th century, and has a long, well documented history.  That history was briefly summed up by Ted Kennedy for Democracy Now:

It’s an ancient technique of tyrants. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, it was used by interrogators in the Spanish Inquisition. In the nineteenth century, it was used against slaves in this country. In World War II, it was used against us by Japan. In the 1970s, it was used against political opponents by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina. Today, it’s being used against pro-democracy activists by the rulers of Burma. When we fail to reject waterboarding, this is the company that we keep. /snip

   Make no mistake about it: waterboarding is already illegal under United States law. It’s illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit outrages upon personal dignity, including cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment. It’s illegal under the Torture Act, which prohibits acts specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. It’s illegal under the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. And it violates the Constitution. The nation’s top military lawyers and legal experts across the political spectrum have condemned waterboarding as torture. And after World War II, the United States prosecuted- prosecuted- Japanese officers for engaging in waterboarding. What more does this nominee need to enforce existing laws?

This essay isn’t about rehashing the many legal arguments about how waterboarding is torture and in violation of US and international law.  Instead, this essay recalls two recent, prominent instances in which the US itself prosecuted the use of waterboarding as a crime, as torture.  It raises this simple question: how can anyone who acknowledges this relatively recent history argue that waterboarding isn’t a crime and isn’t torture.  And how is it that our learned congresspersons haven’t forcefully confronted Bushco’s minions with this history?

Please join me below.

I had an idea just now thanks to gdwtch52 over at the orange website.  It’s about impeachment.

I won’t go on about the need for it.  We’ve read about the crimes for years and had even more evidence presented just in the last few days when the government admitted to torture.

There has some interest in pursuing impeachment in Congress, most notably the efforts of Dennis Kucinich, Congressman Wexler, and to some extent John Conyers.  He may be starting to come around. But our Congress members for the most part have so far refused to uphold their oaths to defend the Constitution, most notably Nancy Pelosi.  It appears that if we are to hold the criminals in high places accountable, we’re going to have to give our Congresspeople a little shove in the right direction ourselves.

What if we could get at least one person from every state to commit to walking or biking to DC to face their Congressperson directly?   I’m no organizer, but that would seem to be easier to do than arranging a huge rally. They are usually over in a few hours and rarely get any media attention unless there is tear gas involved.  

This idea may not get attention at first either, but if done correctly it could be very high profile eventually.  Plus, I think a group of people hiking or biking to DC would be seen as a fairly positive event, rather than being portrayed as a mob of angry rabble rousers, not that there’s anything wrong with that…;)

We all have a lot of contacts throughout the leftleaning political websites, and if we care enough about politics to be here in the first place we probably have some friends in the real world who care about the same things too.  If we can spread the word, I’m sure there would be at few dozen people willing to commit.  

As far as getting it organized goes, I have a few ideas but am hoping to get more from people here.  Setting up a website would be a good place to get some networking started.   Once people were committed, we’d need to set up routes.  People could either sleep in the homes of other volunteers, or money could be raised to put them up for the evening.  It would be good to have others join in locally for shorter walks or rides.   We’d have to create some publicity, but it isn’t too hard to crack into the local media to get things started.  Sometimes all it takes is a phone call to get them to cover your story.

This site strikes me as having a crowd where the majority favors impeachment and there are some longtime activists who might want to do something about it. I’m posting this here in the hopes that people might have some good ideas as to how to make something like this work, and also so it might stay up a little longer to give people a chance to see it.

So who of you has some extra vacation time and an axe to grind?

On the White House lawn, actually.

But, hey – don’t worry; I’m not gonna get all up in a lather about it.

I mean, I don’t want to hurt our chances in November. We don’t want to give the right wing any ammunition that they might use against us, like that we’re “vengeful,” or that our releasing a video of dead-baby eating is “politically motivated,” or that congressional investigations into dead-baby eating are just more “political theater.”

Sure – “Ooooh, dead-baby eating! Oooh, the boogeyman!” I know you’re all, “Oooh, that’s un-American! How can they do that?” Well, I’d love to tell you, but if I did, I’d be revealing sources and methods that could compromise our ability to fight the terrorists. But let’s just say it involves a casserole dish, a little basil, and a 375-degree oven, and leave it at that, m’kay?

And anyway, who says dead-baby eating is a crime?  I mean, I wouldn’t want to have it done to my baby, but the Attorney General tells me he has a written opinion from the White House counsel that says that, short of being slowly roasted on a spit with an apple in their mouth, dead-baby eating does not constitute criminal behavior, and violates no international treaties that we observe.  So I’m good with that.

And like I said, it’s not like they were eating my baby. In fact, I’ve been given assurances by those in the administration that only babies with links to known terrorists were consumed.    

Old School Waterboarding

On Tuesday, Bushco acknowledged publicly for the first time that waterboarding was used by the U.S. government on three “terror suspects.” Testifying before Congress, CIA Director Michael Hayden claimed the three were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003.  But, he said, nobody else had been waterboarded since.  To be frank, I don’t believe that for a second, but I have no evidence to the contrary.

Join me in Gitmo.  

(John Conyers is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which has before it House Resolution 333, calling for articles of impeachment to be drawn up against Vice President Dick Cheney.  In 1974, while a member of the Judiciary Committee, Conyers helped draft articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, articles that were about to be voted on by the full House when Nixon suddenly resigned. Conyers had been one of the most vocal and persistent proponents advocating for Nixon’s impeachment. In May 1972 he and others had taken out a two-page ad in the New York Times calling for impeachment in response to Nixon’s handling of the war in Vietnam; the Watergate burglary had not yet taken place.  The essay below appeared in the October 1974 issue of the journal, The Black Scholar. Nixon resigned in August 1974 and was pardoned the next month by President Gerald Ford.  To the best of my knowledge, this essay has never before appeared online. – o.h.)

WHY NIXON SHOULD HAVE

BEEN IMPEACHED

by John Conyers, Jr.

from The Black Scholar, Vol. 6, No. 2, October 1974

Reprinted by permission of The Black Scholar

RICHARD NIXON, like the President before him, was in a real sense a casualty of the Vietnam War, a war which I am ashamed to say was never declared. Since the hearings of the House Judiciary Committee began on May 9th, 1974, we have had a professional staff of some 89 men and women gather in great detail over 42 volumes of information that was considered throughout some 57 sessions. My analysis of the evidence clearly reveals an Administration so trapped by its own war policy and a desire to remain in office that it entered into an almost unending series of plans for spying, burglary and wiretapping, inside this country and against its own citizens, and without precedent in American history.

Conyers Ulysses: Some work of noble note

(Part 2 of a series)

Ulysses

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink

Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known,– cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honor’d of them all,–

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains; but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought . . .

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me,–

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads,– you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.

Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;

The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.

‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,–

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

First page of argument re: Nixon indictment

http://amhist.ist.unomaha.edu/…

second page of argument re: Nixon indictment

http://amhist.ist.unomaha.edu/…

http://amhist.ist.unomaha.edu/…

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

“I’m not doing this to fail,” he said. “This goes back to a little bit of my civil rights background. We were in an impossible situation. The civil rights leaders came to Martin King and said, please, we hear you’re going to start a civil rights movement in the South, you’ll get all of us killed, Martin, don’t do that!” But if he hadn’t, said Conyers, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would never have passed.

“We’ve lost more rights and constitutional prerogatives in this short period of time than under any president that my studies reveal,” he continued. “So now’s the time. What we have to do is, we have to work on faith. We have to believe that there are enough American people who will agree with us that enough is enough. We’ve got to believe that, and we’ve got to work on that between now and November, and I think we’ll win.”

        – John Conyers, March 2006

http://www.salon.com/news/feat…

http://library.csustan.edu/bsa…

Conyers, John. “Why Nixon Should Be Impeached.” Black Scholar 6:2(1974): 2-8

http://www.thenation.com/blogs…

The two-page ad, headlined “A Resolution to Impeach Richard M. Nixon,” called on the newspaper’s readers to support House Resolution 976, which had been proposed several weeks earlier by Michigan Congressman John Conyers and several other liberal representatives.

http://www.time.com/time/magaz…

In May 1972, Conyers introduced a resolution on the House floor demanding that Nixon be removed from office for his conduct of the Vietnam War. The measure went nowhere, but Conyers kept at it for the next two years, and when the Judiciary Committee finally voted in favor of impeaching Nixon, Conyers relished his vindication. “Impeachment is difficult, and it is painful,” Conyers said at the time, “but the courage to do what must be done is the price of remaining free.”

           — Time magazine, September 28, 1998

Do a google search for the word impeach along with the names of all your hellos see read and Manuel

In the autumn of 1974, a young firebrand on the House Judiciary Committee, unhappy about the way the Watergate investigation had turned out, penned an article for the Journal the black scholar..  Sat down to write an article for the Journal, the black scholar.  The young man was dissatisfied with the way the Watergate investigation turned out.  He felt very strongly that justice had not been done, and, perhaps more importantly, that the long-term interests of the United States in the defense of the Constitution had been ill served by the resignation of President Richard Nixon.  This article was written before the pardon issued by President Gerald Ford.

Look for some of Conyers quotes, recent quote, about impeachment.

A re reading of Conyers article, these 34 years later, evokes many thoughts and feelings.  Overall, the piece could serve as a virtual template to for a manifesto arguing for the impeachment of the current administration.  Conyers main thrust in the 1974 article, his main rationale for the absolute necessity of impeaching Richard Nixon, centers around the illegality of the conduct of the war in Vietnam.; specifically, the illegal invasion and bombing of Cambodia.  Conyers argues that the usurpation of congresses war making our is, in itself, an impeachable offense:

Insert a block quote year

http://www.watergate.info/judi…

from the document, Rodino’s opening statement:

Mr. Rodino. 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.

Do a google search for the word impeach along with the names of all your hello see read Emmanuelle

In the autumn of 1974, a young firebrand on the House Judiciary Committee, unhappy about the way the Watergate investigation had turned out, penned an article for the Journal the black scholar..  Sat down to write an article for the Journal, the black scholar.  The young man was dissatisfied with the way the Watergate investigation turned out.  He felt very strongly that justice had not been done, and, perhaps more importantly, that the long-term interests of the United States in the defense of the Constitution had been ill served by the resignation of President Richard Nixon.  This article was written before the pardon issued by President Gerald Ford.

Look for some of Conyers quotes, recent quote, about impeachment.

A re reading of Conyers article, these 34 years later, he evokes many thoughts and feelings.  Overall, the piece could serve as a virtual template to for a manifesto arguing for the impeachment of the current administration.  Conyers main thrust in the 1974 article, his main rationale for the absolute necessity of impeaching Richard Nixon, centers around the illegality of the conduct of the war in Vietnam.; specifically, the illegal invasion and bombing of Cambodia.  Conyers argues that the usurpation of congresses war making our is, in itself, an impeachable offense:

Insert a block quote year

Why would Conyers – a man who wrote a pamphlet entitled, “impeaching the president” or whatever it’s called – suddenly tone down his rhetoric regarding impeachment?  And why would he do it immediately after the November 9, 2006 congressional elections?

Use this for the introduction to the first of Conyers’s diary:

In September 1974, John Conyers Jr. had been a congressman for five years.  Elected in 1968 as the youngest member ever to represent such a district in Michigan, .  Conyers and your describes the work he did during Watergate hearings so forth.  But before the judiciary committee could serve its articles of on Nixon, he resigned.  His resignation, however, did not dissuade certain people from demanding or believing that his crimes should not go unpunished.  One of those people was John Conyers.  In the September 1974 issue of the journal the black scholar, Conyers wrote a piece entitled, “why Nixon should have been Impeached.”  In the essay, Conyers lays out his case for the necessity of impeaching Richard Nixon, in spite of the fact that he no longer was in office.  The parallels between the Nixon administration’s history of malfeasance and that of the current administration are striking.  With very few minor changes, what Conyers wrote in 1974 could have been written last week.

Conyers of central thesis is that one of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon-an article he actually drafted, and which he reprints in the article-should have held them makes into account for his illegal waging a war against Cambodia.  Conyers makes the point that, aside from starting an illegal war, the administration usurped congressional power by using money (that is, to wage war against Cambodia) in a way not authorized by Congress.  Conyers says that Congress the road at its future efficacy by allowing such a usurpation to go forward without mention.

Conyers also lists several examples of Nixon administration officials going on the record with misstatements of fact (known in the vernacular as “lies”) arguing in support of the Cambodian invasion.  Conyers’ recounting of these public lies immediately brought to my mind the recent documentation of the “935 lies” by the Center for Public Integrity, lies that the BushCheney administration told to rationalize the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

As I read through the entire Conyers article, I would highlight those passages in which I found striking parallels to today’s situation.  By the time I finish the article, I found that I highlighted nearly the entire thing.  What John Conyers wrote in 1974 applies nearly perfectly in nearly every instance to this current administration.  The misdeeds of the Nixon administration resulted in articles of impeachment being drawn up by a House Judiciary Committee whose members included, not only John Conyers, but also Charlie wrangle of New York.

The absolute necessity to defend our Constitution against “a long train of usurpations” is no less pressing today than it was back then., and I wonder how it is that John Conyers of 2008 can look upon the last seven years of the Bush Cheney administration and not find it worthy of every bit of the opprobrium and constitutional accountability that the Nixon administration so richly deserved, but managed to squirm out from under a, much to the chagrin of the then 45-year-old Conyers.  I wonder whether Conyers, perhaps against the better Angels of his nature, has been ordered to stand down on the subject of impeachment of this most criminal administration in our nations history, and is even now writing an update for his 1974 article, to be published in February 2009, entitled the why Bush and Cheney should have been a peek.

Add to the earlier paragraph: ordered to stand down by a weak willed Democratic “leadership,”

It would be a shame if Conyers only legacy.

John Conyers is 75 years old now.

John Conyers and 79 years old now.  It would be a shame if his only legacy with respect to bringing this criminal administration to account consists of a few ineffectual hearings and a couple of articles that no one will notice, and very few will be able to find on a Google search 35 years hence.

As for the dismantling the arguments diary: news

Some would argue that all that is needed to deal with this criminal administration is the result of a new general election.  And, of course, at this point, it appears likely that-absent election fraud-id. the Craddick administration will take its place in the White House next January.  This argument, of course, holds no water.  Because of the magnitude of the crimes that were committed to, both against many peoples of the world and against the Constitution of the United States, the many many wrongs of the Bush Cheney administration cannot go unaccounted for., anymore than good for crimes of any other war criminal.  Think about it: much of the rest of the world wants to put Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney on trial as war criminals, yet there are those in this country seriously propose to let them off scot free, as if they had done no wrong whatsoever.

For the Conyers Ulysses jar: some work of noble note.

Just for the dismantling the arguments diary:

Site the diary by Mark the shark

And so what if nothing further gets done by the hundred 10th Congress?  What has been done by the hundred 10th Congress?  Let’s take a look at the record: and here cite the votes on FISA if I as a, and other bad votes, and the failure to stop the war in Iraq, and the veto of S. Chip, and the failure of subpoenas,

In May 1972, then 45-year-old John Conyers, a second term congressman from Michigan, introduced a resolution on the floor of the House of Representatives calling for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon.  Conyers is resolution, HR976, cited Nixon’s conduct of the war in Vietnam as grounds for his removal from office for the commission of high crimes and misdemeanors pursuant to the Constitution.

Conyers is resolution went nowhere, but neither did Conyers.  The groundswell of support for Nixon’s impeachment continue to grow, and two years later, Nixon resigned from office.

Conyers was a member of the House Judiciary committee that drafted the articles of impeachment for Nixon, articles that were never served, preempted instead by Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 1974.  Or obviated by Nixon’s resignation.  Those are three articles cited Nixon’s obstruction of justice and beer fill in the blank as grounds for impeachment.  The issue of Nixon’s conduct of the war was not included in.  But Conyers did not forget what Nixon had done that originally inspired the young congressman’s call for impeachment.  Paragraph

Two months after Nixon’s resignation, an article appeared in the Journal the black scholar.  Written by John Conyers Jr., the article, entitled White Nick “why Nixon should have been impeached,” was a recounting of the mendacity and malfeasance of the Nixon administration.  In much of the article con, Conyers details his rationale for impeachment, viewed through the lens of the conduct of the war in Vietnam.

And we are put in the paragraph about how reading the article now is so familiar.

And after that, put a citation, a block quote, that summarizes the article.

Rereading the article, one cannot help but think that if the wrongs he enumerated by Conyers in 1974 were sufficient to lead to the drafting of articles of impeachment, the far more egregious transgressions of the Bush Cheney administration over the past seven years certainly warrants as equals want to treatment.  Or it’s certainly warrants being addressed in the same manner.

Year, cite another block quote.

Then, put in the quote for the section about highlighting almost the entire article.

Dismantling the arguments against impeachment

conyers’ lame-ass excuses

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

rahm emanuel’s lame-ass excuses

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

lawyers’ letter to lahy, conyers

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

patrick henry’s speech

http://www.historyplace.com/sp…

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth — to know the worst and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House?

Wow. I guess we’re back on impeachment.

Okay by me.

Sounds like we’re in for a rehash of the impeachment wars of December 2006.

There are four primary arguments used by those who oppose the impeachment of Dick Cheney and George Bush, and we’ve all heard them before: it’s too politically risky.  (Put this one last).  Show the results after the 1974 impeachment process, contrast that with post-Clinton impeachment, which was a farce of an impeachment.

It will take too long.

Democrats will be seen as partisan, vindictive, and or vengeful.  This is actually a subset of the quote “politically risky” argument.

We don’t have the votes.

Include Pelosi’s quotes about it not being worth it.

cite the January 1974 poll that showed that 51% of Americans opposed the impeachment of Nixon; contrast that with recent polls regarding potential impeachments of Bush and or Cheney.

It will diminish the effectiveness and value of impeachment.  This is an argument that is ridiculous on its face.  Compare the process that led to the near impeachment of Richard Nixon to that of the process that actually led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

A recurring theme.  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.  

Any potential impeachment of George Bush or Dick Cheney, once the investigations and hearings have run their course (provided, of course, that they are substantive), will place current day Republicans in the same quandary: they will be faced with a choice between 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 facing the music, and choosing to preserve not only their own political hides, but the future existence of the Republican Party.  If any reader of this site to has any doubts that substantive hearings would reveal wrongdoing on a scope heretofore unprecedented in American history, then I do not know what to say to them.  Further, if any reader of the site believes that revelation of such wrongdoing, and solid, bulletproof documentation of such wrongdoing, will not prove politically fatal to Republicans, then I also do not know what to say to them.

Dean will get done during the time of impeachment.  Check the arguments that Dean used.

Arguments against impeachment: some have even argued (Armando) that resorting to impeachment will weaken the relative standing in Congress to check abuses of the executive branch.  The power of future congresses to check the abuses of the executive branch.

I completely disagree. Like John Conyers in his 1974 essay, “Why Nixon Should Have Been Impeached,” I would argue that failure to impeach weakens the power of the legislative branch, for the very reason that Kagro alludes to: as long as the executive branch knows that the legislative branch is not willing to use its own mechanisms of enforcement, the executive branch knows it can act with utter disregard of the legislative – a fact that has been thoroughly borne out over the course of the 110th Congress so far.

ONE YEAR ON:

kos, December 7, 2006:

We can spend 2007 either pushing impeachment (which isn’t as popular as Zogby claims, see Bowers’ piece), 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.

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, as we no know, the administration has defied their subpoenas and obstructed their investigations. Now what?

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,

Instead, it’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 Republicans on the other hand have shown that they will stop at nothing – the so-called “cataclysmic fight to the death” promised shortly after the November 2006 elections – to keep Democratic initiatives from moving forward.  This Democratic Congress, truly, is left with only one option, an option clearly spelled out in the Constitution: impeachment.

of course, the one argument against impeachment but I cannot successfully fight is the unstated argument.  Some have suggested that Republicans might be holding compromising information certain if not most Democratic congress members.

I saw my first impeach yard sign today.  It was very heartening.

The same mindset that would justify immunity for the telcos in FISA would justify forgoing impeachment: perpetrators of crime should not be held accountable for their crimes.