A threshold for impeachment

[question everything]

Originally published Wednesday, March 15, 2006

A threshold for impeachment

The administration's ventures into torture, wiretapping without a warrant and pre-emptive war provide a solid foundation for impeachment of George W. Bush.
By John M. Crisp
Scripps Howard News Service

During our history's most prominent presidential dalliance, Monica Lewinski gave Bill Clinton a copy of Nicholson Baker's Vox, a fictional erotic phone conversation between two strangers. Baker's new book, Checkpoint, is another extended dialogue, this time between two old friends, Ben, a historian, and Jay, who's so outraged by the deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians at a Marine checkpoint that he decides to assassinate President Bush.

Assassination? Let's not get carried away. Of course, Baker isn't actually advocating assassination -- that's against the law and, besides, Jay is a fictional character who's clearly deranged. The First Amendment permits this sort of attention-getting hyperbole in fiction. But Jay's irrational reaction to the state of affairs in his fictional world is credible only if a reasonable case can be made that things are going very, very wrong in real life.

Some of our country's missteps are the result of differences of opinion and the weaknesses inherent in human governance. For example, our administration and Congress support tax cuts that favor the rich at the expense of the rest of us, as well as energy policies that are blind to the pitfalls of a hydrocarbon-based future. But of much greater significance are the administration's very long steps in very strange directions in at least three areas: torture, wiretapping without a warrant and pre-emptive war. Issues like these go a long way toward defining who we are.

When any administration begins to alter our country's most basic fabric, the citizenry must take notice and resist. Should resistance take the form of impeachment proceedings before our country has changed beyond repair? I'm no particular fan of the Bush administration, but the suggestion of impeachment makes me a bit queasy. Impeachment is a legitimate constitutional remedy, but it's drastic step, one that, like a vote of no confidence, should be taken infrequently, perhaps once a century or so. Use it much more often than that and it quickly becomes a divisive political tool that's trotted out against trivial targets.

(snip)

Clearly, the conventional processes of elections and legislation are preferable to the drastic measure of impeachment. But the country is changing quickly in ways that will be difficult to revoke. Conyers is asking for the formation of a bipartisan committee to investigate the premises that supported the war in Iraq. Given the partisan makeup of Congress, an investigation is unlikely without the support of an informed electorate. Newfane, Vt., however, isn't hesitating. It called for Bush's impeachment at its annual town-hall meeting, making a small but courageous gesture that sends a message: Impeachment isn't strictly about who's president. It's also about who we are and what we want to be.

John M. Crisp is an English professor at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. He wrote this column for Scripps Howard News Service.

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http://www.dailybreeze.com/opinion/articles/2465596.html

[jbfam4]

1. Impeachment isn't strictly about who's president. It's also about who we

are and what we want to be.

We are not as morally bankrupt as this administration. They hate us for our FREEDOMS..............no, Mr. President, they hate us for your policies.

[Demeter]

2. Color of Despair

I don't think any amount of cosmetic beautifying will fix this problem. Bush/Cheney/GOP is a cancer eating the innards out of our once great nation. The political equivalent of surgery, chemotherapy, and stem cell implantation may yet save us, if the treatment isn't delayed any longer.

But where are our surgeons? The Democrats flee as if the malpractice suits and tort lawyers were upon them. The Republicans are BushCo enablers, and only now making faint gestures of protest, quickly overridden by the monster that is Bush/Cheney. They refuse to admit to the disease of the patient, or their part in cultivating it. Politicians do not want to do the job for which they were hired and paid!

The public is furious, but reluctant to take to the streets. They think (rightly, I might add) that it is the politician's job to fix this mess so that revolution doesn't take any more of the strength of the nation.

So we the people must hold every politician in public office accountable, and replace those who do not fulfill the public's job expectations, without any assistance from the traditional media, I might add, which may mean the overthrow of the corporate way of life, since the corporations seem to feel that they have the right to pull the political strings. The corporations must be disabused of this notion, as well.

THis problem was a century in the making. Let's hope it doesn't take that long to straighten it out.