Salon >> The I-word goes public - Democratic Underground

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Fri Mar-03-06 03:53 PM
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Salon >> The I-word goes public

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/03/03/impeachment/

The I-word goes public
At a forum in New York, pundits and politicians called for the impeachment of George W. Bush.

March 3, 2006 | New York -- Late last year, the idea of impeaching President Bush, once taboo even among most liberals, started gaining real currency. Following revelations of Bush's domestic spying program -- and the president's unrepentant insistence on continuing it -- former Nixon White House counsel John Dean called Bush "the first president to admit to an impeachable offense." Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called for the creation of a select committee to investigate "those offenses which appear to rise to the level of impeachment." Twenty-six House Democrats have joined him.

At the end of January, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of the House Judiciary Committee during Nixon's impeachment, penned an appeal for Bush's removal in the Nation, citing his illegal wiretaps, his deliberate deceptions over Iraq, his incompetent prosecution of the war, and his authorizing systemic torture and abuse. "Impeachment is a tortuous process, but now that President Bush has thrown down the gauntlet and virtually dared Congress to stop him from violating the law, nothing less is necessary to protect our constitutional system and preserve our democracy," she wrote. In March, former Harper's magazine editor Lewis Lapham wrote a cover story in that magazine titled "The Case for Impeachment." The Center for Constitutional Rights -- the legal group representing many of the victims of Bush's torture policies -- has just published a book called "Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush," and at least one other book in a similar vein is forthcoming, David Lindorff's "The Case for Impeachment."

With so much ferment on the left, last night's public forum, "Is There a Case for Impeachment?" had the buzzy feel of an important cultural event. The gathering, presented by Harper's and moderated by Air America's Sam Seder, brought together Lapham, Conyers, Holtzman, Dean and Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. It was held in midtown's Town Hall theater, an elegant space with balcony seating, crystal chandeliers and gold detailing. Around 1,500 people -- mostly a mix of tweedy seniors and clean-cut young activists -- paid $10 for their seats. Built as a meeting place for suffragists, Town Hall has a storied radical history -- in 1921, Margaret Sanger was arrested on its stage for talking about birth control. It was a fitting setting for a discussion of what Rep. Conyers, a veteran of the civil rights movement, presented as the next great David vs. Goliath American struggle.

"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.