Molly Ivors of Whiskey Fire:
When a government has been hijacked by antidemocratic forces, the only way to move forward is by going through, not around the crisis. Ask South Africa. Ask Cambodia. And we may get there someday, but probably not for a while.The only way to show we still obey laws in this land is to bring lawbreakers to justice. We have had so many impeachable offenses done to our country in the last seven years. Pick one. Bring the Bush cabal to justice or else we will be struggling under an even worse administration in a few years, one that has taken up where Bush and Cheney left off.
Wexler's math, such as it is, is more modest. He believes that, faced with a serious threat of impeachment, a Democratic legislative agenda can be pushed through with much less opposition than it currently faces, that laws both popular and necessary can be achieved while they're distracted and trying to figure out what to shred, delete, and erase next.
We have two cars here, and they have two different bumper stickers. One says "Impeach Cheney First." The other says "All We Are Saying Is Give Impeachment a Chance." Hallelujah. Just do it.
Bring the Bush administration and all the neocons responsible to court. Impeach them. Jail them. Make them pay enormous fines because I want my money back.
Give us justice. Show us that the United States of America still governs by the rule of law.
Impeach.
4 comments:
the thing that irritates me so much about taking impeachment off the table: impeachment is basically the analog of convening a grand jury to look into the matter of indicting wrongdoers. it doesn't mean we have to take it to the next step [trial by the senate] though i'd dearly love for us to do that.
i would be thrilled, absolutely thrilled, for congress to publicly investigate and indict some of these malefactors.
Exactly. Impeachment is how we PREVENT corruption. It is a function of the Constitution.
Removing it thwarts the proper process we need to take.
Put it back on the table, Nancy.
hipparchia said essentially what I was going to say, but I'll outline it anyway:
1) Impeachment is indictment for acts which may or may not be against federal law but which are inimical to the functioning of our constitutionally based government. Conviction after impeachment results in exactly one thing: removal from office. (Well, OK, there's a second thing: the removed person cannot hold high office again.) In other words, impeachment is not fundamentally a criminal procedure; it is a tool for protecting our form of government from malefactors who somehow reach high office.
2) Once someone is impeached, convicted and removed from office, constitutional and criminal law apply to the impeached person. Bush and Cheney have violated enough articles of the Constitution and enough federal laws that such criminal prosecution should land them in jail for about 50 billion years.
(Hey, Nancy, you got that? Do I need to tell you again?)
Thanks, Steve, for making it so clear.
50 billion years is a long time, but unless we buy quantities of garlic and truckloads of bleach, they will pop back up talking the neocon talking points again.
Oh, and stakes. Lots and lots of stakes.
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