Impeach Now

I just finished reading The Italian Letter. The main thing it did was remind me of all the crap that this administration has done over the past six years, most of which I had half-forgotten in the light of all the crap they've done in just the last year... And then I watch Alberto Gonzales and Tony Snow, and in their different styles they simply exude contempt for the Congress and the people...

So I have a question for Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House of Representatives: Why the hell is impeachment "off the table"? How can we wait for another year and a half? Why are we saying Bush and Cheney have gone too far, but oh no we can't possibly put the country through an impeachment?

Put the country through...? WTF? Who's putting the country through something? Who's doing violence to American ideals and the American form of government? (And who's helping by posturing but refusing to follow through?)

It's really very simple: We must teach the executive branch a constitutional lesson: in the words of John Nicholls, an election does not make a king for four years - the Founders set up a mechanism to save the country.

But there are a few other questions here, too.

What has happened to the GOP? Less than a decade ago they insisted on impeaching Clinton for lying. They thundered on our television screens about high crimes and misdemeanors, and insisted that he was setting a precedent that placed the president above the law. Where are they now?

And why won't the Democrats insist on impeaching Bush for his genuine high crime of undermining the Constitution, claiming the authority to kidnap people and "disappearing" them on his say-so (I choose that specifically because Alexander Hamilton once denounced it in ringing terms:

To bereave a man of life... or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.

These people do that and more, arrogating to the Executive Branch powers that were never meant to be there. They are criminals, if guilty, and only an impeachment will settle that question.

(Granted, it's entirely possible that Dick Cheney is genuinely delusional, and I don't insist on his impeachment for high treason, swift and inevitable conviction, and incarceration - I can accept his being locked up in a psychiatric ward. Bush doesn't have that out.)

The plain truth is that impeachment is not some evil we need to fear. Impeachment is the cure for the arrogant, imperial presidency that the Founders feared and the GOP desires.

Impeachment is not "taking an axe to the government" - impeachment is a scalpel. It's not murder, it's surgery - it's cutting out a cancer on the government. It's not a Constitutional crisis, it is - as John Nicholls says - the cure for a Constitutional crisis.

Frankly, Congress is to blame. They can't even bring themselves to censure this administration - this lawless, over-reaching administration which makes the claim that we're in a war without end and without border, where the commander-in-chief runs, not the army, but the nation, without check, without balance, without advice much less consent. This administration is lawless: it sets itself above the rule of law, and that precedent must not stand.

The Executive Branch is not supreme. The Founders feared that and gave us a way to put an end to it. Congress must act. The Founders expected Congress to act. If they do not, the government falls.

Their duty under the Constitution is to impeach them, and impeach them now. That's what the Constitution tells us to do when the Executive arrogates kingly powers to itself. If they don't do it now, the Constitution will erode, fade away, and disappear.

What happens if we do nothing, when the people know the high crimes and misdemeanors, and yet Congress does nothing - out of fear, or out of some belief that the country "has suffered enough"? What happens? The people cease to be citizens. They learn they can do nothing but rage in silence. They fear the government even as they despise it. They turn away from politics, they seek out bread and circuses - or Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan - and they become subjects.

And that's when the republic falls.

And if you're a real W supporter and can't stand the thought of impeaching him, consider this: the precedent set by this administration will result in the next president having precisely the same powers and abilities this one claims. Do you want Hillary to be able to do whatever she damn well pleases?