Momentum is moving against the Bush Administration as more and more indictments are delivered against key aides and supporters in the innumerable scandals. (You may wonder why so few Democrats are being indicted. Early on, Bush&Co. made sure that the Democrats were frozen out of the power loop, therefore the big-money lobbyists and bribers went to the locus of power -- i.e., to the Republicans.)
Since we don't have official "votes of no-confidence" in our system of government, electorally we have to wait until November 2006 to get the Republicans out of power in the House so that impeachment hearings can begin, and in the Senate, so that a possible conviction can be obtained. (All this pre-supposes that we finally get an honest, verified voting system in place, with no more outsourcing of vote-counting to partisan corporations, in this case Republican-supporting, who use secret coding and who easily can manipulate the tally-results.)
But non-electoral solutions are available:
* So much citizen pressure could be put on Democratic and Republican incumbents, anxious to preserve their jobs, that they will vote to initiate impeachment hearings in the next few months. Certainly, there are enough grounds to justify, at the least, calling for impeachment hearings in the House: the felonious outing by Administration officials of a CIA agent for political reasons, Bush's unlawful order to the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens inside the country, commiting perjury before Congress to obtain authorization for war on Iraq -- well, those will do for starters. There are no shortages of willful "high crimes and misdemeanors" in Bushland.
* Or, another option, perhaps a bit more fanciful at the moment, though perhaps more realistic next year: Republican corporate and political leaders will see the handwriting on the wall -- and the long-term effects on the economy of keeping the disgraced, corrupt Bush regime in power -- and urge Bush and Cheney to resign, for the good of the party and the country.
So our job now, as I see it, is first to supply energy and political cover to the Democrats, Independents and traditional Republicans who want to see the reckless reign of Bush&Co. ended, while we're moving the impeachment ball forward day by day by leaning on our opinion-makers and elected officials to start the process of transformation back to a government of which we can once again be proud.
If this takes massive civil disobedience to convince the elected officials that the citizenry is serious, and that they may be ousted at the ballot box if they don't challenge Bush's crimes, so be it. It's time to move; America can't take much more.
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Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught government & international relations at various universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net .
Originally published by The Crisis Papers and Democratic Underground 12/20/05.
Copyright 2005 by Bernard Weiner.
Since we don't have official "votes of no-confidence" in our system of government, electorally we have to wait until November 2006 to get the Republicans out of power in the House so that impeachment hearings can begin, and in the Senate, so that a possible conviction can be obtained. (All this pre-supposes that we finally get an honest, verified voting system in place, with no more outsourcing of vote-counting to partisan corporations, in this case Republican-supporting, who use secret coding and who easily can manipulate the tally-results.)
But non-electoral solutions are available:
* So much citizen pressure could be put on Democratic and Republican incumbents, anxious to preserve their jobs, that they will vote to initiate impeachment hearings in the next few months. Certainly, there are enough grounds to justify, at the least, calling for impeachment hearings in the House: the felonious outing by Administration officials of a CIA agent for political reasons, Bush's unlawful order to the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens inside the country, commiting perjury before Congress to obtain authorization for war on Iraq -- well, those will do for starters. There are no shortages of willful "high crimes and misdemeanors" in Bushland.
* Or, another option, perhaps a bit more fanciful at the moment, though perhaps more realistic next year: Republican corporate and political leaders will see the handwriting on the wall -- and the long-term effects on the economy of keeping the disgraced, corrupt Bush regime in power -- and urge Bush and Cheney to resign, for the good of the party and the country.
So our job now, as I see it, is first to supply energy and political cover to the Democrats, Independents and traditional Republicans who want to see the reckless reign of Bush&Co. ended, while we're moving the impeachment ball forward day by day by leaning on our opinion-makers and elected officials to start the process of transformation back to a government of which we can once again be proud.
If this takes massive civil disobedience to convince the elected officials that the citizenry is serious, and that they may be ousted at the ballot box if they don't challenge Bush's crimes, so be it. It's time to move; America can't take much more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught government & international relations at various universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net .
Originally published by The Crisis Papers and Democratic Underground 12/20/05.
Copyright 2005 by Bernard Weiner.
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