Imagine if one of the Ojai City Council Members were discovered to be accepting bribes, handing out public dollars to his friends, and torturing children in the basement. Would an appropriate response be "How awful, but you know he's retiring in another nine months and those children are used to being tortured by now anyway?" That response is not even imaginable.
But when the crime becomes larger and less intimate, when we begin discussing hundreds of thousands of murders and countless cases of torture carried out at a distance by loyal underlings, all of a sudden our conviction that accountability is called for becomes less absolute. Why, though, should the need for accountability shrink as the crime grows? This makes no sense to me and would have made none to the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and our poor battered Bill of Rights.
Our First Amendment has been locked up in a chain-link Free Speech Zone. The Fourth Amendment is under warrantless surveillance and scared for its life. The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments have been detained without charge. And the Eighth Amendment is presently undergoing waterboarding. Restoring our Bill of Rights would be a positive step, not personal, not revengeful, not backward looking. Without these protections we won't get very far.
While I consider impeaching Bush and Cheney more important than an election, even if it is the fifth consecutive Most Important Election in Our Lifetime, I am sick of hearing misinformed nonsense about how impeachment would hurt the Democrats in the election. That's what they said when they refused to impeach Reagan for Iran Contra. Then they lost. When they went after Nixon, they won. When the Republicans went after Truman, they won.
When the Republicans impeached and tried Bill Clinton against the will of a huge majority of the public, they held both houses of Congress and took the White House, losing a few seats in the Senate which had acquitted. Some of the impeachment leaders won with bigger margins than they had before, and Al Gore was put on the defensive to such an extent that he chose impeachment-advocate Joe Lieberman as a running mate and pretended he'd never met Bill Clinton.
After the Whigs attempted to impeach Tyler, they picked up seven seats, and Tyler left politics. Weeks after he lobbied for Johnson's impeachment, Grant was nominated for President. After pushing toward impeachment for Polk, Lincoln was elected president. Keith Ellison, who introduced a resolution to impeach Bush and Cheney into the Minnesota state legislature in 2006, was subsequently elected to Congress.
And this notion that impeachment would turn Cheney and Bush into figures of sympathy? I don't have words to express how insanely self-defeating and defensive that is. If Democrats could imagine playing offense, it would take them about 10 minutes to realize that impeachment hearings on torture and signing statements and refusal to comply with subpoenas and the rest of it would be deadly for John McCain's campaign. Can you imagine McCain defending crime after crime while promising not to commit them and explaining his past flip-flops? You wouldn't even have to take an impeachment vote. Just hold the impeachment hearings.
John Conyers' latest excuse for not moving forward on impeachment hearings is that it might hurt Obama's campaign. Obama was asked recently in Philadelphia about impeachment, indictment, and accountability for Bush and Cheney. He suggested that he MIGHT investigate their crimes AFTER we elect him president, and that he MIGHT prosecute them "if" they were found to have committed crimes. "If"? "If"? That word may become as famous as Dick Cheney's "So?" At every stop Obama makes on this endless campaign, people should hand him copies of John Conyers' "The Constitution in Crisis," a book you can buy in most bookstores which documents a long list of criminal offenses committed by Bush and Cheney.
Yes, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is selling books on Bush and Cheney's impeachable offenses while refusing to impeach them.
Does Obama disagree with the book's conclusions? Does he have a response to Bush's public confession to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? Does he question the two Government Accountability Office studies that have found that in a significant percentage of cases, when Bush has announced his right to violate laws through signing statements, he has proceeded to violate those laws? Does Obama now believe the invasion of Iraq and everything that came with it was possibly legal? Was the February 7, 2002, order from Bush allowing the torture of detainees a legal act?
If Obama were to quietly allow impeachment hearings on Cheney or Bush to proceed, he could put McCain on the defensive. Impeachment hearings could squeeze out all coverage of nonsense pseudo issues. And if the American public understood that voting for Obama would put Bush and Cheney behind bars, and understood it while there's still time to register new voters, you would see a landslide that could not be denied.
But isn't it too late for impeachment?
Why? The movements to impeach Truman and Hoover, and the impeachment of Johnson, happened later than where we are now. How can it ever be too late to establish that future presidents and vice presidents will be required to obey laws and the Constitution? Without impeachment, what is the best possible scenario? Presidents with complete integrity for a number of terms, and then a real dictator who chooses to seize on the Bush-Cheney precedents.
Besides, there is nothing for Congress to do other than impeachment. Ending the occupation requires NOT doing something. All other issues, including addressing global warming, are impossible. They can be engaged in for show, and they have been for the past year and a half. But every good bill is vetoed and every mixed bill is signing statemented. And every non-impeachment investigation either displays evidence of crimes and then doesn't act on it, or gets stonewalled with denials of requests, subpoenas, and even contempt citations.
Nixon's impeachment took three months. Clinton's impeachment and trial combined took four months. Cheney's impeachment could take 10 minutes if desired. Just pick an indisputable offense such as refusal to comply with a subpoena, something the Judiciary Committee passed an article of impeachment for against Nixon. Or Cheney's impeachment could take weeks or months if desired. Just beginning it would be a victory and would make an attack on Iran less likely.
Using impeachment to put the White House on the defensive might allow changes in other areas as well, including the economy and housing. Millions of families are likely to lose their homes in the United States in the next nine months, thanks to Bush regulators' management of the banking industry, and thanks to the growing Bush-Cheney recession, which appears to be the result in part of the outrageous expense of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader perverse effect on the economy of having made weapons our top export and weapons making our biggest public investment.
But when the crime becomes larger and less intimate, when we begin discussing hundreds of thousands of murders and countless cases of torture carried out at a distance by loyal underlings, all of a sudden our conviction that accountability is called for becomes less absolute. Why, though, should the need for accountability shrink as the crime grows? This makes no sense to me and would have made none to the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and our poor battered Bill of Rights.
Our First Amendment has been locked up in a chain-link Free Speech Zone. The Fourth Amendment is under warrantless surveillance and scared for its life. The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments have been detained without charge. And the Eighth Amendment is presently undergoing waterboarding. Restoring our Bill of Rights would be a positive step, not personal, not revengeful, not backward looking. Without these protections we won't get very far.
While I consider impeaching Bush and Cheney more important than an election, even if it is the fifth consecutive Most Important Election in Our Lifetime, I am sick of hearing misinformed nonsense about how impeachment would hurt the Democrats in the election. That's what they said when they refused to impeach Reagan for Iran Contra. Then they lost. When they went after Nixon, they won. When the Republicans went after Truman, they won.
After the Whigs attempted to impeach Tyler, they picked up seven seats, and Tyler left politics. Weeks after he lobbied for Johnson's impeachment, Grant was nominated for President. After pushing toward impeachment for Polk, Lincoln was elected president. Keith Ellison, who introduced a resolution to impeach Bush and Cheney into the Minnesota state legislature in 2006, was subsequently elected to Congress.
And this notion that impeachment would turn Cheney and Bush into figures of sympathy? I don't have words to express how insanely self-defeating and defensive that is. If Democrats could imagine playing offense, it would take them about 10 minutes to realize that impeachment hearings on torture and signing statements and refusal to comply with subpoenas and the rest of it would be deadly for John McCain's campaign. Can you imagine McCain defending crime after crime while promising not to commit them and explaining his past flip-flops? You wouldn't even have to take an impeachment vote. Just hold the impeachment hearings.
John Conyers' latest excuse for not moving forward on impeachment hearings is that it might hurt Obama's campaign. Obama was asked recently in Philadelphia about impeachment, indictment, and accountability for Bush and Cheney. He suggested that he MIGHT investigate their crimes AFTER we elect him president, and that he MIGHT prosecute them "if" they were found to have committed crimes. "If"? "If"? That word may become as famous as Dick Cheney's "So?" At every stop Obama makes on this endless campaign, people should hand him copies of John Conyers' "The Constitution in Crisis," a book you can buy in most bookstores which documents a long list of criminal offenses committed by Bush and Cheney.
Yes, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is selling books on Bush and Cheney's impeachable offenses while refusing to impeach them.
Does Obama disagree with the book's conclusions? Does he have a response to Bush's public confession to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? Does he question the two Government Accountability Office studies that have found that in a significant percentage of cases, when Bush has announced his right to violate laws through signing statements, he has proceeded to violate those laws? Does Obama now believe the invasion of Iraq and everything that came with it was possibly legal? Was the February 7, 2002, order from Bush allowing the torture of detainees a legal act?
If Obama were to quietly allow impeachment hearings on Cheney or Bush to proceed, he could put McCain on the defensive. Impeachment hearings could squeeze out all coverage of nonsense pseudo issues. And if the American public understood that voting for Obama would put Bush and Cheney behind bars, and understood it while there's still time to register new voters, you would see a landslide that could not be denied.
But isn't it too late for impeachment?
Why? The movements to impeach Truman and Hoover, and the impeachment of Johnson, happened later than where we are now. How can it ever be too late to establish that future presidents and vice presidents will be required to obey laws and the Constitution? Without impeachment, what is the best possible scenario? Presidents with complete integrity for a number of terms, and then a real dictator who chooses to seize on the Bush-Cheney precedents.
Besides, there is nothing for Congress to do other than impeachment. Ending the occupation requires NOT doing something. All other issues, including addressing global warming, are impossible. They can be engaged in for show, and they have been for the past year and a half. But every good bill is vetoed and every mixed bill is signing statemented. And every non-impeachment investigation either displays evidence of crimes and then doesn't act on it, or gets stonewalled with denials of requests, subpoenas, and even contempt citations.
Nixon's impeachment took three months. Clinton's impeachment and trial combined took four months. Cheney's impeachment could take 10 minutes if desired. Just pick an indisputable offense such as refusal to comply with a subpoena, something the Judiciary Committee passed an article of impeachment for against Nixon. Or Cheney's impeachment could take weeks or months if desired. Just beginning it would be a victory and would make an attack on Iran less likely.
Using impeachment to put the White House on the defensive might allow changes in other areas as well, including the economy and housing. Millions of families are likely to lose their homes in the United States in the next nine months, thanks to Bush regulators' management of the banking industry, and thanks to the growing Bush-Cheney recession, which appears to be the result in part of the outrageous expense of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader perverse effect on the economy of having made weapons our top export and weapons making our biggest public investment.
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