by Molly Ivors
Henry Hyde, that hypocritical, unmourned bastard, once said:"There is no avoiding the issue before us. We are, in one way or
another, establishing the parameters of permissible presidential
conduct. In creating a presidential system, the framers invested
that Office with exceptional powers. If those powers are not
exercised within the boundaries of the rule of law - if the
President breaks the law by perjury and obstructs justice by
willfully corrupting the legal system - then that President must
be removed from office. We cannot have one law for the ruler,
and another for the ruled.... It's your country - the President is our flag bearer, out in front
of our people. The flag is falling my friends - I ask you to catch
the falling flag as we keep our appointment with history."
(Above: Not a can of worms)
What a fucking tool that man was. Let's remind ourselves: wingnuts paid a woman who Clinton had hit on to prosecute him for sexual harassment. They did this in order to lay his whole sexual history bare and embarrass him. He lied--as everyone lies about sex--because it was none of their fucking business. Did I mention that this was part of the Whitewater investigation?
For what happened to Valerie Plame Wilson alone, this administration needs to be impeached.
Let's remind ourselves of this, too: On July 6, 2003, Joe Wilson published his seminal "What I Didn't Find in Africa" Op-Ed in the NYTimes. Vice-President Meisterburger went into full attack mode and sicced his team--Scooter "Hecubus" Libby, Karl "Turdblossom" Rove, and Richard "Blancmange" Armitage--on Wilson and his wife, whose not-at-all important job involved feeding false information to the Iranians about attaining nuclear materials. (Poor Dick is getting his comeuppance now: his fervent desire for war with Iran is being thwarted because, according to the recently released NIE, once the Iranians figured out Brewster-Jennings was a cover, they stopped their nuclear program. See, Dick? if only you hadn't been such a, well, dick, you might actually have gotten your pet war.) For purposes of revenge, of silencing dissent, of covering their tracks, they destroyed a valuable and long-standing intelligence operation.
How, exactly, is that not illegal, Henry Hyde? Is our flag falling now?
And it's one of many, many instances I could name. But one, as we all remember from the late 1990's, is enough.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said repeatedly that "impeachment is off the table." Why? Because, she assured us, disempowering the Republicans is enough. Making them lame ducks is enough. We have other things to attend to. The political math is simply not worth it, in her opinion.
Fuck that noise.
Give me Bob Wexler, the good-humored Dem from Palm Beach County who took a lot of heat for his cocaine-and-hookers joke on The Colbert Report.
Last week, Wexler refigured the math of impeachment in a pretty important way.
"The way we pass stem-cell research, the way we get implemented a children's health care plan, the way we get higher CAFE [corporate average fuel economy] standards to bring our energy debacle into a better condition for generations to come is to have impeachment hearings," Wexler said, appearing to nearly run out breath at one point during his speech. "Because that'll get the president's eye. That'll get the vice president's eye. That for the first time will show that the Democratic majority is here, and that in fact we have the courage of our convictions, and that we're not bound to be tied by conventional wisdom."
Wexler said that impeachment hearings weren't just an option available to Congress, but a requirement.
"This administration has abused its power in office...and it is the obligation -- not discretionary -- but it is the obligation of this Congress to investigate," he said. "And that's what I and some of my colleagues are beginning to call for."
Wexler supported Dennis "Huevos" Kucinich's call to impeach Cheney last month. And DK's argument is compelling: we need to do this. For ourselves, for our nation, for the world. 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.
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.