An acquaintance of mine recently sent me a question to this effect: What kind of country is this when Barry Bonds gets indicted for perjury but we can’t get impeachment proceedings started for George Bush, whose crimes are infinitely worse.
I realize that technically there’s some logical fallacy in that thinking–though I can’t recall the name of the fallacy–but no matter. It’s still a good question.
Feel free to speculate on the answer. Or just rant.
Call me foolish, oldfashioned and sentimental if you will, but I would like to see george saved for the courts. Rumsfeld recently had to skeedaddle out of France, but I think the indictment in French courts applies to whereever he ventures outside of the US. He can be extradited from anywhere. Of course I know GWB can run and hide down in SA, but still there is always a chance. Just look at Pinochet.
…summer, I made a similar comparison.
The quote carried by AP and not a few major Newspapers was,
“Isn’t ironic that Paris Hilton has spent more time in jail than Scooter Libby.”
Yes, I know that impeachment is “off the table” courtesy of the National Democratic leadership…
But since when do we remove the Sword of Damocles poised above the Executive branch by rendering superfluous the necessary political mechanism of impeachment?
A necessary check and balance upon any President who fancies himself or herself to be not unlike a King?
Mentioned no less than six times in the US Constitution, simply pledging that impeachment is “off the table” almost gives a blank check to the Bush Administration to continue to act in direct contravention to the direct language of the Constitution, persisting in rolling back hard fought for civil liberties and legal protections — spying unwarrantedly, violating the separation of powers through signing statements and ignoring the writ of Habeas Corpus just because Bush says so.
Is the Bill of Rights “off the table”?
Could very well be if the precedents set by the Bush administration’s overreaching behavior are not in a very concrete fashion halted, countered and reversed.
As foreign policy expert Michael Parenti recently told me, the “coup may be complete” as we hear recent Supreme Court Justice Appointees Roberts and Alito evangelize about the “unitary executive theory”, something Cheney’s been chomping at the bit to make a permanent feature of the White House since Dick Nixon.
As much as it is going to be wonderful to have a Democratic President in 2009 — maybe even our very first Woman President — in the long term analysis, replacing “King George” with “Queen Hillary” is no fix and no longer America.
This is why electoral victory is only half the equation of getting our country back on track.
A local Federal Representative in the form of Todd Akin, who gives Bush a pass every chance he gets, on the war, on the Republican’s far-fetched economic theories of ‘trickle down’ and their efforts to privatize every molecule on the planet, needs to be replaced with a progressive who will inject a little backbone into the US House, for Missouri and our nation as a whole.
In your service,
Byron DeLear
Byron@DeLearforCongress.org
http://www.DeLearforCongress.org
Congressional Campaign in Missouri’s 2nd District