punditman says: With precious few in Congress willing to take the obvious next step, the Bushies will simply try to run out the clock. The fact that they may get away with it could spell the final death knell for US democracy (what's left of it).
by Ray McGovern from antiwar.com
Last week's four-part Washington Post feature on Vice President Dick Cheney removed any doubt in my mind as to whether he and President George W. Bush have committed the kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment.
While President George W. Bush bears the ultimate responsibility, the nature of the evidence against Cheney and his closest associates is so specific and overwhelming that it makes sense to impeach and bring him to trial first.
Subpoenas from Capitol Hill are flying downtown into executive office buildings like paper airplanes, but the potential for obfuscation and delay is immense, and the danger to the Republic speaks for a more urgent, simpler approach.
As hundreds are killed each day in the misbegotten war in Iraq with no end in sight, the same officials who brought us Iraq – with the vice president in the lead – are salivating for war on Iran.
There is a blizzard of possible charges warranting impeachment, and that is part of the problem. It's not only outrage fatigue, it is knowing how to sort through what Thomas Jefferson called "a long train of abuses and usurpations" to select the most heinous, when it is difficult to discern which of them most offends our Constitution and the rule of law.
Suggestion: From the most heinous, select just one for which there is ready proof – one not susceptible of the kind of diddling that has been so prevalent in Washington these past several years.
Why not focus on a high crime that the Bush administration has already admitted to, with claims it is above the law and the Constitution: electronic eavesdropping on Americans without the required court warrant.
This charge has the additional advantage of precedent. It was included in the second (of three) Articles of Impeachment voted against President Richard Nixon by a 28 to 10 vote by the House Committee on the Judiciary on July 27, 1974.
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