Take Two Impeachments and Call Me in the Morning

Posted by Joshua Holland at 3:00 PM on July 3, 2007.

I will give Bush credit for one thing: he has cured me of my scandal fatigue. After six years under the crop of thugs that occupy the White House, I'd become like an abused child: emotionally tapped out and unable to muster more than the proverbial 1,000 yard stare as each new offense by this rogue administration came to light. But while the latest "signing statement" had lost the ability to elicit much more than a desultory shrug from me in recent months, Bush's decision to spring Scooter out of the hoosegow has made me a righteous, hot-under-the-collar pissed-off moonbat again.

Thanks, Shrub, for restoring my capacity for outrage.

I'm not sure why my reaction to this latest insult to the rule of law is so visceral. Surely, one more crony getting off the hook pales in comparison to the domestic wiretapping, illegal wars of aggression, the unvarying contempt for Congress (much less the electorate) and the constant, almost obsessive lies. But something about springing Scooter -- that smug war criminal bastard -- makes the blood boil.

I guess it's the fact that this is an outrage on a human scale -- Libby's not serving time simply because of who he is. We are a nation of men, and not laws, after all. It is the height of elitism -- Bush, who contemptuously sneered to reporters about a woman begging him for her life from Texas' death row can now find the "compassion" to keep this criminal out of jail for two and a half years (a sentence that may well have been commensurate with the offenses for which he was convicted, but was waaay too light given his real crimes -- being one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq and playing a role in blowing the cover of a covert CIA agent in order to smear a political opponent).

Anyway, all of this proves yet again how profoundly anti-American members of this administration (and their supporters) truly are. And it seems like an appropriate time to retract the argument I made some months ago against impeachment. I don't flatter myself that anyone's paying too much attention to where I stand on the issue, but for those who took me to task: you were 100% right and I was 100% wrong.

Actually, I haven't flip-flopped on the basic argument: I still think impeachment is all but impossible and I still believe that there would be little taste for cleaning up the rest of the rat's nest after the fact. None of that matters, however, because this administration needs to be held accountable somehow. There are no other ways to do that -- the Constitution was pretty specific -- and they've left us no choice but to try.

At this point, I think they need to be impeached, whether or not they are actually removed from office, for two reasons. The first is to keep them tied up so they have something to keep them busy aside from shredding the Constitution, bombing them some Arabs and lining their cronies' pockets with lucre. Keep 'em busy. Maybe keep 'em from bombing Iran. The second reason is simple: future generations, yet unborn, demand it. Some of the worst thugs in this administration are vets of the Nixon administration -- well-schooled in the ugly brand of politics that drove him -- and I am increasingly of the belief that had Ford not pardoned Nixon -- had Nixon truly been held accountable -- we might not have seen such unchecked extremism as we've experienced in recent years. This bunch of Repubs -- and, let's be clear: entirely too many like them on the other side of the aisle -- are the epitome of elitists. They believe, simply, that they should stand above the law. When you take some of their fellows and you frog-march them down to the penitentiary for a while, it can have a salutary effect on your future governance.

(A third and much less important reason is that I'd like to travel abroad without wearing the Maple Leaf all over my body -- without going in Canadian drag.)

Anyway, I see some of our trolls are making a fuss over impeachment in the threads today ("impeach for what?"). So here are some resources for arguing with them or for persuading that stubbornly centrist neighbor …

A concise summary of the case against the administration with links. Very basic.

The Conyers Report, detailing 26 potentially impeachable offenses committed by the bushies

Elizabeth Holtzman's "The Impeachment of George W. Bush"

John Dean's"The Case for Impeachment"

John Nichols' "In Praise of Impeachment"

If you're looking for something meatier, how about a nice book? They make great gifts.

Like Holtzman's book, The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens

The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky

Nichols' The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism

Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney, edited by Dennis Loo and Peter Phillips.

And, last but not least, for the wonks among us, Articles of Impeachment drafted by the Center for Constitutional Rights

Tagged as: impeachment, libbyy, commutation

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.