Thursday, December 22, 2005

Should Bush be Impeached?

I want to tackle this question separate from the question of whether Democrats should push for impeachment in the house and senate. Clearly they should not. Politically, they could hardly go wrong by trying to mainstream the idea. The question of whether Bush *should* be impeached for his actions. Now, as best I can tell, Bush pretty much has no defense for his illegal wire-tapping besides "we told congress we were doing it" which is less a legal defense than a punch line. Personally, if members of congress were sufficiently informed and yet failed to act, they should be punished to the full extent of the law.

Some would argue that an impeachment hearing would be seen as a partisan witch-hunt and would contribute to heightened partisanship. They’re probably right. But that’s the fundamental adversarial basis of our government. Of course a president is going to be impeached by people who are doing it for political gain. Who else is going to do it? Centrists? Moderates?

Ok, now that we’ve all stopped laughing I can continue.

Impeaching George W. Bush would certainly do a lot to reassert the rule of law in our country. Had Bush backed down after being caught it might have been sufficient to censure him, but he has decided to shoot-the-moon and promises to continue breaking the law in the future. How can we accept that? How can we accept the illegal wiretaps going forward? The answer is we can’t. Our elected officials can certainly hold their tongues in acceptance of their limited power in the senate, but liberals should be able to say honestly and without moral ambiguity that when a president abuses the powers given to him, that president is not above the law.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 10:33 PM

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