Impeachment bills against Prez Bush

Hooray Reluctant Philosopher, hooray. About time for some non-political clarity. Too bad these dolts (both Democrat and Republican) follow their emotional politics. I can understand why you are reluctant.

Dusty Bones wrote:

Bush is clearly a disaster, one of our five worst presidents ever. But an impeachment this far into his tenure as president is a ridiculous idea. These things take over a year, which brings us pretty clsoe to the end of his time in the White house. Plus everyone while be absorbed by the next campaign. Plus...if you removed him from office, you'd get Cheney, which is the last thing in the world this country needs. Just learn from monumental mistakes and elect someone decent next time.

Everyone needs to try to distance themselves from their hatred of Bush and look at impeachment as dispassionately as possible. The impeachment of Andrew Johnson is widely viewed by historians as a gross misuse of the impeachment power vested in Congress. That was a political impeachment, something the framers were wary of. In other words, democracy cannot be so fragile that a president can be impeached for capricious political reasons. In the framers' judgment, the penalty a president pays for bad leadership, immorality, stupidity, even dishonesty is that he and/or his paryt loses elections. In the framers judgment, then, the system worked when the Republicans lost the Congress in 2006.

Lying to congress is not a crime. Lying to the American people is not a crime. Interesting, the Atlantic Monthly had a good article last month on how and why all presidents lie.

I'm not a historian or constitutional scholar. But I do keep a copy of the constitution with me all the time. I may be tipping at windmills trying to argue this point on Letsrun, but it just grinds my gord that so many Americans past the high school years don't even have a basic understanding of how their own government works.

Merle Travis wrote:

The outing of covert operative Valarie Plame certainly rises to high crime status.

Both GW and the VP has been implicated.

Intentionally lying to congress about WMD in Iraq may not directly constitute perjury. But in the context of war crimes committed, there is most likely a case for prosecution. Unless you believe that the US prez. is held to such a low standard there is no expectation of acting with the nations best interest, or even honesty at all.

Then of course we have 911, that is if if anybody really cared enough to have a legitimate investigation...

I've been following the Libby trial very closely everyday in the Washington Post. There is some testimony that implicates Cheney, but none that implicates Bush.

Of course, the problem is that Libby hasn't been charged with revealing Plame's identity. No one has. Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction. It's not clear the prosecuter has the evidence that Plame was intentionally outed.

To Merle Travis; Neither Bush or Cheny were implicated in the Plame investigation. As a matter of fact no one in the Bush admin was brought up on charges of outing Plame. Libby is on trial for lying about times and dates of conversations that took place years earlier. Get your facts straight moron.

No one can accurately say that any President is the worst or best while they are still in office. It's just not possible.

Reluctant Philosopher wrote:

But that is a hotly debated topic among constitutional scholars.

I would like see hot constitutional scholars masterly debating this topic.

The Plame thing is grossly overstated. Plame wasn't some clandestine agent, she worked a desk job and her identity wasn't a huge secret. Libby is in trouble for lying, not teling her identity. It's similar to what they got Martha Stewart for and how Clinton got in trouble.

Bush can't get impeached for anything that we know about now, not Iraq, not Gitmo, not Plamegate, nothing.

Reluctant Philosopher wrote:

While a strong case can be made that Clinton perjured himself, in my opinion this perjury was not a high crime or misdemeanor in the context the framers intended. But that is a hotly debated topic among constitutional scholars.

And, there is no U.S. law against lying. Perjury is against the law. Lying is not.

First of all, one does not need to make a strong case about anything. Clinton lied under oath, period. That's perjury.

Perjury is against the law. It is a felony, which is actually far WORSE than a misdemeanor. So how can this not make him a candidate for impeachment?

I really never cared who Clinton slept with. As long as he had the economy humming along he was OK with me. Nor did I ever think he should have been asked about Lewinskey since it was irrelevant to Whitewater. But the fact remains he committed an impeachable offense. He was rightfully impeached. I'm glad nothing ever came of it though because (again) his sleeping around never hurt anyone but him and Monica.

say what? wrote:

I'm glad nothing ever came of it though because (again) his sleeping around never hurt anyone but him and Monica.

He had a wife and child too.

Lying about cheating on your spouse is far less egregious than lying about invading a country and killing a HALF MILLION of its citizens, or fleecing the country in billions of doll,ars of enron/oil/etc stock. But that's just me. Also your prosecuter Ken Starr, Esq. ran up a $54 million bill chasing Slick Willy around. I'd like the IRS to get to the bottom of that creative accounting but theyh don't mess with their own kind.

you've got to figure that there's SOMETHING in there worth giving him the boot for. personally, the domestic spying and suspension of habeus corpus (though voted for) are enough for me.

and yeah.... to the bloke who suggested a real investigation of 9/11.... that would be nice. shocking. revolutionary. but nice.

whatthef***ever wrote:

Lying about cheating on your spouse is far less egregious than lying about invading a country and killing a HALF MILLION of its citizens, or fleecing the country in billions of doll,ars of enron/oil/etc stock. But that's just me. Also your prosecuter Ken Starr, Esq. ran up a $54 million bill chasing Slick Willy around. I'd like the IRS to get to the bottom of that creative accounting but theyh don't mess with their own kind.

Proof Bush lied about invading Iraq? By that I mean I'd like to see proof from you that Bush knew Iraq wasn't any type of threat and that he knowingly lied to the American people by syaing things he knew not to be true.

You can't do that though.

Odd... wrote:

say what? wrote:

I'm glad nothing ever came of it though because (again) his sleeping around never hurt anyone but him and Monica.

He had a wife and child too.

Fine, him and monica and his wife and daughter. I'm sure a few other people had their feelings hurt too. Still glad nothing ever came of it because that's a matter for divorce court, not Kenneth Starr or Congress.

The argument against impeachment in the Clinton case is that he perjured himself in a civil matter that was not connected to the office of the presidency. Most scholars, but not all, interpret the impeachment clause of Article II Section 4 to be limited to crimes committed in capacity as president, in other words using the power of the presidency to engage in criminal activity (as Nixon did).

Article II Section 4: The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, and other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

This interpretation rests largely on the framers' decision to only specifically identify Treason and Bribery, and use the word 'high' in front of Crimes and Misdemeanors. The framers clearly understood that men who became president, especially in their day, came from prestigous backgrounds. They often were very wealthy, owned a lot of land and business. They were men of high ambition. And it may be that they would get elected to office with outstanding litigation against them or their businesses. They may be accused of all sorts of things in their capacity as private citizens, but being accused and proven to be an embezzeller or perjurer in a man's private life would disqualify that man from holding high office.

There is a lot of gray area here. If we elected someone in 2008 only to find out that in 1998 he murdered someone, should he be impeached?? It is difficult to imagine that the country could tolerate an accused murderer in the office for 3 more years. Fortunately, this hypothetical has not been tested.

is that the same cynthina mckinney that assulted a police officer at the capital awhile back? lets impeach her

Reluctant Philosopher wrote:

would disqualify that man from holding high office.

sorry, that should read "would not disqualify"

Odd... wrote:

I'd like to see proof from you that Bush knew Iraq wasn't any type of threat and that he knowingly lied to the American people by syaing things he knew not to be true.

You can't do that though.

He doesn't have to. It's already common knowledge.

Unless you get your news from Fox, ABC, NBC or CBS.

to think that the constitution has power over popular opinion is the pure definition of ignorance.

Wolfgang Grajonca wrote:

He doesn't have to. It's already common knowledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_street_memo

Unless you get your news from Fox, ABC, NBC or CBS.

That doesn't prove anything. I want proof that Bush knew Saddam was not a threat, had no WMDs and all of that and that he lied when he said what he said in the lead up to the war. Show me that tidbit, not the Downing Street Memo which doesn't show anything close to that.