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Originally Posted by aceventura3
The special prosecutor had the support of the Supreme Court, and the Judicial Committee had the support of enough Republicans to approve the articles of impeachment. Most important they had a case. I don't know what the "case" is for impeaching Bush. Even if you think he "lied", which the latest Senate Intel Committee investigation did not conclude, he did not do it under oath. Bush is not in contempt of Congress, he has not obstructed justice, so what are his crimes?
Approval ratings are different than what people will perceive as partisan. Approval ratings also change based on events. Right now Democrats have Bush were they want him, if they make him out to be a victim or whatever, the mood of the nation could change fast. I think the rhetoric being used is better than Democrats actually doing something from a political point of view.
I am betting things won't change much under the next Democratic Party administration. Just my opinion. People can always find some "wrong" with any administration and write books about it. Heck, people can already write books about Obama's "wrongs" and he hasn't taken the oath of office yet. Hannity on Fox has already made a cottage industry on Obama's "wrongs", just wait until he J-walks - impeachment talk will follow shortly thereafter.
I just think it is time for both sides to give it a rest.
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ace....a couple of questions.... you say you think independently, arriving at independent conclusions....so why do you sound so similar to these two guys, Broder and (George F.) Will?
....and do you wear boxers or briefs? I cannot imagine stuffing a "set" as big as the one a person who wrote your last post, yet who subscribed to "the thinking" below, must be endowed with...into a pair of briefs!
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews
Transcript
Broder on Politics
Who's Blogging» Links to this discussion
David S. Broder
Washington Post Columnist
Friday, June 6, 2008; 12:00 PM
Crestwood, N.Y.: So the Senate report -- supported by two Republicans -- supports the conclusion that we all reached several years ago, that Bush and Cheney used propaganda and ginned up intelligence to trick the country into war. If this is not an impeachable offense, what do you define as one? And if an impeachable offense is committed, isn't it the height of irresponsibility for the Democrats to put possible harm to their electoral chances (negligible, in my opinion) ahead of their oaths to the Constitution? How will history look back at this disgraceful chapter in both the executive and legislative branches?
washingtonpost.com: Bush Inflated Threat From Iraq's Banned Weapons, Report Says (Post, June 6)
David S. Broder: You'll have to forgive me, but I am reluctant to see everybig policy dispute turned into a criminal or impeachable affair. There needs to be accountability but there also needs to be proportionality. This country is engaged in two wars and has serious, serious domestic problems. To stop everything and attempt to impeach and remove a president who has less than a year to serve would not strike me as the best use of our energy. And for what? So Dick Cheney can be president?
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060501523.html
Bush Inflated Threat From Iraq's Banned Weapons, Report Says
By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 6, 2008; Page A03
President Bush and top administration officials repeatedly exaggerated what they knew about Iraq's weapons and its ties to terrorist groups as the White House pressed its case for war against Iraq, the Senate intelligence committee said yesterday in a long-awaited report.
While most of the administration's prewar claims about Iraq reflected now-discredited U.S. intelligence reports, the White House crossed a line by conveying certainty about the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States, according to the report, approved over the objections of most of the committee's Republican members.
"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee chairman, said at a news conference. "As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed." .....
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Quote:
http://www.lexrex.com/articles/impeachment.html
Grounds for Impeachment
By George F. Will
Sunday, August 23, 1998; Page C07
...In January Clinton coldly lied to his assembled Cabinet, knowing they would go forth and amplify the lie. Yet now that they know they were ill-used, not one Cabinet member feels sufficiently strongly about it to resign. Such evidence of the condition of the political culture should stimulate interest in impeachment as an instrument for the purification of that culture.
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090800602.html
David S. Broder
Washington Post Columnist
Friday, September 15, 2006; 11:00 AM
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and Washington Post columnist David S. Broder was online Friday, Sept. 15, at 11 a.m. ET to answer your questions about the world of politics, from the latest maneuverings on Capitol Hill to developments in the White House.
....Washington, D.C.: Mr Broder, if you feel Karl Rove is owed an apology from the pundits and writers over Valerie Plame, did you also call for an apology to the Clintons after Ken Starr, the Whitewater investigation and the failed attempt to impeach President Clinton? If not, why not?
David S. Broder: As best, I can recall, I did not call for such an apology. My view, for whatever it is worth long after the dust has settled on Monica, was that when President Clinton admitted he had lied to his Cabinet and his closest assoc, to say nothing of the public, that the honorable thing was for him to have resigned and turned over the office to Vice President Gore. I think history would have been very different had he done that. . . .
What bothered me greatly about his actions was not what he said to his lawyers but what he told the Cabinet, his White House staff -- You can go out and defend me because this did not happen. And he told the same lie to the American people. When a president loses his credibility, he loses an important tool for governing -- and that is why I thought he should step down.
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Impeachment is intended to deal with abuses that relate "chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself." Says who? Alexander Hamilton, which is telling.
Hamilton believed that "energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government." So it is significant that when the three authors of the Federalist Papers got around to explicating the Constitution's impeachment provisions, James Madison and John Jay ceded to Hamilton, a supporter of a strong presidency, the delicate task of interpreting impeachment as a weapon for disciplining executives who use their energy in inappropriate ways.
Impeachment, Hamilton argued in Federalist 65, concerns "those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust." In Federalist 77 he asked, does the Constitution provide "safety, in the republican sense -- a due dependence on the people"? He said it does because, among other reasons, a president is "at all times liable to impeachment."
But for what? A familiar flippancy, that grounds for impeachment are whatever the House of Representatives says, is akin to the notion that the Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is. That only means there is no appeal from the Court, not that the Court cannot construe the Constitution incorrectly.
Twenty-four years ago a study written (with the participation of Hillary Rodham) for the House committee considering impeachment of Richard Nixon said: "From the comments of the Framers and their contemporaries, the remarks of delegates to the state ratifying conventions, and the removal power debate in the First Congress, it is apparent that the scope of impeachment was not viewed narrowly."
It argued that the pedigree of the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" pertains not to criminal law, not just to "crimes of a strictly legal character." Rather it has "a more enlarged operation." Its proper objects include offenses "growing out of personal misconduct" and a "wide range of . . . noncriminal offenses." Thus the articles of impeachment indicted Nixon for, among many other things, "making false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States" about his misdeeds.
Public lies, and personal behavior destructive of trust, are, Ann Coulter argues, central, not peripheral, grounds for impeachment in a system such as ours. In her book on Clinton's debacle, "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," she says that in British history impeachment had been a means of resolving otherwise intractable disputes over policies. But under our Constitution, such power struggles can be resolved through separation of powers mechanisms such as vetoes and judicial review. So, Coulter says, "elections decide policy; impeachments judge character."
Anesthetics and forceps may be needed to extract articles of impeachment from a Congress that reads its duties in poll results rather than in the Constitution. Nevertheless, Clinton's conduct, as already known, is an impeachable offense.
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ace, I've seen you post quotes from Hamilton, before....how has he got it wrong, in this case? Why do Will, Broder, and Coulter, though they thought that a president who "publicly lied", about comparatively trivial, private personal matters, shoud be impeached or resign....and why do you, for that matter, object to the same ground rules when the misleading statements are as serious as the justifications for invasion and occupation, or the outing of a CIA operative for political payback purposes?
Last edited by host; 06-09-2008 at 11:45 AM..
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