Impeachment Anyone?

Item from the New York Times (registration required):

Bush's Use of Authority Riles Senator

By KATE ZERNIKE
WASHINGTON, June 27 — Senators on the Judiciary Committee accused President Bush of an "unprecedented" and "astonishing" power grab on Tuesday for making use of a device that gave him the authority to revise or ignore more than 750 laws enacted since he became president.

By using what are known as signing statements, memorandums issued with legislation as he signs it, the president has reserved the right to not enforce any laws he thinks violate the Constitution or national security, or that impair foreign relations.

A lawyer for the White House said that Mr. Bush was only doing his duty to uphold the Constitution. But Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, characterized the president's actions as a declaration that he "will do as he pleases," without regard to the laws passed by Congress.

"There's a real issue here as to whether the president may, in effect, cherry-pick the provisions he likes and exclude the ones he doesn't like," Mr. Specter said at a hearing.

Wait a Cherry Pickin' Minute! The president can decide what laws he will support and what ones he won't? Wow.

The timid Democrats and the lockstep Republicans are so polarized and filled with greed they don't have a scintilla of courage or statesmanship to say what we have here: a president acting in violation of the Constitution and the federal checks and balances.

The 'blow in the wind' Senator Arlen Specter is correct: the president does whatever he likes.

Who will have the courage to call for impeachment? Impeachment is not a trial. It is the allegation of charges by the US House; the presentation of facts and a sort of indictment. If those facts warrant, then a president is called to trial before the Senate.

The eloquent Barbara Jordan from Texas sat on the House Watergate committee and in her remarks, delivered this powerful piece of history and perspective:

We know the nature of impeachment. We've been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to "bridle" the executive if he engages in excesses. "It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men."² The framers confined in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive....

James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution." The Constitution charges the President with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise a federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice. "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution."

There isn't one Barbara Jordan left. God help us. Bush and his cronies are shredding the democracy piece by piece.

Read the articles of impeachment against Nixon.