Impeach Bush? As If!
Salon.com and Fox News actually agree on something: Our president was told by the Justice Department that their NSA wiretap program was illegal, and he ordered it to continue anyway. In fact, then-White House Council Alberto Gonzales was so anxious to have the decision (made by Deputy Attorney General James Comey) overturned that he showed up at the hospital bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft — then in Intensive Care, recovering from pancreatitis — who made it clear that Comey's decision was the Justice Department's final word on the matter.
Flaming liberals have been uttering the battlecry, "Impeach Bush" for some time now, but suddenly it would seem that we have evidence our President knowingly committed, or at least ordered, multiple felonies. What-to-do? Well, I can make a guess what's NOT going to happen. Bush isn't going to be impeached.
Some still confuse the word "Impeach" with convicting someone of a crime. In fact, impeaching the President simply means that he is officially being accused of misconduct of office. The President cannot removed from office unless he convicted of the accused misconduct by the Senate.
Technically, to begin impeachment proceedings there needs to be reasonable suspicion of "high crimes and misdemeanors". The accepted definition of "high crimes" includes abuse of power and serious misconduct of office.
One might cite Bush's signing statements, where he signs bills into law but includes a statement at the bottom saying he refuses to enforce the law in part or it's entirety. He didn't invent the signing statement, but he's done more of them than all other Presidents combined. That could be considered serious misconduct or abuse of power.
Or we could go back to the NSA wiretaps and discuss whether a President knowing orders a string of felonies to be committed might be considered serious misconduct — at least enough to begin the impeachment process. After all, if he's proven to be blameless then the impeachment will end favorably for him.
Heck, technically the flaming liberals are right: Bush could have been impeached on the suspicion that he took part in deliberately manipulating intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war. But hey, with solid evidence of so many other things there's no need to dig up dead a dead pony.
Of course, the thing I'm leaving out is this: The Democrats were elected with a clear mandate to start getting us out of Iraq. They put together a funding bill that required deadlines and Bush vetoed it. Their next step was to put together a bill giving Bush everything he wanted, no strings attached. They called it a "Compromise".
This is what has become of our last great hope. Nearly two-thirds of the country disagrees with the job Bush is doing and has replaced his Congressional lackies and lapdogs with … lackies and lapdogs.
The chances that Bush will officially be accused of serious misconduct (otherwise known as being impeached) are nil because when the U.S. rebelled against the Republican Party in 2006 we failed to realize that the Democrats were not going to do anything differently. If the midterm elections had been a vote to decide who should watch the kids while we go away for the weekend, the candidates may well have been Jeffrey Dahmer running against John Wayne Gacy.
The future of our country is being raped and murdered right in front of us. Sound harsh? That's what's happening and no one is doing anything about it. And when the corpse of our democracy is buried in the backyard or shoved out of sight under the porch then most people will continue to go about their business and forget all about it. Trouble? I don't see no trouble. Funny smell, though.
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