Liberals, conservatives find common ground against Bush

[babylonsister]

Liberals, conservatives find common ground against Bush

(Original publication: October 6, 2007)

The Westchester Progressive Forum will meet to talk about impeaching President Bush. No surprise there.

Even if, as co-Chairwoman Gloria Karp insists, the coalition is not motivated by policy differences; you would expect its members to believe that the Constitution is threatened by the Bush administration.

So they have invited John Nichols, the Washington correspondent for The Nation, to White Plains next weekend to make a case for impeachment. Nichols has been doing that frequently in the magazine, with words such as these: "No matter how unsuccessful we may think his tenure has been, it will leave a mark on the Republic. If that mark is of a presidency without limit or accountability, Bush and Cheney will have changed the country far more fundamentally than any of their predecessors."

What is more intriguing is to hear that same case made by a conservative, Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration and a constitutional lawyer who wrote the first article of impeachment against President Clinton. Nichols and Fein appeared together on PBS' "Bill Moyers Journal" in July to call for impeachment hearings.

Fein said Bush's behavior was more worrisome than Clinton's because he has sought to cripple Constitutional checks and balances.

"We're talking about assertions of power that affect the individual liberties of every American citizen," Fein told Moyers. "Opening your mail, your e-mails, your phone calls. Breaking and entering your homes. Creating a pall of fear and intimidation. If you say anything against the president you may find retaliation very quickly. We're claiming he's setting precedents that will lie around like loaded weapons anytime there's another 9/11."

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http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071006/NEWS01/710060339/1018/NEWS02