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Edited on Fri Aug-10-07 10:26 AM by calipendence
- the Valerie Plame incident (and their obstruction of justice here)
- Patrick Tillman incident (and their obstruction of justice here)
- Firing of U.S. Attorneys and various crimes associated with that (Hatch Act violations, etc.)
- irresponsible handling of Hurricane Katrina and violation of Posse Comatatus there.
- record usage and probably unconstitutional degree of usage of so-called "signing statements" to attempt to escape the law.
- record usage of "State Secrets Privilege", "Executive Privilege", and other means to hide from congressional and judicial oversight.
(and there are many I'm not mentioning here either)
I think the bottom line is that if we want to have impeachment happen, we need to have someone find out the real under the cover threats that are being made to the Democrats (or at least the REAL source of resistance among them) to impeachment. There is some sort of blackmail or other extreme threats on various people on Capitol Hill that have put them in this position of inactivity. And unless we find out what that is and effectively neutralize it, we probably will not be able to stop it, short of finding a way to completely circumvent or work in spite of MSM efforts to squash any talk of the Bush crimes enough to galvanize the public to in effect have a national strike or something similar in nature to try and shut down the government.
When you have folks like Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold begging off the question of impeachment and saying there's other priority issues to deal with now, and Henry Waxman not bringing forth some key people to the stand like Sibel Edmonds, even though they have the power to do so, and Sylvestre Reyes looking to cover up the legal findings/proceedings of the Duke Cunningham case and related cases like Kontogiannis, etc., you know there is something unhealthy lurking beneath the surface that Americans don't know about now.
I think that if one assumes that this inner cabal has impeachment votes blocked somehow, we need to attack the other points of vulnerability or strength that this cabal is using to enforce this blockage.
1) Make sure that EVERYONE in the Patrick Tillman is exposed and brought to justice to the full extent of the law. Minimally they should be taken out of military chain of command. The goal there wouldn't be necessarily to show an "impeachable crime". It would be to make sure that the military doesn't have any "lieutenants" that Bush and Cheney could use to try and bring down martial law on us, which might be their ultimate chosen means of escaping accountability to avoid retribution after they've served out their term in office, if they feel they can continue to hold onto power instead. The Bush's administration's use of executive privilege here calls attention to what I feel is their feel the need to protect this chain of command from scrutiny, as they know its a key part of their strategy. Getting these people fired might ultimately be easier to accomplish than ultimately impeaching and convicting these folks while in office.
2) Really go after the Republicans that are up for reelection in 2008 (there are 22 of them in the Senate), and point out to them that unless they do something substantively to stop what's happening now, they will go down to defeat then. Perhaps persuade them to sign on to a bill we could suggest the Democratic majority take up which would create an ammendment ot the Constitution that the president in power is not allowed to pardon those appointed by him in his present administration or hired within it or for a previous administration (to prevent the Gerald Ford situation again). Make sure that the top Democratic Presidential candidates COMMIT to not pardoning these folks when they take office!
I'm sure there are other things we can do to limit Bush's options and make he and Cheney understand that their options are limited in our constitutional government despite their attempts to squash it, that don't necessarily go directly to the impeachment list, but find other direct ways to stop their agendas. Those should also be used.
If both 1 and 2 are implemented, then the Bush administration perhaps will realize they can't escape from answering for their crimes at some point, and will start being a lot more cooperative to receive more lenient treatment than continuing to defiantly dismiss any attempts at holding them accountable.
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