bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2006-11-11 02:41 pm
bigmacbear) wrote2006-11-11 02:41 pm
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Impeachment may be foolhardy, but there are things Congress can do instead
I've been reading a bit about the prospects for impeachment of George II and his President of Vice. As well and truly they deserve it (and more), it isn't likely to happen. And that is a shame, but we can't let it stop us from doing something about the causes that led us to this juncture.
Nancy Pelosi has been making noises about explicitly taking impeachment off the table when the new Congress is seated in January. Provided they get that far, I am reluctantly inclined to agree. You see, with what we know now, I think impeachment of Bush might be doable, but Cheney is slick enough that he'd probably squeak by -- and you have to get both of them. But an investigation -- which is definitely in the works regardless of whether impeachment is a possible outcome -- at the very least may dig up behavior so outrageous that the people as a whole (not just us in the radical center) will be screaming for impeachment, if not Bush's head on a pike.
This is as close as we'll probably get to the latter.
This comes with a big caveat: provided the new Congress is in fact seated as scheduled in January. The concern is the current officeholders may well use their new powers under the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the recent changes in the Insurrections Act (which take control of the National Guard from the state governors on the word of the President) to undo the election results by interfering with the newly elected Congresscritters (say, declaring them enemy combatants?).
Realistically, though, I think the current officeholders know that, even if the letter of their handcrafted law allows for this, it will be seen -- rightly -- as a total abrogation of the Constitution and an open invitation for a military coup, and the forced resignation of Rumsfeld shows the military won't stand for this. The current regime will do their damnedest to keep their tyranny under wraps.
In my opinion the first order of business is not going to be impeachment, but reversing the legislative agenda that was rammed through the last Congress. And to start we must have a complete rewrite of the Patriot Act, and outright repeal of the Military Commissions Act and those provisions which were added to the Insurrections Act on the same day. Otherwise, this or some other President will have the means to become a dictator any time he or she chooses.
Next will be an overhaul of theLeave No Child's No Child Left Behind Act. In its current state it burdens the state education authorities right down to the individual schoolteacher with goals they can't possibly meet because no funding is provided to pursue those goals -- the mother of all unfunded mandates. It needs to be funded or abolished.
Perhaps the fall of Donald Rumsfeld is a signal not only of the military's displeasure with their Commander-in Chief but also of the administration's willingness to actually listen to the generals on the ground for a change. I'm not of a single opinion on Iraq: I think we ought to finish what we've started there regardless of the false pretenses under which we undertook this unnecessary war, but I also recognize that may have now become a literal impossibility.
And to pay for all this we should look to returning progressiveness to the tax system and giving the middle class a fair shake. A truly progressive taxation system will get rid of the incentive for CEO's to line their own pockets at the expense of the middle and working classes. And some tweaks to the tax laws would help keep jobs in the US instead of farming them overseas.
So yes, there is a lot of work to do. As much as I'd like to see Bush treated like the criminal he appears to be, there are practical reasons to let the investigation take its course while placing most of the effort into stopping the bad behavior that got the administration into hot water in the first place and undoing the damage that bad behavior has wrought.
Nancy Pelosi has been making noises about explicitly taking impeachment off the table when the new Congress is seated in January. Provided they get that far, I am reluctantly inclined to agree. You see, with what we know now, I think impeachment of Bush might be doable, but Cheney is slick enough that he'd probably squeak by -- and you have to get both of them. But an investigation -- which is definitely in the works regardless of whether impeachment is a possible outcome -- at the very least may dig up behavior so outrageous that the people as a whole (not just us in the radical center) will be screaming for impeachment, if not Bush's head on a pike.
This is as close as we'll probably get to the latter.
This comes with a big caveat: provided the new Congress is in fact seated as scheduled in January. The concern is the current officeholders may well use their new powers under the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the recent changes in the Insurrections Act (which take control of the National Guard from the state governors on the word of the President) to undo the election results by interfering with the newly elected Congresscritters (say, declaring them enemy combatants?).
Realistically, though, I think the current officeholders know that, even if the letter of their handcrafted law allows for this, it will be seen -- rightly -- as a total abrogation of the Constitution and an open invitation for a military coup, and the forced resignation of Rumsfeld shows the military won't stand for this. The current regime will do their damnedest to keep their tyranny under wraps.
In my opinion the first order of business is not going to be impeachment, but reversing the legislative agenda that was rammed through the last Congress. And to start we must have a complete rewrite of the Patriot Act, and outright repeal of the Military Commissions Act and those provisions which were added to the Insurrections Act on the same day. Otherwise, this or some other President will have the means to become a dictator any time he or she chooses.
Next will be an overhaul of the
Perhaps the fall of Donald Rumsfeld is a signal not only of the military's displeasure with their Commander-in Chief but also of the administration's willingness to actually listen to the generals on the ground for a change. I'm not of a single opinion on Iraq: I think we ought to finish what we've started there regardless of the false pretenses under which we undertook this unnecessary war, but I also recognize that may have now become a literal impossibility.
And to pay for all this we should look to returning progressiveness to the tax system and giving the middle class a fair shake. A truly progressive taxation system will get rid of the incentive for CEO's to line their own pockets at the expense of the middle and working classes. And some tweaks to the tax laws would help keep jobs in the US instead of farming them overseas.
So yes, there is a lot of work to do. As much as I'd like to see Bush treated like the criminal he appears to be, there are practical reasons to let the investigation take its course while placing most of the effort into stopping the bad behavior that got the administration into hot water in the first place and undoing the damage that bad behavior has wrought.
no subject
Of course, it's not like Bush did anything so horrible as getting a BJ.