Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman is one wise legal thinker who says that, whether or not it would be a political liability for the Democrats, impeaching Bush is their constitutional duty. Holtzman served four terms in Congress, where she played a key role in House impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon.
Fresh from the Nixon impeachment, Ms. Holtzman is definitely on a roll. Listen to the voice of experience, you young whippersnappers!
Impeachment is an essential tool for preserving democracy. The framers of our Constitution, determined to provide protections against grave abuses of power by a president, created the impeachment process as a special procedure for citizens. Through their representatives, citizens would be able to remove a president run amok.
A president cannot be impeached lightly. The framers rejected the notion of presidential impeachment for "maladministration." The term was, at one point, inserted in the impeachment provision but then replaced by "high crimes and misdemeanors." The framers thought maladministration was too vague and worried that it might put the president at the mercy of an overreaching Congress.
What is expected is that the president will uphold the Constitution and the laws and fulfill the oath of office. Carefully applying the law is a requirement for holding office. The president may not avoid, subvert, or undermine the law. Nothing excuses the president from fulfilling his constitutional obligations, not incompetence or ignorance or lack of interest. The failure or the inability of a president to fulfill these obligations, for whatever reason, causes serious harm to democracy. Impeachment is the constitutional remedy to protect the future health of the nation.
She then goes on to list and explain a bare-bones list of five impeachable offenses that Bush has committed by way of subversion of the Constitution, rule of law, and some plain old crimes. Go see.
President Bush has committed a great many grave and dangerous offenses, and subverted the Constitution. The evidence is clear and strong. Congress cannot shirk its responsibility to protect the nation from tyranny. This is what the founders of this country intended when they added presidential impeachment to the Constitution.
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