The Ecology of Impeachment

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7305

The Ecology of Impeachment
by Patricia Goldsmith | May 7 2007


The American electorate is looking more and more like the polar bear stranded on a shrinking ice floe--still powerful but with democracy melting out from under our feet. Unlike the polar bear, however, we should be able to analyze our situation and take action. The first thing we have to do is accept that certain familiar features of our habitat, which we have depended on in the past, are just gone.

We now have more media outlets than ever before, but their mission seems to be to drown out any molecule of truth. And our inter-dependent voting and justice systems have been reduced to slivers of their former selves.

For example, as time has gone by, the true significance of the Supreme Court's selection of George W. Bush as president has become more and more painfully clear, in spite of efforts on the part of the media and across the political spectrum to obscure the bald truth: In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court shamelessly sided with a gang of Republican congressional aides swinging baseball bats who originally shut down the vote count and threw the case into the courts.

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The push for impeachment acknowledges two simple truths: we can't wait for 2008, nor can we live with BushCo's legacy. That is to say, we must not only remove GWB, but we must remove all the devices and stratagems his administration has used to subvert the Constitution including: signing statements and the concept of the unitary executive; the abrogation of the Geneva conventions, the concept of enemy combatants, extraordinary rendition, and Guantanamo; pre-emptive military attacks; warrantless spying on citizens; the unlabeled exchange of government propaganda for news; and much more.

These illegal maneuvers should not be available to future presidents of any party. Just as SCOTUS explicitly said that their ruling in Bush v. Gore could not be construed as a precedent, so the entire Bush presidency must be stripped of its power to set precedent--and nothing would go further toward that goal than impeachment.

Impeachment would also send a powerful warning to the Roberts' Court that they, too, serve at the pleasure of the people.

Impeachment is the people's powerful roar.