Burt Cohen: America Needs To Impeach

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/07/3037/

America Needs To Impeach
by Burt Cohen

snip//

If Congress fails to act against this assault on our foundation, that is a very dangerous precedent this Congress ought not set.

The harm which has been done to our country? Torture has been institutionalized, habeas corpus eviscerated, and illegal spying made routine. Our Constitution has been trampled on. For the future of the country we love, Congress can not let them get away with it.

Conservative Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who served in the Reagan Justice Department, is an advocate of impeachment. He recently said on my radio show that Cheney “is seeking institutionally to cripple checks and balances and the authority of Congress and the judiciary … kidnapping people and throwing them in dungeons without any legal accountability are standards that are totally anathema to a democratic society devoted to the rule of law.”

He points out Cheney “has no understanding of or respect for Congress’s critical role in the governance of our nation.” Fein is outraged that Congress has not sought to “immediately sanction his excesses … We have a Congress that basically is an invertebrate.”

Should Congress fail to impeach, Fein worries that the Constitution “will disappear on the installment plan.”

America’s founders understood a president is highly likely to try to overreach and for that reason put into law legislative checks and balances to the executive branch. If Congress fails to accept that responsibility, we move ominously closer to realizing the unitary executive as imagined by Cheney.

So while Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi insist it’s not practical, the fact is we’ve seen Congress walk and chew gum at the same time. Should Congress abdicate its responsibility and take no action on impeachment, the legislative’s rightful power will have announced its surrender, a shattering deviation from our nation’s foundation. Thomas Jefferson understood that a president is not a king. For America to remain America, impeachment is essential.

[Clovis Sangrail]

1. the time for impeachment

is running out quickly.

After that... wait a bit and it may be time for another revolution.

[groovedaddy]

2. Maybe it's a republican plot - get them (Dems) to impeach

and let them pay the political price...
or - is just a lack of political guts?

[demnan]

3. It's a sad day in America

when we can't get Congress to step up. We'll have to find a way to make them accountable before we can make the executive branch accountable.