NYT op-ed: "He’s Impeachable, You Know "

[DeepModem Mom]

Op-Ed Contributor
He’s Impeachable, You Know
By FRANK BOWMAN
Published: May 3, 2007
Columbia, Mo.


Jon Krause

IF Alberto Gonzales will not resign, Congress should impeach him. Article II of the Constitution grants Congress the power to impeach “the president, the vice president and all civil officers of the United States.” The phrase “civil officers” includes the members of the cabinet (one of whom, Secretary of War William Belknap, was impeached in 1876).

Impeachment is in bad odor in these post-Clinton days. It needn’t be. Though provoked by individual misconduct, the power to impeach is at bottom a tool granted Congress to defend the constitutional order. Mr. Gonzales’s behavior in the United States attorney affair is of a piece with his role as facilitator of this administration’s claims of unreviewable executive power.

A cabinet officer, like a judge or a president, may be impeached only for commission of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But as the Nixon and Clinton impeachment debates reminded us, that constitutional phrase embraces not only indictable crimes but “conduct ... grossly incompatible with the office held and subversive of that office and of our constitutional system of government.”...

***

A false claim not to remember is just as much a lie as a conscious misrepresentation of a fact one remembers well. Instances of phony forgetfulness seem to abound throughout Mr. Gonzales’s testimony, but his claim to have no memory of the November Justice department meeting at which he authorized the attorney firings left even Republican stalwarts like Jeff Sessions of Alabama gaping in incredulity. The truth is almost surely that Mr. Gonzales’s forgetfulness is feigned — a calculated ploy to block legitimate Congressional inquiry into questionable decisions made by the Department of Justice, White House officials and, quite possibly, the president himself.

Even if perjury were not a felony, lying to Congress has always been understood to be an impeachable offense. As James Iredell, later a Supreme Court justice, said in 1788 during the debate over the impeachment clause, “The president must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate.” The same is true of the president’s appointees.

The president may yet yield and send Mr. Gonzales packing. If not, Democrats may decide that to impeach Alberto Gonzales would be politically unwise. But before dismissing the possibility of impeachment, Congress should recognize that the issue here goes deeper than the misbehavior of one man. The real question is whether Republicans and Democrats are prepared to defend the constitutional authority of Congress against the implicit claim of an administration that it can do what it pleases and, when called to account, send an attorney general of the United States to Capitol Hill to commit amnesia on its behalf.

(Frank Bowman is a law professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/opinion/03bowman.html?_r=1&oref=login

[bleever]

1. Is the Bush administration a corrolary of colony collapse disorder?

I'm really starting to think so, and that we all really need to work as hard as ever to head it off.

[Eurobabe]

6. we can only hope that BushCo leaves the hive, never to return

no offense to the poor bees that are suffering with this disorder.

[kenny blankenship]

2. IMPEACH HIS BOSS. Abu Gonzales is small fry, who should face the Truth Commission later

How I wish our Congressmen and Senators were as quick to say "NOTHING IS OFF THE TABLE" with regard to the criminal traitorous usurper in the White House as they are to say it about countries who've never fired an unprovoked shot at us.

[TheMadMonk]

3. THIS is the smart way to go,

Investigations into Gonzales will almost inevitably uncover leads to higherups. Probably sufficient evidence to make impeaching B&C an imperative.

[kenny blankenship]

4. I've thought about that but I don't think it will play out in that way

impeachment is like a single, silver bullet. You better aim for the heart and not miss, because you won't get any second chances. The country is not going to sit still for endless impeachment proceedings of this cabinet officer, in turn leading to that white house aide, leading finally to Bush himself. After the Clinton soap opera, which was as interminable as it was unpopular, impeachment has a very bad name and the people have little tolerance for it.

Gonzales isn't facing any jail time for anything he's done--no one has suggested this once as far as I know-- so his life's fortune is made if he just keeps silent and takes the fall, whereas he's a useless broken tool if rats out his patron: if he talks he'll never work in big league crime again.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. Let me suggest he could be facing jail time

He's told the truth four or five different ways now. At least two versions have been under oath befor the Senat Judiciary Committee.

Can you say "perjury"?

[kenny blankenship]

11. I'll consider the source

[Jack Rabbit]

13. Okay

Please click here.

Actually, we shouldn't have to go to impeachment with Gonzales. In any legitimate presidential administration, he would have been forced to resign weeks ago.

[BR_Parkway]

7. Presidentail power of Pardons is blocked for those impeached

it's the only restriction in the Constitution. So if someone were to get that ball rolling, Gonzo would be in serious legal jeopardy that he can't be pardoned out of. Would that help his memory?

[AndyA]

8. Absolutely, it would. Knowing there is no help from his cronies forthcoming,

it might refresh his memory quite a bit.

I say impeach ALL of them. I don't know what Congress is waiting for. It would seem to me there is clear evidence of at the very least misdemeanors by Bush, Cheney, and Gonzalez.

Congress must take action against these criminals. If they do not, it will set a new standard for future Presidents, Vice Presidents, and others holding top office in the United States. It will send a clear message: that they can do what they want, in violation of their oath of office, and nothing will happen to them. It will also show Americans that crime does pay.

No, Congress must take action to send a clear message that this is not acceptable, and will not be tolerated.

We need to remember that somewhere out there, in the dark, dank recesses of the Republican Party, might be a future President with far more sinister goals than Bush/Cheney. And our children and grandchildren will be the ones paying the price for our negligence.

We must put a stop to this behavior NOW. IMPEACH. INCARCERATE. It will send a clear message to future generations that America was alive and well in the early years of this century.

[frogcycle]

10. aside from that

it would send a message to the lot of them - all the other cabinet officials, etc.

a shot across the bow, as it were, although the investigations are already several shots

[Hubert Flottz]

9. Check this out...

Gonzales: The Lawyer Who Lied to the Judge

The Washington Post's Dan Eggen this morning reports that in November 2005 Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales apparently misled a federal judge in Montana about the status of William W. Mercer, the U.S. Attorney for the state. The nation's top lawyer and chief law enforcement official reportedly told the judge that Mercer was not breaking the law by spending his time working in Washington (for the Justice Department) and not Montana (for the people of his state). But this evidently was not true. Because on the same day, Eggen reports, "Mercer had a GOP Senate staffer insert into a bill a provision that would change the rules so that federal prosecutors could live outside their districts to serve in other jobs, according to documents and interviews."

Eggen writes: ".... he episode, which received little notice at the time, provides another example in which Gonzales's statements appear to conflict with simultaneous actions by his aides in connection with U.S. attorney policies.... The measure also provides the second example in which the Justice Department sought to use the renewal of the Patriot Act antiterrorism law to assert tighter control over U.S. attorneys. Another provision sought by the Justice Department allowed Gonzales to appoint U.S. attorneys indefinitely without Senate input. Since repealed, it was central to the uproar over the prosecutor dismissals."...MORE

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/benchconference/2007/05/...

[gatorboy]

12. With Clinton, the Republicans turned impeachment into a sideshow.

It's time for the Dems to show them that it's a serious affair.

[leftupnorth]

14. You don't kill a snake by cutting off it's tail. Gonzales should twist in the wind for alap.