Saturday, May 24, 2008

Impeach Bush?

On Friday, in front of the White House, presidential wannabe, Ralph Nader, called for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Ralph said George has, "dishonored the White House and brought a pattern of waste."

A meager crowd of supporters held signs like "Resign Bush-Cheney, Like Nixon-Agnew" and "From Katrina to Iraq, Colossal Failure."

Nader claimed Bush and Cheney are currently committing 5 impeachable offenses on a daily basis.

1) Criminal use of offense against Iraq.
2) Condoned and approved systematic torture.
3) Arresting thousands of Americans, then denying them habeas corpus and violating attorney/client privilege.
4) Signing 800 signing statements, precluding the president from actually having to follow the laws he signs.
5) The systematic spying on Americans without judicial approval.

I don't quite get #3. Thousands of Americans have been arrested? Why was I not informed of this? Who are they? Why were they arrested?

During my time on the planet there have been 2 impeachment attempts. Richard Nixon got in trouble being involved in a break-in at the Watergate. And then plotting to cover up the crime. No one died due to Watergate as far as I know. There were some other impeachment issues with Nixon other than Watergate, but none of those would have brought on impeachment hearings on their own without the Watergate Scandal. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.

Bill Clinton was impeached over lying under oath regarding his nasty shenanigans with Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. The Clinton impeachment, in hindsight, seems terribly stupid and wrong. Though it was sadly entertaining at the time. And, again, no one died due to Clinton's little fib while under oath.

And now you have our current president. Believed by the majority of Americans to be woefully incompetent. Incompetence is not an impeachable offense. Maybe it should be. Of Nader's 5 impeachable offenses the only one that seems impeachment worthy is the Iraq debacle. As in why has there been no investigation into all the misinformation that was spewed by the administration to justify our first war ever where we were not the victims of an aggression, but were instead the aggressor?

In the words of Gerald Ford, his first spoken after taking over for Nixon, come next January it will be a happy day for America when our long national nightmare is over. If impeachment could hasten that day, that would likely be a good thing.

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