One could easily get whiplash trying to keep up with the Washington Post’s behavior of late. First they hire a serial plagiarist and right-wing hack to provide balance for a serious and credentialed reporter in Dan Froomkin. Then they put the case for impeachment on the front-page.
The argument for an impeachment inquiry — which draws support from prominent constitutional scholars such as Harvard’s Laurence H. Tribe and former Reagan deputy attorney general Bruce Fein — centers on Bush’s conduct before and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
It is argued that Bush and his officials conspired to manufacture evidence of weapons of mass destruction to persuade Congress to approve the invasion. Former Treasury secretary Paul H. O’Neill told CBS News’s “60 Minutes” that “from the very beginning there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go . . . it was all about finding a way to do it.” And a senior British intelligence official wrote in what is now known as the “Downing Street memo” that Bush officials were intent on fixing “the intelligence and the facts . . . around the policy.”
Critics point to Bush’s approval of harsh interrogations of prisoners captured Iraq and Afghanistan, tactics that human rights groups such as Amnesty International say amount to torture. Bush also authorized warrantless electronic surveillance of telephone calls and e-mails, subjecting possibly thousands of Americans each year to eavesdropping since 2001.
To be sure, Michael Powell’s piece is more descriptive than rhetorical. But, it lays out the case, and it does so without apology. Whether or not impreachment is good politics is discussed, but the merits of impeachment are not strongly questioned in the piece (except, predictably, by Cass Sunstein).
The public groundswell for impeachment is finally acknowledged on the front-page of the Washington Post. That’s a move in a positive direction. Perhaps they know it is time to appease the left for a few days.
And, what a great lede:
To drive through the mill towns and curling country roads here is to journey into New England’s impeachment belt.
That said, i love this comment:
Activists spend too many hours dialing Democratic politicians and angrily demanding impeachment votes, they [Democrats in Congress] say.
It’s always nice to know that our Congress is listening to the people. You know, “we the people”….
______________
I am so tired of Dem politicians abusing their constituents by, in effect, calling us “crazies.”
I don’t know the exact details, but isn’t the online Wapo (the one which hired Ben) under some kind of different editorial control than the dead tree edition?
Might explain the dissonance.
Pax
If nothing else, Cheney/Bush are in repeated and blatant violation of Title 18; setion 1001 of the consitution for making false statements to congress.
You can’t be in violation if you aren’t testifying under oath, thus Congressional committees’ recent love affair with not swearing people in.
Newspapers probably should give you whiplash, their job is to report the news without any perceivable bias, and we live in an extremely partisan society. Each side of the partisan divide should occasionally be pissed off by something they see in print if the paper is doing their job.
Though in reality they probably have hundreds of warring biases on staff and it’s only a matter of which show through on a specific day. Having opinions and a worldview is impossible to avoid, even for those who do their best to remain objective.
Until very recently, readers of the WaPo would have been entering a “whip-lash free zone” on the issue of the Iraq war or any of its related issues.
I agree, they haven’t spent much time doing their job by critically analyzing administration policy during the last 5 years, though at least some of the blame for that goes to the dearth of public progressive voices to cover.
Even if it only appeasement, I’m happy to see it.
there are 100 good exhibits to impeach. But, Karen Kwiatkowski sums it up nicely in; “Our Little Nero”
“he privately issued a signing statement.” Unbelievable. And except for the State of New Hampshire –live free or die (that pass a law of non-compliance to the ID Act)- no one has called out Bush on his regular signing statements.
It’s not all George’s fault. Before we can have an impeachment we need a Congress – the missing component. This leads us to the question raised by Tom Engelhardt in his “Dispatches from America” series, Part Two of his interview with Chalmers Johnson:
“What happened to the US Congress?
We’ve failed ourselves.
the Post has just announced that they’ve hired Ann Coulter to make the case for the execution of all Democrats for treason.