This is a story that is accelerating by the minute. A representative in the Illinois state legislature named Karen A. Yarbrough found an obscure rule of the US House of Representatives which says that a joint resolution of a state legislature can initiate federal impeachment proceedings. The U.S. House then has to take up the bill of impeachment.
She promptly put such a resolution forward in the Illinois legislature, charging George W. Bush with impeachable offenses. Now an impeachment resolution has been proposed in the California legislature, that includes not only Bush but Cheney.
When news of this hits Washington, lawyers are going to be scrambling to see if this interpretation of the House rule really works. Republicans in the House are going to be sweating and scrambling to find parliamentary ways of derailing this. And other legislatures are going to be debating articles of impeachment.
All kinds of questions arise.
If nine legislatures pass nine resolutions with different charges against Bush and/or Cheney, does the House have to consider them all? Is there anything like double jeopardy involved in impeachment? Or does that only apply to the Senate, if at all?
At the very least, the back and forth over the rule, and the legislatures vying to be the first to pass such a resolution, will put impeachment before the public in a way that not even a Neil Young song could. This is one of those unexpected and unforeseen possibilities that always seem to arise. In the past, a few good people in the right place at the right time, with the right procedures and rules, saved this Republic. So far it hasn’t looked like it would happen this time. But maybe…
