Josh Marshall, of Talking Points Memo and TPM Muckraker is one of the big boys of the progressive/liberal blogosphere. And he’s done a lot of good work over the years exposing Republican corruption in Congress, the Bush administration and among the cadre of corporate lobbyists and campaign contributors who support the entire “one party rule of fools” apparatus we know as the Republican Party in the Age of Rove. Yet, he’s always been opposed to impeachment, despite the mountain of evidence that the Bush-Cheney regime is a criminal enterprise dedicated to turning the Constitution into so much toilet paper to be used only by the Republicans, as needed.
I’ve never understood Josh’s refusal to consider impeachment in the case of Bush and Cheney. The evidence of a multitude of crimes has been clearly established. Indeed, the President himself confirmed he committed an impeachable offense when he admitted that he had expressly authorized violations of the FISA law.
In fact, the number of scandals to which this administration is a party is greater than I can easily and briefly enumerate. And yet, like Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos and others, Josh has been reluctant to even consider impeachment, for “practical” reasons. He’s always maintained that it would never succeed in the Senate, so why bother. As far as he was concerned, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid were right when they took impeachment “off the table” last Fall. Nothing could make him consider changing his mind — until last night, that is:
(cont.)
As regular readers of this site know, I’ve always been against the movement to impeach President Bush. […]
On balance, this is still my position. But in recent days, for the first time I think, I’ve seen new facts that make me wonder whether the calculus has changed. Or to put it another way, to question whether my position is still justifiable in the face of what’s happening in front of our eyes.
Most of those facts I’m referring to stem from the on-going Gonzales controversy (farce?) and the various running battles over executive privilege. […]
Without going into all the specifics, I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the constitution, acting as though not just the law but the constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn’t apply to them.
If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.
Whether because of prudence and pragmatism or mere intellectual inertia, I still have the same opinion on the big question: impeachment. But I think we’re moving on to dangerous ground right now, more so than some of us realize. And I’m less sure now under these circumstances that operating by rules of ‘normal politics’ is justifiable or acquits us of our duty to our country.
Has all the sounds of a man trying to talk himself into doing what he knows is right, regardless of the political implications, doesn’t it? But honestly, I don’t think all this angst is justified. The Bush administration has always had a policy of usurping power for the Executive Branch, and of weakening the checks and balances established under the Constitution. In essence, it has advocated and sought to implement, whenever it could, a policy of one man rule.
Which is why we are now known as a nation that openly tortures and unlawfully and indefinitely detains people without trial, a nation that openly flouts international conventions and prosecutes wars of aggression in violation of the UN Charter, a country that violates and disavows our treaty obligations whenever its president disapproves of them, a nation which spies on its own citizens and whose rulers ignore the law whenever it proves to be inconvenient to the pursuit of their goals.
In short, we are one step away, and a short step at that, from a de facto dictatorship. Indeed, many contend that we are already operating under a dictatorship, since the president has felt free to ignore federal laws passed by Congress, and to determine unilaterally which provisions of those laws he will or will not direct his subordinates to follow. In effect, over the course of his Presidency, Bush has consistently accumulated and usurped power in and for the the executive branch of the federal government pursuant to a program originally conceived by Vice President Cheney before 9/11 even occurred. Pursuant to that program, he has deliberately disregarded laws, treaties and any restraints on his power set forth in the Constitution, and to date, Congress has turned a blind eye to his many transgressions.
Any way you chose to look at it, we have been on dangerous ground for a very long time. If our republic is to survive as the framers of the Constitution intended, President Bush and Vice president Cheney must be impeached, regardless of any “practical considerations” that one might raise as an objection to that course of action. Indeed, I would argue that to fail to do so is the most “impractical” thing Congress could do, in light of the current situation. Failing to act now may mean that Congress will have lost, irrevocably, the opportunity to reverse these changes to our political system which Bush and Cheney have set in place, changes which have turned Congress into a mere debating society, good for sound bites and appearances on the Sunday talk circuit, but bereft of any power necessary to check the excesses of the Executive Branch.
So don’t be distressed, Josh, by all your agonizing over whether you should jump in the deep end of the impeachment pool with the rest of us. Trust me, the waters fine, and I promise you won’t drown. And you’ll feel a lot better once you take that leap of faith. I guarantee it.
