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JandP

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Let us end the nightmare

The impeachment of George W. Bush must come out of the House of Representatives. Why has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi consistently brushed impeachment aside? Concern about distressing the American people makes no sense; impeachment, followed by conviction in the Senate, would remove from power the very man who has been distressing the nation and the world since March 19, 2003.

Impeachment of course is as old and sacrosanct as our Constitution; it is our representatives' response to "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." The high crimes here are the illegal invasion of Iraq (including the lies about WMD, the discarding of the Geneva convention on torture, secret detentions, and the denial of Habeas Corpus) and the illegal spying on U.S. citizens. (This, my friends, is the short list.)

Of course it would make more sense to impeach Dick Cheney first, but that would probably be more difficult, since he could be considered as merely advising Bush, who made the final decisions.

A mere handful of House members have joined Dennis Kucinich in calling for impeachment. The US public is way ahead on this; according to a survey last month by the American Research Group, 45% want to impeach Bush and 54% want to impeach Cheney. Those percentages are almost certain to grow as congressional investigations continue and the spin-generated fog continues to diminish.

Get to it, Nancy and colleagues. Let us end the nightmare.