For and Opposed to Impeachment

Here are links to two news stories. Both give the views of Presidential candidates on the matter of the impeachment of George W. Bush.

Nader Calls for Bush-Cheney Impeachment

Obama: Impeachment is not acceptable

Lets review a bit.

The Constitution calls for impeachment upon the commission of high crimes or misdemeanors. Back in high school civics, impeachment is listed as one of the key checks and balances between the branches of government. The writers of the Constitution were afraid of a strong powerful President, and impeachment is one of the mechanisms they put into place to attempt to contain that possibility.

There have been two impeachments in my lifetime, so we've seen the flow of events. The first stage is to have a committee of the House of Representatives hold hearings into whether or not there is evidence worthy of a charge of impeachment. If they say yes, then it moves to the full House which must also say yes. Only then does the case move to the US Senate which holds the actual impeachment trial.

Thus, since the process has not yet been begun, the real question before the nation is whether there exists enough evidence or suspicion of the commission of impeachable crimes that its worth holding hearings to further investigate.

To me, the answer is an obvious yes. Entire books have been written giving the reasons. I'll just list two very quickly. Remember, only one should be needed.

-- The Sec. Gen. of the UN, Kofi Annan, has publically said that the invasion of Iraq was a violation of the UN Charter. The UN Charter is a treaty ratified by the US. The US Constitution says that any such ratified treaty becomes the highest law in the land. We have someone who can be considered an expert on the matter saying that the President violated the highest law in the land. And it is not on a casual matter, but over the matter of starting a war which has killed over 4000 Americans and who knows how many other human beings. Why is this not cause enough to hold hearings to investigate. ( Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan )

-- George W. Bush stood up before the nation and publicly announced he'd been regularly violating the law. He announced he'd been violating the FISA act, and that he intended to continue to do so. Again, this is over a very serious matter, the illegal spying on American citizens in violation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution and federal law. At the time, that statement would seem to be almost certain cause to hold hearings into impeachment. (Instead, the Congress passed a bill granting a retroactive immunity).

Now, lets go to the two candidates:

Impeachment -- Ralph Nader for President
"Volumes can and will be written, about what can go down as the most serious abdication of impeachment responsibilities by a Congress in its history. No other president has committed more systemic, repeated impeachable offenses, with such serious consequences to this country, its people, to Iraq, its people and the security of this nation before, than George W. Bush."

Obama, to the USA Today in the link above
""I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the president's authority," he said."

Wow, makes one wonder what Mr. Obama considers to be 'grave, grave breaches' if an illegal war and illegally spying on Americans don't make the list. 4000+ dead Americans and key Constitutional rights shredded, and this isn't grave?

I wanted to be fair and quote from Mr. Obama's campaign website like I did from Mr. Nader's. But, near as I can tell impeachment isn't an issue at all to the Obama campaign. It doesn't seem to be mentioned.

The key thing to know is that for the last two years, the Democrats have basically been propping up George W. Bush in office. There has been clear evidence of a need to investigate possible impeachable offenses, and the Democrats have blocked that from proceeding.

As members of the US Congress, they all took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. Including Senator Obama. How you feel they've lived up to that oath should be a very important question in the minds of voters.