None of what you put in there rises to the level of impeachment.
Hardly. But perhaps you'd prefer these: the wholesale violation of FISA laws and the 4th Amendment with the NSA wiretapping. The wholesale violations of the 5th Amendment with waterboarding and their other "enhanced interrogation techniques." Suspending habeas corpus when there has been no invasion or rebellion (yes, Congress is complicit in this as well with the MCA). Ignoring due process by keeping American citizens in jail without a hearing or trial. Then there's Bush's "signing statements" in which he ignores any parts of a bill he doesn't like. Sorry George, if you don't like the legislation, your only option is a veto.
There is little proof available that Bush or Cheney had anything to do with Valerie Plame
Bush, no, Cheney, yes. Speaking of, Plame's job was ensuring that Iran did not obtain nuclear weapons. If Iran is considered our enemy, "axis of evil" and all that, outing her was also giving "aid and comfort to the enemy." Which makes them guilty of treason as well.
technically there was nothing illegal about the firings of the US attorneys
Firing, no, that's not illegal. Using government agencies for partisan purposes, yes, that's illegal.
Any of these actions is more than enough grounds to impeach, let alone all of them put together, and I'm probably forgetting a few things. Furthermore, the president and every senator and representative has taken an oath of office where they promise to defend the Constitution. If Congress doesn't stop Bush's violations, by impeachment if necessary, they are breaking those oaths.
Israel can complain about terrorism when they stop engaging in it themselves, return to 1967 borders and grant refugees the Right of Return. Until then, they have zero legitimacy and zero right to complain.
Let one President get away with perjury, witness tampering, obstruction of justice and subornation of perjury then just look at what the next one does.
Yes, the largely centrist American populace just can't wait for more senseless partisan bickering.
Funny, Americans didn't see holding Duke Cunningham et all accountable for corruption and law breaking "senseless partisan bickering." If we DON'T impeach Bush and Cheney it means our system is broken, and they got away with their raping of the Constitution.
I mean, for God's sake, listen to the venom over the children's health care thing. Both sides wanted to INCREASE funding, and they got into a big argument over by how much rather than just coming to some compromise.
No, the problem was that Republicans just don't like helping anyone, unless it's corporate welfare. Yes, some members of the GOP did vote to override Bush's veto, showing their strong convictions in backing something favored by 80% of the American people.
Also, if you look at the approval numbers, until shortly before the election, Bush was in the dumps. He recovered only within weeks of the election and then fell off quickly again. This wasn't Bush support, it was some last minute PR wizardry.
The PR was passing out hatorade on gays under the cover of "protecting marriage". Which is funny, since the states with the worst divorce rates are heavily Republican, and the state with the best divorce rate is...Massachusetts.
One of the few propositions on which Bush supporters and critics agree is that George Bush does not change and has not changed at all over the last six years. He is exactly the same.
And none of the supposed grounds for conservative discontent -- especially Bush's immigration position -- is even remotely new.
If Bush isn't conservative now, he wasn't conservative in 2004 or 2000 either. And yet conservatives backed him 110% right up until he started hurting their electoral chances.
There is really only one thing that has changed about George W. Bush from the 2002-2004 era when conservatives hailed him as the Great Conservative Leader, and now. Whereas Bush was a wildly popular leader then, which made conservatives eager to claim him as their Standard-Bearer, he is now one of the most despised presidents in U.S. history, and conservatives are thus desperate to disassociate themselves from the President for whom they are solely responsible. It is painfully obvious there is nothing noble, substantive or principled driving this right-wing outburst; it is a pure act of self-preservation.
The conservative movement tied itself to Bush as tightly and loyally as possible for years when they perceived that Bush was a wildly popular president who would bring glory to "conservatives," and that their movement would receive credit for the heroic and powerful Bush. When he was popular, they depicted him as the Embodiment of Pure Conservatism. That's just undeniable, historical fact.
The newfound storyline that Bush's failure is attributed to the fact that he was never really a conservative (and, all along, was really liberal) -- and that movement conservatives are thus his disappointed and betrayed victims -- is pure fiction, the most transparent form of revisionism.
Digby:
"Conservative" is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives' good graces. Until they aren't. At which point they are liberals.
George W. Bush will not achieve a place in the Republican pantheon. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal.)
The problem isn't just Bush. The problem is that the conservative movement has completely, utterly failed America.
Yeah because the Democratic candidates want to have to respond to their Republican opponents saying "Oh we were so close to winning in Iraq, but those lousy good for nothing Democrats stopped us."
To which the Dem response would be: "yeah, you said the exact same thing during Vietnam, and then you got another 20,000 Americans killed."
Yeah I know, sometimes doing the right thing means losing your job, but I doubt any Democrat has enough backbone to end their political career by doing what is right.
That's why their current strategy of "if we can't override his veto, we'll just vote for what he wants anyway" doesn't make any sense. If they are principled, they would block the legislation. If they are simply looking out for their own political skins, they'd force the GOP to take 100% ownership of the mess in Iraq and drive them into electoral relevancy. They do neither. Idiots.
That's why they were idiots to back Lieberman instead of Lamont last year. They already knew Lieberman was a backstabber, yet they applauded him when he re-entered the Senate. Idiots.
To cut off funding entirely and walk away invites disaster -- immense bloodshed and the likely rise of another totalitarian state.
Iraq is already in a bloody civil war and a sectarian theocracy is already likely. We either need to send in another 400,000 troops to pacify the violence - and that's just for the city of Baghdad - or pull out completely. The current half-assed situation isn't stopping the violence, it's only getting our troops killed in the violence.
Everyone knows (but no-one wants to say) that as bad as things are in Iraq, things would be even worse if we leave--including us.
If we really want to this whole occupation thing, we need about 500,000 troops to stop the violence and pacify the area. And that's just for the city of Baghdad. With our light force, we aren't stopping the violence, only getting more of our troops killed and saddling our kids with trillions in new debt. The worst option is saying the course - we need to pull out completely or find another 400,000 troops to send in.
They want Bush to pull out the troops so the failure becomes his problem.
That's why their current strategy makes no sense - by voting to fund the war, Democrats are taking part ownership of it. Republicans will say the Democrats are also to blame for the Iraq debacle, just as they were for Vietnam. And they'll be right. The other thing their M.O. lets Republicans do is play the "I've always been a critic of the Administration's handling of the war" while voting to back them every step of the way. If the Dems can't muster 41 votes to block funding in the Senate, they could at least all vote no and let Republicans take complete ownership of Iraq. But they don't. Because they are spineless and stupid.
That's a (lame) Fox Noise talking point. Defunding the war means ending the war and bringing the troops home, not leaving them stranded with dwindling gas and bullets. And the response to the "stubbed toe" is to ask why this toe is suddenly sacrosanct, but the previous 4,000 American lives were expendable?
Or because they overthrew our popular, peacefully elected president in 1953 and then backed Iraq when they invaded us, killing a million Americans? Oh, wait, we did that to them.
One got a BJ and lied about it. The other created programs to illegally spy on US citizens, lied about Iraq intelligence propelling us into a war even Cheney admitted we couldn't win, outed a CIA operative (that's treason, BTW), authorized use of torture, illegally imprisoned "enemy combatants" without cause and without due process, and more.
Because impeachment proceedings would turn the United States Congress into a circus yet again, except this time it would be the Democrats' fault for letting it happen.
Interesting how Bush and Cheney's massive lawbreaking is the Democrats fault.
Congress has yet to successfully pass an appropriations bill this year, and it's already November.
Because Bush vetoes or threatens to veto legislation, and the "upordownvote" Republicans keep pushing hypocrisy to new heights by shattering all records on blocking legislation through cloture votes.
Miring the Senate down in impeachment proceedings is the last thing the Democrats need
No. The country needs this, or the rule of law is a bad, sad, joke.
You see, the Republicans supported Kucinich's latest hail mary because they know it would be an embaressment to the Democrats.
Bullshit. Failing to hold the most incompetent and corrupt Administration in history to an iota of accountability is what is the embarrassment. Seriously, just WTF does Bush have to do for Republicans and the Beltway mindset to get on board? Eat babies on the White House lawn?
What I am saying is that, while not a fan of either Bush or Cheney, I do not believe that their provable actions at this time rise to the level of impeachment and removal from office.
Some fraction of them died. Now W's corpses are pretty easy to identify, while Slicks' were not. If you are wondering about the Slick and Al lies I was referring too, it was the War on the West, mining and logging were hammered badly to please environmentalist voters. I was on the pointy end of that stick. It wasn't pretty. It took until last year to get back to my 1994 income, even though I went back to school for a doctorate.
Yawn. And just how many miners and loggers perished due to environmental restrictions, exactly? Speaking of, tough shit. The rest of us have to live here too, and don't want to suffer polluted water and bare mountains just so you can make a quick buck.
No, you don't. But why are you quibbling about breaking laws (which they have done: see Plame, FISA, using gvt services for partisan gain) when they've broken Amendments?
Clinton was impeached because he lied under oath
No, he wasn't, and no, he didn't. The Republicans impeached him because they wanted to impeach him, just as Bush invaded Iraq because he wanted to invade Iraq. And Clinton did not lie because in the trial, "sexual relations" was defined as intercourse. As blow jobs are not intercourse, he did not lie.
that's called perjury and it's illegal.
Wrong again. At least your are consistent. Even if he did lie, a lie is only perjury if it is relevant to the case at hand. As the judge ruled that whatever happened between Bill and Monica was irrelevant to the Jones case, it was not perjury.
Besides, if we investigated and re-investigated every inch of Bush's life the way Congress did Clinton, and gave a judge $60 million to investigate him yet again, I bet we could do just a little better than a manufactured perjury charge.
60 Minutes had a piece on Rafid Ahmed Alwan (aka Curveball) that provided the WMD information to the Europians and our CIA. Turned out in short, he lied so he could stay out of Iraq. Yes folks, he conned the CIA whome provided bogus information to the Executive branch.
No dice. They had plenty of other, more reputable, intelligence that said most emphatically that Saddam did not have WMD's.
No, it's quite easy. 1) impeach and convict Cheney. 2) impeach and convict Bush before voting to confirm Cheney's replacement as VP. 3) President Pelosi names an independent as VP, then resigns to end any question about the Dems doing this as a power grab.
And reality catches up to bullshit neocon propaganda: there were multiple leakers, not just Armitage, as your own link points out, and the fact that the members of the press they contacted had a modicum more professionalism than Novak in no way absolves them of responsibility. Focusing on the "primary" leaker is just another pathetic attempt at misdirection.
for it to no longer be IOKIYAR? Getting close to killing more than three times as many Americans killed as Osama bin Laddin? Nope, he's done that already: 911 + Katrina + Afghanistan + Iraq. Making a mockery of the Bill of Rights? Outing a covert CIA operative in a fit of pique? Turning the Department of Justice into the Department of Help Get Republicans Elected? How about apologizing to communists for an air crash clearly caused by their pilot? Putting a gay prostitute into the White House press corpse to ask softball questions during press conferences? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
So just what the hell does Bush have to do for guys to finally turn on him? Change his party affiliation and get it on with an intern?
Slashdot Mirror
None of what you put in there rises to the level of impeachment.
Hardly. But perhaps you'd prefer these: the wholesale violation of FISA laws and the 4th Amendment with the NSA wiretapping. The wholesale violations of the 5th Amendment with waterboarding and their other "enhanced interrogation techniques." Suspending habeas corpus when there has been no invasion or rebellion (yes, Congress is complicit in this as well with the MCA). Ignoring due process by keeping American citizens in jail without a hearing or trial. Then there's Bush's "signing statements" in which he ignores any parts of a bill he doesn't like. Sorry George, if you don't like the legislation, your only option is a veto.
There is little proof available that Bush or Cheney had anything to do with Valerie Plame
Bush, no, Cheney, yes. Speaking of, Plame's job was ensuring that Iran did not obtain nuclear weapons. If Iran is considered our enemy, "axis of evil" and all that, outing her was also giving "aid and comfort to the enemy." Which makes them guilty of treason as well.
technically there was nothing illegal about the firings of the US attorneys
Firing, no, that's not illegal. Using government agencies for partisan purposes, yes, that's illegal.
Any of these actions is more than enough grounds to impeach, let alone all of them put together, and I'm probably forgetting a few things. Furthermore, the president and every senator and representative has taken an oath of office where they promise to defend the Constitution. If Congress doesn't stop Bush's violations, by impeachment if necessary, they are breaking those oaths.
Israel can complain about terrorism when they stop engaging in it themselves, return to 1967 borders and grant refugees the Right of Return. Until then, they have zero legitimacy and zero right to complain.
Let one President get away with perjury, witness tampering, obstruction of justice and subornation of perjury then just look at what the next one does.
Too bad Clinton didn't actually do any of those.
Kucinich (who is an extreme liberal)
You want extreme, you need to visit North Korea. Kucinich only looks extreme compared to the fascist wing of the Republican Party.
Yes, the largely centrist American populace just can't wait for more senseless partisan bickering.
Funny, Americans didn't see holding Duke Cunningham et all accountable for corruption and law breaking "senseless partisan bickering." If we DON'T impeach Bush and Cheney it means our system is broken, and they got away with their raping of the Constitution.
I mean, for God's sake, listen to the venom over the children's health care thing. Both sides wanted to INCREASE funding, and they got into a big argument over by how much rather than just coming to some compromise.
No, the problem was that Republicans just don't like helping anyone, unless it's corporate welfare. Yes, some members of the GOP did vote to override Bush's veto, showing their strong convictions in backing something favored by 80% of the American people.
Also, if you look at the approval numbers, until shortly before the election, Bush was in the dumps. He recovered only within weeks of the election and then fell off quickly again. This wasn't Bush support, it was some last minute PR wizardry.
The PR was passing out hatorade on gays under the cover of "protecting marriage". Which is funny, since the states with the worst divorce rates are heavily Republican, and the state with the best divorce rate is...Massachusetts.
Bullshit. Money quotes:If Bush isn't conservative now, he wasn't conservative in 2004 or 2000 either. And yet conservatives backed him 110% right up until he started hurting their electoral chances.Digby:The problem isn't just Bush. The problem is that the conservative movement has completely, utterly failed America.
Yeah because the Democratic candidates want to have to respond to their Republican opponents saying "Oh we were so close to winning in Iraq, but those lousy good for nothing Democrats stopped us."
To which the Dem response would be: "yeah, you said the exact same thing during Vietnam, and then you got another 20,000 Americans killed."
Yeah I know, sometimes doing the right thing means losing your job, but I doubt any Democrat has enough backbone to end their political career by doing what is right.
That's why their current strategy of "if we can't override his veto, we'll just vote for what he wants anyway" doesn't make any sense. If they are principled, they would block the legislation. If they are simply looking out for their own political skins, they'd force the GOP to take 100% ownership of the mess in Iraq and drive them into electoral relevancy. They do neither. Idiots.
That's why they were idiots to back Lieberman instead of Lamont last year. They already knew Lieberman was a backstabber, yet they applauded him when he re-entered the Senate. Idiots.
To cut off funding entirely and walk away invites disaster -- immense bloodshed and the likely rise of another totalitarian state.
Iraq is already in a bloody civil war and a sectarian theocracy is already likely. We either need to send in another 400,000 troops to pacify the violence - and that's just for the city of Baghdad - or pull out completely. The current half-assed situation isn't stopping the violence, it's only getting our troops killed in the violence.
Dropped the ball? They put bills in front of Bush which he vetoes. In this case, there's nothing that Congress can do but override
Not true. They can block any bill that doesn't include a hard withdrawl date, and they only need 41 votes in the Senate to do it.
Everyone knows (but no-one wants to say) that as bad as things are in Iraq, things would be even worse if we leave--including us.
If we really want to this whole occupation thing, we need about 500,000 troops to stop the violence and pacify the area. And that's just for the city of Baghdad. With our light force, we aren't stopping the violence, only getting more of our troops killed and saddling our kids with trillions in new debt. The worst option is saying the course - we need to pull out completely or find another 400,000 troops to send in.
They want Bush to pull out the troops so the failure becomes his problem.
That's why their current strategy makes no sense - by voting to fund the war, Democrats are taking part ownership of it. Republicans will say the Democrats are also to blame for the Iraq debacle, just as they were for Vietnam. And they'll be right. The other thing their M.O. lets Republicans do is play the "I've always been a critic of the Administration's handling of the war" while voting to back them every step of the way. If the Dems can't muster 41 votes to block funding in the Senate, they could at least all vote no and let Republicans take complete ownership of Iraq. But they don't. Because they are spineless and stupid.
That's a (lame) Fox Noise talking point. Defunding the war means ending the war and bringing the troops home, not leaving them stranded with dwindling gas and bullets. And the response to the "stubbed toe" is to ask why this toe is suddenly sacrosanct, but the previous 4,000 American lives were expendable?
Or as one political cartoon put it: we'll stand up and pretend to fight back harder than we've ever pretended before!
I'd rather we were in Iran than Iraq. Iran actually deserves it.
Based on what, exactly? Ahmadinejad's statements on Israel that were willfully mistranslated by the media? Or his statements on nuclear energy that were willfully mistranslated by the media?
Or because they overthrew our popular, peacefully elected president in 1953 and then backed Iraq when they invaded us, killing a million Americans? Oh, wait, we did that to them.
How do you figure this:
One got a BJ and lied about it. The other created programs to illegally spy on US citizens, lied about Iraq intelligence propelling us into a war even Cheney admitted we couldn't win, outed a CIA operative (that's treason, BTW), authorized use of torture, illegally imprisoned "enemy combatants" without cause and without due process, and more.
And this:
Clinton likely did more worthy of impeachment
exactly?
Because impeachment proceedings would turn the United States Congress into a circus yet again, except this time it would be the Democrats' fault for letting it happen.
Interesting how Bush and Cheney's massive lawbreaking is the Democrats fault.
Congress has yet to successfully pass an appropriations bill this year, and it's already November.
Because Bush vetoes or threatens to veto legislation, and the "upordownvote" Republicans keep pushing hypocrisy to new heights by shattering all records on blocking legislation through cloture votes.
Miring the Senate down in impeachment proceedings is the last thing the Democrats need
No. The country needs this, or the rule of law is a bad, sad, joke.
You see, the Republicans supported Kucinich's latest hail mary because they know it would be an embaressment to the Democrats.
Bullshit. Failing to hold the most incompetent and corrupt Administration in history to an iota of accountability is what is the embarrassment. Seriously, just WTF does Bush have to do for Republicans and the Beltway mindset to get on board? Eat babies on the White House lawn?
What I am saying is that, while not a fan of either Bush or Cheney, I do not believe that their provable actions at this time rise to the level of impeachment and removal from office.
What would, exactly?
Slick DID lie under oath
As I pointed out to another poster, no he didn't.
Some fraction of them died. Now W's corpses are pretty easy to identify, while Slicks' were not. If you are wondering about the Slick and Al lies I was referring too, it was the War on the West, mining and logging were hammered badly to please environmentalist voters. I was on the pointy end of that stick. It wasn't pretty. It took until last year to get back to my 1994 income, even though I went back to school for a doctorate.
Yawn. And just how many miners and loggers perished due to environmental restrictions, exactly? Speaking of, tough shit. The rest of us have to live here too, and don't want to suffer polluted water and bare mountains just so you can make a quick buck.
To be impeached you have to break the law.
No, you don't. But why are you quibbling about breaking laws (which they have done: see Plame, FISA, using gvt services for partisan gain) when they've broken Amendments?
Clinton was impeached because he lied under oath
No, he wasn't, and no, he didn't. The Republicans impeached him because they wanted to impeach him, just as Bush invaded Iraq because he wanted to invade Iraq. And Clinton did not lie because in the trial, "sexual relations" was defined as intercourse. As blow jobs are not intercourse, he did not lie.
that's called perjury and it's illegal.
Wrong again. At least your are consistent. Even if he did lie, a lie is only perjury if it is relevant to the case at hand. As the judge ruled that whatever happened between Bill and Monica was irrelevant to the Jones case, it was not perjury.
Besides, if we investigated and re-investigated every inch of Bush's life the way Congress did Clinton, and gave a judge $60 million to investigate him yet again, I bet we could do just a little better than a manufactured perjury charge.
60 Minutes had a piece on Rafid Ahmed Alwan (aka Curveball) that provided the WMD information to the Europians and our CIA. Turned out in short, he lied so he could stay out of Iraq. Yes folks, he conned the CIA whome provided bogus information to the Executive branch.
No dice. They had plenty of other, more reputable, intelligence that said most emphatically that Saddam did not have WMD's.
No, it's quite easy. 1) impeach and convict Cheney. 2) impeach and convict Bush before voting to confirm Cheney's replacement as VP. 3) President Pelosi names an independent as VP, then resigns to end any question about the Dems doing this as a power grab.
Time to catch up with reality.
And reality catches up to bullshit neocon propaganda: there were multiple leakers, not just Armitage, as your own link points out, and the fact that the members of the press they contacted had a modicum more professionalism than Novak in no way absolves them of responsibility. Focusing on the "primary" leaker is just another pathetic attempt at misdirection.
for it to no longer be IOKIYAR? Getting close to killing more than three times as many Americans killed as Osama bin Laddin? Nope, he's done that already: 911 + Katrina + Afghanistan + Iraq. Making a mockery of the Bill of Rights? Outing a covert CIA operative in a fit of pique? Turning the Department of Justice into the Department of Help Get Republicans Elected? How about apologizing to communists for an air crash clearly caused by their pilot? Putting a gay prostitute into the White House press corpse to ask softball questions during press conferences? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
So just what the hell does Bush have to do for guys to finally turn on him? Change his party affiliation and get it on with an intern?