Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Index: Impeachment

Suddenly, it seems that everyone's talking (on the left, anyway; I particularly like this one, and this roundup) about "the I-word" in relation to the administration's admission that it couldn't care less about the law (that's why they have lawyers: to find loopholes, or the appearance of loopholes, that will allow their allies who control Congress to talk their way out of investigating or impeaching anyone), at least there's a prima facie case that the President is not only violating the rights of Americans but, and this is more likely to get him impeached, ignoring the will of Congress.

Well, this is as good a time as any to make an index page for my own Articles of Impeachment. After all, some of us have been on the case for a while now:

9 April 2011: The Most Comprehensive List of Scandals and Legal Violations.
16 March 2009: Torture.
25 January 2009: Vanity Fair: An Oral History of the Bush White House
2 June 2008: Fundamental and deliberate malfeasance in military affairs (see also here)
14 March 2008: Interfering in regulatory process
4 March 2007: GreyHawk's "short list" of impeachable offenses and a pointed call to both parties' representatives in Congress.
23 January 2007: reckless disregard for the lives and health of US service personnel and first responders, not to mention the rest of us.
1 December 2006: Elizabeth de la Vega's indictment of top administration officials, up to and including the President, on charges of conspiracy to defraud
26 November 2006: Petition outlining ten charges against the President and Vice President.
14 September 2006: Counterpunch Roundup of criminal acts by Administration
8 September 2006: For militarizing, privatizing and "reorganizing" functional government agencies to create disastrous incompetence.
24 May 2006: An excellent review of historical issues relating to impeachment, pointing out the political dynamics of the process
9 April 2006: Plame Leak Damaged National Security and Signing Statements are UnConstitutional. That's my take, anyway.
14 March 2006: Dan Savage's ITMFA (Impeach the M-F Alread) site is up, but all it has so far is attitude and logo stuff. With luck, his readership will provide him with content soon.
7 March 2006: Juan Cole's Top Ten list isn't very impeachable, but Bush-Blair conspiracy, interfering with the military and unspeakable torture should be.
11 August 2005: Speculation about indictments from the Plame leak
6 May 2005: of course, misusing intelligence data to defraud Congress and the American people into a war is the ultimate high crime.
7 April 2005: threatening the fiscal soundness of the government

Do you think President Bush hasn't considered his culpability and legal exposure? Of course he has. The one thing that all his Supreme Court nominees have had in common is extreme deference to presidential authority; it's a defensive strategy.

And there's already some preemptive talking points out there, pointing out things done by previous (i.e. Democratic) presidents which didn't result in impeachment (though other lesser things did, under Republican dominated Congress, so what gives?). But it's possible to really discuss impeachment with even hardcore Republicans, and it's worth it.

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