Lars
December 24th, 2005, 17:09
I found this excerpt in today's Barron's, on the editorial page, and it is not good news for George W. Bush. When this publication, a bastion of business oriented conservatism start to call for the impeachment and removal from office of this president, he is in deep trouble.
AS THE YEAR WAS DRAWING TO A CLOSE, we picked up our New York Times and learned that the Bush administration has been fighting terrorism by intercepting communications in America without warrants. It was worrisome on its face, but in justifying their actions, officials have made a bad situation much worse: Administration lawyers and the president himself have tortured the Constitution and extracted a suspension of the separation of powers.
. . .
Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.
It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.
Published reports quote sources saying that 14 members of Congress were notified of the wiretapping. If some had misgivings, apparently they were scared of being called names, as the president did last week when he said: "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."
Wrong. If we don't discuss the program and the lack of authority for it, we are meeting the enemy -- in the mirror.
I am relieved that there are some principled conservatives who are now starting to wake up to what many of us have been claiming for quite some time and that is that this administration, led by GWB, is a clear and present danger to the hard won civil liberties of this nation.
Now it becomes a matter of seing how many principled congressmen can be found in the GOP. They did once when they had to confront the crimes by Richard Nixon, forcing him to resign. If they think this is going away, they are deluding themselves and this will be the biggest issue in the next election.
Every totalitarian regime in history used outside "enemies" to take increasing power and using that as an excuse. This administration has already started down that slippery slope and it is high time to make them cease and desist and it may require the removal from office to accomplish that.
AS THE YEAR WAS DRAWING TO A CLOSE, we picked up our New York Times and learned that the Bush administration has been fighting terrorism by intercepting communications in America without warrants. It was worrisome on its face, but in justifying their actions, officials have made a bad situation much worse: Administration lawyers and the president himself have tortured the Constitution and extracted a suspension of the separation of powers.
. . .
Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.
It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.
Published reports quote sources saying that 14 members of Congress were notified of the wiretapping. If some had misgivings, apparently they were scared of being called names, as the president did last week when he said: "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."
Wrong. If we don't discuss the program and the lack of authority for it, we are meeting the enemy -- in the mirror.
I am relieved that there are some principled conservatives who are now starting to wake up to what many of us have been claiming for quite some time and that is that this administration, led by GWB, is a clear and present danger to the hard won civil liberties of this nation.
Now it becomes a matter of seing how many principled congressmen can be found in the GOP. They did once when they had to confront the crimes by Richard Nixon, forcing him to resign. If they think this is going away, they are deluding themselves and this will be the biggest issue in the next election.
Every totalitarian regime in history used outside "enemies" to take increasing power and using that as an excuse. This administration has already started down that slippery slope and it is high time to make them cease and desist and it may require the removal from office to accomplish that.