Impeach??

I'd like to see a jail cell in this kinglet's future, so, now that's out of the way.

It is political suicide to bring impeachment and not sustain it, the voters won't stand for it. That makes the first question on the issue, are there the votes to sustain an impeachment? I am not sufficiently a Constitutional scholar to say with any certainty that GWB didn't give himself enough legal cover and deniability to avoid a sustainment. Could an impeachement at six years have enough time to dig through all the garbage? The Clinton impeachment proved that the public doesn't support such action without being convinced that the issues are serious. Yes, I'm convinced that the issues are real serious, but I'm not the public. People who take time to cruise political blogs aren't the public. Politicians had better understand the public (uh 11/7/06).

Is impeachment in the public interest? I'd certainly agree that dissuading future kinglets is in the public interest and that persuading the governors and governed that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not optional would be a public service but I'm also positive that we now face a very real socio-economic and diplomatic mess that has got to be cleaned up very quickly. The resulting impacts of dealing with this mess will take time to be felt and they need to be having effect as soon as possible. An impeachment will freeze Congress in place and energize the White House and its Congressional syncophants in opposition to any actions.

Before we take a run off a very high place let's remember that the Republicans got fired, not that the Democrats were hired and the margins were razor thin in a lot of places. I know the actual numbers are encouraging over-all, but quite simply, the election process is what we have to work with. It is easy enough to see how putting a legislative agenda into action might be more politically rewarding than impeaching if the goal is to make a change to the landscape of American life. The crap legislation that the Bushites have put in place can be changed, it might require a new President, a Democrat or (if such a thing exists) a reasonable Republican or it might be possible with George II with the proper ballbat in hand.

Oversight hearings and some snooping in general might bring to light compelling uncovered actions by Bush and Cheney, in which case impeachment might be the absolutely neccesary action. These secretive furtive weasles will have gotten as good advice as possible for coverage and will have hidden, as much as they could, the dirty laundry, so make no big bets on it.

I have three priorities regarding government: 1) The Constitution, 2) the well being of the public, 3) Democratic politics and in that order. I'd argue that 2&3 are inclusive but that requires vigilence. The Constitution is consistently at risk; every power group has hobby-horses to ride and finds Constitutional obstructions to be "archaic" or "irrelevant." If impeachment serves these priorities in their order, I'm all for it, otherwise it's thin ice.