* xymphora doesnt believe weldon's recantations wrt atta/able danger
* xymphora doesnt believe the plame story
* josh explains why he thinks impeachment is a bad idea:
"The clearest case for impeachment is one in which the president refuses to follow the law and accede to the Congress’s and the court’s oversight powers. The only solution to such a constitutional crisis would be for the Congress to remove the president from office for violating his oath and committing political high crimes.read the rest - i hardly agree with a single thing he says
But that’s just not the case at the moment because Congress has made little if any effort to rein him in. So impeaching him can’t make any sense because the Congress — in the constitutionally indolent hands of the Republican majority — has made no attempt to oversee the president by constitutional means."
3 comments:
Lukery,
I'm sorry if you and I disagree on this, but I think Xymphora is mostly full of hot air. He doesn't know more than any of the rest of us as to what Plame's actual role was. It's nice to speculate but he's passing off his own speculation as fact.
Actually, I think Josh is wrong on substantive grounds. Congress has tried to exercise oversight at various points over various issues, and has continually been stymied by the Bush Administration. At the end of the day, Congress has usually caved because they've been unwilling to take the next step- impeachment.
But more importantly, the question in my mind has said "if it is determined that a President deliberately withheld or gave false and/or misleading information to Congress in order to send the country to war, leading to the deaths and maiming of thousands of people, foreign and domestic, does that constitute an impeachable offense"?
That IS a political decision but I would strongly stand in favor of the proposition that it IS an impeachable offense. Why? Because of Bush is not impeached for this conduct, future Presidents will feel free to do exactly the same thing.
Is Bush the first President to lie the U.S. into war? Absolutely not. Scott Horton has documented pretty well that nearly every American military action since the Revolution has been based on one lie or another. But just because past Presidents were allowed to get away with their lies is not a justification to allow the lying to continue. An argument can be made that with the advent of nuclear weapons, and the threat of total destruction of both sides from war, that NOW is the time to start holding the Executive Power to account on these types of issues.
The other point I'd like to make is a purely political one. It's true that an overzealous impeachment movement could turn off middle america and backfire in the midterm elections. On the other hand, being overzealous has never been one of the Democrats problems. Being overly cautious and passive HAS BEEN and CONTINUES TO BE a problem for the Democrats. So maybe, just maybe, its time for the antiwar movement and Democrats to stop being so timid and start taking a few political risks.
All I know is, if it's Feingold running in the Democratic primary, I'll vote for him in a heartbeat over Clinton or Biden.
One more source to refute Xymphora's contention Plame was just a desk jockey: Judge David Tatel's opinion specifically cited the serious damage that was done to national security. Tatel claimed that otherwise he would not have ruled in favor of Fitzgerald vs. Miller and Cooper.
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