Will Bush be impeached??

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Darius871


Agreed, but I was under the impression that this entire thread has only been mental masturbation about what might make a working legal case . . .

I started this thread, and I say you're right.

[Ned]

Z, which don't the Dems just go fishing, in the manner of Starr?

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Ned
...I say enough is enough. Impeachment is pure politics as shown by the largely party-line vote in both Nixon's and Clinton's cases.

There never was a vote re Nixon. He resigned when a group of Republicans, headed by Goldwater, told Nixon that he'd lost support of the Republicans.

IIRC, they'd done some nose counting and only 3 senators would not vote to convict.

[Ned]

Z, you are mistaken. The House committee did vote 27-11 to impeach. All 11 no votes were Republican. All 21 Dems voted to impeach. Six Republicans joined.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,879405,00.html?internalid=ACA

Nixon "promptly" resigned.

Also, note that the House was controlled by the Dems so that a full House vote to impeach was ineluctable.

As you said, Goldwater delivered Nixon the news that the Republicans did not have enough votes in the Senate to win.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
Rufus, you got it. SP's are not controllable. What he did was wrong because he hamstrung the adminstration for years with his investigation that essentially became a witch hunt.

Starr was allowed to do so by those who were supposed to be providing oversight. ANY position can be abused if those charged with watching over it fail to do so. One might as well abolish the whole human race if you don't want something because of the potential for abuse.

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Starr was allowed to do so by those who were supposed to be providing oversight. ANY position can be abused if those charged with watching over it fail to do so. One might as well abolish the whole human race if you don't want something because of the potential for abuse.

Che, assuming for the moment that communism was a threat to America, were the Army/McCarthy hearings justified?

[chequita guevara]

Since some people commit insurance fraud, should insurance be abolished, Ned? Since some police abuse their power, should the police be abolished, Ned? Since some pastors are really crooks, should Christianity be abolished, Ned? Since Starr was allowed to run amok, the special investigator should be abolished, Ned?

[Ned]

Starr proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that SP's, controllable only by courts, can conduct witch hunts.

But, my point is that congressional committees can as well.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Ned
Starr proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that SP's, controllable only by courts, can conduct witch hunts.

But, my point is that congressional committees can as well.

Of course they can, as your examply of McCartyism showed (I only left it off because it wasn't germaine to the point I was making).

But -- and Che has already made this point -- the fact that a power can be abused is no reason to eliminate that power. (One more to Che's litany: shall we remove Commander in Chief powers from the president? It's certainly a power that's been abused, over and over.) It is the reason to check that power.

Frankly, the last 6 years have been the worst six years of any presidency in living memory. The reason is precisely that nobody has been "hamstringing" -- that is, exercising a Constitutional duty to check and balance -- the tinpot authoritarians in the White House. It's about time someone did.

[Ned]

How do you check an independent prosecutor except through the courts? As we have seen, such a check is no check whatsoever.

McCarthyism is a word in the English language for a reason. Congressional committees can go on witch hunts and abuse their power beyond all reason and restraint. The Watergate joint committee was just one such out-of-control committee that was out to get the president even though it began for an entirely different purpose. They were hoping to pin Watergate on the president. In this they failed. What they found, to their surprise, was a Nixon request to use the FBI and CIA to derail any investigation into his administration during the election campaign. That order was not even carried out. But they gave immunity to the guy who was the mastermind and central operator of not only the actual coverup but of the Watergate burglary itself, bag man John Dean. Dean lied like crazy trying to implicate everyone but himself, and his testimony did a lot of harm to many honorable people, including Nixon. The real reason for Watergate and Dean's coverup was to protect Dean. He was trying to get records that would tie his wife-to-be to a DNC call-girl ring.

Today, John Dean is a hero to the left, and a well paid consultant to leftist TV programs. Why? Because he tried to implicate Nixon. What kind of honor is this? Dean is the man who should be vilified for abuse of power as he abused it mightily while in power and lied repeatedly under oath.

Iran Contra was also such a witch hunt. It's whole purpose was to get Reagan. They gave North immunity, for gods sake. But it was North who was the renegade, not Reagan.

I smell another witch hunt brewing. It is fueled by partisan anger and not by any true effort to protect the republic from any abuse of power by the president. If they can find another Dean, they will be off to the races. Perhaps their man is the ex-CIA director who might just be convinced to lie like Dean did in '73 about the president.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Ned
Starr proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that SP's, controllable only by courts, can conduct witch hunts.

But, my point is that congressional committees can as well.

I find this amusing since you'd be defending McCarthy tooth and nail in any other thread's context.

[Ned]

Am I? I think I was attacking Ike.

The biggest problem with McCarthyism is that it went way beyond any proper investigation into communist subversion, but extended to include anyone who expressed or held leftist views. This plainly violated the spirit if not the letter of our ideas of free speech.

[Arrian]

it was North who was the renegade, not Reagan.

Right, Reagan knew nothing. Sure.

I'm inclined to agree with Rufus, but of course I think it would be politically damaging to the Dems for them to go down that road.

-Arrian

[Ned]

Arrian, you have no proof otherwise, do you?

[Arrian]

Of course not - it's unproveable, which means it comes down to a question of what is more plausible, given what information exists.

In this case, I find it extremely difficult to believe that Reagan didn't know about Iran-Contra. I find it implausible. I cannot, however, prove it.

-Arrian