Doonesbury, Dennis and Dick
by
Dave Lindorff
Impeachment has finally made it into the mainstream press, but it’s taken a cartoonist to do it. Gary Trudeau, over the past few days, has been running talk of impeachment in his “Doonsbury†comic strip (
check it out).
There does, in these two moves, and in the ongoing campaign
for impeachment resolutions in state houses and town halls across the
country, seem to be a growing groundswell for impeachment. So far,
aside from Kucinich, there is little evidence of this in Congress,
where the word “impeachment†has the same effect upon Democratic Party
leaders as a crucifix on a vampire.
And yet…
The Bush administration seems hell-bent on testing Congress’s limits:
*
The federal prosecutor firings, which would probably have disappeared
as an issue by now had the administration simply dumped Attorney
General Alberto Gonzalez a month ago, is mushrooming into a giant
political scandal, replete with suspiciously deleted emails, lies, an
admission of guilt by a Gonzales aide who has said she would “take the
Fifth†if ordered to testify, and evidence that other prosecutors may
have engaged in politically-motivated prosecutions in order to keep
their jobs. This could easily turn into an impeachment bill against the
president.
* The president’s continued instransigence regarding
continued funding for his splendid little war in Iraq is infuriating
the American public, which in turn is pressuring a reluctant Congress
to take an increasingly hard line on setting a deadline for withdrawal.
Again, as Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) has opined, at some point Bush’s
refusal to acknowledge that Americans have given up on the Iraq War and
just want the troops home, could lead to impeachment as a remedy.
*
The president is seeking a rewriting of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act to grant him a freer hand in spying on domestic phone
and internet use without the need to obtain a court order—all at a time
that the public is growing increasingly uneasy about the erosion of
civil liberties protections since 2001. Here’s an issue that unites
left and right and that could lead to impeachment, particularly as a
federal judge has already declared the president to be a felon for
repeatedly violating FISA.
There is certainly no shortage of
reasons to impeach this president. All that is lacking is member of the
House with enough sense of duty (members of Congress are all sworn to
uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and
domestic) to submit a bill. Then the members of the House will have to
stand and be counted on the crucial issue of whether they stand for the
rule of law and the survival of the Constitution, or are just hack
politicians trying to ride through the next election.
With cartoonists and Dennis Kucinich leading the way, we may yet get to see that challenge laid down.
We may yet see this president impeached.
Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several
recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of
American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death
Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with
Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument
for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press,
May 2006). His writing is available at:
