Impeaching Bush, State by State

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[Zepps_News] Derkacz | Impeaching Bush, State by State

 

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042706P.shtml

 

Impeaching Bush, State by State

By Evan Derkacz

AlterNet

 

Wednesday 26 April 2006

 

Taking advantage of " Jefferson's Revenge, " state legislatures have

brought impeachment much closer to reality.

 

Forget bird flu, impeachment is spreading across the nation, state by

state.

 

On Tuesday afternoon, Rep. Dave Zuckerman (Prog.-VT) dropped the third

of three nearly unreported bombshells on the Bush administration.

Zuckerman, along with 12 fellow lawmakers, introduced a formal

resolution for the Vermont state legislature to call on the U.S. House

of Representatives to impeach President George W. Bush.

 

With this resolution, Vermont joined the California and Illinois state

legislatures, already embroiled in impeachment debates of their own.

 

For those who still believe impeachment's just a pipe dream, there are

several key developments to consider beyond this burgeoning state

movement. In addition to the hawkish Zbigniew Brzezinski's op-ed in

Tuesday's International Herald Tribune warning that an attack on Iran

could merit impeachment, Salon's Michelle Goldberg and my colleague

Onnesha Roychoudhuri both noted last month that the " i-word " had gone

public.

 

In an interview with impeachment expert Michael Ratner, Roychoudhuri

observed that:

 

[T]he distant rumbling is growing louder by the day, creating a

resonant

echo that is rapidly taking root in public discourse. " Impeach Him, "

reads the cover of this month's Harper's Magazine. And in a public

forum

in New York City last week, journalists, lawyers and political figures

came together to discuss the case against our president.

 

While the main impediment continues to be a sycophantic Republican

majority, polls show that more Americans favor impeachment hearings

than

currently approve of the job Bush is doing (33 to 32 percent). In

addition, as Bob Geiger notes, Bush's state-by-state popularity is

lower

than even his anemic nationwide figures suggest, with a paltry four

states remaining red two years into his second term. In other words,

the

population has the stomach for it even if the representatives don't.

 

The legal basis for these unprecedented state-level actions was

discovered when, according to Steven Leser, Illinois Rep. Karen A.

Yarbrough " stumbled on a little known and never utlitized rule of the

U.S. House of Representatives. " The rule was written in a book formerly

known as Jefferson's Manual, which, according to C-SPAN, " is a book of

rules of procedure and parliamentary philosophy … written by Thomas

Jefferson in 1801 … [used by the House] as a supplement to its standing

rules. " Section LIII, sec. 603 states, " There are various methods of

setting an impeachment in motion … [one of them is] by charges

transmitted from the legislature of a State … "

 

Each of the three resolutions mentions Iraq lies, torture and illegal

spying, with slight variations in tone and specifics. Assemblyman Paul

Koretz's California resolution (which includes Dick Cheney) and the

Illinois resolution both include the leak of Valerie Plame's identity,

while Vermont's focuses almost exclusively on Bush's most salient

transgression, his illegal spying on Americans. The spying charge leads

the other two resolutions' list of charges as well.

 

In December, cringing at the prospect of getting scooped by its own

reporter's upcoming book on the subject, the New York Times published a

story it'd been sitting on for months at the behest of the Bush

administration. The front page story by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau

outlined a program for illegally spying on American citizens, which had

been explicitly authorized by the president. It became popularly known

as the NSA Wiretapping Scandal.

 

Having failed at pressuring the Times into hiding the story for another

three years, the Bush administration opted for its signature blend of

hubris and fear, at once admitting publicly to having violated the law

but hiding beneath the smoke of " terrorism prevention " and the mirrors

of the Nixonian prerogative: " When the president does it, that means

that it is not illegal. " Of course, we now know precisely how much

water

that explanation holds, even if reworded for maximum terror

exploitation: " When the commander-in-chief does it, it is not illegal. "

 

Still, despite the fact that no attempt was made to cover up this

blatant violation of the law, political will in the

Republican-controlled House to bring impeachment was harder to find

than

a fact in the mouth of Scotty McClellan. Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold's

resolution to censure the president (impeachment is a House-only

proposition) - a measure supported by a plurality of American voters -

included a crystal-clear retort to partisan claims that the illegal

wiretapping was necessary:

 

This issue is not about whether the government should be wiretapping

terrorists - of course it should, and it can under current law … But

this president and this administration decided to break the law, and

they have yet to give a convincing explanation of why their actions

were

necessary, appropriate or legal.

 

But the president and his spin doctors had successfully grabbed the

reins of the debate by framing the question thusly: " Do you, or do you

not, want us to be able to spy on terrorists? " The fact that this and

other myths surrounding the president's violation of the law were

easily

debunked did little to shake Republican Bush worship or Democratic

defeatism.

 

As Feingold's legally toothless censure proposal went into that good

night, impeachment took a back seat. Criticism of Rumsfeld took the

front seat, and congressional Republicans, with one eye on Bush's

tanking popularity and the other on the increasingly ominous midterm

elections, began to back away from the president and tentatively joined

the calls for an exit strategy - any strategy really - from Iraq.

 

Enter the blogs. On Jan. 24, well before the Illinois legislator Karen

Yarbrough stumbled over this state legislature loophole, blogger

arbortender of DailyKos had unearthed the rule that another writer

dubbed " Jefferson's Revenge " . Fellow blogger Kagro X took the baton,

and

the blogs have been pushing the story and building the momentum ever

since, from Vermont's various town - and countywide resolutions to the

Illinois bombshell, through California's and now Vermont's state-level

proposals. According to Steve Leser, Democratic state legislators in

Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina are also considering

either impeachment or censure proposals.

 

In any case, the three states already debating impeachment represent

nearly 50 million Americans, or roughly 16 percent of the total U.S.

population.

 

As promising as this development is, serious questions remain

unanswered. If Americans perceive that voting the Republicans out of

the

House will lead directly to a vote for impeachment hearings, will they

instinctively rally around the president despite his unpopularity

specifically and the unpopularity of Republicans in general?

 

Or, more ominously, will an unpopular president, terrified at the

possibility of a crushing Republican defeat in '06 and facing

impeachment hearings, launch some sort of " October Surprise? "

 

October Surprise speculation ranges from my colleague Joshua Holland's

prediction that measures will be taken to significantly lower gas

prices

to Dave Lindorff's claim that " a number of journalists told me they

worried that Bush, Rove and Cheney, if they thought they were going to

lose the House in November and face serious investigations into their

crimes and deceits, would do something treasonous, like launching a war

against Iran, or perhaps allowing another major terrorist attack

against

a U.S. target, so that they could then clamp down further on domestic

freedom and ramp up jingoistic support among their wavering base. "

 

In the final tally, the state-sponsored impeachment resolutions remain

more symbolic than anything - which may be just as well. By building a

public case against Bush for his clear violations of U.S. law,

Republicans are left with the albatross of Bush around their necks as

they tiptoe into the '06 elections. As pollster Jan van Lohuizen wrote

to Republican Chairman Ken Mehlman in a memo: " We are now 'brand W.'

Republicans. "

 

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Evan Derkacz is AlterNet's associate editor and writer of Peek, the

blog

of blogs.

 

 

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