Founding Fathers, Baseball, Apple Pie, Impeachment
21 February 2006 Founding Fathers, Baseball, Apple Pie, andImpeachment By David Swanson
Remarksprepared for February 18th pro-impeachment rally in colonialdress in Charlottesville, Va., home of Thomas Jefferson andJames Monroe, and near the home of JamesMadison.
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Impeachment hasbeen part of American culture longer than baseball or applepie. Only Mom has been around longer thanimpeachment.
The Scottish take pride in having inventedimpeachment. The British got it from them, and we got itfrom the British. Impeachment is in the US Constitution,and was further developed by Thomas Jefferson in the manualof procedural rules that he wrote for the Congress.
TheConstitution mentions impeachment six times. It makes clearthat impeachment is a power the legislature has over theexecutive and judicial branches of government. And thispower is not an afterthought. It is central to the systemof checks and balances that the Constitution created, andwhich the current administration is well on its way todestroying.
The Constitution opens with this preamble: "Wethe People of the United States, in Order to form a moreperfect Union, establish Justice, insure domesticTranquility, provide for the common defence, promote thegeneral Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty toourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish thisConstitution for the United States of America."
ThenArticle One speaks to the powers of the legislature. Article Two addresses the powers of the President. Andsection 4 of Article Two reads: "The President, VicePresident and all civil officers of the United States, shallbe removed from office on impeachment for, and convictionof, treason, bribery, or other high crimes andmisdemeanors."
The Framers of the Constitution draftedthat language to ensure that the people of the UnitedStates, through their representatives in the United StatesCongress, could hold a President accountable for an abuse ofpower and an abuse of the public trust.
James Madison,speaking at Virginia's ratification convention said: "APresident is impeachable if he attempts to subvert theConstitution."
James Iredell, who later became a Justiceof the U.S. Supreme Court, stated at North Carolina'sratification convention: "The President must certainly bepunishable for giving false information to the Senate. He isto regulate all intercourse with foreign powers, and it ishis duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligencehe receives. If it should appear that he has not given themfull information, but has concealed important intelligencewhich he ought to have communicated, and by that meansinduced them to enter into measures injurious to theircountry, and which they would not have consented to had thetrue state of things been disclosed to them, - in this case,I ask whether, upon an impeachment for a misdemeanor uponsuch an account, the Senate would probably favorhim."
Thomas Jefferson was gravely concerned by theinterpretation of the Constitution which holds that theJudiciary has the power to determine whether the other twobranches are acting in accordance with the law. Jeffersonpushed forward an alternative view, which holds that thelegislative branch of government has that power over thejudiciary and the executive, because the Constitution grantsCongress the ability to impeach, and because Members ofCongress are subject to rejection by the people throughelections. And Jefferson became frustrated and disappointedwhen he saw justices engaging in what he considered abusesof power, but not being impeached and removed fromoffice.
Can you imagine how he would have reacted to theruling in Bush versus Gore?
But the abuse of power thatthe founders of this country feared most was the launchingof aggressive wars. This was why they granted the Congress,and not the President the power to declare war. This waswhy Iredell believed it was the President's responsibilityto report all exchanges with foreign powers to the senate.
We are now in a situation in which our President hastaken us into an aggressive war on the basis of lies. Andhe claims to have provided Congress with all the informationhe possessed, yet he will not turn over his daily briefingsso that Congress can see for itself.
The evidence thatBush and Cheney have committed the most serious high crimeand misdemeanor is overwhelming, and includes not just theeight Downing Street memos and the recent White House memo,but the recorded statements of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeldand Feith and Trent Lott, the testimony of Paul O'Neil andRichard Clark and Bob Graham. For the full case, see www.afterdowningstreet.org .
Butthen, there's more than an illegal war here. There'sillegal spying. There's illegal leaking. There's lying toCongress, the UN, and the American people. There's tortureand arrests without cause. There's illegal propaganda attaxpayers' expense. There's illegal targeting of civiliansand use of napalm, white phosphorous, and depleted uranium. There's the neglect that led to the disasters of Katrina and9-11. And there's the disastrous energy policy that ispromoting global warming.
If we cannot impeach now, wenever can. If we do not impeach now, we are effectivelyremoving impeachment from the Constitution.
Polls showthat the American people are far out ahead of Congress. Inevery poll that has been done, a majority has favoredimpeachment and favored voting for pro-impeachmentCongressional candidates.
Congressman John Conyers hasintroduced a bill to create an investigation, similar to theWatergate investigation, to make recommendations onimpeachment. Twenty-seven members of Congress have signedonto that bill, House Resolution 635. None of them are fromVirginia.
Our Congressman here in Charlottesville,Virgil Goode, whom we pay $158,000 a year, is devoting hisenergies to two projects. First, he wants to name Englishthe official language of the nation. That should reallyease the suffering of millions, right?
And then, becauseours is the one industrialized nation on the planet that hasno single-payer health care and wastes billions of dollarson insurance companies, Goode wants to pass a bill thatwould allow struggling families to donate their tax refundsto people who have no health coverage. There's boldleadership for you.
But, to be fair, our best challengerto Goode this year, Al Weed, has not spoken out forimpeachment yet either. Maybe he doesn't realize that threequarters of Democrats are passionate about it, and so are amajority of Independents.
A large coalition oforganizations recently announced plans to organize protestsoutside the homes of Congress Members to demand impeachmentof Bush and Cheney and an end to the war. To get involvedin that, you can sign up at www.Democrats.com/cd
Democrats.comis not the Democratic Party, but an activist group workingto change the Democratic Party.
Virgil Goode lives inRocky Mount, so it's far for us in Charlottesville. But wemight have to be the once to caravan down one weekend and doit. We can also protest at his office here. The questionis not whether we think he can be brought around, it'swhether we can be brought around as citizens to do ourproper duty and demand it.
Jefferson's manual providesrules on impeachment and says that a state legislature cansend impeachment charges to the US House. A number ofstates have begun working on that. Our state may be toobusy abusing gay people.
But our city of Charlottesvillecan pass a resolution supporting impeachment. A growinglist of cities and counties and political parties around thecountry have done so. There's information at www.impeachpac.org
We can alsopressure national organizations to take on impeachment. This is a debate right now within United for Peace andJustice, and it's not even on the radar screen ofMoveOn.org. If our own organizations can't do it, how canwe expect Congress to do so? Let's get towork!
ENDS
THIS ISSUE Lead NZ News NZ Politics World News FeaturesComment & Opinion No Right Turn on UN Guantanamo Report - Guantanamo must be closed, and its prisoners either released or given a fair trial in the United States under US law. That is the recommendation of an investigation conducted by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Why? Apart from general principles of justice and a respect for human rights, the UN has three reasons. See... No Right Turn: Guantanamo Delenda Est
Kirk MacGibbon: A New York Perspective on Labour's Spending - News that the Labour Party is being investigated for allegedly breaching campaign spending limits by a whopping $400,000 seems almost quaint from a New York perspective. What struck me was just how cheap it is to win office in New Zealand. The Labour party spent $2.8 million to win control of the Treasury for another three years. Helen Clark said the laws were in need of 'clarification. See... Kirk MacGibbon: The Price Of Office
Jason Miller on the Brits' Good News Agency - A succession of scandals in the US has revealed widespread government funding of PR agencies to produce 'fake news'. Actors take the place of journalists and the 'news' is broadcast as if it were genuine. The same practice has been adopted in Iraq, where newspapers have been paid to insert copy. These stories have raised the usual eyebrows in the UK about the pitiful quality of US democracy. Things are better here, we imply. See... Miller: The British Government's Global Fake News Network
Pierre Tristam Defending the Enlightenment - In the eternal battle between reason and regression there's never been a rallying cry as powerful as Voltaire's double-barreled phrase: Ecrasez l'infame. It has been translated variously as "crush the infamous," "crush the horror" or my preference "smash the rogues." Voltaire's targets, his recent biographer Ian Davidson writes, "included superstition, theological repression, Jesuits, monks, fanatical regicides, and the Inquisition in every shape and form; in short, all facets of the dark and regressive alliance between the Catholic Church and the French State." ... It's a lesson the Islamic world has not yet learned. It's a lesson the western world risks forgetting. See... When Liberty's The Ward Of A Higher Power's Rogues
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