In yet another example of post-election continuing BDS (that's, er, "Bush Derangement Syndrome," natch) the Detroit Free Press's Rochelle Riley has called upon Speaker Nancy Pelosi to begin impeachment proceedings against George Bush "for [the] economy's sake."
Pelosi wouldn’t have to start from scratch: Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the bravest member of Congress, introduced legislation 11 months ago to impeach the president and vice president. Last January, the House gave a first reading of one of those articles of impeachment. Our own Rep. John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, joined 38 other representatives to sponsor HR 635, which would form a committee to look into whether there are grounds for impeachment. Revive that effort!
Last week, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, submitted a resolution demanding that Bush stop issuing “pre-emptive pardons of senior officials in his administration during the final 90 days of office.”
Nadler said in news reports that he was moved to action by the president’s “widespread abuses of power and potentially criminal transgressions against our Constitution” and that he wanted to prevent the “undeserved pardons of officials who may have been co-conspirators in the president’s unconstitutional policies, such as torture, illegal surveillance and curtailing of due process for defendants.”
Nadler is storming the beach; others should join him.
If Congress moves quickly and forces the president to focus on impeachment, then he won’t have so much time to push through last-minute regulatory changes that will continue to hurt our country and our ideals. He already has pushed deregulation that would allow employers to talk directly with employees’ doctors and allow power companies to build polluting facilities close to national parks.
Oh no! President Bush, who's been in office almost eight full years, must be removed from office now -- with a whole fifty-four days remaining in his presidency! The life of the U.S. economy depends on it!
Please. Somehow it escapes Ms. Riley that soon-to-be-President Obama, in conjunction with a Democratic House and Democratic Senate, could quite easily rescind and/or replace any "last-minute regulatory changes" etc. that Mr. Bush could somehow "push through."
Regarding presidential pardons, Riley grossly misleads her readers with the following statement:
If Congress isn’t careful, the president who already has issued 171 pardons could also pardon every appointee and employee he has ever had – and their dogs.
This clearly implies that the 171 figure is quite high ("already issued"); in fact, President Bush has been, in the words of the Associated Press, "stingy" in issuing pardons during his two terms. Compared to the number of pardons issued by other two-term chief execs, Presidents Clinton and Reagan respectively, the 171 issued by George Bush is less than half.
(Photo credit: Jewish World Review.)
(h/t to NB reader "Conservative Blues.")
