Recall: about one hundred years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt, a great believer is sea power, announced that he was going to assemble a squadron of American capital ships, paint the white, and send them around the world to announce that the U.S. had arrived as a major power.

Congress declined to appropriate the money for what a majority of members apparently believed was a boondoggle, but Roosevelt ordered the fleet to sail anyway. Somewhere along the route, the money ran out, leaving the fleet stranded.

Setting aside what Congress has done or would do (and I will not flatter the current Congress with an unduly generous assessment of that), such behavior clearly constitutes an impeachable offense by the president. The founders understood that "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" was a vague standard, intentionally pliable to what Congress itself determined was a grave offense against the nation itself.

The President's arrogating to himself the exclusive power of the Congress, and coercively pitting the Congress' prerogative versus the sympathies of the public with the hapless victims of the President's arrogant whims, I believe strikes at the heart of the crucial Separation of Powers set forth by the Constitution.

A wholly separate question is, as I alluded to, whether the Congress could muster the political courage to use the power it so clearly is given by our Constitution.

Lol. Well we agree on one thing -- Bush does not own this country. Now, that realization doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot if no one is willing to remind him of that fact does it? And, like I said in my previous post, acts of congress, laws and the constitution haven't stopped him so far but this defunding of the occupation will be the magic bullet right Kitt? In like fashion, I find your comments and lack of an understanding of the situation to be defensive and clueless.

Let's just take a deep breath and relax, shall we? Although impeachment for ignoring a congressional command (or depravation of funding) would certainly remain an option, I think it's rather drastic to say that Bush could so easily march forward unabated.

With the war being as unpopular as it is -- and the Republican Party fracturing more by the day -- even if Bush were to decide to illegally fund and continue the occupation by unauthorized means, I think he would face significant threats of resignation from his own government. I believe the SecDef, Robert Gates, and several high-ranking generals would be among the officials threatening to resign over the blatantly illegal gambit. As the continuation of war would certainly be no secret, public outrage would escalate to explosive proportions. I am not necessarily talking about violent demonstrations, but certainly immense pressure being applied to our representatives to, in fact, commence impeachment procedures (or at least credibly threaten impeachment).

Without detailing every political and legal pressure that would force Bush to abort a potential decision to continue the occupation in the face of express congressional defunding or deauthorization, I think it's quite a stretch to say that the President could so easily continue forward on his half-baked assertions of plenary Article II power under the Unitary Executive theory, were the Congress to miraculously discover its spine.

It's becoming rather clear that there's little I could say to change your rather nihillistic view of our current political situation. One shouldn't need "evidence" to see that, if the Congress clearly and unequivocally cut funding, and the President circumvented the legislative power of the purse by funding the war in other ways, the people (and, dare I say, even the media) would sit up and take notice, and the President would eventually have to back down or be impeached.

Let's keep in mind that the Congress has so far, by and large, authorized and assented to Bush's execution of the occupation, and so we don't have a sufficient model to predict that their intransigence would have no effect. The other examples you cite of the President ignoring Congress' directives are worlds apart from legislation outright deauthorizing the conflict and cutting off the flow of money to it. This may sound crass, but we are not talking about detention and torture of "suspected terrorists," whom most Americans can conveniently set apart from themselves -- we are talking about the further commitment of American blood and treasure in an immensely unpopular war. To me, if ever there were a burden of "proof," it lies on the side arguing that absolutely nothing would change if Congress were to finally pass such legislation.

At any rate, I would take your position more seriously if it weren't so rhetorically incoherent. Laced into your argument that congressional defunding of the occupation wouldn't change anything is also an implication that Congress would never have the spine to take such an action in the first place. Yet, at the same time, you advocate impeachment as the only remedy, when you must know that this is even less politically palatable to Democrats than defunding. In effect, I'm left wondering what your actual argument is, other than a conclusion that nothing can be done.

Like Kitt, I would support impeachment (or censure) for the already lengthy list of High Crimes and Misdemeanors that this President and Vice-President have committed against the republic. However, this does not mean that this is the only way to stop a miserable and fruitless war and get this country back on the right track. To throw up one's hands in the face of challenges that can and do have real solutions only adds to those challenges.