Letters to the Editor
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Impeachment should be just the beginning
If we can get Bush and Company impeached (Bush, Cheney), the next step is to turn them over to the UN to be tried for war crimes. We can include Rummy at no additional charge. Then the US will again be a Democratic coutry that the world can look up to.
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Priorities
I would love to see a poll of liberal pundits asking which of the following is (a) most important, and (b) most realistic:
1. Impeaching Bush.
2. Election reform--i.e. electronic voting, voter suppression, electoral college, redistricting, etc.
3. Re-taking the House of Representatives and/or the Senate.
It seems to me that everything liberals need or want to accomplish is dependant on achieving item number 2, and it’s silly to talk about number 1 without achieving both 2 and 3 first.
As far as fantasies like "insurrection" and "revolution" are concerned, I think the Blue states seceding would be a more satisfying goal.
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a Consitutional Amendment is needed NOW
The voting districts need to be changed..the whole election system needs to be changed. It will take a Constituional Amendment. The only people with enough time and energy to create such a popular movement are young students and old retired people or those so rich they don't have to work two jobs to support their families...They need to advocate for changing the election laws and the restructuring of our economy so there will be jobs other than jobs that feed the military industrial/pharma complex. It would also be helpful to stop all paid political TV commercials. That would begin to take away some of the influence of the weapons makers. In addition all you liberals out there should immediately remove your money from weapons stocks...that would include GE (NBC Universal) and all makers of any kinds of weapons. Russ Feingold for president!
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I seem to remember that political surprises do happen
Remember all the people six weeks ago saying, "Oh, Hamas will never win the election. They'll gain seats, but they'll never take power. It's impossible."
Then Hamas did just that.
Remember all the people saying, "The Soviets will never let their satellite countries go and the Berlin Wall will never come down"? Then Solidarity and the collapse of the East German state proved them wrong.
You guys -- just because something seems permanent now doesn't mean it will stay that way. Have a little imagination and courage. Voter revolts happen all the time. I think the Democrats can take back both houses in November, and I hope to God they begin impeachment proceedings the very next day against both Bush and Cheney.
To those of you who say "What would that solve?", remember that impeaching the heads of a criminal administration would send a powerful message: that no one, not even the President, is above the law. It'd say to the world that we're ready to start fixing the damage we've done. It would be an epoch-making event. Let's make it happen.
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Bush is having his way, and will continue to do so.
One reader wrote:
"In short, the wheels are flying off the Rove-Mobile. And as the momentum shifts against them Dick, George, and friends will be in for a helluva ride. Impeachment is just the beginning!"
I've heard this many times. How things are falling apart for Bush & Co. Think about it though: Bush has lied like a rug. He has looted the national treasury. He has sent thousands to their graves. He fished after being told that Al Qaeda planned attacks on US soil. He played the guitar while New Orleans drowned. All with impunity. What has it ever cost him? He still manages to appoint whoever he wishes to the Supreme Court. He still manages to escape any meaningful oversight. He still tortures, even after "Straight-Talk" McCain himself passed a law that supposedly would stop that. He still manages to cripple social programs while enriching his pals, fattening the defense budget, and putting us deep in debt. A supine Congress and complicit press have served as his enablers, and the Supreme Court will affirm his right to do all the above.
Impeachment? We will need to reroute the Potomac to clean out this modern version of the Augean stables.
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Insurrection? You ain't seen nothin' yet.
Not that the current regime doesn't deserve it, but as another writer already said, this isn't something sober people take lightly. One had to wonder how many shots Benjamin Franklin or John Hancock had downed before putting their names to the Declaration of Independence. If it were me in Philadelphia, and I had the quill in my hand, I'd want a drink myself.
The risk we would run fomenting an insurrection is not limited to its success or failure. The event itself is as potentially destabilizing as if an invading army had just arrived at our shore. When the smoke cleared, we may not actually have our constitutional republic back, but something else entirely, and we may not be satisfied with the result, to say the least.
Consider France in 1789. After Louis XVI was deposed, France was in turmoil for many years afterward, extending well into the 19th century. The scores of aristocrats and their alleged sympathizers who went to the guillotine every week during that period was but one feature of this turmoil. We may buy for ourselves an even worse situation than existed during the Civil War. The Constitution was designed to prevent this sort of thing from happening. It has worked for over two centuries. It deserves a chance.
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Evolution or Desperation?
I guess the founding fathers never foresaw a situation where one party could dominate all three branches of the federal government to nefarious, unpopular ends. Did they believe checks and balances were a statistical certainty? Was no way they could have foreseen the encroachment of corporate control in government, despite ample evidence in British and European colonial empires? Perhaps they were just too provincial.
Neither Bush nor Cheney will ever be impeached, let alone driven from office by any forces other than a coup within their own cabal. The only "revolution" that's remotely possible here is among Republican congressmen and senators fighting for their political lives. Strange when you think that only Republicans, not Democrats, can "save" us from these dangerous fools. But the masters will end up pretty much the same either way.
After all of us writing today are dead, what wisdom will our children and grandchildren draw from this bleak episode of American history? Will the opinion that all governments cannot be trusted be pervasive and the Norquistian dream of shrinking government be realized, although inspired by a radically different ideology? Or will it all be irrelevant as the US becomes a servant state in some multi-national arrangement, its once vaunted miltary co-opted and bankrupt, the terms of our existence dictated to us by the foreign countries that own our assets and have controlled our debts for decades?