Letters to the Editor
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Impeachment, effective or not, would be a refusal to accept evil
Talk of impeaching Bush makes one realize how incredibly fortunate the country was to have Spiro Agnew resign before Nixon was impeached, and that the beleaguered Nixon saw the need to look accommodating and reasonable by choosing as Agnew's replacement Gerald Ford instead of someone like John B. Connally, who was reputed to be his preference.
Impeaching and convicting Bush without simultaneously also doing so with Cheney (nothing precludes simultaneous impeachment of a president and vice-president, so this would be hypothetically possible) would put Cheney in the Oval Office; a depressing thought to be sure, and not really an improvement. Neither for that matter is the prospect of a President Dennis Hastert, currently next in line after Cheney.
But even if one consequence were a short Cheney presidency, impeachment and removal of Bush would have one great virtue: It would represent a refusal to passively accept the practices of torture, warmongering, erosion of civil rights, and the many other evils perpetrated by this administration. As Martin Luther King, Jr. stated: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
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Impeachment Must Be Pressed
If for no other reason than to maintain pressure on the administration and buttress the work of people like Patrick Fitzgerald. Even a perfectly oiled machine will start to blow springs if you squeeze it hard enough. I say, SQUEEZE.
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Secession? Please.
This is exactly the kind of response I was dreading: more red-state/blue-state false dichotomy. When this country is on the brink of a constitutional crisis, the moral choice is for the "blue states" to secede? Leaving aside the fact that this is completely impractical and impossible and would never, ever happen, I can't believe that people would ever consider this to be a solution. This is whiny hand-wringing. Way to absolve yourself of responsibility for the rest of the country.
So all of you self-indentified "blue staters" who sit so smugly in judgment on the rest us poor fools (and apparently on your fellow liberals as well, since we don't all happen to live in the same place as you), grow up and get over it. There's not a single state out there in which all of the citizens voted for either candidate. In fact, the split was so small in the last election that there are many cases where the difference between a "red state" and a "blue state" is a matter of a couple of percentage points. Hardly an overwhelming majority, if you ask me, and not a good excuse for smugness. Anyone who speaks so casually of the red-state/blue-state split, who thinks of half of this country as the "enemy", isn't someone who is going to be of any use in getting to the heart of the problems our country is facing.
So speaks this Texas Democrat (and East-coaster by birth, if that gives my statement any extra cachet). And believe me when I say that I don't want Bush back here, but I'll take him if it gets him the hell out of the While House.
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The Beginning of the End of Liberalism
Having read the article and all of the letters so far, the thought that presses upon me is that we may now be in the last stages of liberalism. I say that because if there actually is an energetic "movement" for impeachment, that will be the train that takes liberalism out of practical, i.e., political, reality. Possibly two or three letters spoke of getting out the vote; the rest debate which is more "realistic", impeachment, secession, insurrection, or constitutional amendment. As an ideological outsider to doctrinaire liberalism (or progressivism, or democratic partyism), it appears to me that pathology is creeping in on the Left. And if you don't see how I could be correct, then it is certainly too late for you.
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Bush needs to step down
Please, Bush, save us the trouble of impeaching you. Resign. You have failed. You are a failure on all levels. Your blustery, swaggery, down-home shtick no longer masks your essential lack of intellect, competence or judgment. You don't have principles or skills. You just surround yourself with hard-liners who promise to keep you safe from your own lack of leadership or decisiveness, and you let them pull all the strings and prepare all your "talking points," speeches, appointments and agendas. This misguided set of think-tank created missions have all proven to be garbage, and it doesn't help that you are so lackadaisacal at the tiller. You let Karl Rove clean up your crap and he keeps sculpting them into bigger and bigger piles of feces forged in your monkey-faced image. There is hardly any real "you" in the you that is President George Bush. You should have bowed out of the race in 1999 and gone into business brokering Texas dirt -- bringing together the people who have dug holes with the people who need to fill holes. Because digging and filling holes is the essence of your presidency. With Iraq, it seems you've dug yourself an awfully big one. I hope you fall into it and get buried in it forever.
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Other Factors Affect this Situation--Not Just Political Ones
It seems the consensus that bush cannot be impeached and there will be no uprising nor will there be secession. All this leaves us to the current state of affairs, which is the sustainability of bush's policies.
At some point the economics will be the breaking point. Not only has bushco stolen everything they can put their hands on, they've stolen from generations to come. The people holding the money are the one group who can and will do something about bush's reckless policies.
The U.S. indeed will go bust. Americans will lose their homes, which is all they have left as the jobs are already on their way out the door. American industry is effectively shutting down and will continue to do so.
The other willing taskmaster is Mother Nature, who has already shown an unwillingness to tolerate further disregard for the ecosystem. New Orleans, the first city lost to global warming, will be only one of many weather disasters.
So to summarize, economic disaster will take place along with simultaneous weather disasters. The failure of an opposition party, lack of poltiical will and organization, and all of the other factors cited in this discussion are nothing compared to economic realities and the course of nature.
This is why, when I go to sleep at night, I am grateful for the safety and comfort of my home for one more night. I don't think I will have that simple pleasure for the rest of my life.