More Grounds for Impeachment!
Earl J. Prignitz
January 17, 2006
I must admit that I was deeply troubled when our president thumbed his nose at our international treaty obligations under the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions. And then the torture scandals and the violations of U.S. criminal laws at the highest levels of our government were even more troubling.
However these concerns have been compounded by the growing evidence that the President deliberately misled our country into the war with Iraq. With the disclosures of the PNAC records and the Downing Street memos there remains little doubt that this was the case. The cost has been beyond my imagination in terms of the billions of dollars we have gone in debt plus the thousands of Iraqi's slaughtered and the over 2,200 of our own young men and women killed and the thousands returning home maimed for life.
Then the last straw came in the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands of Americans, in total violation of the Foreign Intelligence Act (FISA) -- arguing that as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws.
FISA was enacted in 1978 as a result of the Watergate scandals to prevent unauthorized wiretaps. Congress explicitly intended FISA to strike a balance between the legitimate requirements of national security on the one hand and the need both to protect against presidential abuses and to safeguard personal privacy on the other. After the abuses of Watergate, Congress knew that a President was fully capable of wiretapping under a false claim of national security. That is why the law requires court review of national security wiretaps. Congress understood that because of the huge invasion of privacy involved in wiretaps, there should be checks in place on the executive branch to protect against overzealous and unnecessary wiretapping. At the same time, Congress created special procedures to facilitate obtaining these warrants when justified. Congress also recognized the need for emergency action: The President was given the power to start a wiretap without a warrant as long as court permission was obtained within three days.
If the President is allowed to break the law on wiretapping on his own say-so, then a President can break any other law on his own say-so -- a formula for dictatorship. This is not a theoretical danger: President Bush has recently claimed the right as Commander in Chief to violate the McCain amendment banning torture and degrading treatment of detainees. Nor is the requirement that national security be at stake any safeguard. We saw in Watergate how President Nixon falsely and cynically used that argument to cover up ordinary crimes and political misdeeds.
As a matter of constitutional law, these misdeeds constitute grounds for the impeachment of President Bush and his cronies who have put him up to carrying out these illegal deeds. A President who maintains that he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thus commits high crimes and misdemeanors.
The men who framed our Constitution feared executive power might run amok and hence provided the remedy of impeachment to protect against it. However with a Republican House of Representatives in office this is very unlikely to happen unless there is a tremendous ground swell from the American people to demand it. Yet another way to get it accomplished is to change the makeup of Congress in the 2006 elections
However these concerns have been compounded by the growing evidence that the President deliberately misled our country into the war with Iraq. With the disclosures of the PNAC records and the Downing Street memos there remains little doubt that this was the case. The cost has been beyond my imagination in terms of the billions of dollars we have gone in debt plus the thousands of Iraqi's slaughtered and the over 2,200 of our own young men and women killed and the thousands returning home maimed for life.
Then the last straw came in the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands of Americans, in total violation of the Foreign Intelligence Act (FISA) -- arguing that as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws.
FISA was enacted in 1978 as a result of the Watergate scandals to prevent unauthorized wiretaps. Congress explicitly intended FISA to strike a balance between the legitimate requirements of national security on the one hand and the need both to protect against presidential abuses and to safeguard personal privacy on the other. After the abuses of Watergate, Congress knew that a President was fully capable of wiretapping under a false claim of national security. That is why the law requires court review of national security wiretaps. Congress understood that because of the huge invasion of privacy involved in wiretaps, there should be checks in place on the executive branch to protect against overzealous and unnecessary wiretapping. At the same time, Congress created special procedures to facilitate obtaining these warrants when justified. Congress also recognized the need for emergency action: The President was given the power to start a wiretap without a warrant as long as court permission was obtained within three days.
If the President is allowed to break the law on wiretapping on his own say-so, then a President can break any other law on his own say-so -- a formula for dictatorship. This is not a theoretical danger: President Bush has recently claimed the right as Commander in Chief to violate the McCain amendment banning torture and degrading treatment of detainees. Nor is the requirement that national security be at stake any safeguard. We saw in Watergate how President Nixon falsely and cynically used that argument to cover up ordinary crimes and political misdeeds.
As a matter of constitutional law, these misdeeds constitute grounds for the impeachment of President Bush and his cronies who have put him up to carrying out these illegal deeds. A President who maintains that he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thus commits high crimes and misdemeanors.
The men who framed our Constitution feared executive power might run amok and hence provided the remedy of impeachment to protect against it. However with a Republican House of Representatives in office this is very unlikely to happen unless there is a tremendous ground swell from the American people to demand it. Yet another way to get it accomplished is to change the makeup of Congress in the 2006 elections
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