Forget About Impeachment

Posted by on . 8 comments.

The Bush White House’s latest assertion of how this administration is totally above the law, and answerable to nobody (except possibly the captive in-house Supreme Court), has already led to renewed calls for impeachment (see this, for example). It’s safe to predict that more and more people are going to start seriously calling for impeachment.

Yes, the Democrats should launch impeachment proceedings immediately. We may as well force them to spell out right away how and why the President can no longer be impeached without his assent. It’ll save the time and energy they are no doubt expending right now “discussing when and how to disclose” this stance.

Comments

  1. Fred Holzer says:
    July 20, 2007 at 6:29 pm

    I’ve thought that for some time now. My question is how will they get around the 08 elections and will any one care??

  2. sarabeth says:
    July 20, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    how will they get around the 08 elections

    the time-honored way is to find it necessary to declare some sort of national emergency. and the good lord knows we have enough of those going around.

  3. lindajnm says:
    July 21, 2007 at 4:52 am

    By the way, what is this latest story- that Bush has written a signing statement saying we will follow the Geneva Conventions, when after Congress passed the same law, he wrote that he did not have to follow it.

  4. Ralph says:
    July 21, 2007 at 10:22 am

    We may as well force them to spell out right away how and why the President can no longer be impeached without his assent.

    Sorry, I’m lost. In the quoted sentence, by “they” do you mean the Democrats or the Bush regime?

  5. Ralph says:
    July 21, 2007 at 10:26 am

    … the time-honored way is to find it necessary to declare some sort of national emergency…

    In reading Junior’s recent Executive Order, I discovered that he does not even have to declare an emergency. We are already in a state of emergency, which he declared in 2003. (Sorry I don’t have time to find and include the links right now.) That emergency has never been rescinded.

  6. sarabeth says:
    July 21, 2007 at 11:02 am

    In the quoted sentence, by “they” do you mean the Democrats or the Bush regime?

    “we” = the Democrats, “they” = the Bush regime

  7. sarabeth says:
    July 21, 2007 at 12:46 pm

    Linda, here’s my sense of the executive order Bush signed yesterday:

    When the Military Commissions Act was passed in October 2006, it said

    …the president can “interpret the meaning and application” of international standards for prisoner treatment.

    He was allowed to interpret Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, but he was required to spell out his interpretation in an Executive Order. That’s what he’s just done.

    Marty Lederman writes:

    Last month I surmised that the E.O. would be “very cryptic and uninformative, and that the public will not learn of what techniques our government is using and deeming not to be ‘cruel treatment and torture.’”

    Bingo.
    [...]
    The New York Times reports that “the White House said Friday that it had given the Central Intelligence Agency approval to resume its use of some harsh interrogation methods in questioning terrorism suspects in secret prisons overseas.” I think it is only fair to assume that because the Administration is unwilling to rule out any of the techniques out, it is likely that most or all of those techniques are now approved for use by the CIA. And just to be clear: Those techniques are cruel treatment, and therefore when we use them, we will be breaching the Geneva Conventions, notwithstanding this Executive Order.

    In short, he thinks this Executive Order is somewhere between pure hogwash and a whitewash.

    In addition to leaving it as vague as before what specific interrogation methods the CIA is allowed to use, the Executive Order seems to have a loophole that you could drive an 18-wheeler through. It seems to say that even if there are some legal restrictions on what interrogation methods can be used, these restrictions are unenforceable in court by detainees. Apparently the only way the Executive Order can be used in legal proceedings is by CIA officers to defend themselves from charges of abuse. This may be the only concrete and specific thing the executive order achieves—it exempts CIA interrogators from prosecution for acts they engaged in during the course of interrogation activities, even when those acts violate the Geneva Conventions or the Executive Order.

  8. sarabeth says:
    July 21, 2007 at 2:12 pm

    The Boston Globe:

    But most of the president’s executive order is written in generalities, leaving unanswered whether the CIA will be free to subject prisoners to a range of specific techniques it has reportedly used in the past, including long-term sleep disruption, prolonged shackling in painful stress positions, or “waterboarding,” a technique that produces the sensation of drowning.

    The administration is separately crafting a list of permitted and forbidden tactics that it said will comply with Bush’s executive order, but the list is classified. In a background conference call with reporters yesterday, a senior administration official declined to say whether the new guidelines will permit tactics such as waterboarding.

    “I am not in a position to talk about any specific interrogation practices,” the official said. “It is impossible for us, consistent with the objectives of such a program, to publicize to the enemy what practices may be on the table and what practices may be off the table. That will only enable Al Qaeda to train against those that are on or off.”