In the aftermath of the Watergate crisis in 1974, the Senate Judiciary Committee produced a report on the historical origins of impeachment of the president, and what the intentions of the framers of the United States Constitution—that little document that gives us the right to live free in a democracy—had in mind when they hammered out the concept.
As noted in the report, “The debates on impeachment at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia focus principally on its applicability to the President,” and the maxim that no commander in chief would ever be “above the law.” The framers intended impeachment to be “a constitutional safeguard of the public trust,” but they may have failed to envision a future where the public cared little about their responsibility to contribute to a functioning democracy (or society for that matter), a world where the public would be more concerned with plasma televisions and serial dramas than a healthy country.
Some Americans may investigate what is going on in the world instead of mouthing off about the things they might half-know from watching a major news station broadcast each night before bed. Maybe some even understand what fuels the major television news broadcasts in this day and age (advertising dollars or corporate “responsibility”—read GE buying war gear for their NBC military correspondents two full years before the war on Iraq was declared) but it comes down to ratings, not integrity, and those relying on a network broadcast to keep them informed should realize they are being used as Neilsen numbers, not respected as fellow citizens.
How much longer are Americans going to sit back and watch what they are told, and hear what they want to hear? And how much longer are these Americans going to ignore their responsibility to the founders of this country? There will always be citizens who are happy to sit back and let someone else stand up and do the fighting for them, and I am one of them in some respects. When it comes to taking up arms and traveling overseas to do the bidding of our commander in chief, I leave that to our trained soldiers. However, here in Montana on my home soil of the U.S., I will stand up for my Constitution and the laws and bylaws that are essential in order to have a functioning democratic society and I will fight for our freedom right here at home, hoping to inspire others to do the same. At this moment, our government has been hijacked, and someone (most likely the American people) will have to take it back with a fight.
The battle cry of the lead-up to the war in Iraq, “Freedom isn’t free” was utterly true but terribly misused. If we want freedom, we must pay for it with constant vigilance, and constant attention to the health of our democracy. The founding fathers believed in us, and left us a rich and dynamic legacy in the Constitution of the United States, and before we go fighting foes abroad, each citizen must fight to keep our democracy alive in Washington by holding our representatives accountable to governing with integrity.
When the constitutional impeachment process was debated with James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and others in Philadelphia over 200 years ago, the founders of the Constitution were concerned a future “Chief Magistrate” would attempt to subvert the very document they were composing, and they had much reason to worry.
A brief scan of history confirms the cliché, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and many a good leader has become easily a tyrant or dictator when unchecked by the laws and restrictions of the populace. We Americans have it written in our Constitution that such a leader will be unable to serve a full term in office, and such a leader must answer to us, the American people, when we call him to task. But in the last eight years, the safeguards put in place in the founding laws of this country have been subverted.
One will not hear of this subversion on the evening news, in fact, one would have to work diligently uncovering the complexity of the issue by searching for themselves to find the truth. I first saw the truth in the eyes of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan years ago when he was continually confronted by the White House press corps about the leak of a CIA agent’s identity in supposed retaliation for her husband’s “lies” that Iraq had no WMDs. I was at the time addicted to daily and weekly White House press briefings and “gaggles” and rarely missed a session. McClellan would field tough questions from the press corps, looking always as if he were weary of the lies and avoidance of the truth that was becoming his daily chore. I was unsurprised when he stepped down in April of 2006, the look in his eyes was that of a defeated patriot, and I noted then the obvious reason for his departure.
Now, two years later, McClellan has made a brave move in admitting his knowledge that the Bush administration made poor, and sometimes illegal choices in governing the country, and he is now scheduled to testify before Congress about the “propaganda campaign” that led up to the Iraq war, the possible authorization of torture by administrative officials, and the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame (about which other Bush officials have refused to testify, citing “executive privilege” or having been given commuted sentences for their participation). Current White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, responded to the allegations in McClellan’s book with a cheery but practical, “Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew.”
No one in the Bush administration seems willing to admit any wrongdoing, any possibility of illegal activity or corruption, and so now the time has come for the rest of us to stop swallowing the lies and speak up without fear.
Last week, Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) presented Congress with 35 articles of impeachment against President George Bush. These were not articles addressing the possibility of covering up a sexual affair in a civil case, these were articles accusing the president of true high crimes and misdemeanors: putting our dedicated soldiers in harm’s way for profit, lying to the American people, misleading the nation in a rush to get to war profiteering, sacrificing lives, imprisoning children, spying on citizens, failing to respond with aid in a national emergency, obstruction of criminal investigations and other alleged improper and illegal acts. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi immediately dismissed the articles (after all, it is an election year, and impeachment proceedings would not come across well to voters—or politicians—wanting to maintain a certain political status quo), saying impeachment was “off the table,” and all the hopes of the founding fathers that a corrupt leader would be tried and examined were extinguished.
Why is Pelosi dragging her heels? It’s understandable that the American people (probably most of them having missed that a member of Congress even presented articles of impeachment this month against Bush) have no reaction to or interest in the wealth of damning evidence against the President, but the Speaker of the House? Someone schooled in this country’s law and Constitution? How can she not see the intention of the framers of our democracy to protect against tyranny? Perhaps it is because she is one of the wealthiest members of Congress with a family net worth of over $25 million, and integrity is not often the driving force behind the motivations of the rich. Whatever her reasons for tabling the articles, she is only doing this country a grave disservice, one that history will remember as politically and not ethically motivated.
Over two hundred years ago states held ratifying conventions to approve the Constitution, and in North Carolina James Iredell argued a case that is as valid today as then, that a president: “Must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate. He is to regulate all intercourse with foreign powers, and it is his duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligence he receives. If it should appear that he has not given them full information, but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them,” would the Senate be able to deny that this was an offense against the government and an abuse of constitutional duties?
President Bush did without a doubt mislead both Congress and the American people in the lead-up to the Iraq war, and thereby committed a high misdemeanor against the very government he took an oath to protect.
Bush’s crimes against this country are many and severe, and the time has certainly come for all American citizens to become involved with the preservation of our democracy. Some may argue that Vice-President Cheney or other members of the Bush administration are more to blame for the crimes committed, but the President took an oath of office, and he has not upheld his oath. Few in Congress will stand up for our Constitution, so now we must become the fail-safe the founders of this country intended us to be. We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain...this Constitution for the United States of America.
I am neither a Republican nor Democrat, but a student of history, and I recognize now that we are our only hope, and we must come together in our communities and hold our elected representatives responsible for protecting the articles of our Constitution, and we must at all costs preserve the democracy which was designed to bless us all with liberty, or the great democracy of America the founding fathers envisioned will be little more than a faded vision and an impossible dream.
—Reilly Neill
news@livingstonweekly.com
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