will bush be impeached?

[firsty]

what do you think? obviously already a war criminal, village idiot, nepotistic (is that a word), rightwing whore, now nearly clearly an actual criminal in the eyes of regular ol american law and order for listening in on phone conversations. is this the straw? do you care?

[singlemalt]

I went with "no." Because the dems don't have the balls to pull it off. Let's face it, the dems have been out-hustled, out-campaigned and flat out failed to capture the votes of middle America.

I don't like it. But hey, it's reality.

Now. . . if he was banging an overwieht intern, America would be up-in-arms. And I don't get that whole thing with Buba anyway. I mean, Monica certainly was not hot. But maybe she was sexy in a "hey, I'll flash you my thong" kind of way. I don't know. I guess if I was really horny and my wife was Hillary and Monica was flashing me the thong and whatnot, maybe I'd bang her. . . maybe. Ah yes. . . good ole stream of consciousness.

[e_dog]

to the question, WILL he be impeached, i said No.

but the real question is, SHOULD Bush be impeached, to which the answer is Yes.

[firsty]

well, the real question is the one i asked. i could have asked a different question, but then that would have been a different question.

i think theyll impeach him in order to protect the larger prize that the republicans protect, which is the deeper conspiracy against freedom. but he won't be removed from office.

i think i assumed that he SHOULD be impeached.

[whimsicaldeb]

I didn't vote, because I don't know ... what I want, what I think should be I know and can say: easy:
Impeach the s.o.b. and get him out of there

but ~ what will be ...

I have to wait & see

[jimboloco]

he gonna make grade B westerns

hinm and Ahnuld

stoned getting drunk
shot rye whiskey
half shot red vermouth
dashed with Angostura bitterz
an a sqwuished maraschino cherry
an crushed ice in an old
Porky Pig jelly glass jar
an antique Manhattan recipe
a peasant collectorz' item
likewise i'm sure.....

[whimsicaldeb]

oh ....

don't waste good booze on worthless people!


(bad debby! bad!)

[mnaz]

Oh hell no. With that band of messianic, speechworthy thugs?
Are you kidding?

[abcrystcats]

Wishful thinking, firsty. I'm with singlemalt on this.

And when the election was imminent, some of you optimists believed he WOULDN'T get re-elected. How COULD that happen? It's so obvious what he's done, what he's not doing. Government spending going to hell in a handbasket, we're at war with another country on false pretenses, and this guy is lucky if he's able to competently string three sentences together in an official speech to the nation. How COULD he get re-elected?

We're living in a country of zombies, firsty. Give it up.

I refuse to get all excited about these hopeless causes. So, he SHOULD be impeached. What does SHOULD have to do with it?

[judih]

over at Care2, people are saying - but if we impeach him, which is surely the 'should' of the matter, Cheney will step in.
That does it for conversation. People dare not take that thought any further.

Me? what do i think? Maybe if people get soaked with Bush-ness, the next elections will be conducted with more rationality. (maybe)

[abcrystcats]

Yeah, no kidding.

Thnak you for pointing out the obvious, Judih. Good point: we would get CHENEY instead!

Double YECH.

[firsty]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/21/spyju ... index.html

federal judge resigns from special spy court in protest of bush's behavior.

cheney would go, too. or, more to the point, i do think bush will be impeached but not removed from office. unless someone grows a backbone and tosses the whole administration.

[firsty]

consider this:

bush didnt go thru the spy court because there are further details of the wiretapping that wouldnt have even been approved by that spy court.

consider this:

they intend bush to get impeached in order to get cheney in office so that the republicans can provide another incumbent candidate in 2008.

[Zlatko Waterman]

A nice comment on the current situation. ( pasted in below)


I particularly like this quote from Pitt:


"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom," British statesman William Pitt warned in 1783. "It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

and I strongly recommend this book-- now more than ever:


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/037570 ... e&n=283155



(paste of Atlanta Constituion article)

Published on Thursday, December 22, 2005 by the Atlanta Journal Constitution


Bush and Wiretaps: Congress, Citizens, This Means War
by Jay Bookman

In asserting his right to ignore the law, President Bush has slapped Congress right across the face and told them they better like it.

Congress can now mutter "Yes, sir" and cower in its corner like a whipped dog, as it has for most of the past five years, or it can fight back to defend its institutional authority. Either choice will mark a turning point in U.S. history.

At immediate issue is the president's decision four years ago to allow the National Security Agency, an arm of the Pentagon, to spy on phone conversations and e-mails of U.S. civilians without court-approved warrants. President Bush insists the program is legal, but it's important to understand what he means by that term.

Bush and his advisers do not claim that his actions are legal because they abide by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA; they quite clearly violate that law. Instead, they claim his actions are legal because as commander in chief, he can violate the law if he chooses and still be acting legally.

It is, in other words, his royal prerogative.

That is an extraordinary assertion of executive power, particularly since the president claims this authority will last "so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens," which is pretty much forever.

Conservatives rushing to support Bush's position out of personal loyalty might want to think about that. If allowed to stand, the president's claim will fundamentally alter the balance of power not just between Congress and the presidency, but between our government and its citizens, and it will do so regardless of who occupies the Oval Office in the future.

Bush grounds his argument on need, claiming that current law gives him too little leeway to fight the war on terror effectively. That argument has at least four basic flaws.

First, it ought to alarm anyone who is truly serious about preserving personal liberty in the face of government power. "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom," British statesman William Pitt warned in 1783. "It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

Second, the claim that Bush has had to violate FISA to protect our security is false. Under FISA, the government has explicit authority to begin wiretapping whenever it deems necessary, without seeking prior approval from a judge. The law merely requires the executive to seek after-the-fact approval from a top-secret special court within 72 hours. Since 1978 that FISA court has rejected just five of 18,748 warrants sought by the government.

Third, even if the law were defective, as Bush claims, no president has the power to make that determination on his own. This is a democracy; if there's a problem with a law, the Constitution gives us a process for fixing it. In this case, FISA was a carefully calibrated, thoroughly debated effort to find the right balance between security and liberty; Bush does not have the authority to simply toss that work out the window because he disagrees with it. That's the power of a dictator, not of a president.

Fourth, and most fundamentally, this argument of necessity calls into question who we have become as a people.

More than 160,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq this holiday season, putting their lives, bodies, souls and futures on the line. Thousands more are on duty in Afghanistan. And while those of us here at home celebrate their bravery, for the most part we are not required to share in it. We let them do the fighting and dying for us; we do the applauding and burying.

We do, however, run an infinitesimally small chance of falling victim to a terrorist attack. It happened once; it could certainly happen again, and we should do everything within reason to prevent a recurrence.

But it does not seem too much to ask that in facing down that danger, we demonstrate just a fraction of the bravery and resolution that our soldiers show. Osama bin Laden, after all, is not Adolf Hitler or imperial Japan or the Soviet Union.

If we civilians quake at the comparatively minor danger that he and his followers pose, if we rush to offer up our civil liberties in hopes of a little more safety, we prove ourselves unworthy of the sacrifice that our men and women in uniform are prepared to make.

Yes, the president has told us we should be fearful, encouraging us to compromise not just our freedom but our constitutional system of government. But if this is still the country we claim it to be, we will tell him no.

Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Thursdays and Mondays.

2005 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

[firsty]

there was an interesting debate about this on npr yesterday morning.

what is clear is that bush violated all precedent, law and procedure here. there are clear precedents about how a president is to behave even during wartime, and even in emergency situations, he is still required to get necessary approval/checks/balances thru the courts and congress.

we are VERY close to becoming a nation where we can ALL reasonably assume that our phone conversations are being monitored, that our emails and all internet activity is being recorded. there is nearly no difference between a nation that throws all dissenters into prison and a nation where all dissent is stifled by the presumption of imminent lockup. in fact, the latter is worse in many ways.

this is a crucial issue about basic freedoms. it is imperative that america remains the free country that our soldiers our being told they are fighting overseas for.

it boils down to one thing: the administration presumes it is right and presumes that it is above the law that it pretends to uphold. bush even stated that a check on his power is his promise to uphold the law. he doesnt understand even the basics of our constitution.

you can all assume that you are being monitored. if you're attending local meetings where general liberal ideas are discussed, you can assume the FBI is there, undercover. if you're attending a protest event, you MUST presume that the local police are there, undercover. if you're discussing bush over the phone with a friend, you have to assume you're being listened to. this is not hysteria, these are facts.

this is no longer a free country. period.