Impeach the Little Bastard
Because people deserve to know the truth
©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.wemagazine.org
11/22/08
Republicans have abused the power of the Presidential pardon since
Gerald Ford used it to preemptively pardon the criminal Richard Nixon.
It was argued that Americans, with their delicate sensitivities,
weren’t mature enough to cope with the idea that an elected official
might face a fair and public trial for crimes he may have committed or
had committed while in office.
If the JFK assassination undermined American innocence (and Gerald Ford
tried to spin fairy tales about that, too), then the Nixon pardon
undermined American confidence in themselves as a place where justice
could be served.
Lightning struck again some 18 years later, when George Bush used the
power of the pardon to kick apart the case being pursued against the
criminal Ronald Reagan, and in which some scummy little felons and
traitors such as Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy got to run free and
sneer loudly at the country that gave them their undeserved liberty.
Losing in Vietnam didn’t do nearly as much damage to American
self-respect as the sight of G. Gordon Liddy braying into his radio
microphone that people should shoot federal agents in the head as a way
of demonstrating their Liddy-style patriotism.
A lot of people watched this, and watched right wingers openly gloating
over it, and wondered what the fuck had gone wrong with America.
And then, for the next eight years, the same vicious and amoral clowns
who guffawed over the sight of Nixon lazing in the California sun and
tried to make a tin hero out of the moronic Reagan tried to destroy the
Clinton presidency by impeaching him over trivia.
Now, we have a crowd that makes the Nixon scummies and the Reagan
sleazers look like pikers. For the past eight years, we’ve seen the
most criminal and anti-American administration in history. They haven’t
settled for third rate burglaries and selling arms to terrorists, no.
They stole an election to get in, and then proceeded to spend years
looting the national treasury, lied the country into a war whose real
aim was to abet in that looting, let terrorists attack the country,
refused a serious investigation into it, and used it to pass measures
that slashed the rights of Americans while politicizing the judicial
branch of the government, and attempted to establish one-party rule,
supported by a corrupted judiciary and a crooked voting system.
And while they were at it, they committed war crimes, and gave America
the same reputation the old Soviet Union used to have, of torture and
unjust imprisonments without trial and secret prison camps.
They robbed the country blind, and humiliated and debased it in the
process. They didn’t govern America; they didn’t even rule it. They
simply raped it.
And now, mercifully, the reign of these vicious, anti-American little Republican scumbags is coming to an end.
But will any of them ever pay for their crimes? Trillions of dollars
have gone missing from the common weal, either sunk into wars for
profit, siphoned off to the undeserving rich, or evaporated in the
implosion of a capitalist bubble that was given all the internal air
pressure it wanted. Three thousand people died in 9/11, and another
5,000 Americans have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ll probably never
know how many died in Iraq just for living there, or how many were
herded off to American gulags to die of torture, or spend years
wondering if they would ever get a trial, let alone ever be set free.
Elections were suborned, and Clinton was hardly the only public servant
to be attacked by the Republican slime-and-destroy machine, now in the
paws of the nation’s district attorneys. At least one governor was
framed and sent to jail. In today’s paper, there was a story of a
indictment of Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales in which the judge,
another corrupt, bent Republican stooge, actually tried to dismiss the
charges before they were legally filed.
What the fuck is wrong with America, you ask? It got taken over by
corrupt, amoral Republican crooks, and nobody has the balls to make
them pay for their crimes. And now, they are just clinging on, hoping
that the entire country won’t collapse before the mess is foisted off
on President-elect Obama, and trying like hell to blame him for the
situation they created.
And while they are doing that, they are waiting for Putsch’s preemptive
pardons, the ones that ensure that they will never have to face their
responsibility for the millions of lives lost and the trillions of
dollars squandered or stolen. They’ll never have to stand in open court
and explain why they insisted Saddam had nukes when he didn’t, or why
NORAD was ordered to stand down on the morning of 9/11, or why Governor
Siegleman was sent to jail, or why Putsch suddenly fired all those
Federal attorneys and replaced them with ones willing to investigate
Democratic candidates for office.
The Republicans, who laughingly describe themselves as the party of
personal responsibility, desperately need those presidential pardons
issued preemptively so they can skate, never pay a dime, and crow that
if they were criminals, why weren’t they ever put on trial?
If that doesn’t sicken you, then you are morally bankrupt or worse, a Republican.
That’s why it is so important that impeachment proceedings be started
now in the Democratic House of Representatives against George W. Bush.
He won’t actually be impeached in the 58 days remaining before he
leaves office, making an impeachment moot. There isn’t time.
But the Constitution, the one which grants Presidents the power to
pardon, has one exception: A president may pardon, “except in cases of
impeachment.” As I read it, it means that not only may a president not
pardon any high public officials who are facing impeachment, but it
means that a president who is facing the impeachment process may not
use it in any way that could undermine the process against himself.
Putsch will abuse it and use it to take himself and his cronies off the hook. Don’t doubt that for an instant.
And don’t doubt that it will be another emotional and moral body blow
to Americans, who had just regained a little self-respect and a lot of
hope from electing Obama and throwing off the Republican reign of
sleaze.
It isn’t just a matter of vindictiveness against Putsch, although
personally I would be delighted if he spent the rest of his natural
life rotting away in a jail cell. It’s because America, which has
always prided itself on justice, and avenging wrongs, has faced
terrible injustice and wrongs for the past eight years, and needs the
opportunity to address it through rule of law, in open court, and by
the standards of the civilized world.
Don’t let Putsch get away with his crimes. Impeach the little bastard
now, and make him eventually face a jury to explain himself.
Times executive editor and some of her colleagues.
