Thursday, July 12, 2007

Barbara Boxer Wants Impeachment Back On The Table

We all know the President needs to be impeached for his multitude of crimes. Wiretapping, lying us into war, committing treason by letting Libby go, etc. etc. are all high crimes, not even misdemeanors. Nancy Pelosi said after the 2006 election that impeachment was not on the table, resulting in many groans from the progressive community. Now as the evidence accumulates, we finally have a leader in the Senate who wants to take a serious look at impeaching George Bush. She told it to Ed Schultz on his program today.

From Tiny Revolution:

SCHULTZ: They're throwing down the gauntlet. They're just declaring that they're not going to change anything -- the President in Cleveland yesterday saying, we're just getting started. So in the meantime, the frustration of the American people continues to build, and I have to tell you Senator, I'm not trying to rope you into a conversation one way or another or where you're at on this, but I want to say this for our listeners: they want impeachment put back on the table. They want impeachment on the table as a bargaining chip. Because for instance, Scooter Libby, commuting the sentence, what happened today with Sarah Taylor saying she'd been instructed by the president not to say anything, Alberto Gonzales, the story today about how he was briefed over the Patriot Act and then lied a week later in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I mean, when is enough is enough?

BOXER: Yeah. I mean, you left out a bunch of things -- spying on citizens without a warrant, going around FISA, on and on. Look, I have always said it should be on the table. Ed, I've always said it. I was on a book tour and I ran into John Dean of Watergate fame. He was on the book tour that I was on, for his book. And it was right after we discovered that the administration was spying on our people without a warrant. And he just said, he looked at me and basically just said, as far as he could see, unless there was some explanation for this, this was impeachable. I've always said that you need to keep it on the table, and you need to look at these things, because now people are dying because of this administration. That's the truth. And they won't change course. They are ignoring the Congress. They keep signing these signing statements which mean that he's decided not to enforce the law. This is as close as we've ever come to a dictatorship. When you have a situation where Congress is stepped on, that means the American people are stepped on. So I don't think you can take anything off the table. Because in fact the Constitution doesn't permit us to take these things off the table.


I don't know if it has always been on the table for Boxer despite her good progressive record, but now is as good a time as any. Thankfully she refers to the matter as a Constitutional one and not about politics. This isn't about Ds versus Rs. It is about the rule of law, and following it when our President continues to break the law and shake the pillars of our democracy.