The Impeachment Belt

Funny.

It was only ten days ago that the New York Times wrote that talk of impeaching President Bush was a scheme concocted by Republicans to fire up the base.

I guess the political landscape has altered dramatically since then.

Today, Michael Powell, of the fair and balanced Washington Post, examines the "impeachment belt" in New England and the steadily growing support across the nation to oust President Bush.

He writes:

To drive through the mill towns and curling country roads here is to journey into New England's impeachment belt. Three of this state's 10 House members have called for the investigation and possible impeachment of President Bush.

Thirty miles north, residents in four Vermont villages voted earlier this month at annual town meetings to buy more rock salt, approve school budgets, and impeach the president for lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and for sanctioning torture.

Window cleaner Ira Clemons put down his squeegee in the lobby of a city mall and stroked his goatee as he considered the question: Would you support your congressman's call to impeach Bush? His smile grew until it looked like a three-quarters moon.

"Why not? The man's been lying from Jump Street on the war in Iraq," Clemons said. "Bush says there were weapons of mass destruction, but there wasn't. Says we had enough soldiers, but we didn't. Says it's not a civil war -- but it is." He added: "I was really upset about 9/11 -- so don't lie to me."

Is Powell filing a news report or writing a short story?

Such imagery -- "stroked his goatee" and "His smile grew until it looked like a three-quarters moon."

What is that about? Rather flowery, don't you think?

After getting that little burst of creative writing out of his system, Powell gets back to some substance.

While he cites that it is a fledgling movement, Powell says impeachment "talk bubbles up in many corners of the nation, and on the Internet, where several Web sites have led the charge, giving liberals an outlet for anger that has been years in the making."

He goes on:

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted last month to urge Congress to impeach Bush, as have state Democratic parties, including those of New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin. A Zogby International poll showed that 51 percent of respondents agreed that Bush should be impeached if he lied about Iraq, a far greater percentage than believed President Bill Clinton should be impeached during the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

I get the feeling that Powell is excited, kind of like how a kid gets two weeks before Christmas -- so close and yet so far.

He even cites supportive constitutional "scholars" that like the idea of looking into impeaching Bush, "such as Harvard's Laurence H. Tribe and former Reagan deputy attorney general Bruce Fein."

Powell seems to be saying, "Real smart, unbiased, and conservative guys think that there are grounds for impeaching Bush. WOO HOO!"

He explains:

It is argued that Bush and his officials conspired to manufacture evidence of weapons of mass destruction to persuade Congress to approve the invasion. Former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill told CBS News's "60 Minutes" that "from the very beginning there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go . . . it was all about finding a way to do it." And a senior British intelligence official wrote in what is now known as the "Downing Street memo" that Bush officials were intent on fixing "the intelligence and the facts . . . around the policy."

Oh, not the "Downing Street memo" again.

Critics point to Bush's approval of harsh interrogations of prisoners captured Iraq and Afghanistan, tactics that human rights groups such as Amnesty International say amount to torture. Bush also authorized warrantless electronic surveillance of telephone calls and e-mails, subjecting possibly thousands of Americans each year to eavesdropping since 2001.

Citing an anti-Bush group like AI does nothing to promote the legitimacy of Powell's argument that the Bush presidency is about torture, spying, and taking away the rights of people around the globe, as well as Americans.

Powell's description of the terrorist surveillance program only adds to the obvious slant of his "news" article.

We're talking about listening to TERRORISTS.

"Bush is saying 'I'm the president' and, on a range of issues -- from war to torture to illegal surveillance -- 'I can do as I like,' " said Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "This administration needs to be slapped down and held accountable for actions that could change the shape of our democracy."

Tribe wrote Conyers, dismissing Bush's defense of warrantless surveillance as "poppycock." It constituted, Tribe concluded, "as grave an abuse of executive authority as I can recall ever having studied."

Sounds like lib "poppycock" to me, real Lefty propaganda.

But posed against this bill of aggrievement are legal and practical realities. Not all scholars, even of a liberal bent, agree that Bush has committed "high crimes and misdemeanors." Bush's legal advice may be wrong, they say, but still reside within the bounds of reason.

Ah, there's the rub.

Cass R. Sunstein, professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago states, "There is a very good argument that the president had it wrong on WMD in Iraq but that he was acting in complete good faith."

When Clinton, Kerry, Albright, and all the Dems had it wrong about WMD, were they acting in good faith?

Sunstein argues that Bush's decision to conduct surveillance of Americans without court approval flowed from Congress's vote to allow an armed struggle against al-Qaeda. "If you can kill them, why can't you spy on them?" Sunstein said, adding that this is a minority view.

You've got to love the Post's idea of presenting both sides of the story.

Those believing in the constitutionality of the terrorist surveillance program hold "a minority view."

I suppose that would be true among the elite lib circles of Bush-hating extremists. Powell needs to dig a little deeper.

I think these people still haven't recovered from the 2000 presidential election.

They so desperately want to see Bush fail.

Here in Massachusetts and Vermont, though, in the back roads and on the streets of Holyoke and Springfield, the discontent with Bush is palpable. These are states that, per capita, have sent disproportionate numbers of soldiers to Iraq. Many in these middle- and working-class towns are not pleased that so many friends and cousins are coming back wounded or dead.

"He picks and chooses his information and can't admit it's erroneous, and he annoys me," said Colleen Kucinski, walking Aleks, 5, and Gregory, 2, home.

Would she support impeachment? Kucinski wags her head "yes" before the question is finished. "Without a doubt. This is far more serious than Clinton and Monica. This is about life and death. We're fighting a war on his say-so and it was all wrong."

Powell really needs to talk to some other people, check out some other back roads and streets.

The quote from Colleen Kucinski that Powell uses to end his article is hilarious.

"He picks and chooses his information and can't admit it's erroneous, and he annoys me."

I would apply those exact words to Powell and those of his ilk -- biased, frustrated libs trying their damnedest to take down this president.