[NYTr] Can Pelosi Single-Handedly Take Impeachment Off the Table

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Of course not -- the other 534 creeps she works with have all helped.
Typical of the covert sexism in crticicisms of women leaders
everywhre, Fein calls Pelosi "imperious and mean-spirited." We'll get
"strident" or "shrill" next. When were these words attached to any
powerhouse Speaker before she was a woman? She's a slime, so the
answer is to replace her (with a man, of course). At the same time, at
least Fein is appropriately targeting the leadership of the corrupt and
spineless Dem Party, and not just people like Conyers. -NYTr] 


sent by rick kissell

Slate - August 23, 2007 
http://www.slate.com/id/2172547/nav/tap1/

The Heart of Queens

Can Nancy Pelosi single-handedly take impeachment off the table?

by Bruce Fein

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is proving to be the surprise O. Henry
ending to last November's elections. The American voters gave Democrats
clear control of Congress, rebuked President George W. Bush, and voiced
an unequivocal public craving to trade in customary narrow-minded
politics for something more inspiring. Yet motivated by partisan
concerns over the 2008 elections, the new speaker is following
President Bush around like a sheep while he solidifies an imperial
presidency and diminishes the Congress into irrelevancy. Just look at
the latest ACLU advertisement targeting Pelosi and Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid. The only thing Pelosi has retained for the Congress
is small-minded earmarks to attract political contributions.

If Pelosi persists in her imperious, mean-spirited, and myopic thinking 
in disregard of her oath to support and defend the Constitution,
members of the House should replace her with Majority Leader Steny
Hoyer, D-Md.

According to public opinion polling, the percentage of voters
supporting the impeachments of both President Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney are now approximately 45 and 54 percent, respectively. Most
Americans instinctively feel the president is an untrustworthy steward
of the Constitution's checks and balances because, among other things,
he flouts laws, prohibits White House aides from testifying before 
Congress, consistently defends an attorney general who is an inveterate 
liar, and detains citizens and noncitizens indefinitely as enemy 
combatants on his say-so alone. The prevailing barometer of acute
public dissatisfaction with the White House surpasses the corresponding 
disaffection with President Richard M. Nixon when the Senate Watergate 
hearings began in May 1973. And Mr. Nixon had recently trounced Sen. 
George McGovern in the 1972 elections, winning 49 states.

The prospect of an impeachment inquiry by the House judiciary committee 
would concentrate the minds of the president and vice president 
wonderfully on obeying rather than sabotaging the Constitution. But 
Speaker Pelosi has at least figuratively joined hands with the White 
House in opposition. Emulating the Queen of Hearts in Alice in 
Wonderland, she has threatened the removal of Michigan Rep. John
Conyers from his chairmanship of the House judiciary committee if an
impeachment inquiry were even opened, according to reliable
congressional chatter.

With more than four decades of service in the House, Chairman Conyers
is a veteran of constitutional battles between the branches. The
speaker, in contrast, is a novice on such matters. Unlike Conyers, she
never experienced the Nixon impeachment travails that sobered and
toughened the chairman against executive abuses and secrecy. If she
had, she never would have emboldened President Bush and Vice President
Cheney to intensify their assaults on congressional power by
pronouncing that "impeachment is off the table."

Not surprisingly, after receiving that reassurance that there would be 
no consequences for their misconduct, the White House swiftly choked
off the authority of Congress to expose executive lawlessness or 
maladministration by instructing current or former White House 
officials, including Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and Joshua Bolton, to 
refuse to appear for testimony. And despite the recent enactment of the 
Protect America Act of 2007-which amended the Foreign Intelligence 
Surveillance Act of 1978 for the ninth time since 9/11 to suit the 
administration's fancy-President Bush continues to claim constitutional 
authority to ignore the law at will and in secret.

It would be one thing if the speaker had been able to articulate 
statesmanlike reasons to balk at impeaching the president or vice 
president for their multiple constitutional sins. Impeachment is, to be 
sure, fraught with prudential considerations. A president who confesses 
constitutional error or wrongdoing and pledges to turn a new leaf may
be forgiven. The confession would derail a legal precedent that would
lie around like a loaded weapon for successors in the White House to
justify constitutional misbehavior.

Speaker Pelosi's argument against impeachment is not high-minded, 
however. It is the fortunes of the Democratic Party, not the fate of
the Constitution and the strength of democracy, that animate her
decision. She opines that Democrats would risk losing control of
Congress and the occupancy of the White House in 2008 if impeachment
efforts moved forward. Many Democrats dispute that opinion. They
maintain that citizens voted for authentic change last November and
will revolt if Democrats ape President Bush and maneuver for partisan
advantage while the Constitution burns. If an impeachment inquiry is
blocked by Pelosi, and the White House is left undisturbed in its
constitutional usurpations and celebration of perpetual war, voters may
turn against Democrats for their political spinelessness.

But even if the speaker's political and strategic impeachment worries 
were valid, the Constitution is beyond party. It has remained generally 
unscathed for more than two centuries only because our leaders have 
subordinated their parochial concerns when looking into a
constitutional abyss. The speaker should not be permitted to frustrate
the will of 434 co-equal members who collectively represent the entire
nation and who are inspired by loftier motives when the Constitution
and the relevance of Congress lie in the balance. Just as President
Bush should not be a king, Speaker Pelosi should not be our queen. If
she possessed a crumb of decency or respect for democracy, she would
permit a "free" vote in the House to decide on an impeachment inquiry
without any obligation to support her lead. It is certainly customary
in parliamentary systems like Great Britain or Canada for party leaders
to permit free votes on matters of conscience, like the death penalty
or abortion. Deciding on whether to enforce the Constitution through
impeachment is just as much a matter of moral scruple.

Speaker Pelosi is no constitutional expert. Neither is she an 
impeachment expert. She is no expert in discerning how President Bush 
and Vice President Cheney are slashing away at the sinews of Congress. 
Why should her voice be the final word on impeachment when it runs 
against the grain of the American people and the House of 
Representatives? Checks and balances and protections against government 
abuses are too important to be left to an imperious amateur with a 
Bush-like mental worldview. If House Democrats have any constitutional 
honor and dedication to the nation, they will force Speaker Pelosi out 
if she neglects to turn a new leaf with alacrity.

[Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Bruce Fein & Associates and 
chairman of the American Freedom Agenda. He is author of the
forthcoming book Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle Over
the Constitution and Democracy.] 

© 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC