[NYTr] High Crimes and Ms. Demeanor: Impeach Pelosi

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Dec 5, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/ramakrishnan12052007.html

High Crimes and Ms. Demeanor: Impeach Pelosi Instead

By NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN

    Banta Singh was on his first visit to the city. As it happened, it
was the day of the marathon.

    Seeing hundreds of runners pass by, he asked his city cousin what
was going on.

    "They're in a race", replied the other, wondering how best to
explain a marathon in one sentence.

    "Why?" asked Banta Singh.

    "Well, the winner gets a gold medal", the cousin offered.

    "Hmmm...", Banta Singh wondered aloud. "In that case why are the
others running?"

It is the kind of 'pragmatism' that might land one a slot in the top
echelons of the Democratic establishment in Congress these days.

For a whole year, various high-ranking Democratic House and Senate
leaders, those running for president included (except Dennis Kucinich),
have offered the same answers to several key questions, such as why
they are: (1) Not doing anything to stop the war, (2) not doing
anything about impeaching Bush and Cheney, (3) not doing anything to
halt and reverse the numerous violations of privacy and erosions of
rights, and finally (4) not doing anything to halt the wrongs of the
Bush administration.

The all-purpose excuse: We don't have the votes.

If poor George Washington and his tattered cohorts had insisted on a
guarantee of success as a precondition for confronting the British, we
might all still be speaking English.

If Boris Yeltsin had wanted to be assured of staying in one piece
before standing up to a Soviet army tank in the summer of 1991, history
would have had no piece of Yeltsin.

It is a good thing that Italian police and prosecutors don't follow our
Congress's line of reasoning -- they would have quit going after Mafia
figures long ago, given the low probabilities of conviction.

The Bible has something about the race not being always to the swift,
but it does imply that one must at least participate to stand a chance.
It speaks of the meek inheriting the earth, but gives no indication
that the same applies to the presidency. Even Mitt Romney could tell
you this much.

With the Iranian NIE report of today, it is ever more clear that the
administration's deceptions have only grown in scope. If after this
Congress still does not take up the call for impeachment, it is itself
open to charges of collusion in high crimes against the Republic.

Nancy Pelosi's impeachment is off the table, stance is not only
ridiculous, it is criminal. To leave unchallenged the deliberate
misleading of the country to war, (and the effort to do the same a
second time), makes her party a knowing accessory to the same misdeeds.
Congress has an equal duty to protect the Constitution as the
President. Each day of equivocation is one more day steeped in the
crimes of the Bush administration.

Moral and ethical arguments aside, even a purely political motive
suggests that Democrats must seize the cry of impeachment. Surely, if
the Republicans had not made as much of Clinton's doings and had
refrained from the impeachment trial, the 2000 Presidential race would
have hardly been a contest; Gore would have won in a landslide.

Dennis Kucinich has made a good, if belated, beginning with his
impeachment resolution. But he will get nowhere with his "me, please
stance at the debates. He needs to hammer home to the public the
enormity of what is taking place. His lacing of all his speeches with
some catchphrase-goo about one world and universal immigration does
nothing to enhance his seriousness as a candidate: Mike Huckabee had a
point when he remarked that Jesus did not seek elected office. Of all
candidates, only Ron Paul has managed to combine an evident fealty to
the Constitution with a feet-firmly-on-the-ground demeanor. As a
proclaimed devotee of the Constitution, Kucinich should remember that
that Good Book is silent on matters such as World Peace, Universal
Brotherhood, Multiculturalism, etc., and would do well to follow suit.
He is running for President of the United States, not Savior of the
World.

If the Democrats truly believe Bush and Cheney's crimes are of a
magnitude deserving of impeachment, they can in good conscience speak
of nothing else. If they do not, they should be forced to list each
wrongdoing and say why they don't think it is a high crime. To allow
that something is a high crime or misdemeanor against the Constitution,
and say in the same breath that we must let it slide because we lack
the votes, is as egregious an betrayal of Constitutional responsibility
as the original crime. It also an insult to the entire nature of our
polity as a deliberative enterprise, where exposition, evidence,
debate, and persuasion can change minds.

To paraphrase Lincoln's famous letter to General McClellan, it is time
to tell Nancy Pelosi,"If you won't impeach Bush and Cheney, can we at
least impeach you?"

Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast. He can be
reached at: njn_2003 at yahoo.com.