I've made it perfectly clear my position on impeachment. I'm well aware that my views are in the minority on this site. Hardly anyone has agreed with me, which is fine. I've continued to discuss impeachment with various posters, but just recently, I was hit, both on this site and at a local Democratic gathering, with an argument that, as a proud progressive, I simply cannot square my conscience with.
I didn't start this discussion, but I read a point made my a blogger on this site that suggested that Bush should be impeached, not for FISA, not for destroying emails, not for the Plame incident (all valid arguments, though I still think we should wait), but b/c the President lied to Congress in his 2003 State of the Union Speech regarding the "evidence" (use that word loosely) against Iraq.
I realized when I read that comment that I'd heard it before, at a local gathering of Democrats (mostly college students). The idea that people think that this is a valid argument for impeachment just shocks and sickens me.
High Crimes and Misdemeanors. That is what we can remove the President for. The argument in response to this (again from both sources) was "An impeachable offense is whatever Congress says it is."
We've had two impeachments in our country's history. Both occurred b/c the Oval Office occupants were set up to fall into the impeachment trap. Congress passed laws not allowing the President to fire a Cabinet member. Johnson did it anyway, and Congress impeached him for "High Crimes and Misdemeanors." That episode is a disgrace to our history. Our other impeachment, against Bill Clinton, came the same way. That investigation was started by partisanship, fueled by partisanship, and resulted in a partisan impeachment. The ultimate irony, is that the Republicans, after fueling an almost entirely partisan witch hunt, whined and bitched about "partisan Democrats" foiling their impeachment. Both times, impeachment was foiled for one simple reason, enough Senators recognized that there were no "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" perpetrated by the President of the United States.
The very idea, that we should impeach a President b/c he lied in a State of the Union speech is a disgrace and a mockery to our system of justice. The idea that Congress can declare that they're being lied to in a SOTU speech is ridiculous. Those members lie with regularity. Both to each other, in the House chamber (conveniently, where the SOTU speech occurs), the Senate Chamber, their homes, their offices, everywhere. They are in NO POSITION to make LYING TO THEM an impeachable offense under any set of rules.
My second point. The pro-impeachment forces on this site have listed numerous arguments for impeachment. Everything from FISA to Valerie Plame's outing, to the Bush campaign connections w/ the Swift Boat Veterans (that's murky, but still warrants some discussion). Go with those arguments when making your point. If what all of you say is true, that the President is guilty of impeachable offenses, then why on Earth would you throw this one out as your defense? Lying to Congress in a SOTU?
That argument is nothing more than grasping at straws, and according to those who favor impeachment, it's already a slam dunk. Clearly it isn't much of a slam dunk, if a lot of you agree that this charge, lying to Congress in a SOTU speech, warrants impeachment proceedings.
If I were in Congress, and someone came to me with that as an article of impeachment, I'd laugh him out of the room, raise money for his opponent and make sure he never disgraced the halls of Congress again. Lying to Congressmen is NOT an impeachable offense unless you are under oath (in which case it is perjury). I don't give a damn how Republican the President may be, how many times he may have lied, I hope I would not be so arrogant as to say "B/c I'm a member of Congress, I deserve the whole truth all the time. Since you lied to me in a speech 4.5 years ago, I'm impeaching you for high crimes."
Some folks well say, well it's a moral law. So we should impeach the President for a violation of moral law? That he shouldn't lie. That's just great, then the next Republican President, with a friendly Congress, could simply pass other moral laws designed to punish Democrats. Perhaps something along the lines of "Congressmen should not take money from trial lawyers who have cases pending against the government." This site and others would be furious and you'd be right.
Simply put, Congressmen are NOT guardians of morals. They have no business telling anyone that they shouldn't lie. Several members of Congress lie even more often than Bush has, sometimes on the floor of their own chamber. What should we do with them?
They SHOULD BE guardians of the laws they pass. If you and they think that Bush has violated those laws, then that's a valid argument for impeachment. But simply creating new standards, changing the playing field should not be tolerated, nor advocated by anyone with a sense of decency. Impeaching the President for lying in a SOTU? We'd never see a full Presidency again. That kind of crap is the kind we expect from Republicans. You want to impeach Bush? Find a CRIME, an actual CRIME (there's supposed to be a pretty long list of those). But drop this RIDICULOUS idea that lying to Congress in a speech is a crime. It's not. And when you start removing public officials for actions that are not crimes, you open the floodgates. What will stop them from impeaching a Congressmen b/c he plays poker? To a lot of people, that's morally wrong.
An impeachable offense is NOT whatever Congress says it is. An impeachable offense is one that which EVEN CONGRESS recognizes that the law was broken. Lying to them is not against the law, unless as I said earlier, it's under oath.
I respect everyone on this site, except for those who call me names for disagreeing with them. This argument, that Bush committed an impeachable offense by lying in a SOTU, is absurd, ridiculous, nothing more than an embarassing joke. If this kind of crap comes out in the media, then the impeachment that most of you want SO BADLY, will be dead in the water. Completely. As it should be, if that's the main argument.