Bloggers with short-term memories and no sense of their own irony… If it weren’t so sad, I might actually find it entertaining:
Only Senators completely ignorant of the Constitution would consider impeachment a viable option for dealing with policy differences between the executive and the legislature. The Constitution, in Article 2, Section 4, makes very plain the bases on which Congress can move to impeach a President:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
It does not grant Congress the right to remove a President on policy grounds. In fact, the entire idea of the balance of powers is to ensure that policy differences get worked out by compromise and that Congress does not act out of a mob mentality. The founders made the branches co-equal for a reason, and that was to limit the power of both. Otherwise, they would have chosen the parliamentary model — they had the British system as an easy example to follow — and made Congress the arbiter of executive policy.
Yes, there is only one legitimate reason to ever impeach a president: he lied about getting a blow job! For God’s sake, people, think of what’s important, here! Get your priorities straight! Think of the children! Oh, won’t someone please think of the children?
Is it really that hard for them to remember that just 8 years ago they engaged in a partisan witchhunt against a popular Democratic President, for no other reason than they didn’t like him very much? Do these people have no shame!? Are they completely unaware of the irony, the hypocrisy in all of this?
Impeachment is necessary but insufficient.
At a minimum, George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, and Alberto Gonzalez must each be referred to an international war crimes tribunal, if for no other reason than to restore the credibility and honor of the US. These men are each in their own way the blackest of tyrants, rivaling Saddam in the acts of butchery, torture, and murder committed on their orders.