Tag Archives: impeachment

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As for impeachment …

Now that so many pundits and politicians are talking about impeachment these days in Washington, D.C., I believe I’ll share an important date that’s about to pass.

On Aug. 9, many Americans will commemorate — some will cheer it, others will mourn it — the resignation of the 37th president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon.

You see, Nixon resigned because he was certain to be impeached for some serious “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment; the full House was certain to ratify them; the Senate then seemed certain to convict the president.

It then fell to at least one key friend of the president, Sen. Barry Goldwater, to give him the straight scoop: You don’t have enough support in the Senate to save you from conviction, Mr. President.

He quit on Aug. 9, 1974 and saved the nation the trauma of a certain conviction.

What did he do — allegedly? Well, he ordered the FBI to stonewall efforts to find the truth about who was responsible for the burglary of the Democratic National HQ office at the Watergate office complex.

That’s the real deal, folks. That’s the kind of behavior that gets presidents impeached.

The talk today? Well, it’s not even clear what in the world critics of the 44th president, Barack Obama, have in mind. They keep yammering about overuse of executive authority, even though this president has used it far less than his predecessors over the past century.

If this ridiculous discussion continues in the months to come, let’s keep in mind what happened four decades ago. A president abused his power in a serious way and had the good sense to quit his office before the U.S. Senate ran him out of town.

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Surprise! House votes to sue Obama

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Well, that vote took not a single political observer by surprise.

The U.S. House of Representatives, in a party-line vote, has decided to sue President Obama because he has assumed too much executive authority to suit their tastes.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/213859-house-votes-to-sue-obama

Who knew?

The vote was 225-201. Five Republican House members voted against the lawsuit idea; zero Democrats voted for it.

Now what?

Well, the House is going to file a lawsuit on the grounds that the president abused his executive authority by postponing the employer mandate requirement in the Affordable Care Act. House Speaker John Boehner says Obama “changed the law” when he did that, and that he overstepped his authority in going over Congress’s head.

This might be the most bizarre political stunt since independent counsel Ken Starr uncovered Bill Clinton’s foolishness with the White House intern — giving Republicans enough ammo to impeach the 42nd president of the United States.

Boehner hopes to prove that Congress has standing to sue the president. He’ll probably get it. Then he’ll have to prove that Obama somehow broke the law in exerting his authority as president, or that he’s liable for damages created by his action — which, incidentally, is what Republicans who hate the ACA actually favor.

This is goofy beyond belief.

Interestingly, the five GOP “no” votes came mostly from the nut-case wing of the Republican House caucus. These are the folks who would rather impeach the president rather than merely sue him.

You know, I’m kind of glad Congress is getting the hell out of Washington for the next five weeks. It’s obvious the gasbags who run the House of Reps aren’t interested in actual governing.

Go home, y’all.

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Impeachment tops Democrats' agenda

Politics has this curious way of creating story lines one wouldn’t normally expect.

It now appears that Democrats, not Republicans, want to discuss openly this notion of impeaching President Barack Obama, according to The Hill newspaper.

Dems can’t stop talking about impeaching President Obama

Why is that? Because Democrats are hoping to gin up interest among their base of supporters prior to the 2014 mid-term elections for Congress. Democrats want to retain control of the U.S. Senate and want to prevent further tightening of Republican control of the House.

They figure that by talking about the lunacy of impeaching the president that Republicans will be seen as the party more intent on destroying a presidency than in actual governing.

Good luck with that, Democrats.

Serious Republicans know the country has no appetite for an impeachment. They also know they have no actual grounds to do any such thing. Yes, we hear from nut cases within the Republican Party — with former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin leading the chorus — who want to impeach the president. Speaker John Boehner says it won’t happen; I’ll stick with the speaker of the House on that one.

Will this impeachment talk stir the Democratic voter masses enough to stem the GOP tide this November? Time will tell. If it doesn’t and the GOP captures control of the Senate, well, then we’ll see if Republicans actually can govern.

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Impeachment talk is driving me insane

For the ever-loving life of me I cannot fathom how on God’s Earth Republicans around the country think Congress should impeach the president of the United States.

A new poll from CNN-ORC says two-thirds of Americans oppose the notion of impeaching President Obama. Yet the nutcases on the far right keep fueling this idiocy by suggesting the president has committed some specified impeachable offense.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/213323-majority-opposes-impeachment-calls-and-lawsuit-poll-finds

House Speaker John Boehner says impeachment is a non-starter. Other key Republicans say they oppose it, too. One of them, most interestingly, is former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who got himself entangled in an earlier impeachment effort against President Clinton. It didn’t work out too well for Gingrich and his House GOP brethren. The House impeached the president, but the Senate acquitted him on all the charges. Gingrich, meanwhile, resigned hi speakership and then left the House because of his own shabby personal behavior and because he lost the confidence of his House colleagues.

The pro-impeachment cabal has even less on Obama than the goons on the right had on Clinton. With Clinton, at least they could say the president lied under oath to a federal grand jury about his fling with that young woman who worked in the White House. Perjury is a felony.

President Obama’s alleged misdeed? He’s using the power granted him by the Constitution to invoke executive authority? What else is there?

Republicans are playing with some serious fire if they keep up this nonsense.

Can’t we get back to the business of governing, for crying out loud?

The mid-term elections might give Republicans control of the Senate — but it’s not nearly a sure thing. They’ll likely retain control of the House. If Capitol Hill goes fully Republican, then the GOP will have to settle into the role of co-equal partners in the process of running the richest, most powerful country on Earth.

Impeachment rhetoric from the GOP peanut gallery is an utterly ridiculous exercise.

It is irresponsible and reprehensible in the extreme.

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Gosh, I now am asking my own congressman, Republican Mac Thornberry: What say you, Mac, about this idea of impeaching the president? Please tell me you haven’t swilled the GOP goofball Kool-Aid.

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You go, ex-VP Cheney

Say what you will about Dick Cheney — and I’ve said more than my share in recent months — he’s a serious politician with serious ideas.

OK, so I cannot stand the former vice president’s constant carping about the administration that succeeded the one in which he was a key player. I cannot stomach that he cannot keep his trap shut about foreign policy issues, as he is undermining President Obama and Vice President Biden.

But this serious man said a serious thing about impeaching the president.

He calls such talk a “distraction.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/dick-cheney-sarah-palin-impeachment-distraction-108944.html?hp=r4

Cheney was referring specifically to an unserious politician’s talk about impeachment. That would be the former half-term Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who’s weighed in with some notion that the president needs to be impeached. She hasn’t specified the high crimes and misdemeanors of which he is supposedly guilty.

It doesn’t matter, frankly. There aren’t any misdeeds that rise to anything close to an impeachable offense.

Still, Cheney is right to call down his GOP colleague — if only gently. He said he likes the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee. Cheney says she has a right to her opinion, which of course is quite correct. It’s just that she’s wrong on almost everything that flies out of her mouth.

For that matter, so is Cheney.

On this issue, though, he is right … to the extent he has spoken out at all about impeaching Barack Obama.

Cheney told CNN: “I’m not prepared, at this point, to call for the impeachment of the president. I think he is the worst president of my lifetime. I fundamentally disagree with him. I think he’s doing a lot of things wrong. I’m glad to see House Republicans are challenging him, at least legally, at this point, but I think that gets to be a bit of a distraction just like the impeachment of Bill Clinton did.”

He’s not going to give President Obama any kind of a break, to be sure. That’s expected.

Still, he’s trying to quell the nut-case talk among those on the right wing of his once-great political party. I’ll give him a modicum of credit for that.

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Surprise! Most GOPers favor impeachment

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A part of me is glad the talk of impeaching President Obama keeps percolating.

It serves to remind much of the country that today’s Republican Party is being dominated by nutty zealots who would impeach the president for passing gas in a public elevator if they thought they could get away with it.

Poll: 35 percent say impeachment justified

A new poll shows that 68 percent of Americans who call themselves Republicans believe Obama has done something merit impeachment by the House of Representatives. The poll, sponsored by YouGov and the Huffington Post, reports that 8 percent of Democrats think it’s a bad idea.

Wow. I’m shocked, shocked!

Reasonable Republicans — and there remain some of them in high public office — think otherwise about impeachment. House Speaker John Boehner says it won’t happen. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia says the president hasn’t committed the type of crime that merits impeachment.

That hasn’t stopped the likes of former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah “Barracuda” Palin from weighing in with impeachment talk.

I rather like Attorney General Eric Holder’s response to Palin’s recent demand for an impeachment. He quipped that the former Alaska governor “wasn’t a particularly good vice presidential candidate.” Holder said Palin was “an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why.”

I figure that as long as the media keep reporting this impeachment nonsense, the better it is for those who oppose the idea of proceeding with such idiocy. It exposes the modern GOP as a party dominated by fruitcakes who, absent any constructive agenda for governing, are left to talk openly about an issue intended solely to stoke its fire-breathing base.

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Impeachment talk makes me crazy

All this impeachment poppycock is making me nuts.

Some goofball right-wing members of Congress — not to mention a few bystanders perched in the political peanut gallery — are saying the House of Representatives needs to impeach President Barack Obama.

For what, you say? I don’t know exactly. For issuing executive orders in keeping with his constitutional authority? For the flood of illegal immigrants who are coming into the country, as if the president himself could order it stopped? For tweaking the Affordable Care Act after it became law?

The right-wing loons contend he’s broken laws. They haven’t cited specific laws — because he hasn’t broken any law.

Many of us have lived through two impeachable events involving presidents.

* The first one occurred in the early 1970s. President Nixon’s re-election campaign hired a team of goons to break into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex. When word got out that they were captured, Nixon then ordered the FBI to block the investigation. Then that became known and all hell broke loose.

The House Judiciary Committee and a select committee of senators conducted hearings. The Judiciary Committee then approved articles of impeachment. Nixon resigned in August 1974 rather than face certain impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate.

* Then came the episode involving President Clinton. A special prosecutor was hired by Congress to examine the Whitewater real estate dealings allegedly involving President and Mrs. Clinton. The prosecutor then began snooping around allegations that Clinton fooled around with a young White House intern. A federal grand jury asked Clinton about it. He lied when he denied any involvement with the woman. Oops. You can’t perjure yourself. The House impeached him on those grounds, but the Senate acquitted him.

Two specific incidents resulted in a near impeachment and the real thing.

The stuff involving President Obama? It’s all political hucksterism, meant to inflame the Republican base, get ’em riled up.

Sure, the president has made mistakes. Has any president skated through office without blundering here and there? Of course not.

Do these blunders require an impeachment? No.

To his credit, House Speaker John Boehner says he disagrees with the impeachment yammering.

Good. Now he needs to take the tea party yahoos within his caucus who keep fomenting this nonsense to the woodshed.

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Impeachment talk is ridiculous

Put a sock in it, Sarah “Barracuda” Palin.

You too, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Loony Bin. Same for the rest of the clowns on the far right wing of the Republican Party who believe Barack Obama has committed an impeachable offense.

At least one leading Republican, the speaker of the House of Representatives, is sounding a note of sanity.

Boehner says no to impeachment

John Boehner knows better. He was there when the House commenced impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton and then watched as Republicans took it on the chin in the 1998 mid-term election.

Palin, the ex-half-term Alaska governor, says Obama should be impeached because of the immigration crisis on our southern border. Someone needs to ask the former GOP vice-presidential nominee: What “high crime” and “misdemeanor” has the president committed?

I think I know the answer: none.

She wrote in an op-ed: “The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.”

Let’s allow the grownups to run the country. Speaker Boehner said simply to the impeachment calls, “I disagree.”

Enough said.

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Here comes 'impeachment' talk

Wait for it. Here it comes. Are you ready for it?

Some talking heads in both the left- and right-wing media are talking about impeachment as it regards the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

Oh … brother.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/208264-gop-senator-obama-faces-impeachment-push-if-more-prisoners-leave-gitmo

Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — who knows a thing or two about impeaching a president of the United States — now warns that President Obama could face impeachment if he releases any more prisoners from Guantanamo Bay without consulting first with Congress.

The United States turned over five Taliban detainees in exchange for Bergdahl. The exchange reportedly took place without the White House advising Congress of it in advance, under federal law. Republicans are outraged — outraged, I tell you — that they weren’t so advised.

The White House has apologized for what it calls an “oversight.” That hasn’t stopped the uproar.

Sen. Graham — himself an Air Force reserve lawyer — once helped prosecute President Clinton during the 42nd president’s 1998 impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. The Senate acquitted the president and Republicans ended up paying dearly for it politically at the next election.

Some left-wing media pundits — notably MSNBC’s Ed Schultz — believe Republicans are waiting for the results of this year’s mid-term election before commencing impeachment proceedings against Barack Obama. The idea, according to Schultz, is that the GOP could gain control of the Senate and tighten their grip on the House, particularly with tea party Republicans winning elections across the country.

I’m hoping Schultz is just hyperventilating and will calm down once he catches his breath.

We’ll need to get some answers to questions about Bergdahl’s release and, just as importantly, his capture five years ago. Was he AWOL? Did he abandon his post? If he did walk away, should the Army court-martial him? Let’s sort all that out first.

As for the release, the president and the Pentagon brass were determined not to leave an American behind once we leave the Afghanistan battlefield. Bowe Bergdahl was the lone U.S. service member being held captive. The brass felt it was worth it to exchange five Taliban officers for Bergdahl.

Did they do it by the book? That, too, remains to be determined definitively.

Good grief. Let’s can this impeachment talk until we get all the facts on the table.

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Democratic U.S. Senate runoff on tap

David Alameel is running against Keesha Rogers in the May 27 primary runoff for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

I’ll admit that this one has gotten past me.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/05/05/democrats-rally-around-alameel-sideline-obama-crit/

It appears Democrats actually could nominate a wacky pretender to run this fall against Republican Sen. John Cornyn.

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.

The wack job happens to be Rogers, who finished with 22 percent of the primary vote in March, enough to deny Alameel the outright majority needed to be nominated to run against Cornyn.

“There must be people who don’t know what she stands for,” Alameel told the Texas Tribune.

And she stands for? Well, she wants President Obama to be impeached. That’s right, a Democrat is calling for the impeachment of a fellow Democrat, the guy in the White House, the 44th president of the United States.

Rogers reportedly makes the point about impeachment at the rare public appearances she makes as she, um, campaigns for the Senate.

Alameel was supposed to win the Democratic primary outright. He has the backing of the party apparatus. He has been endorsed by the Democratic nominee for governor, Wendy Davis. He is independently wealthy and is ready to spend a lot of his own money to get elected.

First, though, he has to fight off a goofball candidate for his party’s nomination.

Rogers suggested recently that the president is a closet Republican. That’s right. He’s one of them.

“Obama is right in line with the Republicans as he’s supporting Wall Street financial interests, as he’s supporting this drive toward thermonuclear war, and as he’s destroying the physical economy of this nation,” Rogers said in a Houston speech, according to the Tribune.

Earth to Rogers: The economy is improving; and thermonuclear war isn’t on anyone’s horizon except your own.

Rogers’s surprising success just might say something about the still-dismal state of the Texas Democratic Party. Yes, Democrats are nominally hopeful that Davis might be able to upset Republican nominee Greg Abbott in the governor’s race; they also have hopes for Leticia Van de Putte’s chances in the race for lieutenant governor.

But boy, howdy. If they nominate someone like Keesha Rogers to run against John Cornyn, well, the party’s in more trouble than many of us ever imagined.