Firmage EdImpeach this Boob
I’ve written on the law of presidential impeachment for appoximately thirty-five years. Some of these writings are available on OneUtah.org I’m so dreadfully tired of preaching to the choir. And such a choir. We seem, dear friends, to be a quartet. I’m even more sure you’re tired of my rant. But today’s news, and yesterday’s, now that Romney has had he fifteen minutes, tells us what we already knew.
George Bush is a liar. His only possible defense in a criminal proceeding, or the felonious acts of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” must be that he lacks the mens rea, in his case, the intelligence to have a mens rea, or motive, that was criminal. He may just be so dumb, so lazy intellectually, and so protected by his staff who all know he has the intention span of a snail darter, that just maybe he didn’t know that Iraq did not cause 9j/11; or that Pakistan, not Iraq and Iran, is our true threat, with hundreds of nukes. That these folks, and not Iran or Iraq, produced 9j/11.
But we now know he did know. We know, as we said during Nixon’s impeachment, what he knew and when he knew that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program years ago. His Vice President, Dick Cheney, knew.
Of course, it is just possible, in this most unique White House in American history, that the real chief of the United States Empire, formerly a democratic republicn state, Dick Cheney, didn’t bother to tell Bush Lite. Why tell him and not the janitor? I’ve enjoyed the White House bathroom, with my fifteen minutes, in this case determined by a bladder and what very little remains down there following prostate surgery. The janitor, and the Secret Service agents who sidled up to me as I wandered the catacombs of the White House, obviously kept a clean beautiful John.
I’ve worked for two men who were number two. My grandfather, Hugh B. Brown, counselor to President David O. McKay, and a liberal Democrat; and Hubert Horatio Humphrey. I’ve heard the vice presidency described as a “bucket of warm spit,” by a fellow Texican of our boob. John Adams just stayed home with Abigail, much of the time, never leaving Massachusetts, which would have been very good advice to Mitt Romney. Jefferson did the same, staying much of the time in Virgina. For the first time in American history, we have a Vice President who governs an empire, while occupying and challenging Bush with the colored pencil and coloring books in the George Bush Presidential library.
But by employing the Ten Commandments of politics, all these cynical folk know the first and only commandment that concerns them. Protect your ass. So of course Cheney protected his butt by telling Stupid.
So: he lied regarding 9/11. He lied thereafter, with reports of such dazzling progress in Iraq that with our surge, this year will see far more deaths than any previous year. He lied, as did successive American presidencies since Eisenhower…or really, the Dulles brothers, Allan and John Foster Dulles, regarding the threats from Iran. This, among other things, was a topic in my interviews with Bill Moyers.
Bush the Less has enjoyed a few days’ relief by the focus, with all sexual innuendoes that would stun Freud and Jung, on the non-starter non-story of the year, Mitt’s Mormonism. Who cares?
But now the heat is on again.
Just how many lies over three decades (including deluding Texicans about life, love, and oil) can George Bush tell? How many “wolf wolf’s “before we impeach this criminal, then try him for war crimes. Then throw him in jail for the rest of his life. Or better yet, let him really be Commander-in -Chief, like the first George, George Washington. Place him on the proverbial White Horse of Imperial Military lore, at the tip of the Surge. And then like Uriah the Hittite, married to Bathsheba, after King David impregnated her (”knew” her, in the quaint King James Bible of Mr. Bush), retire the army Bush has destroyed, and let him atone for lying to the National Guard. And the American people.
When you boil down all the impeachment material in American history, presidents are impeached on only three grounds: lying to the American people on war and peace; total incompetence; and so mismanaging the national economy that we will be paying for our disastrous choice of Bush and Cheney, in 2000 and 2004, time out of mind. The children of our children’s children, squared and tripled, will be paying for our sins. Truly, as the Bible says, the sins of the fathers will fall upon the heads of the children, now, to the end of time. This is all I know of original sin.
Bush qualifies for immediate impeachment, conviction, and removal. Then the application of the criminal law. And then life imprisonment or exile.
Let us impeach this ignorant liar while the dogs of war are savaging the world, but somehow, by the grace of God, we’ve not gone nuclear. Please, impeach Bush, Cheney, and their mafiosi. Convict them in the Senate, with the Chief Justice of the United States presiding. (A certain wry justice there, since the Supreme Court stole the American presidency from Al Gore.) Cheney and Bush, in that order, must go. They are a stink in the nostrils of hundreds of millions of suffering people, world-wide.
Ed Firmage
Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, emeritus,
University of Utah College of Law
Salt Lake City, Utah,
USA
December 6th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
From our keyboards to Gods’ ears…may it be so!
December 6th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Thanks, Caveat. We both should be in bed, getting ourzzzzzzzzzzz. xo ed firmage
December 7th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Is it not already too late Ed? What would impeachment serve now?
Have they not gotten away with it, at least here on Earth?
What censure can we expect after the last 8 months of democrat go along and get along with the crocodiles?
What a bunch of wildebeest the US public has become, and we have yet to cross the deep part of the river.
Any answers would be appreciated.
December 7th, 2007 at 2:14 am
Boob is right. Listen to “Washington’s Awash With Boobs” at
http://picnictoimpeach.org
click where it says “hear our song”
December 7th, 2007 at 2:24 am
Great post, Mr. Firmage - but a couple of questions.
But unfortunately, the Democratic-controlled Congress lacks the spine to actually do it. So what recourse is there? Is there any way war crimes charges, whether in the U.S. or in the ICC could be brought against either Bush or Cheney (and let’s throw Rummy in there, too, while we’re at it)?
And from a more pragmatic point, if the Democratically-controlled Congress were to impeach Cheney and Bush, are you concerned about blowback - that is, that Americans would see Democrats as vituperative much the way they viewed the Republican-controlled Congress of 1998?
December 7th, 2007 at 3:55 am
Hi friend Glenn. And Andrew. I spent the last hour writing a reply and it’s now after 2:00 a.m. It disappeared into cyberheaven or hell. So once again. You should read my two “books, ” or long articles, prepared for the Senate, through Ted Moss, as a “how to do it” map for the Congress in the Nixon impeachment. It’s one OneUtah.org
The Utah piece deals with the substantive law of presidential impeachment. The Duke Law Journal piece, on the procedural law of presidential impeachment. Their point, their practical point: impeachment is not about punishing a wrongdoer, primarily. It is to right the wrongs of a criminal conspiracy in the office of the president against the American people and the Congress and the courts.
In a word, impeachment is designed primarily to right a temporary tilt toward the office of the presidency, in favor of Congress and the courts, as the president and his henchmen, previously, shredded the three branches of government, by criminal and unconstitutional arrogation of these powers that our forebears’ gave to all three branches, balanced and in check.
Impeachment is not primarily about punishing the president. It is about preservation of the Republic. But it must not be largely partisan. That is, a number of Republican heavyweights must agree that the country is in peril. And that the trauma, the sheer utter Dantean-like inferno of hell that would mark this time, is worth it. The standard, seductively simple: would we, America, be better off to suffer this pain rather than letting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz get away with their serial killing, as serial killers of the most murderous order. Or is our country better off by an election that sweeps the Republicans out of office massively? Even in Utah?
All American impeachments of the president undertaken have a common theme: the “high crimes and misdemeanors” may be said in a sentence — presidents who lie to the people, who are so stupid or ignorant that they are unfit for the presidency, and those so venal that they threaten to bankrupt the nation.
Lying to the Congress, said James Iredell of South Carolina, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, when asked to name an example of an impeachable offense, replied…to lie to the Senate on matters of war and peace, and foreign relations. He later served brilliantly of the Supreme Court of the United States, and authored a book on the American Constitution.
I submit that the president is unquestionably guilty of at least 20 impeachable offenses. Cheney too. And the other mafiosi in this worst presidency in American history, with no serious contenders for the bottom of the barrel, the bottom feeders par excellance.
But that, in a sense, begs the question: will the United States of America be better off having gone through the trauma of impeachment? Or contrarily, are we better off supporting this fool, this rogue, through his last year. And all of us pray like hell that he not plunge us into Armaggedon.
In my piece of a day or two ago on OneUtah, I also go over Bush’s doings. Read that piece carefully. It’s entitled something like “Arrest president on Tribal Grounds.”
Back on the Duke and Utah pieces. I’ve modified my thinking, a bit, on a point or two, for example, some of what I said about the pardoning power of the president.
Now to the carrot. For the stick, see above. It would make great sense first to impeach Dick Cheney. He, really is the Dark Lord of world politics. Everything bad, truly evil, goes there, or to Rove. Or both. Impeach him in the House. Convict him in the Senate, which sets as a court if impeachment. at that time as a court of impeachment, presided over, not without some irony and karma, by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court, in its worst decision since Dred Scott, stole the 2000 election from Nobel Laureate Al Gore. The Chief Justice simply trots across the street to atone and to chair the Senate, now sitting as a court of presidential impeachment. Cheney is removed from office, thrown in jail for a very long time, after criminal trial in our courts…Impeachment contains no penalties save removal from office. Thereafter is quite another matter. See, e.g., my earlier pieces.
Then go after President Bush. But before this, allow the Republican Party to choose their vice president, through the constitutional processes. So: we again have a vice president and, with huge suspension of disbelief, a president. Now, impeach this dummy so searingly begging for impeachment (see, e.g., the great Russian novel by Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, where the criminal seeks his own death, constantly, by sticking around the scene of the crime. And St. Paul’s prescient remarks to the Romans, ch.’s seven and eight, describing his, and our, inclination to do what we would not, and not do what we should. Freud did not invent the unconscious. That was done by Paul, Augustine, Calvin, et al, in the Christian branch of speculations and self-revelations.)
The normal end to an impeachment proceeding, after all, is hugely the “resignation” of the criminal. This protects the country from their government. This is so in our few presidential impeachments, and our scores of judicial impeachments. So by by Bush.
Now the point, already evident to some of you by our allowing the vice president to be chosen, as is only fair, by the party of the incumbent president and vice president. So: self-interest, the constant organ of our body politic not dependent upon our being angels, reigns supreme. The Republican Party nominates, say, Collin Powell, as Vice President. And when Cheney, our strangest ever Vice President is finally exorcised from American life, Powell becomes President and nominates, say, Elizabeth Dole, the spouse of Bob Dole, former Republican candidate for President, as Vice President.
What a ticket. A whole new ball game. Likely, Hillary and Obama, or Edwards, versus Collin Powell and Elizabeth Dole.
BUT one joker in this implausible deck. As Robert Conquest said years ago, as our greatest scholar of the then-Soviet Union, “when you prophesy the future acts of he Soviet Union, first pretend that their government was just captured by a cabal of heir most deadly enemies.”
Of Course, this remains true of every corporate body. Governments. Churches. Universities. And political campaigns. Each corporate body seems inexorably drawn down the whirlpool, the drain, into the dank dark cesspools, the catacombs under our thin veneer of civility and civilization. BUT, self-interest, nonetheless, assures some great success. As the Federalist Papers say, men are not angels. Angels would need no law and no government. We would all be faithful anarchists. Teach a people correct principles, Jose[h Smith says, and they will govern themselves.
December 7th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Of course, it’s not too late for impeachment. But there is a Plan B. Can we get a presidential candidate to commit to prosecuting Bush, Cheney and the rest for their many crimes after they leave office?
December 7th, 2007 at 10:00 am
I object strongly to the word “boob” in the headline of this post. It is not only vile and untoward but an insult to the millions of honorable (not to mention fantabulous) boobs representing more than half of America’s citizens. I demand that you remove “boob” and replace it with “idiot,” “bonehead,” or other insult acceptable to me, the sole arbitor of good taste and propriety on Earth. Thank you.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:23 am
as you will hear, if you listen to the 30 second song “Picnic To Impeach”, the lyric:
on http://www.picnictoimpeach.org
also, don’t miss “Clinton Got A Blowjob (What Clinton Got)”, at
http://picnictoimpeach.us/whyimpeach
December 7th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Ed it must have been late. Every now and again when I write something long I wish to keep, I copy it. Control C, CV if you lose it. Sorry, you know this, but sometimes… and then even if I lose it, I have a good chunk of it. Drives me nuts when it happens, thoughts are rarely composed the same way twice.
With the democrat congress and bush in end years of his rampage, he is almost a lame duck, all he could ever do now is veto things that come on down the pike.
Like a River trip that has passed the rapids, bush need only pretend to paddle, drink a beer, and collect the memories. Yeah, so let’s bitch him out for almost flippin the boat, and not paddling in synch with the rest of us through the big water. It is going to be long shuttle to get us back to the put in, to do all over again. Now we got some guy that wants to be the boat team leader in his underwear. Well,white water rafting is crazy from its inception, so is democracy.
I know that impeaching bush would achieve some moral purpose, but for the fact it is so late in the game, and all it would do now is rally republicans to the defense of the man. There is a time for things, and in my opinion the time for this has passed. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see it, put it has the overall effect of hanging a dead man.
Protecting the Republic Ed?, that point was moot when the Patriot Act passed, and then re-upped by the super majorities of reps and dems. The deal is done, whipping the mule, will just make us feel better. What an abusive lot both sides of congress really are. We are the paving stones on their road to NOWHERE!
To Ken, do really want to chase bush, cheney and the shadowy people that have populated the administration after the fact? You wouldn’t have any concerns over having an accident, or perhaps a family mishap? Ask the Iraqi people what became of their cries for Justice when they came between this crowd and their money. Might do it, but not without a militant bearing, and I wouldn’t count on succeeding with just my mouth and pieces of paper. Yes, I have little doubt that the crowd that has run the last 7 years is capable of anything. Let us remember clinton, though eye appealing, was of the same make, bombing Yugoslavia in submission, and albright the harpy fiend, saying it was all “worth it”.
Enough all ready. Chasing impeachment is just good money after bad, with one year left. Like chasing the kid who lit your barn on fire while there is still a chance to get the stock out of the barn. If we do that silly thing, the only benefit is that we can eat the barbequed cows and chickens…if we still have our appetite.
December 7th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Ed; I think we should return to the original method of voting in our Vice President seperately, it would give the spectre of impeachment and subsequent removal of a President for high crimes and misdemeanors, the teeth it needs. You can be sure a President would be on their best behavior what with the Veep standing by with a dagger in their hand.
So what if the bi-partisan government was gridlocked in a political dual to the death? The public would get relief, both actual and comic. We are better off when our Federal government does nothing. Forces the States and local communities to accept that their “parents” are basically insane and abusive, and that it is time to grow up and take care of things you can see out your window yourself. A Jeffersonian sentiment, no?
December 7th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Andrew and Ken, for example of my cynical fears. The “Lion of the Left” Bernie Ward, who for years has advocated liberal progressive causes, and a constant harrier of bush and company, has just been arrested for “trafficking in child PORN!! He is a longtime talk radio host on KGO 810, out of San Francisco, A 50KW boomer, I daresay you could pick it up in SLC on a good night.
Say it ‘aint so Bernie. Sad, no matter what, he is DONE, whether he dun it or not. He claims he traded in the porn with others and did so as a matter of investigating the trade in order to expose it 4 years ago. Pretty stupid Bernie.
Sadness and shock, no matter how it turns out
Payback for the foot tapping exposes’? Another salvo in the culture wars? Or just a pervert that got caught, a progressive one. This Country even if Bernie is innocent is full, FULL, of sick little monkeys.
December 7th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
dear friends Richard, Schreinervideo, glenn, and Johny Video. We’re obviously on the same note, the same team, to mix my metaphorl, as addled as my brain. What we really need to do is to figure how to preach to the choir, as we do do, but also reach out to millions of folks with whom we should be in respectful dialogue. And I do not rule out pornography as a means. Respectful needn’t mean stupid. Sing our song, make love not war, change our martial music into Irving Berlin (my age is showing). As I said before, and I don’t remember from whom I stole it, military justice is to justice just like military music is to music.
Ed Firmage xoxo
December 8th, 2007 at 7:00 am
i’m not sure porn is the way to reach soccer moms… but then again, maybe that’s just the thing.
in my opinion, the Left (including the feminist left) must not participate in the anti-sex hysteria upon which the Right goes about destroying it’s enemies. which is difficult, since the Right (including the religious right) is the most guilty of crimes of sexual abuse. we need to expose their hypocrisy and abuse and corruption– without demonizing sex.
at least Monica was over the age of consent, female, and not a prostitute.
http://www.republicansexoffenders.com/
http://conservativesexscandals.com/
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october172007/repub_scandals_10_17_07.php
(don’t be confused by the title, “Republican Sex Scandals Dwarf”)
is it just a liberal media bias?
http://newsbusters.org/polls/main-reason-media-cover-republican-sex-scandals-more-dems-17621
we must expose republican sexual hypocrisy without distracting people from the real issues (like lies and other high crimes), and without resorting to the same mudslinging they use. it’s a slippery slope. no pun intended.
i remember one day, during the Clinton impeachment, hanging out in Brooklyn Heights, one of the richest old-money neighborhoods in New York, right across the water from Manhattan. an elderly, classy looking woman (in her 70’s at least) was exclaiming to her friend, “Eisenhower had mistresses all the time he was President! Who cares!”
tell it, girl.
See the video “Clinton Got A Blowjob (What Clinton Got)â€. Don’t worry, it’s not porn!
http://picnictoimpeach.us/whyimpeach
December 8th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Johny; Right, Left, religious, non religious, atheists, agnostics, gay straight…no matter how you slice it we arrived on this planet from FUCKING around, be that hide the salami, or mucking around with a petri dish or a turkey baster.
Put that in your mini van Mom, and take it to practise, might be a tight fit with the whole gang.
December 8th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Bernie Ward seems to be a very decent guy. I used to listen to him when I was up at that time of night. I simply can’t believe he had any ill intentions for children or knowingly participated in hurting any. At any rate, even if the children in the pictures were wearing burkas, his career is over and that is going to work out very nicely for the right wing sociopaths like Gonzales and Ashcroft who really did harm children in every imaginable way for personal gain. Some of the people imprisoned in Abu Garib were underage.
December 9th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Glenn, Larry, and all of you out their: right on, friends of the Left and Right. Glenn, that’s a facinating idea, electing the President and Vice President separately. that was the original plan. It led to a showdown between Jefferson and the dude who later killed Alexander Hamilton. But brilliance was represented, in those days, unlike the savage inversion of Darwinian thought today, the survival, and indeed the governing by, the least fit. And speaking of fits, this manic man knows whereof I speak.
Ed Firmage xoxoxo
December 11th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Schreinervideo, I accept your correction on “Boob.” It’s just that I’m sex-starved. But even I am not so hard up, if” hard” ever applied to me, but still President Bush’s boobs don’t turn me on. ef
February 7th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Where to download all HOT Paris Hilton sex tape videos…
Where can i download paris hilton sex tape? …