Firmage EdMan of the Year: Impeachment
Vladimir Putin should share his Time Man of the Year award with his buddy, George Bush II. They think alike. Both run absolutely lawless governments unconstrained by constitutional law, international law, or municipal laws of their own states, or the common law of humankind. Both deserve impeachment. Fortunately, some articles of impeachment are finally placed in the hopper for House of Representatives to start the process, in this blessed land. This can be so, with a touch of bipartisan patriotism.
First, impeach Richard Cheney, the Dark Lord of this faithless administration. He has ultimately been behind every illegal act: destruction of White House and FBI tapes; warrantless wiretapping; Harriet Miers (Bush’s nominee, briefly, for the Supreme Çourt…his own Party rejected that notion), Josh Bolten and Karl Rove are now in contempt of Congress and the courts. Due Process is ignored routinely, in holding foreign and domestic human beings and torturing them, despite all law and simple humanity to the contrary notwithstanding.
After impeachment by vote in the House of Representatives, The Senate, presided over by the Chief Justice of the United States (though all questions of substantive and procedural law are decided, finally, by Senate vote), the Senate would try Mr. Cheney and convict him, if any semblance of law remains. After removal (the only pain and penalty allowed), the municipal law could see him in jail where he belongs.
Mr. Bush and the Congress would fill this vacancy with someone, hopefully someone better than any present nominee of the Republican Party, as Vice President.
Then the Congress should impeach the President, and find him guilty. A person, presumably a Republican, would become Vice President, as the (Republican) Vice President assumes the presidency. The Republicans win by having an incumbent president with all the advantages of incumbency; the Democrats and the people of the United States of America win by having a criminal adminsration, an American Mafia, out of the White House.
The final acts of George Bush would be pardons for his fellow criminals as they leave office. But they will yet pay, by being confined to their state for the rest of their lives. Travel beyond their state would result in immediate service of process and, like pirates now and long past, they would be confined by any civilised state in the world. For these high flyers, this is house arrest.
Many years ago, Mr. Justice Louis Brandeis said: “In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Çrime is contageous. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.”
Some will say this cannot happen. We must try. What will happen, of course, is both Cheney and Bush will resign rather than facing their colleagues in a congressional vote. That is not the subversion of the Impeachment Clauses, it is virtually the rule. This is so whether we are impeaching judges (like the one who gave us the Bush presidency) or presidents. The reality of resignation is the fact that allows us the time, the precious time yet, to try. Bills of Impeachment are in the Congressional hopper. Let us suggest to Democrats and Republicans this course of action for our dear Republic.
Those are the stakes. Lawlessness abroad and at home is the rule, now. George Bush, far more than nineteen men now dead, has brought this upon the world. He is by far the most dangerous felon in the world. In that sense alone, he is Man of the Year.
Ed Firmage
Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, emeritus
University of Utah College of Law
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Putin doesn’t care what anyone thinks, why should he, the west raped his Country after the wall fell. We elected the imbecile, and we’re going broke in a useless war. Payback is a bitch.
Realpolitik…”no permanent friends, no permanent enemies…only permanent self interest”, Douglas Kinnard, International Relations 101. Progressives start playing by the rules, and maybe you will get somewhere.
Putin is in charge and will stay there for quite some time. Shrub is headed for the weeds and some brush clearing, and has left us for more of the same. No democrat is going to fix what they helped make.
Vote Ron Paul. Straight up. No excuses.
December 24th, 2007 at 6:35 am
“…inviting every man to become a law unto himself, it invites anarchy!” He said that as if it was a BAD thing…except for in the case of certain politicians, who for the sake of dampening any holiday cheer that may exist, will remain nameless.
Would anyone care to speculate; just who would be the replacement for a dishonored and impeached vice president? Dodd? Kucinich? Paul? (I live in a dream).
Whoever it is must believe in ‘enhanced and updated persuasion and interogation techniques’, which will automatically make him NOT the proper cantidate. Just sayin.
December 24th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Sure it invites it, but it isn’t long before groups of people bring anarchy and the lawless to heel. The abundance of summer falls to winter, before renewal. It is a cycle, we’re in the purgatory of an endless fall, winter spot as a nation. It cannot last, or we won’t either as a nation.
December 24th, 2007 at 9:39 am
There is a big difference between Putin and Bush II. Putin is smart and did very well in his career at the KGB before seeking office to try to stabilize his country. He did it without anyone like Karl Rove or a father’s legacy. View Vladimir in the context of a 21st Century Tsar. It simplifies things. The Russians only know two types of government models, the Tsarist and the Soviet. In all of their history democracy has worked for what maybe two or three years?
December 24th, 2007 at 10:09 am
As of this morning, Rep. Wexler has 131,858 supporters signed up to demand hearings on impeachment of VP Cheney. It will be interesting to see if Wexler and his allies can break through the media-imposed news blackout on impeachment.
December 24th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Richard, it seems like only a week ago the figure on the Wexler petition hadn’t quite reached 50,000. Right-on petitioners. IMPEACH and keep in mind there’s always a chance his heart might fail.
December 24th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Wexler’s original goal was 50,000, now he’s hoping to get 250,000. Or whatever number is required to get CNN to pay attention. Last week Anderson Cooper devoted about an hour of airtime to those four idiots who got lost in the woods for three days while looking for a Christmas tree.
December 24th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Red Dog, you’re right on about Putin being, in effect, the new Tzar. But with nuclear weapons. Caviat, “faithful anarchy” may be just the thing. “Faithful” anarchy means, to me, that we all first must have the law written in the tender places of our hearts and our brains, then and only then we may govern ourselves.
December 24th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Ed, I agree. That law can be written much more simply than the reams and reams of addenda and refinement that presently exist or is called law. Something akin to: Love your brother as you love yourself, Have no false gods, etc. Quite simple and practically anybody can be there. It’s inside us from the git go. Governing ourselves is one thing, however equipped any one of us may be. It is a whole nuther thing to become so sheepish as to think that; with our system as wrecked and misguided as it is, whatever scheme is promoted or whatever crooked clown the supreme court decides to favor will have it right in every instance and we need not worry, our society is in good hands, our direction is righteous. Faith anarchy says we too are invested with the holiness that comes with our creation, that it is our obligation to do unto others as we would be done, to resist the temptation of ease or crime and to see that in fact, Gods will is being done, for none of us is any less imbued with that ‘Godly ’stuff’ than any other, Certainly not in the way that PNAC Strausians would have it. Now the presence of the shitheals among us kinda crimps my philosohy, but that’s another discussion for another time I suppose. They think we’re small and misguided…we think they are simply misguided and perhaps invested in the ‘Dark side’. Everybody’s got lots of room to grow and that’s a fact.
Btw Merry Christmas , Happy Festivus, May there be Peace on Earth, and good will to all (critters included).
December 24th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Caveat, you just said it all, better than I’ve done, or could do. ef
December 25th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
May this Christmas be merry, immediately past holy days be in our hearts, and the holy days of all religions and their secular states’ holidays bind us, even more, together. Our promise is not that the light subsumes the dark. But rather that the dark cannot entirely obliterate the light by which we walk. My new year resolution is to write less, read more, and just occasionally, think before I write.
ed firmage