Business before Pleasure: Impeach the Vice-President first!

THE PEOPLE V. RICHARD CHENEY
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2007-02-21 17:10. Impeachment
By Wil S. Hylton, GQ

Resolved, that Richard B. Cheney, vice president of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that these articles of impeachment be submitted to the American people

When the Founding Fathers crafted the U.S. Constitution, they wanted to be sure that the president, vice president, and other ranking officials could be evicted more easily than the British monarchy. To ensure that the process would be swift and certain, they made it simple: Only two conditions must be met. First, a majority of the House of Representatives must agree on a set of charges; then, two-thirds of the Senate must agree to convict. After that, there is no legal wrangling, no appeal to a higher authority, no reversal on technical grounds. There is not even a limit on what the charges may be. As the Constitution describes it, the cause may be “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors,” but even these were left deliberately vague; as Gerald Ford once pointed out while still serving in the House of Representatives, the only real definition of an “impeachable offense” is “whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

To the credit of this nation, despite the relative ease of impeachment, only seventeen officials have sunk to such ignominious depths that the process has been invoked. The reasons for impeachment have ranged from the outrageous to the banal: from putting political enemies in jail (Judge James H. Peck, 1830) to cheating on taxes (Judge Harry E. Claiborne, 1986); from being rude to Congress (“unmindful of the harmony and courtesies which ought to exist and be maintained between the executive and legislative branches,” President Andrew Johnson, 1868) to being a drunkard (“a man of loose morals and intemperate habits,” Judge John Pickering, 1803). One president was even impeached for having the good taste to keep his sex life private (concealing “the nature and details of his relationship with a subordinate Government employee,” President William Jefferson Clinton, 1998).

In the case of George W. Bush, there may be any number of reasons not to add an eighteenth name to the list. These range from the moderate (that two consecutive presidential impeachments would do more harm than good to the nation) to the provocative (that while Bush has been wrong about a staggering number of issues, he is too hapless to be held accountable for it) to the pragmatic (that even if Bush were impeached, we would still be stuck with Vice President Cheney). There is even, for those inclined to such things, an argument by design: that the president is the president, and therefore God designed it that way.

But none of these apply to Vice President Cheney, and not only because it was Cheney (and not God, or George W. Bush, or anybody else) who selected himself as vice president back in 2000. With Cheney, there are also no lingering questions about capacity, motive, or malice. Over the past six years, as the country has spiraled into military misadventure, fiscal madness, and environmental meltdown, the vice president has not merely been wrong about the issues; he has been duplicitous, deceitful, and deliberately destructive to the American democracy. These things can no longer be denied by rational minds:

That in the buildup to war in Iraq, the vice president, lacking confidence in the true casus belli, conspired to invent additional ones, misrepresenting the available intelligence, crafting new “intelligence,” and then spreading these falsehoods to the public, perverting the democratic process that he is sworn to uphold.
That as the war devolved into occupation, the vice president again sabotaged the democratic system, developing back channels into the Coalition Provisional Authority, a body not under his purview, to remove some of the most effective staff and replace them with his own loyal supplicants—undercutting America’s best effort at war in order to expand his own power.

That in his domestic capacity, the vice president has been equally reckless with the trust of his office, converting the vice presidency into a de facto prime ministership, conducting secret meetings with secret policy boards to determine national policy and then refusing to share the details of those meetings with the other branches of government.

Finally, that the vice president has repeatedly promoted the interests of a corporation, Halliburton, over the interests of the nation, causing untold harm to American economic, military, and public health.

For these and other offenses against the nation, Vice President Cheney, clearly, is guilty of crimes against the state.

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Billo_Really said:

It is a pretty safe bet the Administration is not going to cooperate with anything Congress does towards ending this war. Which raises the question of Congressional Constitutional authority to do so?

Question: Can Congress end a war?

If the Constitution makes it clear Congress is the only branch of the government that can declare war, then it is logical to assume that they have the authority to end the war.

I say why waste all the time arguing with the Executive branch, just Impeach the criminal elements and bring everybody home. Starting with the Vice-President. They can't veto, if Congress makes them go-go!

And no one has been more impeachable than Cheney and Bush.

Impeaching Cheney would avoid President Dick, after we impeach Bush.

I forgot to add the poll.

Can a mod move this to a more appropriate forum?

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Devils.High said:

Yea i heard he is a bad vice president too.
Is it true that we only went to war because of his gas company?

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Originally posted by TOT:
So you post the same lies about lying about intel and Halliburton to prove your case against Cheney, how many times do these bullshit assertions have to be disproven before you people will finally stfu?

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Billo_Really said:

You first!..

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Just Me 2 said:

Can someone please tell me if the senators that voted to go to war looked at the same intel why is no one calling for their heads?

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Trajan Octavian Titus said:

Because that would end Hillary's presidential bid pretty damn quick and the drive by media just can't have that.

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Just Me 2 said:

Well that is crap. I mean they looked at the same stuff so why are they not being held responsible?

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Trajan Octavian Titus said:

Because there's nothing to be held accountable for, all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with "high confidence" that Saddam possessed and was expanding his WMD programs.

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Just Me 2 said:

I agree my point is why is no one calling for their head on a platter why is Hilary not being called a lier and a killer. She was on the committee correct?

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Trajan Octavian Titus said:

She along with 110 other Democrats voted for the war in Iraq.

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Just Me 2
Ok so where is the outcry to kick them out of office?

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Originally posted by TOT:
Need I remind you about all 16 intelligence agencies and Cheney's Halliburton profits all going to charity? Allthough I doubt it would matter seeing as this thread was only intended to be a liberal circle jerk while you people clamor in orgasmic shrieks "off with his head."

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Originally posted by TOT:
Because there's nothing to be held accountable for, all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with "high confidence" that Saddam possessed and was expanding his WMD programs.

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FBI Probes Fake Evidence of Iraqi Nuclear Plans
By Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt Washington Post
Thursday 13 March 2003

The FBI is looking into the forgery of a key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program, including the possibility that a foreign government is using a deception campaign to foster support for military action against Iraq.

"It's something we're just beginning to look at," a senior law enforcement official said yesterday. Officials are trying to determine whether the documents were forged to try to influence U.S. policy, or whether they may have been created as part of a disinformation campaign directed by a foreign intelligence service.

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Billo_Really said:

You gotta stop shopping around this Feith-based Bushaganda. Because not "all" 16 agencies had the "high confidence" you claim.

Next time, pick a ruse that is harder to disprove.

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Confidence Levels for Selected Key Judgments in This Estimate

High Confidence:

• Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.
• We are not detecting portions of these weapons programs.
• Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons and missiles.
• Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grad fissile material

Key Judgments: Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction

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Originally posted by TOT:
And BTW MI6 did not rely entirely on the forged documents and they still stand by their story.

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Billo_Really said:

As a side-bar to all of this, why did Bush discount statements by the IAEA? Because, after all, they're the nuclear experts. If anyone should know what is and what is not nuclear energy, as opposed to nuclear weapons, it is that organization.

And they said, "No way, Jose".

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reaganburch said:

There are a lot of people who are really, really, really, REALLY in need of some Xanax...

People so ANGRY that they are screaming for impeachment are fvcking hilarious... I think people who get THAT angry over anything are funny and should be subject to public laughter...

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Hatuey said:

Yeah...like the people who wanted to impeach Clinton for getting a bj.:roll:.

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