John Cole gets exercised about the curious pas des centains.
Either put an end to this farce, or have faith in the process and act upon the information you find in a manner fitting with the Constitution and the law of the land.
Impeachment is on the table.
But Congress is not allowed to bite.
The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on one of Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders in the chamber have signaled that they do not want the committee — let alone the full House — to take a vote on impeachment.
Our government has structural defects. To review:
1) we have a system of government with regular elections, as opposed to a parliamentary system where there is the option of call for elections at just about any time.
2) the only way our President and Vice President can be forcibly removed from office is by impeachment and trial.
Parliamentary forms of government can remove ineffective leaders via a vote of no confidence. This is not a panacea. Witness the 32 formal governments that were formed in Italy in a 36 month period in the late 1970′s. Our method of forming governments forcibly demodulates the electoral system, reduces oscillations and adds stability to government.
Impeachment and trial can only work when the President has done something so egregious that it is both inescapable and inexcusable AND he is disavowed by his party. With our country so evenly split between the two parties, a member of either party would be more forgiven for voting to retain a criminally corrupt President than voting against the political party. The structure of political parties and the Constitution almost guarantees that the President will never be removed from office by impeachment and trial.
Another structural defect in our form of government is that we select our elected representatives based on personality. But that is another rant.