No reason to get bogged down in the word ‘impeachment’. There is no reason why a prior office holder may not be indicted and convicted for crimes committed while in office even after the term of office has expired.
As long as statute of limitations has not elapsed then there is no legal reason (AFAIK, IANAL) not to pursue any criminal actions that may have been committed for any citizen, the assertion of executive privilege after holding office notwithstanding. Granted, one must meet a much higher standard than ‘Congress says high crimes and misdemeanors’ when attempting indictment but I’m quite sure that if one wanted to take the Al Capone route for catching a known Bad Guy–just what was the precedent for subverting the Geneva Convention?–it could be done.
The law is no respecter of persons. Time we got back to that. It’s easy enough to send Average Joe Toker to the pen based on the weight of the pipe holding his stash… if we are a nation of laws and not of powers, it’s a hopskipjump to holding elected officials to the same standard.
And if politically motivated elements wish to hold future elected officials to the same ‘standard’ based on their interpretations, I must say that based on recent activity there is no reason to believe that they would not do the same regardless to seize initiative, so we might as well have this fight now, so bring your lunchbox, assbags.
What does “accountable” mean, anymore? What criminal sanctions could be applied that would amount to justice? With thousands of innocent dead, how many times can we hang him? Or maybe a Resolution of Tsk-Tsk?
What I want for “accountability” is the facts, the truth and nothing but or God help you. How about we say no criminal sanctions for anybody, so long as they tell the truth? Lie to us, and you got problems. The truth, all of it.
Its as much as we can get, and more than we’re going to.
No, but trying to remove them from an office they’re no longer holding is. (That’s what “impeachment” means, doesn’t it?) I don’t think anyone is saying you’re not going to put Bush on trial. Just that I don’t think you can impeach him anymore.
(I just hate that my boys are gonna have to grind your Steelers into paste on Sunday and … oh who am I kidding… why, oh FSM, why did you take my Urlacher away and turn Jay Cutler into Craig Krenzel?)
Yes, BUT… they can act like they’re drawing some meaningful point of distinction all they want, their underlying belief is “holding Bush administration figures accountable for anything now that he’s out of office is extremist because we have to move forward.”
No, like it was said. If somebody committed a crime, indict him, try him, and convict him. I don’t give a damn. That has nothing to do with impeachment, though.
I think there’s plenty of evidence that “the Bush Administration” committed some high crimes and misdemeanors during their time in office. But…
We need to accuse specific individuals, not an abstraction like “the Nush Administration.”
We need to be able to prove that X did criminal act Y beyond reasonable doubt. Those standards hold as true for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., as to any other prospective defendant.
We need to prove them in the face of claims of executive privilege and stonewalling on testimony, which Karl Rove’s attitudes when subpoenaed make obvious will be the rule, not the exception.
Do I suspect that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, et al. are guilty of crimes gainst the American people? Yep. There may be exceptions but most of them are in fact likely guilty.
Now, the next step is – prove it. Match person to crime. Indict. Try. Prove to the standards of American criminal-law jurisprudence. Convict. And that’s not quite as easy as saying, yeah, they sure did do it.
Which is why I was so coy in setting up my hypothetical. I don’t know quite what Mr. Bush’s motivations for the things he did and authorized were – and there’s plenty of evidence that it would not be the first time someone’s pulled the wool over the President’s eyes, if it proved out that subordinates did some of the things on his watch without his being on top of it.
Probably nothing will come of all this. And the Grand Old party will have set another precedent towrds the decline of American governmental standards.
…provided they’re not injurious to national security, or subject to executive privilege, or confidentiality, or somebody thinks it would be a good idea to dummy up and pretend they are.
Sometimes I think that anyone who answers “I do” to “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” in a case involving the Federal government should be immediately jailed for perjury. Because you know damn well he’s not going to.
If Shodan is 0.0001% of the troll so many of you say, why the constant feeding, the crack-addict need to make a pile-on of pile-ons?
Is Shodan currently raping (and posting footage of ) several memebers of your families? I can’t understand the repetitive anger (all of us have our brakdowns, but this is getting ridiculous. So many keep complainig about him…just fucking ignore him (button or no button).
I’d feel sorry for many of you if he disappeared, how would you get your fix? And don’t tell me “the board would be better”, you’d be jonesing like there is no tomorrow
