The fate of the nation is not a trivial matter.
I guess you could say you impeach on the grounds you have, not the grounds you wish you had. 
I am assuming that any national politician, especially candidates for the Presidency or Vice-Presidency, who imply possible miltary action against Iran should be impeached proactively:
And, of course:
Regards,
Shodan
How many divisions does she control? What is the extent of her capacity to engage? In other words, why should we give a rat’s?
My point exactly. But you’re just talking about an abuse of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and I’m talking about a major war.
Yes.
The problem, as I said in the OP, is that we’ve got two loose cannons running the country, who really don’t care whether the people of this country want any war they happen to drag us into. The only time that can be dealt with is in advance.
If we have a sane person running the country, then if reasonable circumstances come along that require military intervention in Iraq, the sane President will handle it sanely and without trying to completely bullshit us.
BTW, I’m perfectly OK with impeaching on the grounds of what we’ve already got, per Quiddity and John Mace. But the reason for urgency in doing so is because of what these clowns might yet do.
Nice point, and if not disavowed (“because I said it before I knew that the elected leaders of the American people were being systematically fed falsehoods,” for example), it provides excellent reason to oppose Sen. Clinton’s candidacy.
However, you seem to be missing the point of what impeachment does. It’s the elected-official equivalent of a grand-jury indictment, and if passed by the House, leads to a trial in the Senate to remove a government official from his office. It does not itself, by the specific language of the Constitution, do anything more than remove from office; if criminal penalties are indicated, they are pursued by the normal Federal criminal-prosecution procedures thereafter.
In short, you cannot impeach a candidate qua candidate for the Presidency, because he/she is occupying no office from which he/she can be removed.
The fact that Sen. Clinton is in fact a United States Senator would suggest that she could be impeached, save for another Constitutional provision – to wit, that each house of Congress shall be the sole judges of its membership’s qualifications. In short, a Senator is not first impeached by the House and then tried by the Senate, but simply expelled by act of the Senate as watchdog over the qualifications of its membership. However, the Senate has always been loath to act in such a manner, and the House nearly as much so.
But, and this is key: it would be extremely easy to see your post as “knee-jerk conservatism” – whenever anyone mentions Pres. Bush in a negative light, immediately drag a [del]red herring[/del] Clinton across their path. I feel that a more charitable view is that you think that if Pres. Bush is to be condemned for warmongering against Iran, so ought Sen. Clinton. And in that you do have a valid point. However, in the absence of the agreement of at least 218 Representatives and 49 other Senators (or 50 if Mr. Cheney’s casting vote is discounted), Sen. Clinton has no power to authorize an incursion into Iran, while Pres. Bush debatably does have that power in his own hands as C-in-C (he certainly claims it; the “debatably” refers to the putative (un)constitutionality of his claim).
It is equally possible for a maniac with an AK-47 or a kindergardener with a pair of scissors to inflict a fatal wound on you; but one is far more likely to do so than the other. In the words of Brandeis and Holmes, Mr. Bush’s views present a clear and present danger; Mrs. Clinton’s do not.
If only there were some branch of government not controlled by people in the Party of the President. Some independent branch of government, with the power to approve or disapprove this tyrant’s cabinet choices, his choices for judicial positions, his requests for funding. If only the Founding Fathers had been wise enough to provide for the eventuality of an power-obsessed executive. And perhaps they should have thought to create some sort of provision for us to select the members of this branch at regular intervals, as a check on the powers of the executive.
I blame Thomas Jefferson.
Given your impressive display of sarcasm, I am anxious to learn by what mechanism you believe Congress could prevent the current Administration from bombing the daylights out of Iran.
Why do you imagine that Bush would or could launch a surprise attack on Iran without the authorization of Congress?
What countries has Bush started a war against without the approval of Congress? He had approval to invade Afghanistan, he had approval to invade Iraq.
Bombing Iran would mean war with Iran, this isn’t like bombing Libya back in the 80s where Libya had no choice except to sit there and take it. You know it, I know it, Bush knows it.
Except somehow you just KNOW that Bush is obsessed with starting a war with Iran, that war with Iran is the only box left unchecked on his to-do list before he leaves office. The only way to prevent certain war with Iran is impeachment. And how do you know this? Your evidence that Bush secretly longs for war with Iran is, what?
Wait, let me get Socratic for a minute. By what mechanism can Congress prevent the current Administration from bombing the daylights out of FRANCE?
I dunno. The aircraft carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf, the shoot-to-kill orders concerning Iranians in Iraq, the Administration efforts to make Iran the next bogeyman responsible for everything that’s been going wrong in Iraq (now that they don’t have Zarqawi to kick around anymore), and the unwillingness of members of the Administration to commit themselves to whether or not Bush has the power to attack Iran without Congressional permission?
Yeah, I know - I just hallucinated all of the above. My bad.
What, for being in France while the Constitutional Convention was going on?
Several answers to both questions (why he would and how he could) were suggested in this thread.
Nobody, IMO, suggested a persuasive answer to the OP (what could the Dems do to stop him?).
None. Why?
The point is, the past occupants of the Oval Office during my lifetime have mostly been what you’d call Not Insane, with the possible exception of Nixon.
The problem I’m responding to in this thread is the present combination of Executive power and potential Executive recklessness.
Normally I would dismiss Shodan’s rhetoric similarly, but given the premise of the OP, he makes a reasonable point. If we are going to impeach for actions that someone might do in the future, why not pre-impeach a presidential candidate?
So, are you ready to bet on whether Bush will start a war with Iran? Your premise must be that war is reasonably likely, so I’ll give you 2:1 odds.
Out of curiousity; for those advocating a dual impeachment - what would be the actual charges you would issue against Vice President Cheney? He didn’t authorize any military force against anyone, nor did he do any of the other possible charges that have been made against the President. Are you going to impeach him for not following proper hunting safety procedures?
OK, so the premise of the thread is that both Bush and Cheney are dangerously insane, and unless they are impeached are very likely to launch a surprise attack on Iran before they leave office?
How many countries has Bush bombed in this manner?
So the scenario is that Bush gets bored tomorrow, and calls up the Pentagon and orders some Air Force general to start dropping bombs day-after-tomorrow? Or is the worry that he calls up the CIA and orders them to manufacture a Gulf of Tonkin incident? Lets deal with the Gulf of Tonkin scenario first.
The trouble is, a stunt like that doesn’t give the President authority to start bombing willy-nilly. The purpose of the stunt is to stampede Congress into authorizing the use of military force against Iran. And of course, to mobilize public opinion against Iran to make the use of military force against Iran politically popular. Except I don’t see how that could happen. Bush has used up his credibility with both Congress and the public. If you think the American public is itching for a war against Iran and just needs an excuse, you’re delusional. Yeah, in 2002 we were itching for a fight against Iraq and just wanted an excuse. Except it’s 2007 now.
Remember during the debate about the AUMF, how Congresspeople who had voted against the first Gulf War scrambled to make sure they didn’t make the same mistake on Gulf War II? They didn’t want a vote against a quick, decisive, popular war to come back to haunt them. Do you think a vote to go to war against Iran would be as easy to ram through congress today? And anyway, in this scenario Bush isn’t defying congress, he’s getting congressional approval. How are they going to impeach him simultaneously with authorizing the war? Either they believe the incident is real and we need to go to war, in which case Bush isn’t acting as dictator, or they think the incident is fishy and they don’t authorize the war, and if enough evidence comes to light they can impeach him over the phoney incident.
So I suppose your real worry is that Bush is going to wake up tomorrow and call up the Pentagon and order them to start bombing by 5:00. Except this isn’t going to happen. They’d have to have everything prepared. Now, the preparations could be done secretly, but there are at least three levels of secrecy here. Secrecy from the Iranians, secrecy from the American public and secrecy from Congressional oversight. Obviously the bombing will be kept secret from Iran, and so the preparation must be kept secret from the American public. But keeping it secret from congress is another thing entirely. Orders like this come directly from the President, but they don’t go from the president to the pilot of a B-52, they go through the chain of command. The generals are going to be involved. Plans have to be made. Munitions, personnel, fuel, aircraft, all have to be prepared. You think the bombing is going to be kept secret from the army? The army has to be involved because they’re going to have to deal with Iranian border troops. This isn’t something that can be done in a day. And this cannot be kept secret from congressional oversight. Yes, it can be kept secret from congress as a body, not from the congressional committees. Not an operation this large. You can keep a CIA kidnapping secret from everyone, but not a bombing operation that will involve thousands of troops.
All this presupposes that Bush can call up a General and order a secret bombing. But what incentive do the Generals have to keep it a secret from Congress? Even if the president is a homicidal maniac, does that mean his entire cabinet is too? All the generals too? Everyone? Bush by himself can’t start a war, he has to give orders. Why do you think the President can’t just order the Air Force to bomb France out of the blue? What restrains the President from doing so, stipulating as you demand that the President is a homocidal maniac?
If the President is a homocidal maniac, why aren’t you worried that he’ll bomb France, or start shooting his buddies on his vacation hunting trips? You honestly think there are no barriers other than self-restraint to the President ordering a carpet-bombing of Paris?
No. It’s that they’re dangerously reckless, and that if they are not removed from office, the risk that they will attack Iran is substantial.
(IIRC, the quick rule of thumb for evaluating risk is in terms of expected value: you think in terms of the product of the likelihood of X and the consequences of X.)
You’ve already asked that, and I’ve already responded.
I think this is as good a place as any to stop reading.
Charge him with complicity in everything W has done. WRT most administrations that would make no sense – but in this case we’re talking about Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.
Gotcha. In other words, you don’t think that Bush is likely to secretly bomb Iran. Sorry, I thought this was supposed to be a debate, not Bush Impeachment Porn. Please, continue fantasizing about Bush getting himself impeached rather than discussing how and why such a thing might or might not actually occur.