The 25th amendment is useless if Cheney were to go along with Bush. In the OP’s scenario Congress would still be in session hence it’d be able to convene and impeach/remove Bush & Cheney is short order. President Pelosi would then fire his cabinet. To prevent that Bush would need round about at least 50%+1 of the membership of each chamber. He’d need the military’s support (under this scenario the military is duty-bound not to obey him).
All I recall is some bullshit (at least, I’m pretty sure it turned out to be bullshit) about Clinton staffers trashing some office equipment and furniture in the West Wing before they moved out.
The staff has repeatedly stated that the Edit Post capability is purposely disabled so that nobody can claim “I didn’t say that” and alter the boards to prove it. You have to stand by what you say, and make followup posts correcting it if necessary.
It wasn’t bullshit, but it was overblown. I mean, I remember the Righties (like my parents) all in a tissy that Clinton was going to do anything to remain in power, up to and including suspending the Constitution. I think the nutjobs on both sides ascribe their own fears to the other side’s nutjobs.
I heard all sorts of crazy scenarios regarding the Florida controversy. Including one where Janet Reno ended up POTUS.
That’s retarded, though. If someone says something and it is up long enough for the board to notice it will have been quoted and the general consensus will already be established to what is said. The rare case of someone posting something and then removing it via edit before someone can comment on it directly is meaningless enough that it doesn’t outweigh letting us use one of the most basic forum functions known in light of the subscription fee for this place.
Most forum software I’m familiar with can also automatically include a message saying, “This post was last edited by X at X:XX:XX” so while you may not be able to show exactly what was edited there is proof that an edit indeed happened.
Yes, George W. Bush has stated he’d prefer to be a dictator at least three times, according to BuzzFlash.com:
I feel that these posts represent views & opinions that are, to say the least, rarely expressed by incumbents of any Federal Office, much less the White House. And these were publicly stated views.
Hyperbole has vanished? Hell, I say stuff like that to my classes all the time. I’ve also mentioned, on this Board, my desire to be God-Emperor of the Universe, on more than one occasion. Until the mechanisms exist to make it so, and I take plausible actions to become GE, it is so much fluff. Just like what any number of politicians have said in the past, and will likely say in the future.
Retarded or not it happens; another board I visit changed to a no-edit policy for just that reason.
OK, Bush feels like he has a mandate and conceivably a divine mission to carry on in the manner he believes right. (In which he differs little from FDR, except that FDR was a craftier politician.) I don’t believe he’s Evil Incarnate, or even Naughtiness Personified – I think he’s a man who has an end-justifies-the-means view in which the War on Terrorism takes precedence over fringe encroachments (and that’s all they are at the moment) on popular conceptions of civil rights. I suspect it’s unlikely in the extreme that he would ever actually do such a thing.
However,** Tuckerfan** invites us to entertain the hypothetical – which, as noted, was lunatic-fringe entertainment on the other side in 2000. My response, which I will stand by, is to that hypothetical. If Mr. Bush moved from duly if dubiously elected Chief Executive into a non-constitutional strongman role, it would be my duty under the Constitution to which I have taken an oath, to resist his unconstitutional usurpation of power. (If on the other hand he spends the next two years getting the 22nd Amendment repealed, runs and wins again (with a little Roving assistance on the Diebold front), different story. I’d protest what I consider to be an unfair election – same as the last two, come to think of it. But I wouldn’t feel called to be in open or clandestine revolt, and as a law-abiding citizen would not do so.
Shodan, without turning this partisan, I’d like to see your honest analysis of how a Bush-impeachment move based on Tuckerfan’s hypothetical scenario would play out. I’m asking this because I have known and supported some good moderate Republicans in my day, even campaigning for one door to door. But the events connected with Foley (who, in Elucidator’s wonderful phrase, while Bush was seeking a mandate was himself seeking a boy-date) as played out by the House Republican leadership leave me more than slightly dubious about how much support such a measure would get among Republicans. So I’d like to see your perceptions, as a counteractant to my own.
As is this non-sequitur attack on a position not even laid out in this thread.
Of course, having opened that gate, we then get the rejoinder:
Look, the OP is a hypothetical that happened to use the sitting president to ask a question that could have been asked of any president. The question is in regards to a means of organizing resistance, not another straw vote on the current administration.
Turning this into one more partisan snipefest is simply unnecessary and reflects more poorly on you two than on the OP.
It wasn’t a non sequitur to the post he was specifically responding to.
Yeah, it was. A claim that the great hordes of all people would be more interested in their TV schedule than their government is different than a claim that “Bush supporters are mindless drones.”
For the inverse of “Bush supporters are mindless drones,” we need to look as Bosda’s deliberate misrepresentation of Bush’s comments that a dictatorship would be an easier method (for the governing).
OK, now I’m confused. Who made the claim about people and their TV schedules? Perhaps what **Shodan **posted could be called a strawman, but it was certainly on topic to what **Lissa ** posted.
That’s exactly how I meant it. I wasn’t thinking about party affiliation when I wrote that-- people of all persuasions are equally guilty of apathy.
I wish I could share the conviction of those that say it couldn’t happen. Taking Bush out of the equation, let’s say President X was in office. In the last October of his last term, a nuclear device goes off in New York. X goes before Congress and in a televised speech declares that he is temporarily suspending the Constitution and those that would oppose him are unpatriotic. Given how the current Congress has completely abandoned its oversight role after an attack that killed 3000 people, why should we have faith that Congress would suddenly step up to the plate after an attack that killed 3 million?
Well, if he calls people “unpatriotic” then that’ll put the fear of God into them! The constituiton has provisions for emergency powers. We fought an entire civil war without “suspending the constitution”, remember. And Congress isn’t about to put itself out of business and let a dictator take over. The whole scenario is ludicrous.
In an state of anarchy you will act according to your own conscience.
I will support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Tris
No it isn’t. It happened in Rome, it can happen here.
Yeah, I’ve always been slightly bothered by the fact that so much of DC’s architecture was influenced by the Greeks and Romans, since after all, we know what happened to them.