Elizabeth Holtzman in a July 8 column appearing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer declared the following:

"According to a top aide, John McCain recently endorsed George W. Bush's right to wiretap U.S. citizens without court approval, despite the clear requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  It's clear that McCain has learned nothing from the past seven-plus years of Bush/Cheney assaults on the Constitution."

It is alarming that apparently Americans confused about a president's prerogatives, or the question must now be asked.  After 8 years of continuous constitutional abuses, are they so warped in their thinking that they imagine George Bush has the right to subvert the Constitution?

Holtzman cites imperative urgency, continuing:

Elizabeth Holtzman has experience in the impeachment process as a member of the House Judiciary Committee in the case of President Richard M. Nixon, whose actions put him above the law and abrogated the Constitution.

Holtzman and enough of her Judiciary Committee colleagues believed that the Constitution had indeed been contravened and voted to impeach Nixon.  As reported in a previous column, Nixon was persuaded to resign by a powerful trio of Republicans led by Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona and the nation was spared an impeachment trial.

Elizabeth Holtzman believes that the time has come for George W. Bush to face impeachment proceedings.  As someone who called for impeachment proceedings after Bush and Dick Cheney took America to war on spurious grounds, and on that basis recommended impeachment four years ago, I concur in Holtzman's assessment.

The November 15 issue of The Washington Spectator features an article by Elizabeth Holtzman, who, as a congresswoman from New York, was a member of the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Peter Rodino of New Jersey during that tense period in the seventies when the issue of impeachment was being considered.  

The  Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon, which would have resulted in a trial before the Senate had the besieged and increasingly unpopular chief executive not been coaxed into resigning.  

Republican elder statesman, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, along with the party's leaders in the Senate and House, Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and John Rhodes of Arizona, achieved that result in a private White House meeting that devastated Nixon.