Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

A point Jackson raises early is his reluctance for Congress to proceed toward impeachment.  This reluctance relates to the shabby period of recent history when Newt Gingrich was the prevailing force in Congress and President Bill Clinton became the impeachment target of Republican efforts.  As Jackson relates:

"The Gingrich Congress' attempt to railroad President Clinton out of office gave impeachment a bad press.  It is scorned as irresponsible, vindictive, partisan spitball politics.  Rather than addressing the challenges the nation faces, impeachment, many pundits argue, wastes months on harsh, divisive wrangling.  And of course, in 1998, the public punished Republicans - ultimately leading to the toppling of Gingrich himself."

Here is where Jackson should step back and analyze all that he has revealed relating to the overall conduct of this Administration, excesses characteristic of some of the more extreme examples of dictatorship, and weigh their gravity alongside his comment that the Gingrich Congress "gave impeachment a bad name."

The point Jackson must realize in examining the totality of the impeachment picture is that the Clinton and Bush-Cheney situations are totally different.  

We are currently dealing with the issue of whether a federal republic with a written Constitution underlying the specifics of how such a state should operate can endure in the face of a blatant effort to impose a dictatorship through applied exigencies, basing such conduct on continuing response to the 9/11 tragedies.  

Bush and Cheney have used 9/11 repeatedly as a linchpin to act in dictatorial fashion, reminding one of Napoleon Bonaparte's declaration, "I am the state."  Those who oppose these ongoing excesses as unconstitutional are accordingly tarnished with a brush of being "soft on terrorism" and lacking seriousness in opposing America's enemies.  

America is meanwhile sent to war in the fight against terrorism to battle a dictator on which American support had been previously lavished, basing the attack against him on support for a regime he strongly opposed.  

All one has to do is read Number 65 of The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton to gain a picture about what the Founding Fathers had in mind governing impeachment.  The procedure exists as a safeguard against executive excess.  

Jackson should recognize that an oceanic expanse separates the rationale behind Republican efforts to remove President Clinton from office and the widespread abuses of this Administration in shredding the Constitution in the manner described by Jackson in his article.  

There is a vast difference between the bill of particulars existing against Bush through widespread abrogation of constitutional authority and seeking to remove a chief executive from office for lying on an affidavit in a civil legal action about an extra-marital affair.

Accordingly, the impeachment effort should proceed on the basis of the facts.  It is the duty of Congress if members abide by their oaths of office and the responsibility of seeing that "the laws are faithfully executed" to proceed with impeachment proceedings.

It is good all the same that Jackson registered his thoughts on impeachment at this time since it gives those of us who believe that such an action is justified an opportunity to examine the rationale of those reluctant to take that step and provide alternative reasoning on why the time has come to stand up against the forces openly flouting the Constitution with brazen and frequent impunity.