Censuring Bush requires citizens'
help
The Capital Times (Madison)
John Nichols
December 27, 2005
As President Bush and his aides scramble to explain new revelations
regarding Bush's authorization of spying on the international telephone calls
and e-mails of Americans, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee
has begun a process that could lead to the censure, and perhaps the
impeachment, of the president and vice president.
U.S. Rep. John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who was a critical player in
the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations into presidential wrongdoing, has
introduced a package of resolutions that would censure President Bush and Vice
President Cheney and create a select committee to investigate the
administration's possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for
impeachment.
The Conyers resolutions add a significant new twist to the debate about how
to hold the administration to account. Members of Congress have become
increasingly aggressive in the criticism of the White House, with U.S. Sen.
Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., saying last week, "Americans have been stunned at the
recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous president. It has become
apparent that this administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting
pattern of abuse against our country's law-abiding citizens and against our
Constitution."
Even Republicans, including Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter,
R-Pa., are talking for the first time about mounting potentially serious
investigations into abuses of power by the president.
But Conyers is seeking to do much more than schedule a committee hearing, or
even launch a formal inquiry. He is proposing that Congress use all its powers
to hold the president and vice president to account up to and including the
power to impeach the holders of the nation's most powerful positions and to
remove them from office.
Advertisement:
The first of the three resolutions introduced by Conyers, House Resolution
635, asks that Congress establish a select committee to investigate whether
members of the administration made moves to invade Iraq before receiving
congressional authorization, manipulated pre-war intelligence, encouraged the
use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and used their positions to retaliate
against critics of the war.
The select committee would be asked to make recommendations regarding
grounds for possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
The second resolution, H.R. 636, asks that Congress censure the president
"for failing to respond to requests for information concerning allegations that
he and others in his administration misled Congress and the American people
regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated
intelligence information regarding the justification for the war, countenanced
torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and
permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of his administration, for
failing to adequately account for specific misstatements he made regarding the
war, and for failing to comply with Executive Order 12958." (Executive Order
12958, issued in 1995 by former President Bill Clinton, seeks to promote
openness in government by prescribing a uniform system for classifying,
safeguarding and declassifying national security information.)
A third resolution, H.R. 637, would censure Cheney for a similar set of
complaints.
"The people of this country are waking up to the severity of the lies,
crimes and abuses of power committed by this president and his administration,"
says Jon Bonifaz, a co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, an
alliance of more than 100 grass-roots groups that have detailed Bush
administration wrongdoing and encouraged a congressional response. Bonifaz, an
attorney and the author of the book "Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching
George Bush" (Nation Books), argues, "Now is the time to return to the rule of
law and to hold those who have defied the Constitution accountable for their
actions."
Bonifaz is right. But it is unlikely that the effort to censure Bush and
Cheney, let alone impeach them, will get far without significant organizing
around the country. After all, the House is controlled by allies of the
president who have displayed no inclination to hold him to account. Indeed,
only a few Democrats, such as Conyers, have taken seriously the constitutional
issues raised by the administration's misdeeds.
Members of Congress in both parties will need to feel a lot of heat if these
important measures are going to get much traction in this Congress.
The grass-roots group Progressive Democrats of America, which has had a good
deal of success organizing activists who want the Democrats to take a more
aggressive stance in challenging the administration, will play a critical role
in the effort to mobilize support for the Conyers resolutions, as part of a new
Censure Bush Coalition campaign. (The campaign's Web site can be found at
www.censurebush.org.)
PDA director Tim Carpenter says his group plans to "mobilize and organize a
broad-based coalition that will demand action from Congress to investigate the
lies of the Bush administration and their conduct related to the war in
Iraq."
Getting this Congress to get serious about maintaining checks and balances
on the Bush administration will be a daunting task. But the recent revelations
regarding domestic spying will make it easier. There are a lot of Americans who
share the view of U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., that Bush and Cheney have
exceeded their authority. As Feingold says of Bush, "He is the president, not a
king."
It was the bitter experience of dealing with King George III that led the
founders of this country to write a Constitution that empowers Congress to hold
presidents and vice presidents accountable for their actions.
It is this power that John Conyers, the senior member of the House committee
charged with maintaining the system of checks and balances established by those
founders, is now asking Congress to employ in the service of the nation that
Constitution still governs.
John Nichols is the associate editor of The Capital Times. E-mail:
jnichols@madison.com
Published: 7:26 AM 12/27/05
|