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Posted on Thursday 28 June 2007


The vice president has run utterly amok and must be stopped
By Bruce Fein

Under Dick Cheney, the office of the vice president has been transformed from a tiny acorn into an unprecedented giant oak. In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president’s insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney’s multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify.

The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.
As the noise level rises, one must pause for a moment and consider if impeaching Vice President Cheney is mob rule or a wise move for the country. On the mob rule side of the coin would be that it’s a time when we are massively disillusioned with a failed foreign war that our leaders continue against all counsel and public opinion. On the other side are three large groups of issues. First, what we know publicly – well documented in the Washington Post series and the recent article in Rolling Stone. Add to that the conviction of his Chief of Staff. Add to that his role in the abandonment of the Geneva Conventions. Second, what we don’t know, but suspect. The falsified Iraq prewar intelligence, the outing of a C.I.A. Agent, the "deal" with the Oil Executives, etc. Third, a chronic disregard for the laws of the land and the duly elected Congress of the United States.

For what it’s worth, I think the main reason to impeach him them is something else – he is they are incompetent. We are in a crisis right now, and they’re still farting around with their idiosyncratic agendas, and doing nothing to further the real needs of the country. They’re lost in a sea of self-serving and largely immaterial issues, spending most of their time trying to cover their asses for previous sins, and doing absolutely nothing to get us on course. So, impeach him them on the grounds of misguidedness or incompetence [or corruptness, or lying, or sedition]. The grounds don’t really matter. They just need to go to their respective ranches.

And anyway, I’m not kidding anyone. If it’s mob rule – that’s fine with me too. Power to the mob! In this case, mob rule probably is good for the country. As our famous first Republican once said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

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