First, the redefinition of treason from being a subversive act designed to overthrow the government, to merely pointing out that our President has violated enough of our nation’s laws sufficiently to face some form of accountability. We’ll discuss this in greater detail later on.
Before we get to the crux of the argument, here is count number two of the Articles of Impeachment brought against Richard Nixon:
“endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”
That should, at least for anyone at all interested in their own personal intellectual honesty, be sufficient to illustrate that our current President does indeed deserve to face some form of legal accountability for his actions these last six years. Since Presidents can not be charged as the rest of us would when being accused of a crime, that leaves the only option spelled out in our Constitution. This manner of trial for Presidents only, sought to guarantee that no single person, regardless of how powerful, would ever be above the law, nor exempted from answering to it.
Before we go any further, I just want to state unequivocally, that Sarah Palin is 100% correct in her assessment. Were we a nation of laws, were our founding principles in tact, were our nation indeed functioning properly, and were the concept of doing the right thing for the nation placed above petty political considerations, Articles of Impeachment would have been drawn against Barack Obama long ago. Now, before the leftists out there lather themselves into a tizzy over this statement, Impeachment is a trial, and the Bamster would be allowed to provide a legal defense. In order to prove the validity of this point, looking back at our history at the three times when Impeachment did occur, only two trials took place and the President was found to be not guilty in both instances. Even more noteworthy however, both men won reelection during their next bid for continuing in their post. Impeachment is merely forcing that accountability to the law that all citizens are held to.
There is something else that I wish to disclose here, and that is that in the case of Bill Clinton, I was most certainly against that Impeachment, although not for the reasons others were against it. Bill Clinton was charged with a process crime due to a frustrated Ken Starr, while looking at a man with a lifetime of association with obvious felonious behavior, could not tie his subject to a single crime, instead decided to charge him with a process crime. One by the way that should have embarrassed even the most severely prudish of prosecutors. My personal opinion is that all process crimes should be summarily dismissed as a matter of law, should no underlying charges be proven, or at the very least brought. (If you’ve followed the link, in the three cases I’d cited, Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, all were charged with process crimes in situations where sufficient evidence could not be obtained during the investigations that any laws pertinent to those investigations were even violated. Clinton was never charged with anything related to White Water. No one involved with the Stewart Case was ever charged with Insider Trading. No one was charged with outing a clandestine operative in Scooter Libby’s case. In the case of Scooter Libby, the actual name of the person who leaked the information was known prior to Libby’s questioning, which manages to add an even more sinister twist to the whole affair.
When asked to comment yesterday on Palin’s statement, House Speaker, John Boehner, answered in as dismissive a manner as possible that he disagreed. His short curt answer, complete with clownish facial expression, let everyone know that he not only would not be seeking to hold this President to any sort of behavioral standard, (but instead has filed a bizarre law suit which legally has zero chance of accomplishing anything,) but he also was perfectly willing to participate in my favorite game. “Is the conservative evil, stupid, senile, or crazy? The Democrats have branded Sarah Palin as stupid, and John Boehner has jumped on that bandwagon not only with both feet, but also with his crying eyes in full bloom.
Now, my fellow members of the political right, a group by the way that every Republican and his uncle, even John Boehner, claim to be members in good standing of, I am perfectly willing to listen to well reasoned arguments as to why Impeachment would be a bad idea. You might say that it’s counter productive, since there’s zero chance of securing a verdict of guilty in the highly partisan and Democrat controlled Senate. That’s true. You might argue that you’re afraid of political backlash, which you inaccurately blame for electoral defeat in 1996. (Bob Dole and Ross Perot were the causes of that defeat, and the proof in that pudding lies in the fact that the GOP actually gained seats in the Legislative Branch during an election year in which they failed to win the Presidency.) I may not agree with those arguments, but at least they’re somewhat substantive. Stating that Sarah Palin is stupid however is nothing more than an ad hominem attack, something by the way that is usually reserved for the party of the left. More importantly, it also fails to address the fact that Sarah Palin happens to have gotten this one right.
There’s something else to consider here with this latest bit of sophistry coming from the good folks at MSNBC. The want Sarah charged with Treason, simply for pointing out that evidence exists to support our President be charged with a crime. She’s not calling for a mob to overthrow our government, nor endeavoring for such on her own. She merely wants our President, a man who according to our Constitution by the way, be held to account in the only manner a President can be held to account, for charges stemming from very strong evidence that he’s acted outside of the laws that every citizen is expected to live by.
This departure by MSNBC is even more troubling than most of their highly partisan crapola disguised as objectivity. (A disguise by the way that could only fool the terminally moronic.) The gracious host of this news programming offers his helpful opinion as fact, that Treason be redefined to include anyone who dares to ask that a sitting President not be placed above the law. So much for the First Amendment guarantees in the NBC Universe. At one time, our press was described as being a fourth branch of government, a supposed watch dog, holding our elected leaders to some form of honest ethical standard. Those days would seem to be long gone my fellow inhabitants of the People’s Democratic Republik of Amerika. I’ll soon see you in the reeducation Kamps my comrades. Don’t worry though, in every movie depicting a Dystopian Society in which government has run amok, television screens used in those kamps are huge. So we’ll doubtless get to see MSNBC hosts on drive-in-movie sized detail. A fifty foot tall version of Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris Perry, I can hardly wait.
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
Tags: Impeachment, Sarah Palin
