Why has Gorge W Bush not been impeached?

Answer 1

The question: Why haven't the Democrats already impeached the president for all these crimes, abuses of power and assaults of the Constitution?


I used to chalk it up to cowardice, but I'm no longer happy with that answer. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) may be a politician's politician, but she hasn't lacked for courage. She has, for example, always been ready to stand for taking a tough line on civil liberties in China, when the corporatocracy has been pressing the government to cozy up to China.


It's also hard to buy the idea that so many progressive members of the House--people like John Conyers (D-Mich.), Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Chakka Fattah (D-Penna.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)--all of whom clearly understand the nature of the president's crimes, could be afraid to submit bills of impeachment--indeed that all the progressive members of the Democratic Party in the House are so afraid to take a stand on impeachment that not one has dared to submit an impeachment bill. (Only Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) has taken that step, and she waited until she had already been voted out of office and then filed her impeachment bill in the last week of the 109th Congress.)


That said, there are some things I do know.


First of all, there are members of Congress who understand that the president should be impeached. Chief among these is Rep. Conyers. Back in the last Congress, Conyers, as ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee--the committee that would hold impeachment hearings if a bill of impeachment were submitted--held unofficial hearings into some of the president's high crimes and misdemeanors, which resulted in a book, George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying. The book is a clear call for impeachment. Conyers also filed a bill in the 109th Congress which called for creation of a "select committee" to investigate possible impeachable crimes by the Bush administration. It ultimately boasted 39 co-sponsors, including Reps. Rangel, Fattah and Waters.


I also know that midway through the 2006 election year, Rep. Pelosi began telling reporters, at every opportunity, that if Democrats were elected to a majority in the House in the November election, there would be no impeachment effort--impeachment, in her words, would be "off the table."


And so it has been, at least inside the Beltway. And not only has it been put off the table--Pelosi and the party leadership have been actively working behind the scenes in an unconscionable effort to undermine grassroots campaigns to put it back on, via state legislative resolutions. In both New Mexico and Washington state, Democratic party leaders from Washington have put the screws on local legislative leaders to keep the issue of impeachment from even making it to an open floor debate in a legislative chamber. Clearly, progressive members of Congress have also been pressured not to submit impeachment bills.


In part, I think this is all happening because Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership have bought the Republican Party's spin--that impeachment would be "good for Republicans" because it would allegedly "energize the Republican base" that supports President Bush no matter what. Maybe that is technically true, but that base is less than 30 percent of the voting public, and it ignores that fact that impeachment would also energize the Democratic, progressive base, and might well also energize the libertarian base, all of which collectively would far outnumber any possible energized reactionary base.


This leads me to what I think is the real reason the Democratic leadership is opposing impeachment--a reason I find thoroughly disgusting and unworthy of the party of Roosevelt.


I believe that Pelosi, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), Howard Dean and the rest of the leaders of the Democratic Party, have concluded that the Republican Party and the Bush administration have so screwed up that they have lost the support of the majority of Americans, and that all Democrats need to do to win the White House and a bigger margin in the House and Senate in 2008 is to let them continue to screw up, aided by selective Congressional investigations designed to further embarrass them.

While Pelosi has talked grandly about passing a progressive agenda of bills in the 110th Congress, the Democrats know that they cannot pass any meaningful progressive legislation. Their majority in both houses is razor thin and could never survive a veto, and even if they could, by watering down their bills, lure enough Republican votes to override a veto, President Bush would invalidate any bill that made significant change or reform by just issuing one of his unconstitutional and illegal "signing statements" asserting that as commander in chief in the war on terror he doesn't have to adhere to the Constitution.


So what Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid plan to do is pass legislation that they know won't go into law, like the minimum wage bill, or global warming laws, and then go to the voters in 2008 saying, "We would have gotten these bills into law, if only we had more Democrats in the Congress, or a Democratic president."


They're doing the same thing with the war. If Democrats wanted to end the war, they could do so immediately by refusing to pass a supplemental funding measure to support it, but they don't want to do this. It's not that they fear being called unpatriotic--hell, with 70 percent of the public wanting the war to end immediately, nobody would fault Congress for pulling the plug. Even the troops who are stuck over there wouldn't be upset to see the funding that keeps them there terminated. But ending the war would leave the Democrats without their best issue going into the 2008 national election: Bush's war. So instead of ending the war, they vote to oppose it, but then continue to fund it. (Rep. Emanuel has actually said publicly that it would be good for Democrats if the war were to continue through November 2008.)


It's a supremely cynical campaign ploy, and it's also behind the strategy of keeping impeachment "off the table."


If Bush were impeached, and witnesses began getting called in under oath to expose his and Vice President **** Cheney's lies and deceit in tricking the nation into war, his illegal NSA spying activities, his obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame outing investigation, his authorization of torture, his obstruction of efforts to combat global warming, his criminal failure to provide troops with armor or to plan for an Iraq occupation or to respond to the disaster in New Orleans, and his usurpation of the powers of Congress and the Judiciary in invalidating over 1200 laws passed by the Congress, it would almost certainly lead to his (and Cheney's) removal from office and to a prompt end to the war.


Then where would Democrats be?


They'd have to stand on their own merits. They'd have to give voters a positive reason to vote for them.


And it's been so long since Democrats have done that that they really may not even know how it's done.


Even progressive Democratic representatives seem to have bought into this cynical thinking. How else to explain Rep. Conyers' repudiation of his own book, even as it's about to come out in paperback? How else to explain the deafening silence of progressives like Reps. Waters, Rangel, Jesse Jackson Jr., and, at least until this week, Dennis Kucinich?


I'm hoping that at least Kucinich will finally stand up and reject this cynical Democratic thinking, and file a bill of impeachment, giving Rep. Conyers the chance to redeem himself by standing up to Pelosi et al. If he does stand up, and begins hearings on an impeachment bill, I hope other progressive Democrats?and maybe a few principled Republicans?--will join him by filing their own impeachment bills. I hope state legislators in Vermont, Washington state, New Jersey and elsewhere, will take heart from what Kucinich appears ready to do, and will shrug off the pressure from Democratic national leaders, listen to their own residents, and pass joint resolutions calling for Congress to initiate impeachment hearings, too.


This dam can be broken.


If it is, perhaps Democrats and patriotic Republicans will finally be able to live up to their oaths of office, which pledge them to uphold and defend the Constitution "against all enemies foreign and domestic." There is no greater enemy of Constitutional government, the rule of law, and the freedoms that so many have died to establish and to defend than President Bush and his administration. If Congress will not stand up to the crimes of this administration and call this president to account through impeachment, all future presidents will feel free to follow his corrupt example, and the impeachment clause may as well simply be removed from the Constitution.


Or be rewritten to refer only to lies about extramarital sex

Answer 2

IT would be a waste of tax payers time!! 2/3 vote will be needed in order to impeach him. There isn't a enough democrats to make the vote. The republican might whine about Bush but they gave him everything he wanted the last 6 years they won't impeach him.

Answer 3

To be impeached you have to commit a crime which is an impeachable offense. Trust me, with the dems owning hous ean dsenate, if there were even 1 thing that he could be impeached for they would be frying him already, unfortunately he has not broken any laws.

Answer 4

Some See Impeachment Option, Hagel Says

Answer 5

Wow, this question is getting really old..........

Ok once again.....

Impeachment is the act of prosecuting a President for commiting a crime. Since President Bush has not commited a crime, he cannot be impeached.

Now...........buy a dictionary

Answer 6

Study our Constitution. A sitting president can only be impeached for "high crimes" and misdemeanors." President Bush has not committed either. If you are not happy with him, vote in 2008.

Answer 7

Because a bunch of whiney children crying for it is not an impeachable offense.

Answer 8

He the two has a God-like complicated or is a Hitler-wannabe. Cheney is his little precise hand imp and all and sundry else that sings their praises. How can all and sundry who calls themselves American take a seat decrease back and not applying a care interior the international with out questioning their President and have not any voice is previous me. we would desire to constantly have had them out on their ears precise after 9/11. in case you look on the info and the consistent coverups and scandals interior the White residing house over who did what on 9/11 is obtrusive they comprehend who......themselves!! ask your self why FBI or whoever the brokers have been that took surveillance digicam pictures of the attack on the Pentagon from interior of sight companies yet won't launch to the regularly occurring public how or why it exceeded off might desire to make you think of....and that they only allowed one digicam working on the front to the Pentagon with the incorrect date on it while the Pentagon is the main safeguard weighted down place with cameras and sensors everywhere. that's the fort Knox of all homes so a techniques as secure practices ranges yet they do no longer enable all and sundry comprehend something. ask your self how can the twin towers explode into dirt and unfastened-fall in onto itself as we communicate right down to that's footprint from the small fires and the attack above that did no longer final very long. Has there ever been any steel/concrete construction ever crumple so flippantly from hearth injury? NO. as properly the incorrect construction collapsed first. Plus, WTC 7 collapsed an identical way. They in no way demonstrate this interior the 9/11 Comission report. It grew to become into all planned from interior with the help of Bush and Cheney and Rice and all who kiss their you comprehend what's for economic and political benefit. The blackouts in manhattan and powerdowns of all cameras and bomb sniffing canines an evacutations of workers interior the towers and bldg. 7 in the previous 9/11 gave lots of get right of entry to for those employed from interior of to place detonation gadgets interior the stunning places to be monitored and activated from a secure region as quickly as each physique grew to become into of their places with their stupid sport faces on. The President and his imps have taken the lives of many those that day and it hasn't stopped ever for the reason that our troops have been long previous. It has to provide up someplace, sometime.

Answer 9

The former, blank check republican led congress made no inquiries into the Bush admins dealings. As more, overdue, hearings are held, more evidence will come out that may lead to his impeachment at some future date.

The recent Scooter Libby trial revealed that **** Cheney was directly involved in leaking CIA agent Plame's name to the press. This is the first domino in a string of many to fall into the public light.

Answer 10

He has not been indicted.
He has not been proven to have committed any crimes.
He cannot be impeached because you don't like him.
He has to be accused and arraigned by Congress(good luck on that one)

Anything else? Oh yes, Impeachment means trial, nothing more.
I like this question, I answer it 2-3 times a week.

Answer 11

i don't know but i will say in the entire history of the united states and most of the developed world no leader has lied as much as he has about as many important things as he has and got away with it as he has.
there is something very wrong with the USA . getting upset about bill Clinton and even allowing that inquest to pry into that aspect of his life or work should have been criminal . that man that ran the Clinton investigation should be in prison .
bush should be impeached and put in prison for the remainder of his life. oh the other man who lead a inquest into financial dealings the Clinton's made and was unable to find any proof they ever did anything wrong his name was star and he should have been arrest for gross misuse of authority and trust allowing such matters as this Monica women's involvement with the president . you get upset about that but are fine with a man who lies to you about the need for a war . takes you to war in the wrong country and continues to lie everyday about the most important things in American government he should be in prison.
as for what crime he has committed he lied to all of the world and started a war if that is not a big enough crime then fire and brimstone should fall on the USA