On Inpeachment Thinking 1974, etc.

History is something we can learn from, right?

From The Final Days:

Caldwell Butler, a Republican representative from Virginia on the House Judiciary Committee considering the impeachment charges against Nixon in July of 1974:

"...There are frightening implications for the future of our country if we do not impeach the President of the United States... If we fail to impeach, we have condoned and left unpunished a course of conduct totally inconsistent with reasonable expectations of the American people... The people of the United States are entitled to assume that their President is telling the truth. The pattern of misrepresentation and half-truths that emerges from our investigations reveals a presidential policy cynically based on the premise that the truth itself is negotiable. It is a sad chapter in American history, but I cannot condone what I have heard; I cannot excuse it, and I cannot and will not stand still for it...."

Of course, current affairs have their own way of enlightening us as well:

Today, in a blog entitled How do you repudiate a lawless regime? (from Scarecrow at Firedoglake):

"...we read that Conservative Andrew Sullivan now uses the term “fascist” to describe the Bush/Cheney regime:

When conservatives subvert the rule of law … to enable torture, and when only one man gets to decide who gets detained and tortured, they are no longer conservatives. They are fascists. And they need not just to be defeated; they need to be repudiated.

Though I’ve resisted using the term, I think Sullivan is right on both counts. It is an ugly, unwanted truth, but we have to face this.

Readers of Firedoglake know I believe impeachment is the logical cure for the dangerous cancer eating its way through our Constitutional system. Impeachment is the Constitutional remedy the Founders provided for exactly this disease. It should be attempted even if it fails, because it’s the right thing to do, and because we owe it to those who follow to say we tried and did not submit to this wrecking crew without a struggle...."

Mikey says: Hmmm... So, should impeachment be off the table? I'm not sure. Is this similar to a prosecutor weighing evidence in a particular case and deciding that there was an insufficient amount to convict and then making the decision not to even bring the case to court? And if the prosecutor knows he (or she) doesn't have the votes to convict and goes ahead anyway and the perpetrator is found innocent, what then? Of course, there is always the danger that the perpetrator will not only continue the illegal activity but, emboldened, take the crime to a higher level if he realizes that nobody is going to slap his hand and say no. One other thought: time is speeding up on us, or so some would say what with all the modern machines and tools that we have. But maybe in this case, this failure to act on removing the cancer, this inability to even consider the ultimate response to WH shenanigans, well, maybe we have a slowing down of time which will lead to the public's utter revulsion and final repudiation of a gang that has done so much damage to the American way of life. Sometimes one looks for explanations on what is not happening.

So it goes...