William M. Boardman has it right.
Impeachment, as it is being handled by our House of Representatives is
a three ring circus...if there were still a three ring circus to
compare it to. All that will come from the effort will be a show down
between Congress and Donald Trump. Given what I've seen so far,
Donald Trump will come out on top.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/8/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Here's an article that states what I think and what I've been hearing on
the
podcasts to which I listen. I'm pleasantly surprised to see it in RSN.
Miriam
What Does "Impeachment" Mean to Democrats? They Don't Say.
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
08 October 19
"Therefore, today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving
forward with an official impeachment inquiry. I am directing our six
Committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of
impeachment inquiry. The President must be held accountable. No one is
above
the law."
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, September 24, 2019
This is not encouraging.
The country has been in a deepening constitutional crisis for more than two
stormy decades and now, belatedly, the speaker is proposing an umbrella?
Even less encouraging, when the speaker announces an umbrella of an
impeachment inquiry, the political and media classes respond as if they're
going to a New Year's Eve party rather than undertaking a serious
constitutional duty.
An umbrella? Made up of six committees? How is that supposed to work?
It's been raining for a long, long time.
Since the moment the current president was sworn in, he has been committing
more and more impeachable offenses. After more than two and a half years of
open corruption, the most thoughtful response we can get from the US House
of Representatives is an umbrella of six committees with no formal
framework?
The speaker is playing political word games, and she's surrounded by
enablers equally uncommitted to being frank and honest. What is "an
official
impeachment inquiry" exactly? It's nothing. It's three meaning-free but
impressive-sounding words that reinforce the status quo. The status quo is
whatever those six committees are up to. We don't really know what that is
because they aren't eager to explain and reporters aren't eager to inquire.
"An official impeachment inquiry" is actually nothing but empty words that
give some sort of cover to those carrying it out, whatever it turns out to
be. We shall see, but I am not encouraged.
As I said on the radio (yes, quoting myself!) two days after the
announcement of the official impeachment inquiry:
When impeachment becomes a sudden fad with no clear grounding in principle
and a narrow focus on pretty much circumstantial evidence grounded in a bed
of bipartisan corruption resting on tectonic plates of the new cold war, I
remain detached and skeptical - except the show might be spectacular,
especially if viewed from another planet (or maybe just China).
In other words, right from the start the official impeachment inquiry
looked
like an out-of-control six-ring circus with all the sideshows clamoring for
center stage and absolutely no clear way to the egress. After two weeks,
the
mindless public tumult has only gotten worse. No one has offered a cogent
answer to the core question of why swamp creatures behaving like swamp
creatures in a longstanding swamp had any real significance when they
turned
their swamp creature tactics on fellow swamp creatures.
In the real world, Ukraine got its military aid (late) and the Ukrainian
president did not get any White House visit. That would be a quid pro nunc.
Whether anyone's investigating the Bidens remains unclear, no matter how
deserved. When you're the VP of the United States and your son is getting
$50,000 a month from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch and you don't make a peep
- well, whatever Joe Biden thinks his behavior was, it was not an example
of
integrity. And Biden still hasn't owned up to it any more than he's owned
up
to his more egregious gifts to his country: the Iraq War, Justice Clarence
Thomas, and predatory credit card companies. To the extent that the
official
impeachment inquiry is designed to protect Joe Biden, it's yet another
corrupt Democratic Party scheme designed to interfere with an election and
defraud the American public.
Right now, both parties are betting there's a sucker born every minute and
that won't change. Come see the official impeachment committees swallow
their umbrellas whole without a trace. Is there any reason to think
America's elected freakshow won't keep the two-party con spinning
indefinitely? The chair of the House Intelligence Committee can't even
admit
the harmless truth about his early knowledge of the first whistleblower.
How
much of this incompetence is deliberate?
So what would an honest impeachment process look like?
The meaning of impeachment is clear - it means indicting the president for
"treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors" in the words of
the Constitution. There are no constitutional rules for carrying out an
impeachment, so calling it an umbrella or a banana or a roadside bomb are
all allowed, even if they don't mean much.
Any serious indictment should rest on reliable evidence (as illustrated by
the Nixon impeachment and all but ignored in the Clinton impeachment). This
time around, we have Congressional leaders who have spent years denying the
evidentiary elephant in the room. Now they suddenly leap into the morass of
Ukrainian corruption, cold war politics, and bipartisan sleaze, spouting
the
high hilarity of moral dudgeon over things they studiously ignored for
years.
The country doesn't need this kind of fake political theatre of such
mindless thrashing about, not if the country has any collective
determination to redeem its most important values. Of course, there's doubt
about that. But this moment, this presidency, these decades of decline cry
out for principled, clear-headed leadership that is willing to trust the
politics of truth and integrity. The umbrella politics of the six House
committees have delivered enough denial and evasion. To call for an
intellectually honest impeachment process assumes that there are enough
principled, clear-headed people in the House prepared to take on a long,
intricate, uncertain process for the sake of the American future. Such
people are not yet apparent, but perhaps they exist.
For a serious impeachment process to succeed it needs to be comprehensive,
open-ended, and truthful. For better or worse, it is up to the House to
manage this. There is no one else. The Senate has already rendered itself
irrelevant, making removal of the president is all but impossible,
regardless of the evidence. And just as well, since the consequence of
removal is clearly undesirable, whether it produces a President Pence or a
President Pelosi.
The most meaningful timeframe now is fixed by the November 2020 election.
Between now and then the House could - if it can muster the collective
integrity - create what amounts to a year-long national teach-in on
constitutional values. There is no shortage of important issues that have
nothing to do with Biden or Ukraine. There is a host of important issues
that are not secret. Many are explored in "The Constitution Demands It: The
Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump" (Melville House, 2018). This book
offers more than enough arguments and evidence to impeach this president
multiple times. The authors - Ron Fein, John Bonifaz, and Ben Clements -
are
all distinguished lawyers and constitutional scholars who would provide the
kind of calm, thoughtful, articulate voices that should characterize an
ideal teach-in panel. Without that kind of integrity and honesty, we're not
likely to get helpful answers to questions like these:
Do we want to allow presidents to use their office to enrich themselves?
Do we want to allow presidents to re-write laws without Congressional
participation?
Do we want to allow presidents to attack the environment for the sake of
private interests, at the cost of the public good?
Do we want to allow presidents to deny climate science at the cost of the
public good globally?
Do we want presidents to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,
rather than arbitrarily caging children against the law?
Do we want presidents to respect the rule of law and due process of law?
Do we want presidents to be accountable for their words and actions,
especially when they incite bigotry and violence?
This is not an exhaustive list. What matters most is that the president be
held accountable for the worst of his behavior, not just some partisan
character assassination of an already politically dead challenger. Who
knows? If enough Democrats can find the courage and strength to act in the
highest national interest, maybe enough Republicans will follow suit to
make
it a real thing. It might even poll well. And newly-educated voters might
remove the president.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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