One of the most repeated comments after yesterday's diary "Only Impeachment will bring our troops home"(
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/18/134514/326) was that impeachment is beyond our grasp because of the Republican domination of both houses of Congress. Such defeatist and fatalistic thoughts are unwarranted as long as we still have a few shreds of democracy left.
The whole point of the diary was that anything less than impeachment would fail to sufficiently dislodge the Bush administration and would allow them to continue to manipulate and neutralize any effort to bring about change, even tampering with the conditions or results of the 2006 Congressional elections.
Rather than just reject impeachment out of hand because of today's political realities, follow me after the fold...
Those of us seeking the truth and justice for the crimes committed against the American people by the Crawford Mafia do not have the home-field advantage, not as the Republicans did when they sought to bring down the Clinton presidency, or the Democrats did when going up against Nixon. But there are other ways to try the impeachment question in the court of public opinion, beyond the nominal rules of Congress and escape the desperate manipulations of DeLay and Frist.
Actual impeachment as defined by the Constitution requires each house of Congress to play its prescribed role, something unlikely to happen with GOP co-conspirators holding the reins of power there. But impeachment is actually simply an indictment, an investigation of sufficient credibility and weight to bring charges of such gravity as to warrant a trial and removal from office.
Indictments can originate from many different places, from district attorneys and grand juries, from various courts and tribunals, and even the court of public opinion. An indictment is a preponderance of evidence that indicates that a crime has been committed and that the parties accused have a reasonable expectation of conviction. The Constitution defines Presidential impeachment as a Congressional process, which essentially means having a sufficient number of Members willing to invoke the investigation, a political calculation on their part. By beginning the process of assembling the evidence elsewhere, Congressional impeachment becomes inevitable as the variables underlying that political calculus are changed.
During Watergate it took months of revelations in the press outside of formal Congressional action before sufficient numbers of Republicans (and Democrats) were convinced that their political futures depended upon opposing the Nixon administration. Something similar happened with Democrats in Clinton's impeachment when it became clear that he had been less than truthful in his testimony about Monica Lewinsky. Just because Delay and Frist are nominally controlling the issues taken up by Congress, they can not, as we saw in recent the strategizing about the filibuster, just impose their will on a determined and united minority without the threat of bringing Congress to a halt and creating a Constitutional crisis.
How to get the ball rolling to begin the inevitable bringing to justice of the most corrupt and subversive administration in our nation's history? Representative Conyer's Downing Street Minutes hearing shows us one path. He didn't wait for Sessenbrenner to give permission to hold the hearing. Despite Milbank's chiding in the Washington Post, Conyer's hearing was more than "playing house." It had the weight and gravity, if not the explicit jurisdiction, to begin making the case for impeachment. That one hearing may not have changed a single vote in the House, but following up and seeking more testimony, more revelations, more evidence will begin to change the political calculus that each Member is making. It is clear from the recent polling information that the weight of public opinion is shifting our way and Members, all of whom are facing reelection in just a little over a year can ignore public sentiment only at their own peril.
If every ranking Member of every major committee in Congress began similar hearings, even outside of formal Congressional committee structure, investigating the many lies and deceptions and corruptions of this administration in virtually every area of government, perhaps coordinated and publicized by the Minority Leader's office with a daily briefing summarizing the progress and actions of these investigations, the web of lies and deceit would be revealed for what it is.
Imagine simultaneous investigations producing revelations and giving cover to whistleblowers on such topics as electoral suppression and fraud, misappropriation of funding, international treaty violations, conspiracy to circumvent campaign finance or environmental law, the subversion of intelligence and law enforcement Each separate investigation reinforces the findings of its sister committees, and as a whole show a web of lawlessness that extends to the White House and virtually everything this administration has touched.
The evidence produced by these ex-parte investigations, and the resulting press coverage no doubt bringing additional evidence to light, will eventually lead to calls for special investigators. Most Congressional committees have a Republican majority of only one or two Members. With credible evidence of wrongdoing in the public domain driving public opinion even more against the administration and its Congressional collaborators, the probability of defection dramatically increases. Democratic maneuvering to block the work of a given committee or the entire body as a response to the leadership's refusal to deal with the evidence presented becomes an act of honor in defense of our democracy, not the mere obstructionism defenders of the status quo will claim.
There are other routes to marshaling and coordinating this march of public opinion. Many state governments have Democratic governors and attorney generals. Many of the Bush administration policies, from activating the state's National Guard to changing Medicare funding affect the states and create a basis for investigations seeking out corruption and the illegal use of federal power. Like many states' attorneys general combined their efforts to take on Microsoft's anti-competitive practices in the late '90's in a way no individual state alone could have done, so coordinated investigations into electoral suppression and fraud, abuse of federal power and corruption charges could be investigated much more powerfully by combining the efforts of many jurisdictions to reveal an overall pattern.
Congressional impeachment is a political act, not necessarily meeting the exact same standards of evidence as a criminal trial. Of course, the Republicans will try to hide behind some deflection that no actual crime was committed in any individual instance. But the effort here is not to necessarily "prove beyond any reasonable doubt" that a crime was committed, but that there is a "preponderance of evidence that a crime may have been committed." Once that preponderance of evidence is in the public domain, Members can ignore it only at the risk of a one-way ticket home and causing even further damage to their party by appearing to condone or defend the obviously guilty. Just as Tom DeLay looks increasingly lonely and delusional as he bleats that the ethics charges against him are mere "partisanship," so will any attempt to defend this administration from simultaneously encroaching investigations from so many fronts look unhinged from reality.
As the recent "Deep Throat" revelation showed, there are still people today who thought Nixon was innocent, no matter what all those tapes revealed. And so it will be with the Bush administration. But if we are to ever get to the truth, have fair elections, get our troops home, and prevent the country from being dragged through more 9/11-type hysteria, we can not wait for the day that will never come when 100% of the public is on our side. All we need to do is convince a handful of Members on key committees that the costs of ignoring the evidence will weigh fatally against them.
The Bush administration will fight back with everything they have. They have fought the Plame investigation by threatening innocent reporters with jail. They fought the creation of the 9/11 Commission tooth and nail. Jeb Bush is still shamelessly going after Michael Schiavo to deflect attention from the fact that Terri's autopsy showed how wrong the Right was, and how correct all the findings of the previous 16 trails were. There's a real possibility of jail time and even war crimes trials, so they will pull no punches fighting back.
This will be a bloody and highly polarizing fight, but given what we know about the public's current positions, we will have the backing of the majority. After all, if the administration has done nothing wrong, why resist a simple investigation of the facts? What are they hiding? Why do they hide behind technicalities and jurisdictional quibbles to block the truth? The public has grown more sophisticated and just because Michael Jackson was found technically not guilty, doesn't mean that the parents of America will be sending their sons over to Neverland for naptime. Similarly, although the administration may frustrate every attempt to gain an actual criminal conviction, the accumulation of evidence will have the political and electoral effect on those defending their criminal behavior, so as to render an actual impeachment unnecessary.
The time to start this is now. The 2006 Congressional elections are the big stick in our hands to force Members to act with some conscience. The public is coming around, and their representatives will follow eventually. The key is weaving together the evidence on Iraq, on the tax cuts, on the environment, on electoral suppression and fraud, on outright corruption into a convincing national narrative of rightwing conspiracy and collusion to subvert the democratic process throughout the country.
And, true to form, the administration just keeps handing us more evidence, like Bush's statement yesterday that we are "stuck in Iraq" right or wrong, for the duration.
Only impeachment will bring our troops home.