But, in 1993, Clinton and the Democratic congressional leadership concluded that pursuit of these "old" scandals would only embitter the Republicans, make the Democratic Party look vindictive and endanger the bipartisanship that Clinton saw as essential for his domestic policy agenda...The investigations and legal actions related to Iran-contra, BNL/BCCI among others spanned several administrations, despite having been undermined all along by timid Democrats and finished off in a bid to obtain political goodwill from Republicans that never materialized. If anything, Clinton and the Democratic leadership's caving in on these issues was taken as weakness by the congressional Republicans, who rewarded Clinton's actions with even sharper opposition and impeachment. In terms of the Republican general public, Clinton and the Democrats were demonized and creating anti-Clinton, anti-Democratic, anti-liberal propaganda became a cottage industry, launching the careers of scads of conservative media wingnuts.The pattern of craven Democrats selling out justice in hopes of partisan advancement continued through the Bush the Younger administration as a Democratic Congress under Nancy Pelosi refused to put accountability on the table for the many abuses of the Bush administration, both before the election that would bring Democrats back into control of the House:The Democratic retreat from the investigative battles in 1993 would have another profound effect on the future of American politics. By letting George H.W. Bush leave the White House with his reputation intact -- and even helping Bush fend off accusations of serious wrongdoing -- the Democrats unwittingly cleared the way for a restoration of the Bush political dynasty eight years later.
Seeking to choke off a Republican rallying cry, the House's top Democrat has told colleagues that the party will not seek to impeach President Bush even if it gains control of the House in November's elections, her office said last night.... and afterwards:Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) told her caucus members during their weekly closed meeting Wednesday "that impeachment is off the table; she is not interested in pursuing it," spokesman Brendan Daly said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is proving to be the surprise O. Henry ending to last November's elections. The American voters gave Democrats clear control of Congress, rebuked President George W. Bush, and voiced an unequivocal public craving to trade in customary narrow-minded politics for something more inspiring. Yet motivated by partisan concerns over the 2008 elections, the new speaker is following President Bush around like a sheep while he solidifies an imperial presidency and diminishes the Congress into irrelevancy. ...... leading many to the reasonable conclusion that the Democrats were complicit in the crimes of the Bush Administration which the public favored impeachment of Bush and Cheney for:The prospect of an impeachment inquiry by the House judiciary committee would concentrate the minds of the president and vice president wonderfully on obeying rather than sabotaging the Constitution. But Speaker Pelosi has at least figuratively joined hands with the White House in opposition. Emulating the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, she has threatened the removal of Michigan Rep. John Conyers from his chairmanship of the House judiciary committee if an impeachment inquiry were even opened, according to reliable congressional chatter.
It's just been disclosed that Representative Jane Harmon and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were briefed by the Bush administration on the use of waterboarding. Harmon objected but Pelosi did not -- and when she became speaker of the house, she rejected Harmon for chair of the House Intelligence Committee.Pelosi's staunch, off-the-rails resistance in the face of public demand for accountability of the Bush administration has set the pattern for craven Democrats following the elections of 2008 to avoid the alleged partisan strife that would cause a lack of comity in the legislative branch leading to, erm, nothing getting done. Ooops, that happened anyway. Regardless, Democrats have been a forward-looking bunch.The Administration has frequently responded to charges of Executive usurpation by saying the Congressional leaders were fully briefed on such questionable practices as NSA surveillance, extraordinary rendition, and enhanced interrogation techniques. ...
According to the Washington Post, since 2002 leading Democrats lawmakers received "about 30 private CIA briefings,' some of which included descriptions of waterboarding, overseas rendition sites, "and other harsh interrogation methods." Officials present at some of the meetings, told the Post that the reaction from legislators "was not just approval, but encouragement."
Obama didn't take long to warm up to fighting justice and stonewalling investigations. Within about 6 months of taking office, he was already denying UN experts' requests for visits to Guantanamo and data about CIA prisons, not to mention continuing Bush's program of renditions. Also, in that time frame Obama "looked forward" about an attempt in Spain to prosecute some of the Bush torture support squad:
Asked for the first time to respond to the likelihood that Spanish prosecutors will target officials in the Bush administration for sanctioning torture at Guantanamo Bay, Barack Obama stressed, once again, that he prefers to look forward, not backward.Obama was stonewalling by refusing to "wade in to the debate over a lawsuit filed by six Spaniards who alleged they were tortured," and thanks to Wikileaks, Obama's actions have been exposed:In an interview with CNN En Espaà ±ol that aired on Wednesday, the president noted that his administration had ordered the closure of Guantanamo and put an end to policies of enhanced interrogation that "ran counter to American values." But he wouldn't wade into the debate over a lawsuit filed by six Spaniards who allege they were tortured at the detention center. A Spanish court is threatening to investigate former Bush officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, for their complicity in torture.
In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department--one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks--details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.Since the days before taking office when Obama decided to "look forward," many policies of his administration have perpetuated and extended the dubiously legal policies of his predecessor. The failure of the Democratic majority in Congress to hold Bush accountable has created a new baseline of bad actions for Obama to build on to target even the most basic civil rights for destruction, shredding protections of civil liberties - and even Obama's rhetoric has taken on a remarkable resemblance to Bush's.
As Dan Froomkin put it:
In a lot of ways, we're worse off today than we were under George W. Bush.Back then, Bush's extremist assault on civil liberties, human rights and other core American values in the name of fighting terror felt like an aberration.
The expectation was that those policies would be quickly reversed, discredited -- and explicitly outlawed -- once he was no longer in power.
Instead, under President Barack Obama, they've become institutionalized. ...
Obama has set even darker precedents than his predecessor. Massively invasive bulk surveillance of Americans and others has been expanded, not constrained. This president secretly condemns people to death without any checks or balances, and shrugs as his errant drones massacre innocent civilians. Whistleblowers and journalists who expose national security wrongdoing face unprecedented criminal prosecution.
What impeachment is and what it's for
Among the greatest concerns of the US founding fathers was the potential of the federal government that they created to revert into a tyrannical oppressor state. They had concerns about the executive committing the nation to perpetual war. Incidentally, they had concerns about the use of torture and created explicit constitutional prohibitions against it. They created a mechanism to hold the executive accountable, so as not to grant the sort of authority of a tyrant:
The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution.As Hamilton alludes to in Federalist #69 above, the founders left a legacy of two means to deal with the arrogation of tyrannical powers, the example set by their actions and the method embedded in the Constitution.
In discussions of impeachment, there is often considerable discussion of whether the charges against the president amount to criminal acts. This excerpt from a report written and released by the Judiciary Committee in 1974 in the aftermath of the Watergate crisis explains (briefly) what sort of charges may be raised:
Impeachment is a constitutional remedy addressed to serious offenses against the system of government. The purpose of impeachment under the Constitution is indicated by the limited scope of the remedy (removal from office and possible disqualification from future office) and by the stated grounds for impeachment (treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors). It is not controlling whether treason and bribery are criminal. More important, they are constitutional wrongs that subvert the structure of government, or undermine the integrity of office and even the Constitution itself, and thus are "high" offenses in the sense that word was used in English impeachments. ...While it may be argued that some articles of impeachment have charged conduct that constituted crime and thus that criminality is an essential ingredient, or that some have charged conduct that was not criminal and thus that criminality is not essential, the fact remains that in the English practice and in several of the American impeachments the criminality issue was not raised at all. The emphasis has been on the significant effects of the conduct-- undermining the integrity of office, disregard of constitutional duties and oath of office, arrogation of power, abuse of the governmental process, adverse impact on the system of government. Clearly, these effects can be brought about in ways not anticipated by the criminal law. Criminal standards and criminal courts were established to control individual conduct. Impeachment was evolved by Parliament to cope with both the inadequacy of criminal standards and the impotence of courts to deal with the conduct of great public figures. It would be anomalous if the framers, having barred criminal sanctions from the impeachment remedy and limited it to removal and possible disqualification from office, intended to restrict the grounds for impeachment to conduct that was criminal. ...
It is useful to note three major presidential duties of broad scope that are explicitly recited in the Constitution: "to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed," to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States" and to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" to the best of his ability. The first is directly imposed by the Constitution; the second and third are included in the constitutionally prescribed oath that the President is required to take before he enters upon the execution of his office and are, therefore, also expressly imposed by the Constitution.
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