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BREAKING:
And while we’re at it, a Federal District Court judge has just provided an object lesson in why Congress is foolish to ignore impeachment and instead to continue with the futile effort to “investigate” the Bush regime’s offenses. Judge John D. Bates, who was appointed to the federal bench in the District of Columbia by Bush in December 2001, was a counsel in the Whitewater Republican witchhunt against the Clinton’s in 1995-97. He proved his ideological mettle in 2002, shortly after donning his robes, by dismissing a lawsuit by the Government Accounting Office which was trying to gain access to the minutes of Vice President Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force. Now Judge Bates, true to form, has thrown out the damage suit against Cheney that was filed by outed CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. Clearly, the judges that Bush has stacked the courts with—especially in the crucial D.C. district which would hear any cases involving disputes between Congress and the White House—are not going to rule in Congress’s favor. To go ahead with these investigations, and to file contempt charges in the courts, would be to risk rulings that would undermine the whole foundation of separation of powers, leaving Congress an empty shell.
It would be a disastrous act of betrayal against the Constitution for Democrats in Congress to run this risk, when there is a clear, and appropriate alternative that would force the courts to accede to Congressional authority: impeachment. For unlike other congressional investigations, impeachment has a clear and unambiguous Constitutional mandate, which all but the most corruptly partisan jurist would have to concede.
DAVE LINDORFF is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of “The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now out in a paperback edition). A veteran investigative reporter and columnist, his work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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