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From yesterday's NYT. Courtesy of TPM.

Play It. Impeach.

Courtesy of MoveOn.

This should be posted everywhere and played daily to remind people how wrong our country's state of affairs is and who is responsible for them. At the very least, two things are abundantly clear. The situation then is as it was when we began this Iraq War, and it was clearly the wrong thing to do for more reasons than I or the past Mr. Cheney can list. It is also evidence of the hypocrisy and hubris of those in power. This war was not in our national interest and only in the interest of a handful of willfully delusional idealistic plutocrats with no personal blood or treasure to risk.

Mr. Cheney's words then reinforce my belief now that both he and Mr. Bush should be impeached. This is not to say they should be prosecuted for their duplicity, hubris and reckless endangerment our nation. These two men and the sycophants around them have destabilized the balance of power in the United States Government. In the eyes of some, they have come as close to engineering an imperial presidency as we may (hopefully) ever see. It is certainly more so this case and done with less cause than the Lincoln administration, which had cause aplenty.

Again, it is not for ridding us of these two men that we should impeach, however appealing that may be. It is for what they have done to the executive branch. This is a reason that many conservatives can and should support impeachment. Here's why: What Bush and Cheney have done is to forge an entire new set of powers for the executive branch that, if not prosecuted before the end of their term will, in effect, stand as a consent by the Congress and legal precedent as a tool set for the next executive to inherit the office. So, all you so called conservatives out there and your like, if things continue to go the way they are in the '08 Presidential race, a Democrat will be able to do all the things Bush and Cheney have done and little to nothing can be done to stop them. Once precedent is established, it is extremely difficult to overturn. And you won't have the lack of intestinal fortitude and general flaccidity of your party to blame when you cry foul.

Power is the reason for everything in this argument for impeaching Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. For or against, power and the ability to wield it or keep it in check as the framers of the Constitution wished it is what is at stake. Some days ago, Mr. Edwards was answering questions from the public and impeachment came up. He stated he was against it because of what it did to the national government overall during the Clinton administration. Basically he said it rendered our government ineffective by grinding it to a halt as it concentrated on the proceeding. That is a perfectly good and strong argument when one is arguing against impeaching the chief executive over concealing a marital infidelity that had little to no bearing on the nation aside from tabloid titillation and shallow moral pandering for political gain.

The stakes are higher now. The principles and precedents on which our nation has been built have been trampled upon and that needs to be addressed and remedied. You have to be naive or willfully blind to think that any candidate for president isn't mindful of how the office has changed over the last six years and the powers they could potentially inherit. It is sheer folly to think that any politician would volunteer to give up such power despite how virtuous they might profess to be.

So conservatives, ask yourself if you want a Democrat to be able to do all the things Mr. Bush and his cabal have done. Progressives should be asking if they truly want to right the wrongs of the last two terms. Also, if you were for impeaching Mr. Clinton over wrongly concealing a private sexual transgression, you should be equally, if not more so in favor of impeaching Mr. Bush for putting our country in such peril, on so many levels, in such a deliberate and calculated fashion. If you disagree with the latter, you are, in this blogger's opinion, in the avant-garde in leading the charge that is the United States' hastening decline as a world power and a great, "moral" nation.