Bracing

This is the most bracing discussion clip I've seen on television since I can't tell you when, a discussion from Friday's Bill Moyers PBS show episode all about impeaching Bush/Cheney, a show that has now, in effect, put impeachment squarely on the table. Via Crooks & Liars (of course):

In this clip PBS’ Bill Moyers sits down with The Nation’s John Nichols and conservative constitutional attorney Bruce Fein from the American Freedom Agenda to discuss the crimes and abuse of power by George Bush and Dick Cheney and the need to impeach them both. While Nichols and Fein come from different ends of the political spectrum, they are in total agreement on this issue. Congress must put impeachment on the table because if they do nothing to stop Bush and Cheney now, we will see future presidents follow in their footsteps which would be a disaster for our country.

To hear Nichols, author of The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism, impeaching these Constitutional law-breakers, even if on the last day of their office, is far from a disruptive measure. It is, in fact, restoring order to our nation.

Fein, who worked in the Justice Department for President Ronald Reagan, and just wrote compellingly in Slate advocating entering into impeachment proceedings immediately against Shadow President Cheney, concurs that this is about when the Roman Empire fell -- when the populace gave up on being citizens and allowed themselves to become subjects.

Bush and Cheney and their operation have been running our government by executive fiat and they are running America into the ground. Bush is obviously completely walled-off, completely insane, i.e. sociopathological in, as Wes Clark identifies, how his entire governing style has boiled down to "a President who is fighting for his personal survival."

This means impeachment isn't a dream, at this moment it is starting to feel like an inevitability.

In willfully walling himself off from reality, criticism, self-criticism, some might cut Bush slack for psychological excusey reasons. The fact is that he's an adult who has chosen his isolation, and the real story is, of course, that he's been so willing to do it because he is at the center of a criminal operation, and thus needs maximum protection from evident culpability.

But as Booman23 on Kos points out, "The Showdown is Here":

I never thought that Bush and Cheney could be removed for their past crimes, but only for refusing to cooperate with subpoenas that would expose those past crimes. And, for that strategy to be effective, the Dems had to plausibly 'take impeachment off the table' and take the abuse of the angry left.

Well...they've done it. We have reached the breaking point. The administration won't turn over documents related to Pat Tillman, they won't turn over RNC emails, they won't let Harriet Miers testify before the House Judiciary Committee, they won't let Karl Rove testify, and they severely limited what Sara Taylor was able to say in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. All of this is based on dubious assertions of Executive Privilege which must not be acceded to.

Booman goes on to lay out how there's still a few more steps to impeachment, starting with Congress charging Harriet Miers with "Inherent Contempt" for not appearing as subpoenaed (under "orders" from the President -- even though she doesn't work for him anymore!). The goal is to get all the information the Presidents and Mr. Rove are desperate to hide or destroy.

The impeachable offenses.