Censure Would Be a Good Start

Congressman John Conyers, who would replace civil-liberties-hating Congressman James Sensenbrenner as Chair of the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats take back the House, has been earning his salary recently by investigating the Bush Administration.

Via Roll Call (subscription required):

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) has called on Congress to censure both President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Conyers, who called for the censures in two separate bills introduced during last weekend's session, is also seeking the creation of a select committee to report on whether the administration committed any impeachable offenses in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.

The Michigan lawmaker unveiled the bills in conjunction with the release of a report authored by the Judiciary Committee's Democratic staff, called "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retributions and Cover-ups in the Iraq War," that is intended to examine charges of misconduct in the Bush administration.

In addition to censure, the report includes a range of recommendations, from referring violations of federal criminal law to the Justice Department for Investigation to amending House rules to allow ranking members to schedule and
conduct committee hearings.

Earlier this year, Conyers conducted a hearing on the Downing Street Memo, the minutes of a high-level British government meeting to discuss pre-war intelligence that was leaked in May 2005 to The Sunday Times of London. Conyers' hearing, which was not allowed to be held in a committee room, was described by many as a mock-impeachment session.

Although Conyers said Tuesday that he would like to begin hearings on the legislation when Congress reconvenes next year, he said he has not spoken with House Judiciary Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) about the issue.

It's a shame though that Democrats continue to be obsessed with the lead-up to the war. Continuing to insinuate that Bush lied us into war may or may not be good politics, but it's certainly dishonest given the lack of proof that Bush lied (for the claim to be true, Bush would have had to have known that Hussein was not pursuing WMDs). Given that President Clinton and other Democrats looked at the same evidence and concluded that Hussein might be seeking WMDs, claims of "Bush Lied, People Died" are outrageous on their face. (This is not to say that Bush shouldn't be blamed for taking us into war based on inaccurate intelligence, mishandling the war and its aftermath, and staying there after our goal of getting Hussein was met. Nor is it to say that journalists and members of Congress should not look into whether or not Bush did in fact lie, by saying that Hussein was pursuing WMDS when he knew that he wasn't).

Instead of beating a dead horse, Democrats should focus on Bush's clear violation of federal wire tapping law and his Clinton-like finger-shaking to the American people that he wasn't spying on anyone without a court order. These are impeachable offenses and taking them on would put Republicans in a tough spot. It would be hypocritical for the Republican Congress to ignore Bush's flagrant violation of a federal law meant to protect the constitutional rights of the American people, after trying to impeach Clinton for relatively minor violations of federal law in a personal lawsuit.

With that said, the war could be incorporated into articles of impeachment which could include:

1) Violating federal wiretapping law and lying to Congress and the American people about such violations;
2) Violating federal and international laws against torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners and lying to Congress and the American people about such violations;
3) Abusing Presidential power by seeking to punish critics of the war and their families;
4) Launching a war based on inaccurate information, bungling it, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, and killing tens of thousands of people without even saying "my bad" (Is there a Latin term for this?); and
5) Seeking to consolidate absolute power in the executive branch, the worse crime a President can commit in a constitutional Republic.

These are offenses that are easy to investigate and easy to prove (or disprove). Given Bush's low approval ratings, Democrats have little to lose by making the 2006 election a referendum on Bush' impeachment.