Thursday, May 3, 2007

Impeachable

The writing in the New York Times today, Frank Bowman has an op-ed piece making the point I made a few weeks ago.

If Alberto Gonzales will not resign, Congress should impeach him. Article II of the Constitution grants Congress the power to impeach “the president, the vice president and all civil officers of the United States.” The phrase “civil officers” includes the members of the cabinet (one of whom, Secretary of War William Belknap, was impeached in 1876).

He further points out that impeachment does not require actual laws to have been violated, but is reserved for offenses so egregious and political that no one ever thought to specifically make those offenses illegal. And finally, for those who say "US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president,"
That the president has the constitutional power to [hire and fire appointees at will] does not mean he has the right to do them without explanation. Congress has the right to demand explanations for the president’s managerial choices, both to exercise its own oversight function and to inform the voters its members represent. The right of Congress to demand explanations imposes on the president, and on inferior executive officers who speak for him, the obligation to be truthful... he has no right to lie, either by affirmatively misrepresenting facts or by falsely claiming not to remember events. [My italics].

So let's hope Congress takes it's oversight role seriously, and sends the message to the DOJ that the time for playing games is over. Prevarication might be fine in politic, but when it comes to one's duties as a law officer for the US, there are serious consequences.

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