Bush and Impeachment

I've been reading a lot about impeachment lately. There are a number of interesting books on the subject -- Charles Black Jr.'s Impeachment: A Handbook and Raoul Berger's Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems only the two most obvious -- and there are reasons today to think about what is usually considered an unthinkable subject.

Eleanor Clift in her Newsweek column mentions that Democrats on Capitol Hill are actually starting to grow a spine:

"Democrats feel emboldened, and they’re dropping the euphemisms. They’re saying straight out that the president and his administration lied and manufactured evidence to take the country to war. The logical extension of such an explosive charge would be impeachment, says Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, though Wittman doesn’t personally advocate this strategy. “It’s the highest crime and misdemeanor one can think of, the case that they maliciously did this, and it obliges Democrats [who backed the war] to say they cast the wrong vote.” Wittmann is sharply critical of the administration’s performance in Iraq, but he supported the invasion and thinks Democrats would be ill-advised to drag the country into impeachment proceedings."

Ill-advised? Offhand I can think of at least 2,000 reasons why impeaching this president would be, as Oliver North once said in a somewhat different context, a neat idea.

Clift continues:

"The more we learn about the secretive White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and the role of Vice President Dick Cheney in pressing his dark views on the country, the likelier it is that the administration will be found culpable for exaggerating the threat Saddam Hussein posed in its zeal to go to war. If the Democrats win back the House in the ’06 election, Michigan Democrat John Conyers will chair the House Judiciary committee. On the day the Scooter Libby indictments were handed down, Conyers invoked the language of Watergate: “What did the president and the vice president know, and when did they know it?” If the political tables turn, impeachment may not be so far-fetched after all."

Far-fetched? Not bloody likely, as my cousins across the pond would say.

Whether or not Bush is impeached depends almost entirely, as Clift says, on how the Democrats do in the midterm elections next year. If, as I fervently hope, the Democrats win back the House and Senate by convincing majorities, then I think impeachment is a virtual certainty. But whether Bush is removed from office, as he deserves to be, will depend on whether the Republican senators decide to back him up or cut him loose.

Democratic senators stood by President Clinton, so he survived impeachment. President Nixon was abandoned by Republican senators (Barry Goldwater told Nixon to his face that he couldn't count on more than a dozen votes to acquit in a Senate trial), so he was forced to resign rather than be removed from office.

Right now I think the odds are at least 50/50 that Bush will be impeached in the next two years. But impeachment is not enough for this president. He deserves to be the first president to be removed from office in disgrace for the crimes he has committed in office.

So read Black and Berger on the subject. Make sure you go to the polls in 2006.

And if your Senator is a Republican, make sure you get in touch with him or her via e-mail or snail-mail and let them know exactly what you think of this administration and the way they lied this country into war. And what you think they should do about it.

Tom Moran

O.J. on Robert Blake

The Associated Press recently printed an interview with acquitted murder defendant O.J. Simpson in which he commented on the fact that fellow thespian and acquitted murder defendant Robert Blake had been found liable in a civil trial for the murder of his wife.

"I still don't get how anyone can be found not guilty of a murder and then be found responsible for it in any way shape or form," Simpson was quoted as saying. "... If you're found not guilty, how can you be found responsible? I'd love to hear how that's not double jeopardy."

I hate to admit it, but so would I.

Tom Moran

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

The current issue of The Village Voice has a cover story by Rebecca Raber on the lack of discussion of abortion on television.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0546,raber,70023,6.html

It's an interesting piece, especially when you consider that it doesn't say anything that my blog item on the same subject didn't already say six months ago:

http://celticprogressive.blogspot.com/2005/05/trophy-wife-who-didnt-bark.html

Welcome to the party, Rebecca. Better late than never.

Tom Moran

Two Cheerleaders Walk Into a Bar...

Isn't there something inherently American about the story of the two Carolina Panther cheerleaders who were kicked off the squad after being arrested? Given that most professional athletes could probably rape a nine-year-old on videotape and get away with it if they were able to catch a football or dunk a basketball, why are these women being singled out?

But first, let's go over the facts, for those people who haven't yet heard the story.

Two women, both of them cheerleaders for the Carolina Panthers, were in Banana Joe's bar in Tampa. One of the women was (barely) underage and using an ID belonging to another cheerleader. Both of the women were, apparently, inebriated. They were in the women's bathroom when they allegedly began engaging in the sort of activity that made Janine Lindemulder a porn star. Other women, who wanted to use the bathroom for other, less salacious, activities, took umbrage at this. One of the cheerleaders responded by allegedly assaulting one of the complaining women. Both cheerleaders were arrested -- one was charged with battery, the other with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The Carolina Panthers responded by throwing both women off the cheerleading squad.

Now think. Why would these charges -- the kind of charges that pro athletes are charged with almost every day -- cause these women to lose their jobs? Think real hard.

Let me put it another way. If these women had been having sex in public with men, instead of each other, do they think they'd still have jobs today?

The fact is that professional sports in general is phobic about lesbians. They sort of resemble Queen Victoria, who wouldn't make lesbian sex illegal because she refused to admit that such activities could possibly happen. Nobody, for example, wants to admit that the WNBA is rife with lesbians, both on the court and in the stands. The people who run the sport prefer to pretend that all their players are straight as as arrow, so they can advertise the game as something that middle-class breeders can bring their little girls to without the risk of contagion from any nasty old dykes.

Basically, these women were fired, not because of what they're charged with, but because they had sex with each other. A simple bar fight might have gotten them suspended, but muff-diving loses them their jobs. What makes it even more ironic is that one of the women just released a statement through Tampa attorney Joe Episcopo, adamantly denying that any Sapphic activity took place. "She just wanted to make clear there was no sex,'' he said.

Could anything be more hypocritical -- or more American?

There just might be a happy ending to this story, however. The press is reporting that Penthouse wants these two women to pose nude for an upcoming issue of the magazine. If they asked me, I would tell them to turn down the offer, and head straight for the San Fernando Valley. After all, women as limber as these two are can always find work in the porn industry. And, when you think about it, why should they stand on the sidelines cheering for someone else -- when they can be the star of the show?

Tom Moran

Andy Rooney's Negro Problem

Andy Rooney's big mouth has gotten him in trouble again. The question is, does he deserve to be?

The Drudge Report posted an item about Rooney's recent appearance on Imus, on which he made some comments which have generated a lot of adverse reactions on the blogosphere.

Pat Cambell down in Florida asked, a tad rhetorically:

"What year is this clown living in? Will Rooney take heat for this? Will it be Andy "The Greek" Rooney treatment?"

(In other words, will Rooney be fired for his un-PC comments, if you don't remember what happened to Jimmy the Greek. He made what were alleged to be insensitive remarks and lost his job with CBS because of them.)

Robert George, on his "Ragged Thots" blog, also slammed Rooney on the basis of the Drudge quote:

"The phrase "senile-old-coot-whose-best-days-are-long-behind-him-and-besides-he-was-never-funny-to-begin-with is a perfectly good phrase. There is nothing wrong with that."

Now, I'm not all that crazy about Andy Rooney. Never have been. But does he really deserve all this opprobrium?

This, according to CBS, is what Rooney actually said:

Rooney: “I object every time I hear the words ‘African-American,’ you know? I don’t know why we have gotten caught with that.”

Imus: “Yeah, I don’t either.”

Rooney: “I mean, am I an ‘Irish-American?’”

Imus: “What should I say, just ‘black’ right?”

Rooney: “Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with ‘black.’ Growing up, it’s funny how words get to be opprobrious. The word ‘negro,’ perfectly good word. It’s a strong word and a good word. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Mostly it’s not necessary to identify anyone by skin color. But I don’t care for ‘African-American.’”

Imus: “I won’t use it anymore.”

Is that so horrible? Really? I mean, from the tone of some of the blogs you'd think he was saying something on the order of, "You know, ol' Adolf wasn't such a bad guy after all..."

Is to question the appropriateness of the expression "African-American" a priori proof of racism, as some bloggers would have us believe? Because I don't think Rooney's comments are anything to get worked up over. At a time when young black men (ooops, make that "African-American men") are calling themselves and each other the dreaded "N" word every two seconds, is it really so heinous to wonder why we are shackled with the cumbersome term "African-American"?

Now, people have a right to refer to themselves by any term they want. If I felt like calling myself a "Hibernian-American" I suppose I could -- if, as James Joyce's father once said in a somewhat different context, I wanted to make a bloody fool of myself. But I also think that we should not be stigmatized by questioning why we use certain terms to refer to certain people.

After all, Andy Rooney isn't the only person to advocate going back to the word "negro" -- if that's really what he was doing. Stanley Crouch (who is either black, a negro or African-American, depending on whom you ask) has made similar comments in terms far stronger:

"Being called something other than Negro will not better the state of the people who now walk around challenging others to call them African-Americans. They think that to be proud and effective, people with dark skins of a certain pedigree need to know they are connected to the grandeur of Africa, the fountain of civilization. Hogwash.

Clearly, knowing that they are Africans has done nothing special for Africans themselves, as we can see in the massacres in Rwanda during the 1990s, the many brutal African dictatorships and the abundance on the continent of backward ideas about women, slavery and a number of other things.

People can call themselves whatever they want. But the challenges facing this nation and its darker ethnic group will not be solved by anything other than deep thinking and hard work. Pride comes from accomplishment. Cosmetic nonsense will not get it."

It's a good thing Andy Rooney didn't say that. I shudder to think what might have happened to him if he had.

Tom Moran