"Need a response to a President who engages in...misconduct. Otherwise, the record can be rewritten"

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Wed Dec-13-06 09:02 PM
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"Need a response to a President who engages in...misconduct. Otherwise, the record can be rewritten"

�Yes, impeachment is necessary, because, with President Nixon, his resignation in the face of certain impeachment meant that you couldn�t rewrite that history. You couldn�t come back and say he really was a great president. No, he wasn�t a great president. And here you had the verdict -- a fair, responsible, bi-partisan verdict of the House Judiciary Committee. You need to have a response to a President who engages in this kind of grave misconduct. Otherwise, the record can be rewritten. The history can be changed. You cannot change a vote. You cannot change the facts that are behind that vote. And that�s the reason President Nixon has been disgraced to this very day. And it�s not just his acts. The impeachment put those acts in a legal context, and put a ribbon around that package and said to history, to future presidents, to the American people, to the world -- we�re not going to stand for a President who abuses his power. So now what�s the message? We�ll let someone else take that responsibility? You can�t hand off that responsibility to somebody else. It�s our responsibility of our times, of our generation. And what kind of Constitution are we going to hand down to our children and grandchildren?� --Elizabeth Holtzman

Elizabeth Holtzman has been a US Congresswoman, the District Attorney of Brooklyn, and was Member of House panel that impeached Richard Nixon. Dec. 12, on AM KCTC 1320, Ms. Holtzman said,

�If you�d asked me in December of 1972, after he�d just been re-elected in a landslide, whether to impeach Nixon, I would have said, "For what?"

The Watergate hearings began in mid-1973 and the rest is history.

Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman sat on the House Judiciary Committee during 1974 to draft articles of impeachment against President Nixon, a sobering decision that she says gave her a sinking feeling in her stomach, knowing that Nixon had systematically abused the powers of the presidency. Faced with certain removal from office, Nixon resigned.

Now thirty years later, with the experience of Watergate behind her, Holtzman has written a clear, balanced, and thoughtful book:

The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens. We spoke to Elizabeth Holtzman about why impeachment is necessary to cement Bush�s high crimes in American history; why the mainstream media and political pundits have written impeachment off; and what Americans can do to hold George W. Bush accountable.

http://www.impeachbushbook.com/
By Elizabeth Holtzman with Cynthia L. Cooper

************************************

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/interviews/045

Elizabeth Holtzman Calls for Americans to Put Impeachment Where It Belongs -- Back On the Table

BuzzFlash: Why do you think President Bush should be impeached?

Elizabeth Holtzman: President Bush should be impeached because he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, as set forth in our Constitution, and because his abuses of power are so serious, and so subvert our democracy and so threaten it, that action has to be taken to preserve our democracy and hand it down to future generations intact.

BuzzFlash: No one is better placed or qualified to call for the impeachment of George W. Bush than you. You were a former congresswoman. You were a former Brooklyn district attorney. Most importantly, you were a member of the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings of Richard Nixon.

You lay out the following reasons for impeachment:

1) the offense of wiretapping surveillance in defiance of the law;

2) the offence of lying to induce America to support a war;

3) the offense of reckless indifference to the lives and welfare of American troops;

4) the offense of torture in violation of U.S. and international laws and treaties;

and 5) covering up the war deceptions with the leak of misleading classified information.

Is the most egregious offense to warrant impeachment Bush�s illegal wire-tapping, breaking the law repeatedly, not just once?. It�s perhaps the most clear cut argument for impeachment.

Elizabeth Holtzman: No, I think what you have is a President who has repeatedly and in various ways put himself above the rule of law. And then secondly, as with the handling of the war in Iraq, he failed to take care that the laws were faithfully executed. In other words, he�s turned away from carrying out his basic responsibilities as President. So in some cases, he puts himself above the law, and in some cases, he runs away from the law.

<snip>

BuzzFlash: A lot of political analysts, and even incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, have said that impeachment is not where the Democrats are going to put their energy or make their priority. Although legally there is a case to impeach the President, a lot of political observers don�t think it�s the right thing to do -- and I�m emphasizing this word -- politically. Where is your opinion in terms of the legal argument for impeachment versus the political strategy to do so?

Elizabeth Holtzman: We can�t start and end the conversation with what political pundits have to say. First of all, our generation -- the American people living right now -- have a responsibility for preserving and maintaining our Constitution. Are we going to allow it to be shredded by a president? Then, if this president can get away with starting a war based on lies, with breaking the law willfully, what�s the next president going to do? What�s the precedent that�s started here?

Secondly, it really doesn�t matter what the pundits say, and it doesn�t really matter what members of Congress have to say about impeachment. If the American people want impeachment, it�s going to happen. The real problem is that the mainstream media won�t take the issue seriously. They don�t want to spend the time to understand it. And they�ve decided it�s not going to happen, so they�re not going to write about it. The consequence is that many Americans don�t understand that the framers of this Constitution 200 years ago understood that there would be a Richard Nixon, and they understood that there would be a George Bush. And they said: American people, you have a remedy. We�re giving you a remedy. It�s 200 years old. It�s called impeachment. That�s designed to remove a President who threatens our Constitution and subverts our democracy.

Watergate didn�t start because the Congress wanted impeachment. Left to its own devices, Congress never would have done anything on impeachment. Left to its own devices, the press never would have investigated, except for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The rest of the press was completely unconcerned on the subject. They didn�t care. They weren�t aggressive. But the American people understand that this is their Constitution, this is their democracy, this is their country, and they have the power to do something about it.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/
http://www.impeachpac.org/
http://www.democrats.com/
http://www.rense.com/general73/constt.htm