JOHN NICHOLS: I think the members of our Congress have no understanding of the Constitution. And as a result, they-- don't understand their critical role in the governance of the country.
BRUCE FEIN: ... the vice-president is de facto president most of the time. And that's why most of people recognize that these decisions, especially when it comes to overreaching with executive power, are the product of Dick Cheney and his aide, David Addington, not George Bush and Alberto Gonzalez or Harriet Miers, who don't have the cerebral capacity to think of these devilish ideas.
JOHN NICHOLS: On January 20th, 2009, if George Bush and Dick Cheney are not appropriately held to account this administration will hand off a toolbox with more powers than any president has ever had, more powers than the founders could have imagined. And that box may be handed to Hillary Clinton or it may be handed to Mitt Romney or Barack Obama or someone else. But whoever gets it, one of the things we know about power is that people don't give away the tools. They don't give them up. The only way we take tools out of that box is if we sanction George Bush and Dick Cheney now and say the next president cannot govern as these men have.
BRUCE FEIN: They (Congress) do not have convictions about the importance of the Constitution. It's what in politics you would call the scientific method of discovering political truths and of preventing excesses because you require through the processes of review and vetting one individual's perception to be checked and-- counterbalanced by another's. And when you abandon that process, you abandon the ship of state basically and it's going to capsize.JOHN NICHOLS: the founders ... always assumed that the press would alert the people, that the press would tell the people. And the fact of the matter is I think that our media ... have done an absolutely miserable job of highlighting the constitutional issues that are in play. You know, you can't have torture and extraordinary rendition. You cannot have spying. You cannot have lying to Congress. You cannot have what happened to Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, you know?
BRUCE FEIN: Let me underscore one of the things that ... relates to one political official in the White House, Sara Taylor's testimony. And claiming that George Bush could tell her to be silent ... was like the military in Germany saying, "My oath is to the Fuhrer, not to the country." She took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. There's no oath that says, "I'm loyal to a president even if he defiles the Constitution."
BRUCE FEIN: I think the spark against the Libby commutation is ... the indication that Bush is totally heedless of any honor for law and accountability... "I am king. You play by other people's rules, but as long as I am in the White House, I get to play by my rules." That is something that offends everybody.JOHN NICHOLS: ...the founders who had recently fought a revolution against a king named George would tell you that monarchical behavior, the behavior of a king, acting like a king, is an impeachable offense. You need not look for specific laws or statutes. What you need to look for is a pattern of behavior that says that the presidency is superior not merely to Congress but to the laws of the land, to the rules of law. And that is why we ought to be discussing impeachment. Not because of George Bush and Dick Cheney but because we are establishing a presidency that does not respect the rule of law. And people, Americans, are rightly frightened by that.
There was more, much more. The full transcript or video is available at Bill Moyers Journal.
1 comment:
Thank you so much for linking the Moyers video! Now we can watch what we missed. If only the whole country was watching what they're missing (ie, whole chunks of the constitution) ... or are they ... how will we ever know without a true press? I keep thinking of all those little leaflets & pages the activists used to pin up on trees in the 1700's. Whole towns were hungry for info & the subject of sedition hung heavy in every public venue. All those people willing to fight & die, knowing they were setting up a country worth dying for. ~~ D.K.
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