[Peace-discuss] From the middle American press

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Can you imagine an editorial comment like this in our local daily? --CGE]

	Doak: Restore Constitution as
	law of the land - Impeach Cheney
	By RICHARD DOAK, Des Moines Register

Simply waiting for President Bush to be replaced in 2009 won't undo the 
damage done to the Constitution these last six years.

The absolute executive power asserted by Bush must be disavowed while he 
is still in office, lest it become precedent for all future presidents.

That's why Vice President Cheney should be impeached.

His conviction and removal from office would be the most powerful way to 
send the message that unchecked executive power is not the American way.

Why impeach Cheney and not Bush himself? Because an impeachment of the 
president would be an all-consuming drama that would keep the nation 
from other important business.

A vice president could be impeached without seriously disrupting the 
nation's business. There was no big upheaval when Vice President Spiro 
Agnew resigned under a criminal cloud.

Besides, Cheney has been deeply involved in, if not the architect of, 
most of the possibly impeachable activities of the administration, and 
he is the chief advocate of the theory of the "unitary executive" that 
purports to justify unlimited presidential power. An impeachment of 
Cheney would, in effect, be a repudiation of Bush's overreaching power 
claims.

Cheney's centrality to the administration was meticulously reported last 
week in a series of articles in the Washington Post. The articles show 
the most influential vice president in history as a master manipulator, 
pulling the levers of power, sometimes going behind the president's 
back, operating in almost total secrecy and with contempt for the notion 
of accountability to the public.

After all that's happened, it is still possible to view Bush as a leader 
with a basically good heart who makes the mistake of accepting guidance 
from a Machiavellian vice president.

Cheney's contempt for the law and the public was illustrated again last 
week in the uproar over his refusal to make certain records available to 
the national archives.

Excessive government secrecy will become one of Bush-Cheney's legacies. 
Consider what else will become precedent if Cheney's version of the 
unitary executive is allowed to stand unchallenged. In the future:

- Any American citizen could be taken into custody, jailed for life with 
no trial and without ever knowing the charges, just on the president's 
say-so.

- Wiretapping, Internet snooping and surreptitious searches of 
Americans' homes without a warrant could be reinstituted at any time. 
Although the administration supposedly has stopped warrantless searches, 
the authority to do so has not been definitively renounced.

- Torture, under the euphemism of enhanced interrogation, will be 
standard practice, contrary to international law and, worse, everything 
that America once stood for.

- Any president will be able to pick and choose which laws to obey and 
which to ignore.

Under the Constitution, the president has a duty to "take care that the 
laws be faithfully executed," but Bush routinely declares in signing 
statements that he will carry out only those laws that he happens to like.

The Cheney-Bush belief that the president is above the law is a clear 
and present danger to the Constitution.

Impeachment is allowed under the Constitution for "high crimes and 
misdemeanors." High crimes, by definition, are crimes against the state. 
Outside of treason, in America there can be no higher crime than 
flouting the Constitution.

That's why Cheney warrants impeachment. Not to mention he was the 
administration's most blatant liar about nonexistent weapons and 
al-Qaida connections in pre-invasion Iraq.

One more thing: His fellow Republicans should take the lead in 
impeaching Cheney. It would be a way to redeem themselves.

It is to the everlasting shame of the Republican Party that its members 
in Congress became the president's and vice president's enablers. They 
looked the other way at possible violations of law and the Constitution. 
They meekly surrendered legislative prerogatives and blocked 
investigations. They tried to legalize illegal acts ex post facto and 
immunize executive-branch officers from any liability for wrongdoing.

They put party loyalty above their oaths to defend and protect the 
Constitution.

The great irony is that the aggrandizement of executive power was 
enabled by the party whose core values include strict adherence to the 
Constitution and tight limits on government power.

In renouncing the unitary executive theory of Dick Cheney, the 
Republicans could help restore the Constitution to its proper balance 
and reclaim their own party's soul.

RICHARD DOAK is a retired Register columnist,

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