Garling Gauge

Conservatives For Impeachment

“The Vice President has run utterly amok and must be stopped.”

Posted June 27, 2007 on Slate, conservative Bruce Fein lays out a compelling case to impeach vice president Dick Cheney:

“As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney’s multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify.”

When the topic of impeachment comes up, conservatives and Republicans decry the notion, offering up the question, “But what crimes has he committed?”

In summary, Fein recounts the following reasons for impeachment. See the article for details:

Cheney’s claim that the office of the vice president is above the Constitution because it serves executive and legislative functions, not required to follow the Senate or Executive rules. President Bush also performs legislative functions, does that exempt him from the Executive Branch?

Cheney “has proclaimed that all checks and balances and individual liberties are subservient to the president’s commander in chief powers in confronting international terrorism.”

“The vice president asserted presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes.” (rebuked by the Supreme Court)

“Mr. Cheney claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the president’s say-so alone” (rebuked by the Supreme Court)

“The vice president initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists.” (Germany and Italy have charged the CIA with crimes because of it). “The legal precedent set by Cheney would justify a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kidnap American tourists in Paris and to dispatch them to dungeons in Belarus if they were suspected of Chechen sympathies.”

“he contends that military power may be unleashed to kill or capture any American citizen on American soil if suspected of association or affiliation with al-Qaida.”

“Mr. Cheney has championed a presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.”

“He has advocated and authored signing statements that declare the president’s intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law that he proclaims are unconstitutional”… “tantamount to absolute line-item vetoes that the Supreme Court invalidated in the 1998″

“The vice president engineered the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.”

“He concocted the alarming theory that the president may flout any law that inhibits the collection of foreign intelligence, including prohibitions on breaking and entering homes, torture, or assassinations.”

“The vice president has orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications.”

“He has summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force, and to frustrate the testimonies of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys.”

“Cheney scorns freedom of speech and of the press. He urges application of the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists who expose national security abuses”

“He retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, through Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration’s evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq.”

“Mr. Cheney is defending himself from a pending suit brought by Wilson and Plame on the grounds that he is entitled to the absolute immunity of the president established in 1982 by Nixon v. Fitzgerald. (Although this defense contradicts Cheney’s claim that he is not part of the executive branch.)”

“President Bush’s tacit delegation to Cheney and Cheney’s eager acceptance tortures the Constitution’s provision for an acting president. The presidency and vice presidency are discrete constitutional offices”…which “circumvents the 25^th Amendment.”

“Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Bruce Fein is a constitutional and international lawyer with Bruce Fein & Associates and The Lichfield group, having served as associate attorney general under President Reagon. He was also part of the ABA Task Force on presidential signing statements.

Still not convinced? Read the Washington Post’s documentation of the vice president’s assertion of executive powers.

Interestingly, presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama has said he opposes impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

According to the CNN political ticker while speaking at a weekly constituent breakfast, “The Illinois Democrat said he would not back such a move although he has been distressed by the “loose ethical standards, the secrecy and incompetence” of a “variety of characters” in the administration.”

Obama believes in another course of action, “vote the bums out”…”That’s how our system is designed.”

Obama summarized his reasoning in the following way: “I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the president’s authority”

Therein lies the question, dear reader: Have Cheney’s constitutional breaches been grave?