She Really Said It: 'If someone had a crime that the President had committed, that would be a different story'...
By Brad Friedman on 7/31/2008, 1:21pm PT  

A Bush-appointed federal judge has found that White House aides, such as Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers (and even Karl Rove, though he wasn't a part of this court case, and so not named) must show up when called by Congress to testify:

“The executive’s current claim of absolute immunity from compelled Congressional process for senior presidential aides is without any support in the case law,” Judge John D. Bates ruled in United States District Court.
...
Judge Bates, who was appointed to the bench by President Bush in 2001, said Ms. Miers cannot simply ignore a subpoena to appear but must state her refusal in person. Moreover, he ruled, both she and Mr. Bolten must provide all non-privileged documents related to the dismissals.

The NYTimes report goes on to note that "The White House is almost certain to appeal the ruling."

Of course they are. Tick, tick, tick...


In related news...Nancy Pelosi, said --- incredibly --- when asked about why she won't Impeach on ABC's The View this week: "I thought that Impeachment would be divisive...If someone had a crime that the President had committed, that would be a different story."

Huh? Did she seriously say that? Yes, she did. See the remarkable video at right for proof, along with Kucinich's response to her breath-taking comments.

Impeachment shouldn't be done, she continued, with two feet firmly planted in her Bizarro World, "unless you have the goods that this President committed a crime."

(Pardon us while we pick up our head from the floor...)

Pelosi may not have heard, but Kucinich recently filed some 35 Articles of Impeachment, exhaustively detailing many of the crimes that Bush has committed. We realize she may have been busy that night, but there was also a remarkable, six-hour hearing on these crimes held last Friday in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee when, if only for six hours, a sober reality seemed to have returned to Capitol Hill for the first time in some eight years.

Pelosi, and her counterpart Harry Reid, have clearly decided to avoid anything even resembling reality. They both ought to be replaced immediately.

Kucinich is turning in an online petition to Pelosi today, asking her to move forward with her Constitutional-duty of bringing accountability to the outlaws currently occupying the Executive Branch.

At those "not"-Impeachment hearings last Friday, Bruce Fein, a former Reagan Administration official noted that in the Bush Administration's intentional withholding of intellegence from Congress which countered the assertions of Iraq having WMD, that alone, as one of the founders, James Iredell, noted way back when, is, in itself an Impeachable offense of the highest order:

BRUCE FEIN: I'd just like to make one observation about the idea of misleading Congress as an impeachable offense. This is a quotation from James Iredell. Now, he was appointed by George Washington to be on the first Supreme Court of the United States. He was there, if you will, 'at the creation' --- to borrow from Dean Atchison. He was speaking to the North Carolina ratification convention.

And this is what he said:

"'The President must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate. He is to regulate all intercourse with foreign powers, and it is his duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligence he receives --- whether he believes it or not. If it should appear that he has not given them full information but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country in which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them --- in this case, yes, isn't that clearly an impeachable offense?"

So, the founding fathers understood exactly the situation that has been alleged in this case --- not necessarily that President Bush lied, it's clear that he didn't give the full slate of information to the Congress that was available regarding weapons of mass destruction, collusion between Saddam and Al-Quada, or otherwise. And this is, as the Supreme Court has said, a virtual definitive interpretation of an impeachable offense, because it was made by someone who was there at the time, participated in the convention and ratification. It's not something that's concocted after the fact.

Here's the video of Fein's describing the above at the heaings, along with another look at Pelosi's extraordinary comments on The View...


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Article Categories: Impeachment, Accountability, Democrats, Nancy Pelosi