Tom DeLay Wants To Impeach Obama Over Gun Regs. Tom DeLay, F'Chrissake...

Tom DeLay,
not that many years ago

Here's the story; Tom the Crook doesn't like enhanced background checks (which even a lot of conservative gun owners are inclined to accept), and wants to impeach the prez for moving to implement them. And here's part of the wiki on DeLay, as context for any support you may be inclined to give him on any issue.

Some muthafuckas don't deserve your support, ever...

Censure Of The President, And An Even More Unusual Punishment

Reps. Steve King (R-Nutjob) and Raul Labrador (R-Who?) want Congress to issue a formal censure of President Obama for his executive-order immigration reforms, as a way around impeaching him:

"I think we should censure the president of the United States," Labrador said on CBS, days after Obama announced his actions. "I think it’s unfortunate that he did this, I think we need to lay out clearly why this is unlawful."

But there's a problem. An impeachment is a criminal indictment by the House of Representatives, subject to conviction or acquittal by the Senate. Thus sayeth the Constitution (Article II, Section 4). By contrast, a censure of the president would be in every meaningful way a "bill of attainder," i.e., an act of Congress declaring someone guilty of a crime, without any sort of trial. The Constitution explicitly prohibits bills of attainder (Article I, Section 9). Impeachment and removal from office are effectively the only way to punish a bad president, and the Constitution lays out the details of how it is to be done. Without this restriction, no president would have time for anything except defending herself/himself against a rampaging opposition party's bills of attainder.

So Reps. King and Labrador are proposing a bill of attainder inflicting unspecified punishments on a duly elected President. "I think it’s unfortunate that [they] did this."

And as for me, I think a toilet plunger should be shoved into the pie‑hole of each of these representatives, to protect the nation from the crap spewing forth therefrom... but the Constitution makes no mention of, indeed never even implies, a citizen's right to plug the mouths of spewing legislators, however urgent the need. I guess we'll have to tolerate the spewing.

Lordy, those wingnuts surely know their Constitution, don't they? [/sarcasm]

GOPers Threaten Obama's Impeachment... In Response, I Have A Threat For Them

Jonathan Capehart, member of the WaPoo's editorial board, discusses... OK, let's be honest, threatens... impeachment of President Obama. This he does under a banner titled "PostPartisan." Heh. What a card!

Sarah Palin, pea-brained, more immature even than the usual Republican, rejected soundly by Americans as Vice President, advocates impeachment of a president elected not once but twice by the American people.

Obama, pensive

I do not like President Obama. He has many shortcomings, some in the specific areas of American governance... civil liberties, privacy, compliance with the Bill of Rights including due process rights... that mean a great deal to me. But on the rare occasions that I wish him gone, I can't get past one simple fact:

The American people elected Obama their President, not once but twice. Just like George Dubya Bush.* Just like Bill Clinton. Obama was solidly elected by a substantial majority, twice; neither election was a squeaker. My feelings about him aside, he was (and if polls are to believed, still is) the duly elected choice of the American people.

Dog knows America has suffered under two-term Republican presidents... Ronald Reagan, for example... and no one seriously sought to throw them out of office before their terms expired. Like him or not, Ronald Reagan was my President. Like him or not, Poppy Bush was my President. Like him or laugh at him, Junior Bush was my President (however dubious the process by which he took office). As a committed American, I accepted the choices of the American people, foolish as I thought those choices were, and got on with business.

Today's Republican Party has another way of doing things. To them, no Democrat, no matter how large a majority s/he receives in a presidential election, can remain President for as long as a term, let alone two terms. When Mitch McConnell said back in 2008 (?) that his most important task was to see to it that Obama did not win a second term, that's exactly what he meant, and I have no doubt he began planning Obama's impeachment that very day.

Impeachment is a safety valve, a last-ditch method for dealing with a President who has gone crazy... and criminal. The main problem with impeachment is that it is undemocratic (with a small 'd') and indeed subverts the democratic process by which at least in theory we choose our nation's leaders. Impeachment is a political process... that's how everything is accomplished in a representative democracy... but it should not be thought of first and foremost as a political option, just another means of getting what one party wants. Impeachment ignores and overthrows the voice of the American people. It's like a fire extinguisher behind glass: you don't break the glass unless there's a genuine fire.

Yet if Obama is impeached, Republicans will have availed themselves of that emergency process twice in my adult lifetime. Maybe, after elections, they will have the Senate votes to convict Obama and remove him from office. But they certainly have no right to do so, not if they continue talking, as Dubya did repeatedly, about "freedom 'n' democracy" as if it were our form of government. Such talk comes from a party that sees its own reign, at all times, as trumping both freedom and democracy.

I have no great love for Obama, as regular readers know. And I have no stomach for rebellion, let alone outright revolution. But if the GOP wants to strengthen my stomach, all they need to do is impeach and remove Obama. In that case... "Go ahead... Make. My. Day!"

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*Obligatory asterisk. As in, "vote carefully; you have only one asterisk..."

Tea Party GOPer Starts Talk About The I-Word

That's right. Impeachment. Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) says the House Tea Party has the votes to do it, but admits that the results would be bad for America. I didn't catch any mention on his part that it would also be damaging to the GOP, but face it... we've seen this movie before; we know how it ends.

Regular readers (all both of you) know I have no great love for Obama. Readers who have been with me a bit longer know I actually supported Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the 2008 primary, much good it did me. And there are probably a couple of things Obama has done for which he is legitimately impeachable, not that there's much evidence available to those who might pursue the charge.

But if a bunch of goddamned Birthers in the House mount an impeachment effort, knowing what the Senate will do even if the House brings a charge, and the rest of the GOP doesn't put a stop to it from the get-go... then the GOP deserves every damned thing that happens to it as a result. To hell with them.