Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says that impeachment is not off the table. That's a nice sound-bite, Congressman, almost as nice as Sen. Larry Craig's insistence that he has never had sex with a man. We all know it's a crock, and Conyers and Craig both know it when they say it, but it sounds good.
Impeachment is so far off the table it may as well be at another restaurant. As a tool for the removal of the cancer on the executive branch, impeachment is no longer operational, as they say. We've simply run out of time, because people like Conyers, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been too scared to use their Constitutional powers for the good of the nation. They prefer to sound as if they're serious about it, as per Conyers' insistence at a town hall meeting in Michigan this week. They have no intention of actually walking the walk, but they need to keep talking the talk, even as they continue to fund Bush's illegal war.
Even if the will to impeach were there, it would still take Congress a year to clear its collective throat and parade all 535 of its bullshit artists in front of town halls and Sunday morning blowhard shows, so that they can be seen looking suitably serious. And who could bear that parade of pomposity? Certainly not the people. So it's best to keep talking the talk and hope they don't rise up and storm the Winter Palace.
To use a basketball metaphor, Conyers, Pelosi and Reid have decided to just ride out the clock on Bush and Cheney, to sit on their lead. But, as Al McGuire used to say, "Two minutes is an eternity in basketball." Likewise, 15 more months of Bush and Cheney is an eternity for the country and the planet.
But Congress prefers to do nothing but talk. Talk is cheap, and talk in D.C. is cheaper than the perfume in Sen. David Vitter's favorite Washington cat house or the urine-speckled toilet paper on the floor of Sen. Craig's favorite sex stall.
The bottom line: If impeachment is not used now, for this administration, then it should never be used again. Ever. It should simply be deleted from the Constitution, or placed inside a glass exhibit case at the National Archives for the tourists, maybe next to the photograph of Dick Nixon shaking hands with a drug-addled Elvis Presley. No president and vice president have committed more and worse high crimes and misdemeanors than George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. And yet no president or vice president have faced less accountability.
Slowly, the accomplices in crime—Rumsfeld, Miers, Rove, Gonzalez—scuttle off to cushy private sector posts. But the crimes remain unpunished and witnesses' memories are getting hazier by the day. You can also bet the mortgage that behind doors all over Washington, interns and party hacks are shredding documents, destroying evidence and paying hush money to the little scummy minions who propped up this charade.
Reid, Pelosi, Conyers, et al. made nice-sounding statements after Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez departed—"the investigations will continue"—but it's all for show. They have no intention of holding Bush or Cheney accountable. Cheney will die of old age before a single subpoena is issued and Bush will be safely ensconced on some Paraguayan ranch by the time they get around to issuing polite pleas for his extradition.
History will judge this Congress, and the previous two Congresses, harshly for their spinelessness and inaction.
Even if it goes "overtime" and runs into the next terms of office, impeachment must happen as an act of national reconciliation. Quit talking and start walking.
