[Sosfbay-discuss] Betraying Thomas Jefferson: Abetting Crimes Against the Constitution

[JamBoi]

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff04192007.html

April 19, 2007
Abetting Crimes Against the Constitution
Betraying Thomas Jefferson

By DAVE LINDORFF

The enemies of the Constitution are growing in number and are to be
found now, not just in the White House and the Congress, but also in
state capitals, from Washington to Vermont.

Not only do we have a president and vice president who are almost daily
undermining and rending at the fabric of the Constitution. Not only do
we have Democratic Party leaders actively barring the party's elected
representatives from standing up to the president by submitting bills
of impeachment, as called for in the Constitution.

We now have Democratic Party leaders in state legislatures betraying
Founder Thomas Jefferson, by sabotaging grassroots efforts to get joint
legislative resolutions passed demanding the start of impeachment
proceedings in the House.

Thomas Jefferson, a complex and personally deeply conflicted human
being was, as a philosopher of government, incredibly prescient. Not
only did he foresee the critical need for a section laying out the
inalienable rights of man in the nation's founding document. He also
understood the concept of a "beltway bubble" long before there were
even paved roads, much less interstate highway beltways.

Jefferson understood that a monomaniacal and unprincipled president,
particularly in time of war or national crisis, could intimidate
members of Congress-particularly a weak Congress riven by political
rivalries-and prevent that body from going forward with impeachment. He
understood that members of Congress themselves, remote geographically
and politically from their constituents, could eventually become so
isolated they would fail to act in accordance with the wishes of the
voters who sent them to Washington. That's why Jefferson came up with
an alternative way of initiating impeachment proceedings, in addition
to the standard Constitutionally-prescribed method of having a House
member submit an impeachment bill. His solution, laid out in his Manual
of the Rules of the House, was to allow a joint resolution by any
state's legislature calling for impeachment to also require the House
to initiate impeachment.

Over the past year, there have been grassroots campaigns underway in at
least 10 states to get such resolutions passed.

Unfortunately, the Democratic leaders of a number of state
legislatures, working in collusion with, or at the direction of even
more craven Democratic Party leaders in Washington, are undermining
Jefferson, and are sabotaging his carefully crafted mechanism for
defending and protecting the Constitution and ensuring the survival of
democratic freedoms.

In New Mexico, Democratic leaders in the state senate, after earlier
voting in favor of an impeachment resolution, suddenly turned around
and defeated a procedural effort to bring an impeachment resolution to
the floor for a vote, effectively killing the measure. A similar effort
was made by party leaders in the Washington State Senate, though a
second effort to get that bill, Senate 8016, to a floor vote will be
made tomorrow (Friday).

In Vermont, where 38 town meetings in March all voted out impeachment
resolutions, and called on the state's legislature to pass an
impeachment resolution, the Democratic leaders of the state House and
Senate are apparently blocking attempts to move a resolution to a floor
vote (where it would likely pass).

In each case, there is evidence that Congressional leaders in
Washington, often with the assistance of members of each state's own
Congressional delegation, have been leaning on Democratic legislative
leaders in the statehouses, to pressure them to kill the impeachment
resolutions.

This tactic represents a grotesque betrayal of Thomas Jefferson, who
expressly saw the state legislative resolution route to impeachment as
a way of letting the public, at the state level, send a message to
Congress, not the other way around. By squelching such efforts from
Washington, the Democratic Party is using top-down power to undermine
the popular will.

Polls have repeatedly shown that a majority of Americans, and an
overwhelming majority of Democrats, want to see the president impeached
and brought up on charges for lying to put the country into an illegal
war, for illegally ordering the National Security Agency to spy on
Americans without a warrant, for abusing power by invalidating acts of
Congress, for ordering torture, for covering up the outing of a CIA
undercover agent, and for myriad other crimes. Yet the Democratic Party
leadership has decided that it is in the Democratic Party's short-term
interest to ignore these dangerous assaults on the Republic and the
Constitution. The thinking among party leaders is that by laying low
and doing little, Democrats can reap gains in the 2008 national
election.

Maybe they're right about that. Maybe they're not. But impeachment in
any case is not about partisan gain. It is a process mandated by the
Constitution when freedom is under threat. Every member of Congress
took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution from attack by
enemies foreign and domestic.

We all know that the Bush administration is wrecking the Constitution,
and that it is trying to turn the presidency into an all-powerful
dictatorship.

In the face of that assault, the national Democratic Party, far from
standing up for the Constitution and for democracy, is proving to be an
abettor in the crime.

Now state party leaders are showing themselves to be just as craven and
cowardly.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the
Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His n book of CounterPunch columns
titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press.
Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment",
co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.

He can be reached at: dlindorff at yahoo.com

___________________

JamBoi: Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer
The Green Parties' #1 Blogger
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com

"To the brave belong all things"
Reply from Celts invading the Italian penninsula's when nervous Romans asked. 
approx 400BC

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)

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