Column: Impeach before Bush leaves office RAW STORY

Published: Tuesday November 25, 2008





Print This Email This A Detroit Free Press columnist argues that Congress shouldn't let President Bush's last two months in office go by without pressing for impeachment.



Rochelle Riley argues that immediate impeachment hearings would prevent Bush from issuing preemptive pardons for government officials accused of crimes and would prevent the president from further pursuing economy-wrecking deregulatory policies. If Congress moves quickly and forces the president to focus on impeachment, then he wont have so much time to push through last-minute regulatory changes that will continue to hurt our country and our ideals. He already has pushed deregulation that would allow employers to talk directly with employees doctors and allow power companies to build polluting facilities close to national parks.



Anyone worried that our congressional representatives cant tie their shoes and chew gum at the same time, or cannot focus on the economic crisis and impeachment hearings at the same time, will find that many answers to our economic and global defense problems will come from those hearings. It's unclear precisely how those two ideas can co-exist. Riley doesn't explain how impeachment will prevent Bush from enacting his bad economic policies, while simultaneously not distracting Congress from developing its own economic policies.



It almost certainly doesn't matter, though. Although Riley urges Congress to follow through with impeachment articles introduced earlier this year by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has maintained a strict opposition to beginning impeachment hearings.



So Bush can rest assured. In January, he will leave office, as scheduled, with simply the disapproval of more than two-thirds of the country, not the formal condemnation an impeachment trial would bring.



