All the President's Thugs

It reads like a plot from the Sopranos, the "Wednesday Night Ambush" in which the current resident of the White House sent his soldiers to the ailing Attorney General's hospital bed to twist his arm into signing off on a program that he had already clearly concluded was illegal.

The fact that the mainstream media, which will milk any white damsel in distress story for every ounce of drama they can squeeze from it, has yet to exploit the action thriller quality of this storyline suggests to me they realize that the only follow-up to this sordid tale is an unequivocal demand for Bush's impeachment. Like many other Americans who loathe Bush, I've held back in any sustained calling for his removal from office because it seemed to me there was more to be lost than gained (mostly due to how difficult it would be to achieve with the current make-up of Congress) in doing so, but now I agree with those arguing that the impeachment clause of the Constitution is meaningless if intentionally breaking the law is not a clear rationale for invoking it.

Let this sink in. Bush intentionally set out to break the law. Even after his own Attorney General (John Ashcroft, mind you, no bleeding-heart liberal) concluded that proceeding with the secret program would be illegal, he intended to move ahead with it anyway. Intentionally, with no room for plausible deniability at all.

Many bloggers are examining this issue (for an excellent summary, see this post by Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings), although next to none over at Redstate.com, unsurprisingly. In reading through it all, what strikes me as most incredible is how truly vicious this administration was in trying to get what it wanted. Consider for a moment the fact even though what Bush wanted to do (and we're still not sure exactly what it was, knowing only that it was much worse than the program that was eventually approved) was so ethically unacceptable that his Attorney General, the Director of the FBI, and scores of DOJ officials were willing to resign to prevent him from doing it, he still wanted it done so badly he sent two members of his staff to a hospital at night to coerce a desperately ill man into essentially accepting legal responsibility for it (can you say Patsy?).

The degree of ruthlessness (not to mention betrayal) that suggests is simply staggering. And who were these late-night soldiers deployed to do this dirty work, to set up an otherwise loyal servant? Andrew Card (the former chief of staff) and none other than the currently embattled, pro-torture Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. The man eventually appointed to be our nation's number one law enforcer was attempting to bully a gravely ill man to help his boss break the law.

From the Washington Post (hardly one of Bush's strongest critics):

The administration, it appears from Mr. Comey's testimony, was willing to go forward, against legal advice, with a program that the Justice Department had concluded did not "honor the civil liberties of our people." Nor is it clear that Congress was adequately informed. The president would like to make this unpleasant controversy disappear behind the national security curtain. That cannot be allowed to happen.

What I find most unbelievable in all this, given how willing Bush was to trick Ashcroft into taking the fall for his illegal scheme, is that other Bush supporters don't seem to see that they too are just as disposable to this mob boss. There are folks on the right already trying to paint Comey's testimony as "histrionic" (although, pathetically, Kmeic has to rely on the response to Comey's testimony, rather than his actual words themselves, to make this otherwise lame and totally transparent argument), suggesting they will still target anyone who speaks out against Bush, unable to connect the dots here and realize if Bush was willing to hang Ashcroft out to dry, then they wouldn't stand a chance should they be unfortunate enough to step into his path.

It is so long past time for this criminal to be out of office. Congress should begin impeachment proceedings immediately.