Pres. Obama commits impeachable offenses on a regular basis, and the unwillingness of Congress to say anything about that has damaged our system of government. But on this Taliban prisoner release he is the most vulnerable. I hope someone in Congress has the guts to introduce articles of impeachment. Even if it doesn’t pass the House, it will make a very important political statement.
It was Andrew McCarthy, in an interview earlier this week on The Kelly File on Fox who is the first one I heard bring this up. He made it clear that the offense is not releasing prisoners without Congressional approval. In fact, he has constitutional grounds for not ceding that authority to Congress. Rather it is gross ineptitude and dereliction in his duty to protect United States national security by releasing key enemy combatants without waiting for the enemy to surrender.
Having said that, Senator Lindsey Graham’s impeachment threat that was published in yesterday’s The Hill was childish and apparently directed not at achieving actual results, but at courting a tough image with low-information voters. The article said, “Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned Wednesday that Republican lawmakers would call for President Obama’s impeachment if he released more prisoners from Guantanamo Bay without congressional approval.” Yes, Senator Graham, I know you were really upset about not being consulted over this. But us little people throughout the country are much less concerned about that and much more concerned over his reckless disregard for national security. We now have fellow Americans who will be at risk of being taken hostage for similar deals. And we have other innocent people who will likely be killed thanks to the efforts of these five dangerous Taliban commanders who have been released.
Why is this the impeachable offense we’ve been waiting for? Because this is so hard for the administration to defend. They sound ridiculous with their invented excuses. Charles Lane, the opinion writer for the Washington Post who appears often on Fox News Special Report, is capable of incredible ethical agility in defending all kinds of misconduct by Obama. But last night he could find no good words to offer in defense of the administration on this one. Others who are typically defenders of the administration but like to try to appear that they have some intelligence or integrity or something also are shying away from defending Obama here.
And their attempts to defend Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl are really an insult to our intelligence. Filing impeachment articles would help draw out these facts and make more people aware of the damage that Obama has done to this country’s interests.
But Senator Graham looks stupid here. Senator, was this an impeachable offense or not? If so, lower the boom. If not, then don’t. Your threat sounds childish.
As to the comments by Senator Marco Rubio that, well, Obama only has two years left, let’s just wait it out. No, that is the wrong way to take this. We all know that there is absolutely no chance that Democrats in the Senate will vote to actually remove the president. Remember that impeachment is like indictment – the House votes to bring the charges. Once impeached, the Senate then votes on whether or not to convict. Only with a vote by the Senate to convict is a president actually removed. So that won’t happen. And there is even very little chance that enough Republicans in the House will actually vote to impeach. But as Andy McCarthy brought out, there needs to be a statement made, otherwise the precedent will be set that the President can get away with this and Congress will simply look the other way. If no one brings it up, then future presidents will have no fear to abandon their oath to defend our country and faithfully execute its laws.
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