A few post back, my Mom left a comment reading: "And it will be tough to get him impeached as a matter of fact...don't see it happening at all." My knee-jerk emotional reflex to that was 'nothing worth doing is ever easy'... but logically, she's right, but isn't not as simple as it might sound.

For the first 200-some years in this country - neither political party needed a majority to have the power to force a sitting president or his immediate staff to testify - under oath - to the senate. Now this balance of power is very, very important to keep in mind - because it doesn't exist anymore.

One of the first things Reagan did when elected - besides doing away with the Equal time rule for news media - was destroy the power for the minority party to have any checks & balance over the president. Why would Reagan do this? Well, maybe we'll never know, but now here we are - a country that would only be recognizable to it's founders at first glance. A country that tortures... a country that imprisons people, even it's own people, without reason or notice to their family for years and years... a country that spies on civilian to civilian phone-calls and emails, and then has the nerve to lie about the spying to our faces... a country that has violated the War Crimes Act 0f '96... a country out of control in it's spending, borrowing, literally, 1.9 billion each day just to keep the government going and the economy looking like it's afloat... on and on and on...


But there's a finer point here - republicans are already talking about their next presidential candidate... which is unusually early. And for good reason - the 2006 elections are coming up, and as I said above, Bush can fail as much as his heart desires without almost any consequence... aside from his poll ratings... unless, and it's a very big "unless", he looses majority in the house. If democrats get the needed number of seats than Bush knows he is done for - hell, already his own party has been mentioned impeachment in the media. So how can Bush hurt himself to save himself? A political gift from the Gods: The failed port deal.

Despite democrats being some of the first to voice their opposition to the deal, republicans have gotten all of the spotlight in their "defeat" of the deal. Making the president look weak on defense... but not the republican party. Which on one hand, separates them from the president and his 37% approval rating - no one wants to be guilty by association during an election year. So Bush has symbolically "taken one for the team", but really, he just saved his own ass... assuming that this move was enough the help republicans win seats and keep a majority in the house.


We have to win back the house - and we have to impeach Bush, it's one of the only ways we can send a message to the world that he and his actions do not represent us.

A country is not only what it does - it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates.
- Kurt Tucholsky