Some notes/suggestions, prefaced with an overall ovation for the notion of proposing detailed articles of impeachment:
----- Whereas, George W. Bush has proposed and signed federal laws that have no basis in the Article I Section 8 powers of Congress, such as the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act and the No Child Left Behind Act; ----- I'm not sure this is an impeachable offense. As the clause points out, Article I, Section 8 outlines the powers of Congress, not the president. Is it a "high crime or misdemeanor" to suggest to Congress that they act outside those enumerated powers? If so, a lot of people should be getting grand jury subpoenas based on the letters they send to their congresscritters or to their local newspaper editors. Even assuming it is a theoretically impeachable offense, I strongly suspect that asking a Congress composed of substantially the same people to whom he proposed that legislation, and who subsequently passed that legislation and delivered it to his desk for signature, to impeach him over it. The strongest grounds for impeachment would seem to be a) The torture case, which relies on international conventions to which the US is signatory and violations of which can be ascribed solely to the executive without congressional culpability; b) Actions taken outside the bounds of recently passed legislation, either in direct violation of it or using the pretense of "signing statements" to reinterpret it; and c) Actions taken in violation of longstanding legislation or constitutional constraints (e.g. the warrantless wiretapping counts might be better based on 4th Amendment grounds than on FISA). I do really like the proposal, though. I just wish that the LP had passed something similar in 2006 -- it's getting late in the game. Regards, Tom Knapp
