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The Urgency of Impeachment: An Exchange of Letters with My Representative
By Adam Dwyer | HuffingtonPost.com
Dear Adam Schiff,
Thank you for your full and sympathetic response to the constituents who have urged you and your colleagues in the House to impeach Vice-President Cheney.
You are against proceeding with that impeachment because you fear it will diminish the ability of the House to achieve bipartisan consensus on more important issues. You suggest that new oversight with lots of hearings is the best way to deal with the “decisions” of the Vice-President that “concern” you.
I urge you to reconsider. What more important job can the House have than preventing this rogue administration from starting another criminal war in Iran? How can you do that more surely than by beginning impeachment proceedings against both the President and the Vice-President, immediately? If they do bomb Iran, the people that could have stopped them, the people who took impeachment off the table, will be as guilty in the eyes of the world and before the bar of history as the lawless perpetrators themselves.
The fundamental principle here is that if Bush and Cheney have committed high crimes and misdemeanors (and what reasonable person doubts it?), then they must be impeached. That’s the law.
In truth, conducting that impeachment, which is required of you and your colleagues, your simple duty, may be not only the best way to keep them from starting a catastrophic new war, but also the best way to end the disastrous, excruciatingly pointless current war. Isn’t it increasingly obvious that nothing short of an impeachment will get the attention of the arrogant little Lord Protector who now reigns in our imperiled democracy? Impeachment is simple justice, but it may also jolt these bloody men out of their destructive fantasies and bring our troops home.
This country needs real leaders now, perhaps more than at any time in our history. If we don’t find them in the people we have elected, we will have to elect new ones, no matter how happy we are with a small increase in the minimum wage and a blizzard of brave subpoenas. If those new leaders also fail us, we must replace them, too, as soon as we can, on and on, until we see the war ended, the criminals and traitors turned out of office, and the rule of law restored; or until our time runs out.
You are a very good representative, but these terrible times demand more of you. How feeble it seems to fret about achieving entirely meaningless compromises with the party that has abetted the crimes of Bush and Cheney even as the profound damage they are doing, bankrupting and murdering us and so many others, continues.
Please help us.
Frank Dwyer
Congressman Adam Schiff wrote:
Dear Mr. Dwyer :
Thank you for contacting me regarding your support for introducing articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney. I appreciate hearing from you and welcome your input.
I share your concern about the policies and actions of Vice President Cheney and I am deeply troubled by the potentially precedent-setting expansion of executive power at the cost of our system of coequal branches and the civil liberties guaranteed to all Americans. The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution with the intention that no one branch of government should become too powerful. With the oppression of monarchical rule only recently behind them, they sought to prevent the rise of a too-powerful executive by crafting a calibrated system of checks and balances that allows for interplay between the three branches of government.
Despite the challenges that our nation faces, we must not cast aside the values and ideals that our people have defended for centuries. The Executive Branch is an extraordinarily powerful one; in order for the checks and balances to function properly, both Congress and the Courts must resist an excessive assertion of executive power that is at odds with the interests of the American people or violates the Constitution. Congress has an important legislative function, but it has an equally vital role in providing oversight and we must continue to aggressively exercise this prerogative.
One of the most important areas in which oversight has been lacking involves the terrible mistakes that have been made in the prosecution of the war and the reconstruction of Iraq . After more than 4 years of bloody combat; after our Nation has lost more than 3,700 of our military’s finest; after thousands more of our brave men and women have been wounded; after we have spent almost $600 billion; and after finding no weapons of mass destruction, the very basis of that war, it is clear that no one in the Administration has been held accountable. This is beginning to change, and the new Democratic Congress has held an unprecedented number of oversight hearings since it took power. It is my belief that these oversight hearings will provide the basis for a dramatic change in direction in our Iraq policy.
Another area which cries out for strong Congressional oversight and action involves the revelation that the executive secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Americans on American soil. On May 11, 2007, the House of Representatives responded to the President’s assertion of inherent authority to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant or any judicial review. By a vote of 245-178, the House adopted an amendment that I offered with my colleague Jeff Flake (R-AZ) to reiterate that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) provides the exclusive authority to engage in domestic electronic surveillance for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence information. The President and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) recently returned to Congress with a legislative proposal ( S. 1927) that would make it easier for the NSA to collect intelligence on Americans and groups abroad. I strongly opposed this bill, which nonetheless passed the Congress and was signed into law on August 5, 2007. This measure is set to expire in six months, and I will be working hard to reinstate the type of court supervision that is essential to protect our privacy.
I continue to believe that we must be aggressive in combating terrorism and offer terrorists no quarter. However, the suggestion of the Administration that we can only do so by subverting the law and giving up our constitutional rights is seriously misguided. Instead, I support a different approach. We will use every tool to go after those who wish to harm us. But Americans who are law-abiding citizens of this country should have the confidence of knowing that a court is overseeing what the government does when it comes to our privacy rights.
On the specific remedy of impeachment, the Founding Fathers established a high standard requiring the determination of high crimes and misdemeanors. After witnessing the misguided, destructive and polarizing impeachment of President Clinton, I can well understand why they raised the bar so high. While I share your concerns about a number of the Vice President’s decisions and believe that Congress must continue work to reign in any abuses of power, we must be mindful of the effect such proceedings would have on our efforts to change our policy in Iraq and address the country’s most pressing problems. There is no question that the Vice President has done a great disservice to the country in many ways, and I am deeply troubled by his views of executive authority and performance in office. We must continue to do vigorous oversight and let the evidence lead us where it may; at the same time, we must not be deterred from the highest imperative of changing our Iraq policy, reversing the Administration’s intrusive surveillance policy, meeting the challenge of global climate change, and other critical priorities.
Please be assured that I will do my part to ensure that Congress provides such a check and ensure that the Administration is held accountable for its actions.
An on-going job of a Representative in Congress is to help constituents solve problems with federal agencies, access services, and get their questions answered promptly. On my website, I offer a detailed guide to the services my office can provide to you as a constituent. I also encourage you to subscribe to the Washington Update, my email newsletter which contains information on local events, my work in Washington , and even lets you weigh in on important issues through online polls. Visit me online at http://schiff.house.gov to subscribe. Please know that you can always reach me at (626) 304-2727 or via my website if I can ever be of additional assistance.
Thank you again for your thoughts. I hope you will continue to share your views and ideas with me.
Sincerely,
Adam B. Schiff
Member of Congress