Congress Duty Is To Impeach

When members of Congress and of the legislature take an oath to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution, then they have a duty to do so. Yet, regarding impeachment, we are told, "It's not going to happen," or "It would be too time-consuming."

George Mason, one of the main authors of the Constitution, is reported to have said that the power to impeach was the single most important part of the Constitution and that without it, the rest of the document was irrelevant.

Impeachment does not mean conviction. It means that when a president or vice-president is definitely overstepping his boundaries, for example by ignoring the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, the House of Representatives has a duty to implement impeachment proceedings to see if the acts warrant conviction or not. Impeachment is a safeguard to protect our democracy, and in our case, it could be a tool to rescue our democracy.

Isn't holding the president and vice-president accountable to the law worth taking the time to do? "Lack of time" seems to me to be a weak excuse for lack of action, given the gravity of the situation.

We've seen example after example of deceptive and criminal behavior by the Bush administration over the past six years. I think that a Congress which refuses to uphold its duty to impeach is derelict in its duty and thus becomes an accomplice to the suffering, both present and future, that this administration is wreaking in this country and in the world.

Lack of action on impeachment by Congress will also almost certainly ensure that the United States becomes a police state. The groundwork for this has already been laid via the USA Patriot Act and by using mercenary soldiers (like Blackwater, Inc.) both at home and abroad who are not bound by the laws of the military or of Congress.

Is this the kind of country that we want to be? Call your Congressman and let your friends in other states know that this is important. We need to reclaim our democracy.

Nancy Rice
Randolph Center