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Show DAILY HERALD Thursday, November 2, 2006 Think To impeach or not to impeach If Democrats regain control of the House, should they hold presidential impeachment hearings? PRO By Wayne Madsen WASHINGTON George W. Bush has not only trampled on the U.S. Constitution but he has wiped his shoes with it. Bush, unlike un-like all of his predecessors, has maliciously and egregiously violated his oath of office and the laws of the United States. For these high crimes, a Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, under the chairmanship chair-manship of Michigan's John Conyers, an experienced, progressive lawmaker with 21-terms under his belt, has a duty to swiftly initiate impeachment proceedings. During our nation's three presidential impeachment im-peachment hearings, two resulted in Senate trials. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached by the House and were tried by the Senate. Richard Nixon, disgraced dis-graced by the Watergate affair, resigned before be-fore the House could vote on impeachment. The impeachments of Johnson and Clinton resulted from members of the House seeking seek-ing petty political revenge against a sitting president. Johnson was accused of dismissing con-gressionally con-gressionally confirmed officials and undermining under-mining Congress. Clinton was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from hjs sworn testimony in the Paula Jones case. The Senate wisely rejected the 1 1 counts against Johnson and the two charges against Ginton. The House committee charged Nixon by the House with subverting justice, abuse of power, and defiance of congressional subpoenas. sub-poenas. He resigned before the House could vote on the charges. The cases against Johnson, Clinton and Nixon pale in comparison to the serious constitutional violations carried out by President Presi-dent Bash. For that reason, Conyers and the House Judiciary Committee should bring two omnibus articles of impeachment against Bush as soon as the 110th Congress convenes next year: I Crime No. 1: The president knowingly conspired to exceed his constitutional authority author-ity to wage war by falsifying intelligence and lying to the American people and Congress. i Crime No. 2: The president subverted democracy and his oath of office by conducting conduct-ing illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, and violated international treaties by illegally torturing, kidnapping and detaining innocent people and ignoring rulings of the federal See PRO, 2 CON By Peter Hannaford PETROLIA, Calif. Last June, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., convened a mock House Judiciary Committee hearing in a basement room in the Capitol to look into impeaching President Bush. A handful of his fellow Democrats joined him in this game of Let's Pretend. The four "witnesses" agreed that the president was a liar and guilty of "high crimes." Conyers, who is the ranking minority member of the actual committee, got the other participants to call him "Mr. Chairman." At one point he said, to laughter, "At the next hearing we could use a little subpoena power." Despite the laughter, he's serious. If the Democrats succeed in turning their dreams into reality on Nov. 7 and win a majority ma-jority of House seats, Conyers will return in January as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and will have plenty of subpoena power. Recently he said, "The Bush administration adminis-tration has thumbed its nose at our nation's laws and the Constitution itself." In one way or another he has said or written writ-ten the same thing many times before. Though his public tone is level and his demeanor de-meanor not fiery, if his words were bullets all the senior members of the Bash administration administra-tion would have been drilled through many times over by now. His appeal is to the far left, Bush-hating wing of his party and that wing is bent on wreaking vengeance on the Republicans if it gains control of the House. The subpoena power will be used to tie the administration in knots. In short, the new majority will make life pure hell for the administration. Conyers harps on the failure to find weapons weap-ons of mass destruction in Iraq as if a mistake based on widely held intelligence were a crime. Attempts to criminalize policy differences differ-ences are not new in Congress. In the late '80s, a Democratically controlled Congress attempted to do this over the issue of the Nicaraguan Contras. The left favored the Sandinistas. San-dinistas. For 40 years the Democrats controlled the House in a highly partisan fashion. When the Republicans won control in 1994 some of them proceeded to engage in payback. Congressional Con-gressional Democrats moaned about the loss of "collegiality" and "bipartisanship." While payback was understandable, on the whole it would have been better if the Republicans had See CON, 2 A -A , FISH 'N CHIPS PHONE ORDERS WELCOME 580 E. State Road American Fork 4 Celebrating 50 Years of Falling in love JgftLOSEE U&C Jewelers Saturday, Nov. 1 1 thru Thursday, Nov 16 GjttonTree Square, Provo 373-1000 www.loseejewelers.net 8 S.: t. ' i Saturday -KKadwtts Monday -The drive-in Tuesday -Cames Wednesday -MaKShoppe Thursday -Classic C9xm10-3(Mii. trtm, Happy Dtp, pap- flttfrfrfrtoofefcxy toning up molts, floats CoNtaMsfromUdr aetskCmfrmthtSn urn. SpttU bust, Catliy ml Mtitpm Mowing and drinks from thtS Pi. andHwmML Sihtn,ittwynaokfnm amttsts with prim for tin Happy Days PRICES THAT REMIND YOU OF THE 50'S . ELEGANCE THAT LASTS FOREVER. 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