Bush congressional critics get unimpeachable forum

WASHINGTON – Call it the un-impeachment hearing.

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Friday it insisted was not about removing President Bush from office. But critics of Bush’s policies couldn’t pass up the chance to accuse the president of a long list of impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Leading the way was Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, the former Democratic presidential candidate who has brought repeated impeachment resolutions on the House floor against Bush and Vice President Cheney.

“The decision before us is whether to demand accountability for one of the gravest injustices imaginable,” Kucinich said.

The House Democratic leadership, not interested in a divisive impeachment battle in the last year of Bush’s presidency, steered Kucinich’s resolutions to the Judiciary Committee where they could quietly fade away, but Friday’s hearing gave Kucinich and his allies an opportunity to air their views.

“To the regret of many, this is not an impeachment hearing,” said committee chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., pointing out the less incendiary title of the event, “executive power and its constitutional limitations.”

Still, Conyers, a vocal opponent of Bush, noted that his panel had pursued many issues that Kucinich and others regard as impeachable offenses: manipulating intelligence about Iraq; misusing authority with regard to torture, detention and rendition; politicizing the Justice Department and retaliating against critics.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., concluded that “this is the most impeachable administration in the history of America because of the way that it has clearly violated the law.”

“I am really astonished at the mood in this room,” commented one witness, George Mason University School of Law professor Jeremy Rabkin.

“The tone of these deliberations is slightly demented,” Rabkin said. “You should all remind yourselves that the rest of the country is not necessarily in this same bubble in which people think it is reasonable to describe the president as if he were Caligula.”