Gaining momentum

It seems that more and more intelligent Americans are finally waking up to the fact that the duplicity, calumny, and downright dangerous conduct of the Bush Administration has reached a critical mass far more menacing and reprehensible than that of Bill Clinton's tawdry little affair, a trivial misstep that "warranted" his impeachment by the House seven years ago. The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel noted yesterday:

As 'Editor & Publisher' recently reported, the idea of impeaching Bush has entered the mainstream media's circulatory system--with each day producing more op-eds and articles on the subject. Joining the chorus on Christmas Eve, conservative business magazine 'Barron's' published a lengthy editorial excoriating the president for committing a potentially impeachable offense. "If we don't discuss the program and lack of authority of it," wrote 'Barron's' editorial page editor Thomas Donlan, "we are meeting the enemy--in the mirror."

On a similar note, Sydney Schanberg of The Village Voice writes:

The lies - after all, that's what they really are - have become so numerous that reasonable people are beginning to hear echoes of the Nixon presidency and impeachment. Think about all those rosy "trust me" speeches Bush has been delivering... We've been lied to before. But this presidency has lifted these arts to new and scary heights.

Still more articles this week are echoing the call for impeachment, from Ruth Coniff to Kathy Gill to Gerald Rellick to...

Well, you get the idea.

I still tend to believe that simple impeachment of the President, while absolutely deserved and overdue, would nevertheless leave far too many of his PNAC cronies still in power, and that a push for Executive Recall would address the problem more thoroughly. However, the current momentum toward holding Mr. Bush accountable for his "high crimes and misdemeanors" is an encouraging sign. Perhaps the country is on the verge of regaining its common sense, which has gone missing for five long years.