Impeachment, please.

Ever since Nancy Pelosi said impeachment was off the table, President Bush has been goading her and the Democratic Congressional leadership to reconsider.

First, he began reading our personal mail. Then he makes a terrible war worse by sending more troops into Iraq, against the best advice of his military commanders in the field and over the objections of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Not to mention a slap in the face to public wishes angrily and emphatically expressed at the ballot box in November.

You have to ask yourself what does impeachment mean if it doesn’t apply to this guy?

No other President in our history has been so destructive to American lives and values as this one has. Nixon is looking pretty good by comparison.

No other President has committed more impeachable acts and it is evident he has no intention to cease and desist as he completes the shambles of his second term.

Do you suppose impeachment might at least get his attention? Perhaps slow him down?

I often wonder how he sleeps nights knowing his actions are responsible for the deaths of more than 3000 American troops, with thousands more maimed for life. Does Laura go through the Washington Post before he sees it and remove those pages of photos of young men and women (some not so young) killed in action in Iraq? Or is the story true that he doesn’t read newspapers?

Does he ever catch one of Keith Olberman’s scathing commentaries on MSNBC or the equally devastating ridicule of Jon Stewart on Comedy Central? Or does he keep the clicker on Fox News where Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity give tortured logic to him and the 12% of Americans who still support the war?

Bush himself must be both puzzled and surprised at what he is allowed to get away with. For his next act, expect him to pardon Scooter Libby while a jury is still hearing the damning evidence of media and Administration colusion.

If Bush keeps goading us, it won’t be just the Cindy Sheehans and liberal lefties demanding impeachment—expect a revolt of the Moderates who are weary of waiting for somebody to do something while there’s still time.

Aggravation time in the new Congress

President Bush says he wants to play nice with the Democratic-controlled Congress, and offers a plan where he and they can work together.

Some plan. A key component is to make permanent more than $1 trillion in tax cuts for the richest Americans. Bush says we can do that and still have a balanced budget—four years after he leaves office. What goes unsaid is that if he had never taken office we would have surpluses as far as the eye can see and not be bogged down in a war that has taken more than 3000 American lives and hundreds of billions from our treasury that could be spent here at home on health care, education, roads and other essentials that are falling apart.

It really bothers me how the Democrats appear to be wimping out on the two issues that restored them to power in the Congress: ending the war and rolling back those obscene tax cuts.

One thing Bush said that I agree with is “we can’t play politics as usual.” We sure can’t.

Democrats eternally worry that voters see them as “soft on security”. So they tip-toe around troop withdrawals that should be a slam-dunk. Same with the old “tax and spend” canard that gives them palpitations even when it comes to dismantling Bush’s scandalous tax cuts. As former DC Mayor Marion Barry would say, “Get over it!”

Not only does our country demand and deserve better, but even the most risk-averse Democrat should know that devising a new strategy to end the Iraq war and decisively rolling back the tax cuts, so important and long overdue, is not only the right thing do so but also the smart thing to do.

In a recent op-ed in his favorite newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, Bush called for bipartisan cooperation to “accomplish important things for the American people.” In a conciliatory tone, he wrote “we share many of the same goals for the people we serve” and together “we can find practical ways to advance the American Dream.” Wow.

But after that positive windup, he delivered a thoroughly partisan pitch for failed policies and skewed views typical of what warms the hearts of readers of the WSJ’s op-ed page, with no indication he got the message voters sent in the November midterm election when they routed Republicans and put Democrats in charge of Congress with a mandate to steer a different course.

Despite incendiary findings of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and public polls showing support for the war falling to single digits, the Bush op-ed blithely observes: “When America is willing to use her influence abroad, the American people are safer.”

In a further departure from reality, he wrote that “making the tax cuts permanent” enables industry to create new jobs and is “good for the American worker.”

It is Wall Street, not Main Street, that celebrates the Bush economy. Stagnant wages, lost pensions and disappearing health benefits for workers are in sharp contrast to billions in bonuses handed out by brokerage houses at Christmas time and the $200 million severance payout given the departing chairman of Home Depot.