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WaPo Moves towards a Bush Impeachment
by Leaves on the Current
Thu May 17, 2007 at 09:47:20 PM PDT
Okay, so they never actually use the i-word. But there's no mistaking what this most infuriatingly supine of major editorial pages has committed tonight, starting with the sly title of the link on washingtonpost.com:
The subject is the now-infamous episode in which the White House pressured a gravely ill John Ashcroft to approve the secret wiretapping program his own staff had already deemed illegal, as James B. Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week. Here's what has the WaPo beginning to dance, ever so gingerly, with the ghosts of 1973-74:
In a previous editorial, the WaPo had already excoriated the Ashcroft sickbed episode as "lawlessness so shocking [the account of] it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source" than Comey, Justice's former number 2 official. In another, it had already used the word "coverup," the WaPo's own description for the cause of Nixon's downfall. But tomorrow's editorial is different: tomorrow's editorial focuses for the first time squarely on the president. Was his conduct "breathtaking" enough to raise the prospect of impeachment?
The unmistakable implication, with all the weight of the Post's own historical language behind it, is yes.
UPDATE: As others have also noticed, theres strong additional evidence that the WaPo is moving towards a call for impeachment in the language they use in this editorial to describe the Ashcroft sickbed episode: "the Wednesday Night Ambush."
Unmistakably, its a direct and deliberate reference to the Saturday Night Massacre that did so much to end the Nixon presidency.
by Leaves on the Current
Thu May 17, 2007 at 09:47:20 PM PDT
Okay, so they never actually use the i-word. But there's no mistaking what this most infuriatingly supine of major editorial pages has committed tonight, starting with the sly title of the link on washingtonpost.com:
"What Did Bush Know, and When?"
The unmistakable echo, of course, is the Howard Baker question that became the yardstick for Richard M. Nixon's inexorable slide toward impeachment: "What did the president know, and when did he know it?" And that's just what the Post editorial page is demanding to know in tomorrow's editorial--which inches towards a call for this president's impeachment, as you'll see across the jump.
The subject is the now-infamous episode in which the White House pressured a gravely ill John Ashcroft to approve the secret wiretapping program his own staff had already deemed illegal, as James B. Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week. Here's what has the WaPo beginning to dance, ever so gingerly, with the ghosts of 1973-74:
It doesn't much matter whether President Bush was the one who phoned Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's hospital room before the Wednesday Night Ambush in 2004. It matters enormously, however, whether the president was willing to have his White House aides try to strong-arm the gravely ill attorney general into overruling the Justice Department's legal views. It matters enormously whether the president, once that mission failed, was willing nonetheless to proceed with a program whose legality had been called into question by the Justice Department.
Tomorrow's editorial goes on to deride Bush's dismissal of questions about the episode--"I'm not going to talk about it"--as "so inadequate." Well, yes; but that's not what's interesting here: what's interesting is the language the Post uses to describe the implications of Comey's testimony for the president, and the nature of the inquiry it now demands:
. . . there is a serious question here about how far Mr. Bush went to pressure his lawyers to implement his view of the law. There is an even more serious question about the president's willingness, that effort having failed, to go beyond the bounds of what his own Justice Department found permissible.
Yes, Mr. Bush backed down in the face of the threat of mass resignations, Mr. Ashcroft's included, and he apparently agreed to whatever more limited program the department was willing to approve. In the interim, however, the president authorized the program the Justice lawyers had refused to certify as legally permissible, and it continued for a few weeks more. . . [A]s a matter of presidential practice, this is breathtaking.
It is indeed. Breathtaking enough, the Post says, that though "[t]he president would like to make this unpleasant controversy disappear behind the national security curtain[, it] cannot be allowed to happen." On the contrary, it says, public discussion is essential. Breathtaking enough to move the nation towards the real prospect of impeachment? Yes, Mr. Bush backed down in the face of the threat of mass resignations, Mr. Ashcroft's included, and he apparently agreed to whatever more limited program the department was willing to approve. In the interim, however, the president authorized the program the Justice lawyers had refused to certify as legally permissible, and it continued for a few weeks more. . . [A]s a matter of presidential practice, this is breathtaking.
In a previous editorial, the WaPo had already excoriated the Ashcroft sickbed episode as "lawlessness so shocking [the account of] it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source" than Comey, Justice's former number 2 official. In another, it had already used the word "coverup," the WaPo's own description for the cause of Nixon's downfall. But tomorrow's editorial is different: tomorrow's editorial focuses for the first time squarely on the president. Was his conduct "breathtaking" enough to raise the prospect of impeachment?
The unmistakable implication, with all the weight of the Post's own historical language behind it, is yes.
UPDATE: As others have also noticed, theres strong additional evidence that the WaPo is moving towards a call for impeachment in the language they use in this editorial to describe the Ashcroft sickbed episode: "the Wednesday Night Ambush."
Unmistakably, its a direct and deliberate reference to the Saturday Night Massacre that did so much to end the Nixon presidency.