Congress must insist Bush isn't above law

JESSE JACKSON

_Should President Bush be im-
peached? The very idea seems
extreme, if not loony. Incoming
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
has explicitly ruled impeac-
hment off the Democratic majority's
agenda. But activists and legal schol-
ars are organizing to pressure De-
mocrats to begin impeachment hear-
ings. And the incoming chair of the
House Judiciary Committee, Rep.
John Conyers, has issued two remar-
kable studies on abuses of presidential
authority, raising the question of im-
peachable offenses.
The Gingrich Congress' attempt to
railroad President Clinton out of
office gave impeachment a bad press.
It is scorned as irresponsible, vindic-
tive, partisan spitball politics. Rather
than addressing the challenges the
nation faces, impeachment, many
pundits argue, wastes months on
harsh, divisive wrangling. And of
course, in 1998, the public punished
Republicans -- ultimately leading to
the toppling of Gingrich himself.
But in the current circumstances,
the question isn't merely rhetorical or
partisan. While in office, Bush and
Vice President Dick Cheney have as-
serted an extraordinary array of ex-

tra-constitutional powers. Bush ar-
gues that he has the right to declare
war on his own. He claims he can des-
ignate any American an "enemy com-
batant." For those under that suspi-
cion, he claims the right to wiretap
them without warrants, arrest them
without charges, detain them without
lawyers, torture them without judicial
review and hold them until the war
ends. He also says that neither Con-
gress nor the public has any right to
review his decisions, or to gain access
to the papers that he chooses to keep
secret. Because Bush himself says the
war on terror will last for decades, the
scope of this assertion is staggering.
Bush and his men drove us into the
war of choice in Iraq, distorting intelli-
gence to gain public support and un-
dermining our credibility across the
world. His policies led directly to the
disgraces of Guantanamo Bay and
Abu Ghraib. His assertions have tram-
pled the rights of American citizens,
as well as those from other countries.
Lack of accountability squandered bil-
lions in taxpayer dollars on waste,
fraud and abuse of major contractors
in Iraq. The list goes on.
Bush's remarkable assertions
would make the president an elected
king. That is not what the founders in-
tended. They wrote the Constitution
to create a system of checks and bal-
ances to limit presidential power.
They gave Congress the right to de-
clare war, arguing that "no one man"
should ever have that power in a re-
public. They passed the Bill of Rights
to guarantee rights to the people.
How do we hold presidents ac-
countable when they trample these

limits? Presidents cannot be indicted.
They are immune from civil lawsuits
on the basis of their official actions.
The only recourse in the Constitution
is impeachment.
The Democratic Congress has a
duty to the Constitution to investigate
Bush's claims to be above the law.
Conyers may well put off any consid-
eration of impeachment -- but he has
a duty to convene serious hearings on
the scope of the president's claims,
the abuses to the Constitution and to
citizens resulting from those claims,
and the remedies to them.
Whether we're Republican or De-
mocrat, conservative or liberal, we all
should support defending our Consti-
tution. We need a careful considera-
tion of whether the Constitution can
or should be changed in the light of
the threats we now face. If it is to be
changed, then surely it should be
changed by amendment, not by the
unilateral acts of a president. If
changes are not needed, then Bush's
claims must be clearly rejected.
What if the president and his ad-
ministration refuse to cooperate with
Congress in this inquiry? What if they
deny access to all documents, refuse
to testify and issue "signing state-
ments" stating that the president will
not abide by the laws that Congress
passes? Then the Constitution offers
only two options: Vote the president
out of office, and Bush is due to depart
in 2009. Or impeach Bush for high
crimes and misdemeanors. In my
view, it should not come to that -- but
Congress must act to defend the Con-
stitution before America turns com-
pletely into an elected dictatorship.