Katrina vanden Heuvel on Impeachment

I normally enjoy the wonderful Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation most when she shows up on one of the cable news shows and makes short work of whatever right-wing dinosaur goes up against her. There's something about her erudite serenity in a sea of GOP blather that always does it for me.

But I want to make sure you all see her blog column yesterday, The I-Word is Gaining Ground. It's an excellent wrap-up of Republican hypocrisy – being so aghast at Bill Clinton's "crimes" and not so much about the real criminal stuff going on in this White House – along with a good primer on roughly where we stand with the prospect of impeaching George W. Bush.

An excerpt:

"In 1998, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, currently under indictment on corruption charges, proclaimed: 'This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law...The other road is the path of least resistance' in which 'we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us...[and] close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking...and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system.' That arbiter of moral politics was incensed about the possibility of Bill Clinton escaping unpunished for his 'crimes.'

"Fast forward to December 2005. Not one official in the entire Bush Administration has been fired or indicted, not to mention impeached, for the shedding of American blood in Iraq or for the shredding of our Constitution at home."

DeLay was, of course, referring to the horrible offense of lying about consensual adult sex... But that's not really the point of vanden Heuvel's piece. Read the rest and get ready to charge into 2006.