2009-10-08 Is it time to whisper the word impeachment

2009-10-08 \Floyd G. Brown\Mary Beth Brown WorldNetDaily \Barack Obama/impeachment\right-wing insanity\intellectual sabotage/examples http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=112223 Is it time to whisper the word 'impeachment'? Is it time to whisper the word impeachment  At the tea party in Washington, D.C., a popular sign read simply, "Impeach Obama."

As a moderator of discussion on the blog www.exposeobama.com, Floyd has observed the discussion of impeachment is mushrooming amongst conservative activists.

Radio personality Tammy Bruce may have captured these activists' beliefs about Obama best: "Ultimately, it comes down to ... the fact that he seems to have, it seems to me, some malevolence toward this country, which is unabated."

But has Barack Obama committed an impeachable offense? What exactly constitutes an impeachable offense? Former President Gerald Ford, while serving in the House of Representatives, said an impeachable offense was "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."

Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution reads: "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

The key phrase here is "high crimes and misdemeanors," a concept in English common law well-known to our Founding Fathers, but grossly misunderstood in this day and age. "High crimes and misdemeanors" essentially means bad behavior. ... Impeachment is no more or less than the recall of an elected official who isn't up to the job. Obama deserves recall much more than Gov. Gray Davis, and he was replaced by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a special recall election 2003-10-07, in California. This article commits the following counts of intellectual sabotage:
 * trivializing the act of impeachment by framing it as simply a matter of convincing enough Congresspeople to do it (rather than having a sufficiently overwhelming complaint). (There was far more cause for impeaching Bush, but this was glibly dismissed on other grounds.)
 * providing a straw man to stand in for legitimate attacks on Obama, making it easy to dismiss such attacks as "just those crazy teabaggers"
 * drawing attention away from what should be the key topic of any such discussion, i.e. just what has Obama done that is so terrible?
 * Knowing WND's politics, their complaint with Obama is probably not his failure to carry through on his campaign promises regarding (for example) gay rights, but rather on actions he is carrying through on which were part of his platform (and which formed the basis of his overwhelming victory) -- which means they are heavily implying that most of the country is "fed up" with Obama for doing things which, in fact, they are quite happy about.
 * implying (but not stating -- intellectual sniping-from-concealment) that Obama is guilty of "gross incompetence, negligence and distasteful behavior" -- a highly dubious opinion in need of much substantiation, with none provided (and which is much more applicable to the president they supported)

&ldquo;Impeachment is no more or less than the recall of an elected official who isn't up to the job. Obama deserves recall much more than Gov. Gray Davis...&rdquo;   