Impeaching Paradise: Why Hasn't It Happened Yet?

The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
- John Milton - Paradise Lost

George bush has made a heaven for himself out of the hell of his administration. His dimwitted "freedom for everyone" attitude has fooled nobody but himself. Maybe he's starting believe in his own lies - and, therefore, his own snake oil. (Stress OIL).

Back in 2001, a pre 9-11 United Nations very astutely tagged the U.S. as a rogue nation. They obviously knew something the American public didn't. After 9-11, George got his dream come true: to go to war - any war - with Iraq! Life was good!! The White House was Paradise and Crawford, Texas was Eden! The Prime Minister of Great Britain championed George. Even the island nation of Tonga came to embrace his cause!

Vice President Cheney was also in his heaven: making deals with Halliburton and Enron so that the war would bring spectacular returns (for whom, was not yet disclosed).

Oh, there were rumblings of lies about Saddam Hussain, WMDs and the knowledge of civil war without an exit strategy, as well as murmurs of illegal empowerment, but Bush and Cheney dismissed these as unpatriotic.

But the rumblings continued:

Salon.com - Nicholas Thompson, July 24, 2003:

Lying about war is more serious than lying about sex -- which is why the president's free ride is coming to an end.

Conservative Republicans like to compare George W. Bush to Ronald Reagan, characterizing him as a masculine Everyman, traditionally conservative and regularly underestimated because of his low-key manner. Liberals like to compare him with his father, who seemed Reagan's tightly wound, Ivy League, career-climbing opposite -- and a one-term president to boot.

Sorry Nick, but, ah, that didn't happen. You were thinking in 2003 terms. We're now in 2008 terms with over 4000 soldiers dead and buried.

MSNBC poll taken Dec. 21, 2005: 89% thought Bush deserved impeachment.

Elizabeth Holtzman, The Nation, Jan. 11, 2006:

Finally, it has started. People have begun to speak of impeaching President George W. Bush--not in hushed whispers but openly, in newspapers, on the Internet, in ordinary conversations and even in Congress. As a former member of Congress who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon, I believe they are right to do so.

From the Impeach Bush Coalition.com, Aug. 2007:

I am giving serious consideration to turning off the clock. Up until now I have held out hope that the Congress of the United States of America would finally come to its senses and Impeach George W. Bush for his admitted criminal violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Today, that hope is just about gone.

I just read this, Democrats Feel Pressure on Spy Program, in the New York Times. The fact that the Bush administration is trying to get FISA re-written to cover its prior illegal acts should be the final piece of evidence needed to indict (impeach) him. Bush has been arguing since he admited violating FISA that he always had the authority to do so. If he is asking for the authority now, he didn't have it then. Slam dunk, folks.

From the Impeach Bush website:

News and Current Actions:

4/24/08 - Oakland Town Hall Forum with David Swanson, Phil Burk, Medea Benjamin, Elizabeth de la Vega and others. 7-9 PM, Grand Lake Theater, Oakland, CA [PDF]

Please support HR24, the New Hampshire Impeachment resolution introduced by Betty Hall.

The new "Nixon Plan" calls for a flood of impeachment resolutions from concerned members of Congress.

Please call the Judiciary Committee and urge them to join Rep Wexler in his call for impeachment hearings.

Bush and Cheney have only 8 months more in office - four of which will be taken up by an election overshadowing their misdeeds.

What's holding everything up? Public apathy. Their administration created the messes, but now the public has to focus on other people getting us out of them.

George and Dick next January: still in Paradise? Let's hope not.

But if they fall, they will reverse their attitudes towards their fate just as the Angel of Light did:

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.
~John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I

You can count on it.