Bush Administration Misconduct Hearings liveblog, continued

By GottaLaff

It's Q and A time now.

Professor Jeremy Rabkin (George Mason U. law professor) keeps saying the idea of impeachment is demented. The people making these charges are "bitter" and "demented". He's very "animated" himself. One might even call him demented. We're just "construing everything in the worst possible light."

Nadler: Wrong. It's an abuse of power. If the president lied to Congress, and I think he did, to get us to war, and he may have had motivations that he didn't put forth, that's impeachable. Next, we're in a dangerous situation. Bush claims power to point a finger at anyone IN THIS ROOM, and say you're an enemy combatant and you can go to prison. Finally, they've made it impossible to remedy any of this, because of privilege, etc. So we have to figure out a way around all of this. If the admin. has gone so far beyond any interpretation of executive privilege, how does an impeachment inquiry get beyond this?

Fein: Have the inquiry, vote to impeach, do what we did with Nixon. [I hope I got that right] He can't get around that.

Nadler: Should we amend the Constitution about pardon power?

Schwarz: If it's being abused, yes.

But Fein says there are statutes that deter the power, if Bush used it to pardon his administration. Make him exercise the power early, like now, so he can't pardon someone last minute. Congress has power to... [Sound went out]

Nadler: It took the Nixon tape to make impeachment a possibility. What about now? How can we make it a viable option?

Holtzman: We had bipartisan support. It started with the American people, nobody knew what the head count would be in Judiciary. The process had to be fair, so the Dems picked a Republican... no polls, no head count... totally uncharted waters. Ultimately, the fairness of the process persuaded both sides of the aisle. Fairness to the president, too. Allow witnesses for him. Impeachment inquiry, handled fairly, with the full participation of the minority, with the evidence there, can work. Maybe I'm a cockeyed optimist. It worked in 1973. The Clinton impeachment didn't work because it was partisan.