Senator Patty Murray On Impeachment

From: Senator@murray.senate.gov [mailto:Senator@murray.senate.gov] Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 12:10 PM To: xxxxxxxxxxxXX@gmail.com Subject: Response from Senator Murray Dear Ms. N_____: Thank you for contacting me about impeachment proceedings for President Bush or members of his Administration. I appreciate hearing from you about this serious issue. As you know, Congress may remove the President, Vice President, and any Civil Officer of the United States from office through the impeachment process. According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives may impeach an official on charges of "Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors" (Article II, Section 4) to remove the individual from office. Only two sitting Presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. No sitting President has been convicted and removed from office. Recently, Washington state legislators in Olympia introduced resolutions that called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. State Senator Eric Oemig (D-Kirkland) was the sponsor of this resolution, Senate Joint Memorial 8016. Howeverx, since State Senator Oemig's resolution was at the state level, it would have had no binding impact on the impeachment proceedings at the federal level. The State Legislature adjourned without taking action on this legislation. In addition, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has introduced House Resolution 333 (H.Res. 333) in the U.S. House of Representatives, which calls for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. The U.S. House of Representatives is the only legislative body with the authority to begin impeachment proceedings of the Executive Branch. I share your serious concerns and frustrations with the direction that President Bush and his Administration have been taking our country, both at home and overseas. I am troubled that Congress has been denied a chance to hold hearings and to bring accountability to this Administration. Now that Congress is under new leadership, we finally have that opportunity, and Congress is using the oversight process aggressively to get the facts to help our country move forward. We have held more oversight hearings of the Administration's handling of the Iraq war in the first few months of the Democratic control of the Congress than the Republicans did since the war began. I believe the best way to alter the direction that our country is headed in is to focus on fixing the current problems. At both the state and federal levels, there are many issues that require our attention, discussion, and action, and will require the President's active involvement. I am concerned that progress on health care, education, and veteran's care would all be put on hold and would not be fixed if Congress solely focused on impeachment proceedings. Be assured, I believe that the Congress must hold the Administration accountable for their actions and decisions, and I look forward to the upcoming hearings and investigations that are occurring in the 110th Congress. Thank you for sharing your views on this matter with me, and I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as the actions of President Bush and his administration are reviewed. I hope all is well in Spokane. Dear Patty, I am troubled that Congress has been denied a chance to hold hearings and to bring accountability to this Administration. I am concerned that progress on health care, education, and veteran's care would all be put on hold and would not be fixed if Congress solely focused on impeachment proceedings. Your words above, Patty, and believe me, I am and always have been a fan of yours, but “troubled” isn’t nearly enough of an emotion when America is facing the kinds of devastation that she currently endures under the Bush administration. I know it. My neighbors know it. Millions and millions of us now know it. I think—and forgive me for this, Patty—you guys there who have the reins in your hands have just got to butch it up when it comes to the Bush so-called ‘administration’. I know you are a busy woman and that you are doing your best and I sometimes imagine I can see the frustration and resignation you must deal with on your face when our local news covers your stories. I know you’re doing your best, but Patty, when the American revolution cried out for heroes, the times called forth men like these:

John Adams- “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” Benjamin Franklin- “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Alexander Hamilton- “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” Patrick Henry- “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!” Thomas Jefferson- “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” James Madison- “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” Thomas Paine- “It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.” George Washington- “I have beheld no day since the commencement of hostilities that I have thought her liberties in such eminent danger as at present. Friends and foes seem now to combine to pull down the goodly fabric as we have hitherto been raising at the expence of so much time, blood, and treasure; and unless the bodies politick will exert themselves to bring things back to first principles, correct abuses, and punish our internal foes, inevitable ruin must follow.”

I’m not attempting a history lesson here, honestly, but seeking to remind you, in hopes that you might perhaps inspire those others there in Washington, D.C. that ‘troubled’ is not a sufficient emotion in these times; nor is acquiescence a proper response to the machinations that will sooner rather than later deprive us of the liberties for which the above named Americans willingly laid down their lives and their fortunes. Americans have never been afraid to bleed and sacrifice for love of this country. Our children dead and mutilated in Iraq prove that yet again, as they did in Viet Nam, Korea, and any other armed conflict one cares to remember, nor should our elected representatives in these times forget that the most important gift from those old guys and dead guys and mutilated guys was Freedom, which mostly means that you can speak your mind without fear, which, honestly, we haven’t been able to do for a few years now. Get it? Fear is the destroyer of Freedom. And Patty, when the sentence “I am concerned that progress on health care, education, and veteran's care would all be put on hold and would not be fixed if Congress solely focused on impeachment proceedings.” reaches from there in D.C. to my home here in Spokane I wonder if you are truly cognizant of how that resonates. What are these issues if the liberty on which America is founded is dying? And, another thing. It makes sense to me—and granted, I’m not in your shoes—but it makes sense to me that the people we send to Congress are smart enough, and dedicated enough, and committed enough and tough enough to accomplish the rescue of democracy as we know it in this country while also attending to the social issues which may or may not sufficiently rescue the growing masses who can no longer afford energy to heat their homes or food to feed their children, considering that the root cause of all these problems has been the overreaching of the Bush administration and their subversion of the values that created this country in the first place. Forgive me, Patty, first of all for writing to you knowing full well that you’ll probably never lay eyes on this, and that some able assistant somewhere will be looking out for your interests on this level because you are too busy to take care of the thousand and one details that go along with being a Congresswoman. And forgive me for writing to you as if you are an old friend and a neighbor, but you are and have been a splendid American woman to me, and I hope with all my heart that you will continue to be in Congress for many years. But. Patty. Those folks there calling the shots from the ‘thugocracy, neoconocracy, theoconocracy—whatever—have been at this piece of work for thirty years or thereabouts and your social concern is not going to change the ultimate direction that America takes if they manage to finish what they started all those years ago. I’m not asking you to change anything you are doing for us there in Washington, D.C.. I am asking you to consider the possibility that all of us who care about the historical ideals of America are starting to wake up and see that we face an huge threat from the Bush idiocracy. My greatest fear is that America will be denied the next presidential election through some malfeasance of Bush and his ‘people’, and you know what, Patty, I ain’t the only one who fears that scenario. It’s simply the ‘worst case scenario’ in this mess—the bottom line. The final straw breaking the camel’s back—unless Cheney and Bush and all their buddies are brought to heel. I guess my point is this: we have to fight them with words—loud ones—with our woman’s anger—with all the fierce dedication of all the struggles to define women’s rights from the time of the Suffragettes, the ‘60’s ‘consciousness raising groups’, the get-out-and-march-in-the-streets dedication of the first women to gleefully burn their bras and make their old men wash the dishes and change the baby’s diaper for the first time. Scary as hell, those times, but nothing like as scary as these times are now. Thanks for listening, whoever you are reading this, and give Miz Patty my kindest regards. D____