Two Views on Impeachment

I have come to the conclusion that, if the House does not act to impeach this president, it will -- by failing to do so -- express a very serious lack of confidence in the system created by our Constitution, and express a very serious lack of respect for our system itself.

If Congress fails to start impeachment proceedings, it will set a very bad precedent. If Bush and Cheney -- oh, forget it -- if Cheney is allowed to get away with the very serious crimes committed by this presidency, what will the next president get away with?

--bink.

Mike Stark: Speaker, when we do tell the public about it, they say one word. The say "IMPEACH". And I respectfully suggest that if you let this administration out of office without impeaching even Abu Gonzalez, er... Alberto Gonzalez, you will have set a precedent. The next republican administration that takes office will know that they can get away with anything they want because Democrats won’t stand up for the Constitution. That’s what millions of people are saying.

Speaker Pelosi: I appreciate your point. I think that the Gonzalez vote of confidence, as you saw, did not carry. But uhm... yeah, I understand your point, but it’s a choice that has to be made, that is to say "what is the price they are paying for the exposure?"... Look, nobody knew any of these things about Gonzalez. Let’s remember how we got to where we are – and that was by the oversight activities of the Congress of the United States. I made a decision a few years ago, or at least one year ago, that impeachment was something that we could not be successful with and that would take up the time we needed to do some positive things to establish a record of our priorities and their short-comings, and the President is... ya know what I say? The President isn’t worth it... he’s not worth impeaching. We’ve got important work to do... If he were at the beginning of his term, people may think of it differently, but he’s at the end of his terms. The first two years of his term, if we came in as the majority, there might be time to do it all...

--Mike Stark