Friday, March 19, 2010

IMPEACHMENT OP-ED IN THE WASHINGTON TIMES: AND SO IT BEGINS

Endorsed as the lead item at Fox Nation right now:



It's not in the editorial voice of The Washington Times, but it's an op-ed by a Times columnist, Jeffrey T. Kuhner (he's also a talk radio guy and right-wing think tanker). Given the widely agreed-upon fiction that the Times is a respectable newspaper, I'd say a line has been crossed:

... Mr. Obama is imposing a leftist revolution. Since coming to office, he has behaved without any constitutional restraints...

The Slaughter Solution is a poisoned chalice. By drinking from it, the Democrats would not only commit political suicide. They would guarantee that any bill signed by Mr. Obama is illegitimate, illegal and blatantly unconstitutional. It would be worse than a strategic blunder; it would be a crime -- a moral crime against the American people and a direct abrogation of the Constitution and our very democracy.

It would open Mr. Obama, as well as key congressional leaders such as Mrs. Pelosi, to impeachment. The Slaughter Solution would replace the rule of law with arbitrary one-party rule. It violates the entire basis of our constitutional government -- meeting the threshold of "high crimes and misdemeanors." If it's enacted, Republicans should campaign for the November elections not only on repealing Obamacare, but on removing Mr. Obama and his gang of leftist thugs from office....


You know what's the creepiest part of that? The argument that if deem-and-pass is used, henceforth "any bill signed by Mr. Obama is illegitimate, illegal and blatantly unconstitutional." Basically, here's The Washington Times preemptively declaring that we will not have a legitimate president -- essentially seconding Orly Taitz, if for different reasons -- and validating the messages frying the brain synapses of every crackpot Timothy McVeigh out there.

It sure would be nice if mandarins such as David Broder would express a tiny bit of alarm at language such as this in D.C.'s #2 paper, but I'm sure an effective declaration of the illegitimacy of the government doesn't seem as bad to the Dean as, say, someone making an unkind remark about Joe Lieberman.

And no, this is not the same as the left-wing response to the 2000 election. Many of us thought that outcome was a travesty of the electoral process, but I don't know of any major news organization that was willing to declare the government null and void as a result. I don't even know of any sane lefties who felt that every act undertaken under Bush could simply be ignored or reversed based on the circumstances of his election. We at least acted as if we had a real government, however sleazy the process by which it came to be. I'm not sure the righties are going to do the same.

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