Huh? Crazy Things We See and Hear

I saw a couple bumper stickers that really made me pause and wonder about the rationality of the owner of the vehicle. One was "Impeachment is Patriotic". Now I would contend that as a general statement, that is correct. If a president has committed a crime, like lying under oath to a grand jury, they should be brought to trial under the impeachment process and removed from office. There is some debate among scholars whether the impeachment clause in the constitution was intended just for governmental process crimes or personal criminal activity. I would contend it was intended to cover any and all crimes committed by a president. I would even suggest that it include crimes that he may have committed before coming into office. If it didn't cover all crimes we would have situations like this: A president gets angry with the Secretary of State for nailing his daughter, the president pulls out a gun and shoots him dead right in the oval office in front of ten witness. Yet, he can't be prosecuted in the normal courts, because a president is immune from such prosecution. Nor could he be impeached because it would be a private criminal matter. So impeachment would have to apply to all criminal matters. Otherwise it would be absurd. And indeed, since it is always a bad thing to have a criminal in the White House, impeachment is indeed patriotic.

The problem with this bumper sticker is that it was not intended to make a general statement. It was in fact a call to impeach president Bush. The problem is that there is no crime. Even if Bush lied to get the nation to approve of the invasion of Iraq, there's no law against that. Furthermore, one can be truthful and be wrong. A lie is when one knows the truth and then says something different. If President Bush thought Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD's) then he was telling the truth. He may have been wrong, but he was still honest. Further at this point in time, with reliable reports of WMD material showing up in Syria and the actual uncovering of small amounts of WMD material in Iraq, Bush may not even have been wrong.

A further point must be made regarding the irrationality of the impeach Bush position. He leaves office in seven months. He's term limited, so he's done, period. Why the vitriol for one who's about to go away anyway?

This same vehicle also had a bumper sticker that said: "You can't be prolife and prowar." Holy nonsequitur! War is about restraining evil in the world. Terrorists are about the most evil people you can find in the whole history of the world. A war to restrain terrorists is about as just of a war as you could ever fight. In this sense, war is what we do to restrain evil doers outside our own nation. Law enforcement is what we do to restrain evil doers inside the country. On the other hand, the prolife movement is about protecting the lives of the innocent, who have done no specific evil and who have been given no due process. Our constitution says that no citizen of the United States may be deprived of their life without due process. That means that they have to have a fair trial with legally collected evidence presented to show their guilt. Once their guilt is established, through this due process, they may, if the statues call for it, be deprived of their life. In fact, one can be very supportive of war and capital punishment precisely because they are prolife. After all, did those people in the World Trade Center ever get due process? Is there due process at a Planned Parenthood Clinic?