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June 29, 2007

Obama Just Lost My Vote

Well slap me on the face. Barack Obama has come out in opposition to impeachment of either George Bush or Dick Cheney. It's hard to imagine he could have said anything that would have upset me more, particularly considering his justification for the statement.

Although he says he says he is distressed by the "loose ethical standards, the secrecy and incompetence" of a "variety of characters" in the administration, he holds to the view that we should "vote the bums out."

"I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president's authority," he said.

"I believe if we began impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunction," he added. "We would once again, rather than attending to the people's business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, nonstop circus."

Is the illegal wiretapping of American citizens in violation of the FISA law not a "grave, grave … intentional breech"? How about torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions? Or turning our legal system – as in the Department of Justice (and the U.S. Supreme Court, too, by the way) – into political arms of the Republican Party in violation of the Hatch Act? What about the outing of a covert CIA agent? Are we to look the other way at such clear examples of high crimes and misdemeanors simply because we don't want to get into a power struggle with the forces of darkness? Would Obama be unwilling to take on this tough fight and cave too easily to those forces if he was elected? Doesn't he realize that we need a leader who will engage and defeat these people so we can have our country back?

We all want to get to the "people's business," but I think we have more pressing matters to attend to first. And making sure these two criminals are punished for what they have done to America has to be a priority. They've gone too far for us to be nice and move on.

Posted by Becky at June 29, 2007 08:39 AM