Speaker Pelosi the Ball is in Your Court

And a critical development happened this afternoon. With the filing before the courts by the Judiciary Committee, Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York effectively took the first step towards an Impeachment Enquiry. This is a critical step, and the dancing is effectively over.

I am old enough to remember why Democrats took the House in 2006. It was about the Iraq war and taking the country to war on lies. By 2006 we all knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Some of us had done our homework and suspected as much since almost to a one, the sites mentioned were the ones that the United Nations had inspected…repeatedly. Most of us who raised questions, of course, were ignored. And in fact, the authorization to go to war was done on a fantasy.

Under international law, the Iraq war could be seen as an aggressive war, the first indictment under the Nuremberg standard. In other words, it could be understood as a war crime. Ergo, many Americans wanted the George W Bush administration to be held accountable for this. The only way to do it, short of the International Court of Justice (which the United States does not recognize) is an impeachment of the president, his latter indictment in the Senate, and removal from office. Then, and only then, could the president and his officers face the music for this.

I am old enough to remember that once the Democrats took over the House, they elected representative Nancy Pelosi from California as the first female Speaker of the House. It was historic, and the day she took the gavel from John Boehner, there was hope. Maybe, finally, there would be accountability. I also remember the day she told the country that impeachment was off the table. It happens to be that many in the Democratic leadership voted for the war, including her. So I suppose holding Bush accountable meant holding themselves accountable.

Two years later the country not only voted for the first African American president but also increased the majority of the House and gave Democrats a supermajority in the Senate for all of ten minutes. The day Barack Obama won hope filled the nation. And Democrats squandered all that by playing the kinds of games that ensured that the progressive agenda they promised…would never really happen.