Pierce: Nancy Pelosi's Impeachment Announcement Was a Moment of Constitutional Leadership
Nancy Pelosi's Impeachment Announcement Was a Moment of Constitutional Leadership
The dam has broken. The House of Representatives has moved to conduct a formal impeachment inquiry.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
SEP 24, 2019
...The president* appeared to have used the threat of withholding military aid to Ukraine unless the newly elected president of that embattled country agreed to investigate Joe Biden, and Biden's son, Hunter, over something for which there was no evidence. Moreover, he'd used his half-mad personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to broker the threat. And, when it came to light, both the president* and Giuliani, after a brief period of threadbare denials, had copped to their activities in public, and several times, while simultaneously refusing to allow a whistleblower's report on what could be an attempted blackmail or bribery scheme to go to Congress, as it required by law. Sometime over the weekend, the ground shifted and the landslide began. Reluctant Democratic congresscritters had jumped on board. Republicans like Mitt Romney furrowed their brows more deeply than they ever had before. And, on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally moved.
After meeting with the caucus in the big room at the end of the hallway, Pelosi delivered what can only be called an address to the nation on why the House of Representatives had no choice but to initiate an impeachment inquiry into the actions of the President* of the United States, only the fourth time in history that this drastic step had been taken. Her speech was clear and it was sharp and it rolled out with a gravitas appropriate to the circumstances. It was a moment of constitutional leadership and, if it was delayed in such a fashion that drove the impatient—like, say, me—crazy, it was more than worth waiting for....
And she ended her remarks with a quote from that most truculent and uncivil of our Founders, Thomas Paine, someone who brooked no delays and excused no timidity in defense of self-government.
...
"The times," Paine wrote, "have found us."...
"I'd go home," Cleaver continued, "and there'd be people all around the table asking me when we were going to do something about this guy." Cleaver affected a kind of rueful surrender, but he looked like a man who'd had a 10-pound weight lifted off his shoulders.
Not far away, Congressman Al Green, Democrat of Texas, was, by comparison to Cleaver, positively giddy. Green had been telling people that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago could use impeaching almost since Inauguration Day in January of 2017. His first resolution to impeach the president* was tabled by the then-Republican majority House in December of that year by a vote of 364-58. Back then, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership had helped to sink Green's resolution. On Tuesday, he looked even lighter and more free than Cleaver did.
"I am vindicated," Al Green said.
We'll see, I guess. We certainly will see.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29215905/nancy-pelosi-impeachment-inquiry-donald-trump-announcement/
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