John Nichols is about the only guest of Jean Feraca's show, Here on Earth, that I'll listen to through a pledge drive. Especially when he's promoting his new book The Genius of Impeachment: The  Founders' Cure for Royalism. While conservatives will dismiss the book as partisan grenade lobbing, what I've always liked about Nichols is not that he's "a Liberal" but that he's such a lover of small-"d" democracy that he can't help but sound like one.

The issue of impeachment goes far beyond partisan politics. It is about the fundamental right of the citizenry to demand a government that works for them, despite them. From day one, George W. Bush and his administration have done nothing for the people of this country. Quite the contrary in fact. The only people he stands up for are the rich and the powerful. Frankly, I'm suprised it's taken this long for the American people to be outraged at a White House run amok and a Congress that sits on its hands in the face of egregious abuse of power. We're mistaken if we think we've sent a clear enough message. George Bush is, and always has been, an enemy of free and open democracy. Period. 

The worst of it is we should have seen it coming. When Bush and Karl Rove played their game of dirty tricks on John McCain, a member of their own party, to gain the 2000 Republican nomination, nobody stopped them. Certainly not the Republicans. To top it off, the 2000 election had to be settled by the Supreme court, amidst a mountain of evidence to suggest the election process in Florida - where G.W.'s own brother was governor - was less than jake.

What kind of president has closed-door meetings with the executives of huge energy companies to come up an energy policy?  This President then had the audacity to suggest the way to free us from the dependency on foreign oil is to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Clearly Bush was off the rails, and he'd barely begun his presidency. Hell, he spent most of the first year or so in office at his ranch. If there was ever a bigger slacker in the White House I'd be shocked. Shouldn't dereliction of duty be imeachable? If getting a totally legal blowjob got Bill Clinton into impeachment trouble, a president who never bothered to come in to work should certainly fit the bill. 

Yet it continued, and nobody said a thing. Not Congress or the Senate, certainly not the pundits and talking heads on our now right-wing dominated airwaves. Everyone was so afraid of being tagged "a liberal," that nobody stood up for common sense. Nobody said anything when the Administration gutted environmental protection legislation to favor campaign donors and smash-and-grab politicians who thought they'd gerrymandered their way to the top forever.

September 11 hit us like a ton of bricks. The country was hurt and angry. Support and sympathy poured in from around the world. Finally, America knew what it felt like to be hit where it hurts. We could no longer watch events unfolding from across the big ponds with disinterest or scepticism. First came the invasion of Afghanistan, and the hunt for Bin Laden was on. We tossed out the Taliban; we had support from world leaders; we had might and right on our side. Then we turned the corner.

Iraq had always been in the sights of the Administration. For some reason Bush and Cheney had a hard-on for Saddam. At first it looked like 9/11 could justify about anything terrorist-related, never mind the fact that we invaded Iraq under false pretenses. And for what? It's that old saw: greed and cronyism. Halliburton raked in billions in no-bid contracts. I remember the Defense Department scandals of the 80s: toilets that cost the military thousands; coffeemakers and screwdrivers that were clearly bid to gouge. And we were duly outraged. Yet Halliburton got a free ride while Vice President Cheney, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner others still owned stock and received annual payments from them.

The "liberal media" was silent, since it never really existed, and the conservatives were too busy shouting about what a bad guy Saddam was. As if Saddam was a synonym for Bin Laden. He wasn't. Instead we've lost thousands of good, strong, young Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, not to mention tens of billions of dollars that could have been spent where it was needed. At home. Yet who benefits from the war? Halliburton and war profiteers like it. Saddam was a bad man, no doubt, but he was better for his own people and the safety of the region and America than the current civil war that's only getting worse.

Not only wasn't Bush impeached ten times over, he was reelected by people who believed the White House press releases about the imminent apocalypse. They bought plastic sheets and duct tape in a twisted 21st century homage to the "duck and cover" days of the Cold War. Common sense was out. Mass hysteria was in the house. There was no way we could hand over the country to spineless Democrats when there was a terrorist lurking around every corner. We were suckers. They knew it.

We let Bush and his ilk get away with murder and gross negligence. Hurricane Katrina showed that Bush and the Republicans cared more about pushing their war agenda than helping down-and-out Americans. Trent Lott's house was going to be rebuilt, but the poor folk of New Orleans and Mississippi could dangle. They weren't going to make anybody rich so screw 'em. And we watched, and lied to ourselves that New Orleans should be bulldozed anyway, when we should have been screaming for accountability at the very least. Bush just turned on the "orange alert" sign and we went cowering back to our terrorist-infested neighborhoods.

George W. Bush has taken our liberty, made a mockery of the Constitution, squandered billions on a useless war. He's underfunded most of the initiatives he created. Take a look at "No Child Left Behind" if you can stomach it. The USA Patriot Act turns anyone who disagrees with the Administration into a terrorrist, and leaves anyone arrested for that vague crime to rot in a prison not necessarily in this country. They allowed wanton torture and have yet to apologize or even close Abu Ghraib depite a constant stream of photos detailing abuse. The Administration has conducted its affairs with secrecy not seen since the Kremlin. Bush has taken our jobs overseas so his CEO buddies can make even more money.

Take any one of these problems and we have an election that looks like the one we just had. It actually took all of those problems and more to get folk mobilized to vote against the greed and corruption that is the new hallmark of the Bush-led government. The Founding Fathers knew that an America united is a force for good, its power boundless, its energy limitless. Bush and Rove and the rest of 'em knew that a divided America is too weak to stand up to bullies who abuse the Constitution for their own gain. Yet Americans have flexed their muscle and we have a new political landscape. Now we need to use that muscle to toss Bush and his cronies out on their ears. It is time to impeach. If we don't, we have wasted a golden opportunity to tell the folks in government, who work for us and at our pleasure, that "the buck stops here."