Bush War Crimes Defender Admits Obama Didn't Break Law But Should be Impeached Anyway

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Bush War Crimes defender, Michael Mukasey, is the latest to weigh in on Bowe Bergandahl and the Republican/Tea Party’s endless pursuit of a reason to impeach the president.

Mukasey admits that President Obama didn’t violate the law when he secured Bergendahl’s release, but he should be impeached anyway. Unlike Congressional Republicans, Mukasey doesn’t believe that Obama violated the 30 day notice law, though under Mukasey logic it’s because that law is unconstitutional. Still, he wants Obama to be impeached because he, Mukasey, has serious questions about this president’s prisoner swap, notwithstanding the Gitmo prisoner releases that occurred on his watch.

Mukasey became unleashed from what we all ought to hope are his constitutional moorings. Our Constitution is very clear: it takes “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” to remove the President and other government officials from office. That’s it. But Mukasey has other ideas.

To his credit, Mukasey admits the 30-day notice requirement is unconstitutional. Never mind that even if it were constitutional, failure to give notice has no criminal penalty attached to it. NDAA Sec. 1035(d). Not to be deterred, Mukasey makes up his own rule: that there be “serious questions about whether he should continue in office.” ”Serious questions,” he says. Really? So we’re to abandon a solid place in constitutional law and rush head-long into the vast, nebulous, indeterminate, even arbitrary puddle of “should?”

Not only does the “should” standard fall short of what the Founders gave us, but it goes in a bad direction: a President can be removed if Congress merely thinks he messed up. That’s a political standard or at least a policy-oriented standard, not a criminal one. The Constitution and its very principles of checks and balances and separation of powers simply do not let Congress throw out a President because they disagree with him. No, Mr. Mukasey, not even if they have “serious questions.”

A fun side-note: officers and judges at the International Criminal Court can be removed for “serious misconduct.” Rome Statute Art. 46(1)(a).

That’s a much lower standard than outright criminality. Is Mukasey going all New World Order on us?

The one possibility we see is that Mukasey was thinking about some sort of declaration that Obama is unfit for office. The problem there is that that means going a different route than impeachment. Rather, “the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide.”

Of course, the Obama haters in Congress wouldn’t have it because this mechanism would deny them the sugar rush that comes with their inquisitions and it would mean they’d have to find another excuse to avoid doing their jobs.

The fact is Republicans just want to impeach the democratically elected President because he is both black and a Democrat. They’re willing to do whatever it takes as we’ve seen with their sham trials and lies. Mukasey took Republican desperation to a whole new level of revisionism by making up his own rules and trying to sell them as the law.

Republicans were just as obsessed with impeachment during Bill Clinton’s administration. Odds are they will be just as impeachment thirsty when likely Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, is elected in 2016.

The fact that Barack Obama is black is an additional thorn in the Tea controlled Republican Party’s side, a thorn that has caused them to create their own facts about everything from the President’s place of birth, to his policy initiatives and his actions as president.

As time goes by Barack Obama has bested the Republicans in every way imaginable, so it’s easy to see why they are so desperate they are even willing to entertain using icky international law to pave the way to impeachment.

Obama got Bin Laden where the Republicans failed. The disastrous policies of the Bush administration left Obama with serious messes to clean up. The economy was on life support. We were bleeding jobs. Obama turned all of that around with the added challenge of Republican obstructionism. Then, of course, there are the war crimes that caused extensive damage to our ability to play the world’s moral authority and defender of human rights.

Michael Mukasey defended those war crimes. So for him to even enter this discussion takes chutzpah. Making up laws and possible resorting to the ICC statute just shows how desperate he and Republicans are to find anything that will give them an impeachment sugar rush.

Image: NBC