The Spying Scandal is the Least of It

The big dustup over GWB's admission that he broke the law in having the NSA spy on American citizens has gotten even a lot of prominent Republicans upset. Columnist George Will, about as conservative as they come, called it a "mistake" the other day. And several GOP Senators (Spector, McCain, Hagel, and Snowe, among them) are saying, "hey, wait a minute!"

Oh yes, and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) quotes no less an authority on presidential misconduct than John Dean, Nixon's counsel during the Watergate affair, as saying GWB is the first president to actually admit to an impeachable offense.

And yes, I think it's appalling that Bush not only condones illegal spying, but does so enthusiastically and repeatedly. To show just how much they don't get it:

At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan was asked to explain why Bush last year said, "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so." McClellan said the quote referred only to the USA Patriot Act.

(The above quote is from a Washington Post story by Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer, dated Wednesday, December 21)

But...I think there are far more serious high crimes and misdemeanors that are worth going after.

Congressman John Conyers points some of them out in his just-released report, "The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War." With over 2000 US soldiers dead, by some estimates much more than 100,000 Iraqis in fresh graves, and countless wounded, that's where I'd start the impeachment proceedings, if it were up to me. And continue through corporate corruption, election rigging, shredding the environmental and economic safety nets, and a bunch of other stuff. In the context of all this, the spying scandal is the least of it.