TWO CLEAR REASONS IMPEACHMENT SHOULD BE A BIG STORY

Polls show that roughly half the American people favor the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. There have never been opinion polls like these: half the country, and this is without the impeachment process having even begun.

Even if there were nothing but unprecedented opinion polls like these, that would be a big story. So, mainstream media, why aren't you telling it?

But of course there's more -much more!- than the opinion polls.

Never has there been such a lawless presidency. Nothing even close. Never one so dishonest. Never a presidency so contemptuous of the Constitution and so completely indifferent to its responsibilities to the country as a whole and to those profound values embedded in the oath of office.

It's clear, it's documented: this president and this vice president have assaulted the rule of law in a manner never seen before in American history.

How could impeachment NOT be a big story -the big story- when the Constitution is under assault from an administration that claims unchecked powers, and when every member of Congress takes an oath, as a condition of taking office, to protect and defend the Constitution?

This assault on the rule of law has created one of the most profound crises in American history, and with the ways the Bush administration is blocking the other two branches of government from exercising their constitutional functions, impeachment is the only route left to expose and defeat this presidential power grab.

But you'd never know how huge a story this is from following the mainstream media. The television news people don't treat it as NEARLY as important as a stain on a blue dress.

What gives? You didn't take an oath to defend the Constitution, but let me ask you:

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE REASON "FREEDOM OF THE PRESS" IS IN THE CONSTITUTION?

Do you think the Founders worked to protect a free press because they thought it essential that Americans be able to write and to read about the latest antics of some pretty starlet? Do you think it was because they feared that diet books might be quashed.

No, of course not. The essence of the idea of a "free press" was not that "anything goes." That was not the point. The point was that the press would be FREE in the sense that the government would not be allowed to control it, to muzzle it, to prevent it from telling the people what the wielders of power did not want them to know.

The Founders gave you, the press, freedom so that you could aid a free people in protecting their freedom. They made the press free, that is, for the very same reason that they gave the Congress the power to impeach a president: as a bulwark against tyranny.

The Constitution is a legal structure, but it is also a kind of imprint from which one can read the main danger from which they were trying to protect us, their heirs. And this Bushite regime and its lawlessness is precisely what concerned them.

This moment, in other words, is the test for which the Founders tried to prepare us.

Congress has its test: will it impeach in the face of an assault on the Constitutional system of checks and balances that the Bushites are waging? Our Founders compel the members of Congress to make only one sacred and binding promise- and that is to defend the Constitution, especially against threats like this.

If they honor their oath, that is a big story, as impeachment always is. And if they fail to honor their oath, that's a big story, too, as the violation of a solemn oath and the acquiescence in presidential usurpation must be.

So the Press has its test, and if it fails to treat the question of impeachment as a momentous story -whatever Congress does- it also fails its test. It has failed to be the watchdog for the people that the Founders had in mind in protecting your work from government control.

The people also, of course, face a test in whether we will rouse ourselves to protect our birthright as a free people. But you, the media, have a leadership role to play in helping the American people play their part.

"It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government," Tom Paine said around the time this experiment in freedom came into existence on this continent.

Where, O media, is your patriotism?

[Click here to view the source article on NoneSoBlind.org.]

About author

Andrew Bard Schmookler's website, NoneSoBlind.org, is devoted to understanding the roots of America’s present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America’s Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states. Email to: andythebard@peacefulassembly.org