Because I am respectful of it and because he is a good teacher, I asked bro’s opinion of Pelosi’s ‘no impeachment’ pledge. This is his response:

“As frank said she did what she had to do politically. But we need to put politics aside at some point and deal with this problem. So many of these things I thought we learned from Vietnam/watergate but they seem to have come back to bite us in the ass again.. Impeachment is not only about breaking the law but more importantly about abuse of power.The abuse of power part of impeachment is there to keep the President,whoever it might be, from doing exactly what Bush has done. But the problem with that is, it’s an after the events protection. And with Bush putting even more power in the hands of the president, the ability and ease of abusing that power is even much greater now. Therefore Bush himself has made the impeachment process that much more important a process to ensure the president, who ever it might be, doesn’t abuse that expanded power. So if we give the president even more power as we have done and then are unwilling to at least investigate whether he/she has abused it, are we not letting him or her abuse it with no repercussions? Power with no means of control or oversight has proven to be very dangerous, wouldn’t you say? Maybe the debate should be centered around how much power the Pres. should have and what he/she can do with it without congressional approval/oversight? We need to ensure this doesn’t happen AGAIN and I think impeachment might be the best and maybe only way to expose HIS abuse of power and the need to address it for the future. It’s not about revenge,it’s not about Pelosi, it’s not about Bush, it’s about doing what’s needed to make sure it doesn’t happen again, EVER. And so if impeachment is what’s needed, then sorry Pelosi, your political image is gonna have to take a back seat to what’s important to the integrity of our form of government. Even if Bush is forced to resign as Nixon did, it still doesn’t solve the problem. It will be the second president that has abused his power, resigned in disgrace, and leaves the door open for another president to abuse the power. And as I said previously, Bush expanding the power of the president makes this that more important an issue to address.”

I don’t, necessarily, disagree with him. In fact, I agree with his central points. I also think Pelosi is right and for these reasons:

1) Until we have a qualified and worthy Democrat in the White House working in partnership with a Democrat-controlled Congress, this country cannot get to the real work of preserving our constitution and legislating fairness and equality and protection for all her citizens. And getting our soldiers home! We have a lot of wrongs to right. We can begin now, but job-1 is to elect a Democrat as our next president and for the next two years we need calm and results in Congress to do it.
2) Tying up important Congressional actions in impeachment hearings will, I fear, stop the progressive momentum brought by the recent elections. Can you imagine the media circus! Just as we have begun to marginalize the idiotic cacophony of the rightwing, 24/7 impeachment coverage will hand them the mic again.
3) All that impeachment will accomplish is removing Bush from office where his power can now be limited until his presidency ends. It doesn’t punish him in any meaningful way for any of his crimes and I suspect that afterwards the country would not have the will to do what needs to be done, which is to prosecute the lot of them for war crimes.

Of course all bets are off if the Boy King cannot be contained.

This is a good debate to have. What’s your opinion?