Liberal Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold said Sunday he wants Congress to censure President Bush for his management of the Iraq war and his “assault” against the Constitution.
Question for PracticalReasoning….. Is it legal to censure George W. because you don’t agree with his politics? If I remember correctly, didn’t everyone agree or at least agree to support the War after the 911 attacks? How many democratic politicians agreed and supported the president in those early days? Are they going to be censured, too?
From reading the AP article, it doens’t sound like the democratic leadership is interested in pursuing the censure – but I do like Mitch McConnell’s response on the matter: “I think it’s safe to say Russ Feingold is not a fan of George Bush. I think that’s the best way to sum that up,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
witch hunting presidents is what congress does now. they need to censure Bush to retaliate for Clinton and the impeachment hearings. It’s called “wasting our money”
Oh, and if you would like to do a link exchange, I get some pretty decent traffic.
eric
criminyjicket – witch hunting – excellent analogy and I agree retaliation is the motive.
There is nothing in the Constiution about censuring a president. Basically, it’s a statement of dissaproval but has no binding punitive effect. In other words, it’s useless – the perfect policy for today’s Democrats. Make no mistake, Feingold does not want to censure Bush becasue he disagrees with his Iraq policy – he wan’t to censure Bush in order to score political points with the ultra-liberal wing of the Democrat party. So, is censure legal? Sure – it’s not even technically a ‘legal’ act. Will it do anything? No.
Cool – appreciate the repsonse and perspective, PR.
Is it legal to censure, sure. It’s just as legal as a non-binding vote of no confidence.
As for binding things like impeachment, well, they are legal too if you have evidence to back them up. Evidence like the vice presidents office pressuring intelligence to provide biased info, or releasing the names of covert agents to get back at people who don’t agree with their interpretation of the intelligence. But, that is what a special prosecutor is for, to find the hard evidence before flying off the handle into impeachment hearings.