You spin it for free Amos.

Prepare to Impeach Obama if He Accepts Unconstitutional Powers

by Ralph Lopez

With Obama backpedaling on the investigation of torture and other Bush crimes, his promised rollback of unconstitutional Executive Branch powers seems in peril. On the prosecution of Bush crimes, Joe Biden has already given the standard slimeball cop-out you would expect from Joe Biden: "We're looking forward, we're not looking backwards." On Obama's transition website change.gov, the question which outranked all other questions from the public was on the appointment of a special prosecutor, submitted by Bob Fertik of Democrats.com. The question was disregarded, even though it had the most votes, as having been "already answered."

And today in the New York Times Obama signaled his reluctance to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture and warrantless wiretapping, until there was evidence. Bush admitted to approving torture, illegal surveillance, there is blood all over the floor and five bodies heaped in the corner. But we need evidence.

But the case can be made that if Obama refuses to do his duty to uphold the Constitution, then at some point when he has reasonably been given a chance, the focus of the Bush impeachment movement should transfer to him. By not explicitly renouncing the Executive Branch's new powers to declare American citizens as "enemy combatants" indefinitely, to torture them as they did Jose Padilla, to engage in warrantless wiretapping, and to break the law with impunity, he implicitly accepts these unconstitutional powers. Absent an explicit renunciation of these and their accompanying, unconstitutional legislative counterparts like the Military Commissions Act, he will be acting outside the law, as George Bush was, and he will be passing these powers on to his successor.

The economic crisis will deepen into a Darwinian quagmire no matter what Obama does. In the end it will end as all depressions end: with the strongest fatter than ever and everyone else pretty much starting all over again. This is not about another temporary economic cycle. It's about what form of government we will live under for the next one hundred years.

Obama is in a tenuous position, and it would behoove him to understand that there are those on his own left who take the constitutional form of government seriously. With powers in his own party already signaling that it will not be an easy ride, by balking at what should be an uncontroversial element in his tax plan, a $3000 tax credit for companies which hire or retrain workers, he is looking at hostility from both the right and the left. It's starting to look like Jimmy Carter all over again.