SU Professor discusses President Bush Impeachment

Getting President Bush out of office may seem far fetched to some, but in the eyes of Southern University professor Dr. Albert Samuels it was perfectly mapped out.
On Wednesday, Oct. 25, associate professor of political science Dr. Samuels held a program in Rodney G. Higgins Hall titled “American Fascism: The Case of the Impeachment of George W. Bush.”
The program labeled and outlined several reasons why the current President should be removed from the highest elected office of the country.
Samuels began the program by naming the three reasons or issues that would cause the impeachment of the President of United States, as treason, bribery, and ‘other high crimes or misdemeanors.’
According to Samuels, these reasons were first placed in the Constitution, as quoted by Benjamin Franklin, “to eliminate the need for assassination.” The framers’ original intent was to include articles of impeachment to protect the political system from tyranny.
Historically, only two American presidents have ever been impeached. In 1858, Andrew Johnson and William Clinton in 1998. The only president to resign from office in order to avoid impeachment was Richard Nixon in 1974. Samuels said that historically, neither president was impeached for the reasons given to the public.
Johnson was impeached because of a “fundamental disagreement on Reconstruction” and that Clinton was ousted because of “moral issues.”
Samuels gave as many as seven reasons why the Bush administration should be taken out of office, listing them as the dangers that the Framers were afraid of in government.
The first impeachable offense that the Bush administration is guilty of, according to Samuels, was lying to the Congress and the American people, the initial reason that Nixon resigned his office. Samuels charges the current administration with giving the public false pretenses about the real reason America is at war, by giving inadequate and misleading statements to gain popularity and backing to fight the ‘War on Terrorism.’
“Lying has been a manner of course for this administration,” Samuels said.
The remaining factors that lead Samuels to believe that Bush and his administration should be removed were the “subverted way that this administration runs roughshod over the principle of the rule of law and ignores the separation of powers,” violation of treaties, undermining United States citizens civil liberties.
The administration’s “gross negligence” in response to Hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005 and denial of intelligence that the levees would break in New Orleans, when being informed about the risks beforehand in a video conference the day before the storm.
Samuels also cited the outing of a CIA agent whose husband wrote an opinion-editorial piece about the administration, legalizing methods of torture, investigation and denying habeas corpus-to challenge the constitutionality of a conviction-to enemy combatant, which is unconstitutional.
Faced with so many reasons and issues, Samuels pointed out that in 1998, when William Clinton was undergoing investigation, a survey of over 60 percent of Americans did not believe that Clinton should be impeached while a current survey of well over 53 percent believe that George W. Bush should be removed from office.
Despite claims that this Republican Congress has failed to fulfill their role, the fact remains that no one has raised these issues in Congress to start an investigation or a hearing to remove Bush from office.
To explain this, Samuels simply said, “This country is not run by government, but by politics.”