John MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine, calls for impeachment

In Canada's national newspaper at that... The Globe and Mail is Canada's NYT.


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Impeach Bush now

Unmasking a CIA agent is bad, lying to Congress worse. With each U.S. death in Iraq, the case against the President grows stronger, says JOHN MacARTHUR

By JOHN MacARTHUR
From Thursday's Globe and Mail

Now that the U.S. government's chief weapons inspector in Iraq has, in effect, confirmed an obvious truth -- that President George W. Bush and his closest advisers promoted a non-existent nuclear and chemical weapons threat from Iraq to justify a war -- an obvious question presents itself: Why aren't Americans talking seriously about impeachment?

After all, Mr. Bush now stands plausibly accused of the lofty crime of subverting the Constitution of the United States -- that is, lying to Congress about an imminent danger to the American people in order to collect enough votes to authorize his corporate/imperial project in Iraq. Yet, outside of a few brave remarks from Senator Robert Graham, and the considered opinion of Watergate stool pigeon John W. Dean, almost nobody dares speak the "I" word.

Is the notion really so preposterous? Reasonable people can disagree about the "intent" of the founding fathers when they wrote the clause that states that "the president . . . shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors."

But one doesn't need to be a constitutional scholar to interpret the meaning of a civil covenant that leaves plenty of room for political manoeuvre.

Indeed, the genius of James Madison and his colleagues lay not so much in their literal specificity, but in their deliberate ambiguity. Depending on the era and circumstances, one man's high crime is Bill Clinton lying about sex with Monica Lewinsky in front of a grand jury; another's is Richard Nixon's involvement in (and lying about) the Watergate burglary cover up. Lately, my idea of a high crime is lying to Congress, before the authorization for war was voted last Oct. 11 -- a time when the administration was touting an atomic bomb threat from embargo-starved Baghdad.


SNIP

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031009.maca09/BNStory/International/

the impeachable facts. And that's how Ailes and FoxNews want it.

I responded to the headline "Impeach Bush Now" more than the content. On reread, they don't fit together that well.

Just got a subscription to Harper's last week and I can't wait to get my first copy. I've seen interviews with MacArthur and found him to be really intellegent and straightforward.

I grew up with it as my father was a subscriber all my life. The writing is wonderful and the Index... legendary.

Harper's Magazine made its debut in June 1850, the brainchild of the prominent New York book-publishing firm Harper & Brothers. The initial press run of 7,500 copies sold out immediately, and within six months circulation had reached 50,000.

Although the earliest issues consisted largely of material that had already been published in England, the magazine soon began to print the work of American artists and writers -- among them Horace Greeley, Horatio Alger, Stephen A. Douglas, Winslow Homer, Mark Twain, Frederic Remington, Theodore Dreiser, John Muir, Booth Tarkington, Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Jack London. Several departments served to note regularly important events of the day, such as the publication of Herman Melville's new novel Moby-Dick; the laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable; the latest discoveries from Thomas Edison's workshop; the progress of the crusade for women's rights.

In more recent years, the magazine published Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill long before either man became a political leader. Theodore Roosevelt wrote for Harper's, as did Henry L. Stimson when he defended the bombing of Hiroshima. In the 1970s, Harper's Magazine broke Seymour Hersh's account of the My Lai massacre and devoted a full issue to Norman Mailer's "The Prisoner of Sex."

Over the years, the magazine's format has been revamped, its general appearance has evolved considerably, and ownership has changed hands. In1962, Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson, & Company to become Harper & Row (now HarperCollins). Some years later the magazine became a separate corporation and a division of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune Company. In 1980, when the parent company announced that Harper's Magazine would cease publication, John R. (Rick) MacArthur and his father, Roderick, urged the boards of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Atlantic Richfield Company to make a grant of assets and funds to form the Harper's Magazine Foundation, which now operates the magazine.

In 1984, Harper's Magazine was completely redesigned by editor Lewis H. Lapham and MacArthur, who had become publisher of Harper's Magazine and president of the Foundation. Recognizing the time constraints of the modern reader, the revived magazine introduced such original journalistic forms as the Harper's Index, Readings, and the Annotation to complement its acclaimed fiction, essays, and reporting. Throughout the years Harper's has received eleven National Magazine Awards, among many other journalistic and literary honors.

The year 2000 marked the sesquicentennial of Harper's Magazine and, to celebrate, the magazine has introduced several new editorial inventions and restorations: Archive, Map, and Review. It has also published An American Album: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Harper's Magazine, a 712-page illustrated anthology -- with an introduction by Lewis H. Lapham and a foreword by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. -- a cloth-bound volume that offers a unique perspective on American life, distilled from the pages of the nation's oldest continuously published magazine.

... before the "All-Volunteer" military created a US foreign legion of the poor, and before the Rove/Murdoch propaganda machine absolved Dubya from accountability in the minds of US voters, Presidents were held very responsible for every unnecessary casualty overseas.

Here in the 50 States and DC, right now we have trouble remembering how Lyndon Johnson agonized over every Vietnam casualty and how Bill Clinton was vilified in the media for putting at risk overseas a tiny fraction of the numbers on whom Dubya and company have painted bullseyes in Iraq.

As time goes on and casualties mount, maybe more and more in the US once again will be able to see and think as clearly as the author of this Globe and Mail piece.

See the dead marines in Beirut.

When the 20 (??) US soldiers were killed in Saudi Arabia, the Republicans called for the resignation/firing of the entire Clinton administration and military leadership.

NO one reminded the American public of the MUCH larger loss of life under Reagan.

by sending US troops to Iraq region prior to a legal means of employing them re: a UN vote the Bush Criminals blackmailed the American people into supporting the nonsense war (which was mainly for domestic political considerations, ie: filling up media time and welding bush's backers to his policy; bush inc engineered the overthrow of legal government in 2000 election, so 911, blowing up flight 587, the anthrax murders, afghanistan, iraq etc are all just garnish to that main course, the coup d'etat)
how americans can't see that they were blackmailed (nevermind that the war itself was just a conjob) by their own government, is absolutely amazing!