http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=1010134&format=textPoll: Impeachment talk gains steam after Libby move
By Herald wire services
Sunday, July 8, 2007
A bad week for President Bush may foreshadow a dismal political season, as the president’s poll numbers plummet, Republicans abandon his Iraq policy and he faces a nascent censure and impeachment movement.
A new survey by the American Research Group found that only 31 percent of respondents approve of the president’s commutation of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence. The study by the private New Hampshire-based polling company canvassed 1,100 Republicans, Democrats and Independents from July 3-5, finding 64 percent disapproved of the commutation and 5 percent were undecided.
The president commuted the sentence Monday, saying the 2 years imposed last month on Libby, who was found guilty of perjury and obstructing justice in a case linked to the Iraq war, was “excessive.”
The commutation has sparked a firestorm on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), who has drafted a resolution to censure Bush, said the president’s “intervention is an unconscionable abuse of authority by George W. Bush, and Congress must step forward and express the disgust that Americans rightfully feel toward this contemptible decision.”
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has scheduled hearings Wednesday on the commutation. The hearings will include pardons made by Clinton, former President Bush and possibly other past presidents.
Those hearings may be the least of the White House’s problems.
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