Here’s the president:
“When this ruling came down, I instructed my administration to get to work immediately with Members of Congress willing to fight for the American people to develop a forceful, bipartisan response to this decision. We have begun that work, and it will be a priority for us until we repair the damage that has been done.”
Forget the “bipartisan” BS, the point is that this statement advocates a forceful response from Congress. What could such a thing be? Legislation could lessen the damage, but not reverse it, and could hardly be seen as forceful. A Constitutional Amendment gets closer and is ultimately what’s needed, but it requires that the states take action, as well as, or instead of, Congress. The only forceful response Congress can offer, regardless of whether it’s uni-partisan, bi-partisan, tri-partisan, or non-partisan, is impeachment.
Oh, but you can’t impeach justices for rendering decisions you don’t like. They have to have truly abused power in a serious way. They have to have done something that could fit this description from President Obama:
“We’ve been making steady progress. But this week, the United States Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists – and a powerful blow to our efforts to rein in corporate influence. This ruling strikes at our democracy itself. By a 5-4 vote, the Court overturned more than a century of law – including a bipartisan campaign finance law written by Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold that had barred corporations from using their financial clout to directly interfere with elections by running advertisements for or against candidates in the crucial closing weeks.
“This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy. It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way – or to punish those who don’t. That means that any public servant who has the courage to stand up to the special interests and stand up for the American people can find himself or herself under assault come election time. Even foreign corporations may now get into the act.
“I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.”
Impeachment is for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
Treason? Check. These five jusices have, according to Obama, just given foreign, not to mention international, corporations the power to greatly influence the outcomes of U.S. elections.
Bribery? Check. This decision facilitates, not to say legalizes, massive bribery the likes of which the world has never known.
Other high crimes and misdemeanors? Check. These five justices ruled on an issue not requested of them and not relevant to the case they heard, and did so in a manner destructive of long-standing precedent. That’s a serious abuse of power.
So, take your pick: treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors: we’ve got ’em all here, and we’ve got the president of the United States pointing this out to us and Congress.
Let’s hurry up and demand impeachment proceedings before President Obama declares concern over this decision to constitute looking backwards.