Letters to the Editor

Always time for impeachment

You say there is not enough time to impeach Bush. But it only took 10 days to impeach Andrew Johnson. It only took two months to impeach Clinton, followed by a two-month trial. If Bush were impeached for refusing to comply with subpoenas, then the process could be very short because there is no difficulty in proving this. Please get your facts straight before giving up on American democracy. We can still save this government. More facts at: http://www.impeachbush.tv/

Phil Burk

Lawlessness run amok

It’s disappointing as a foreigner to read the comments expressed by this American author [“Supporting Solutions,” July 2].

Not so very long ago I used to live in a world where America’s word on humanities shared treaties against torture and launching aggressive invasions was at very least not blatantly and flagrantly broken.

Impeachment is a lawful and a political response to grievous moral and legal wrongs (like torture and launching illegal wars against both U.S. and international law) and a failure to impeach is an indictment on the collective character of the citizens of the United States of America.

If the citizens of the U.S. do not lawfully and publicly repudiate the grievous outrages their president has carried out in the world on their watch, then the world is entitled and logically obliged to recognize that they are accessories after the fact.

Impeachment is not just about Bush now, it is about the U.S. citizen. It is about whether the U.S. citizen deserves to be a member in good standing of the human race.

How, even in principle, is it possible to win a war on terror when both major political parties in a nation and when most of the commentariat of a nation do not repudiate torture and aggressive invasion? Terrorism is a political act of desperation. But the people of the U.S., through not doing their duty with respect to the people of the world, through not upholding their promises on treaties and through modeling lawlessness and exceptionalism to the world, are not only not innocent; They are, in the absence of impeachment, guilty of terrorism against the rest of humanity.

Without impeachment, the citizens of the U.S., as well as their current president, the current Congress and both major political parties, stand before the world in naked, lawless infamy and utter hypocrisy.

To such a lawless nation, how could not a rational world composed of mortals who wish better for their own children see the bringing of terror, the returning of terror, as a necessity forced upon them?

If the world contained another United States, that other United States would be in deadly conflict with this current one that will not impeach its president and uphold its most solemn promises.

Brett Paatsch

Right to go topless

If Jen Moss is denied the right to be top-free in the Fourth of July Parade, then the same rule must apply to all sans-shirt men! [In response to “Baring it all,” July 2.] Please note that thousands of women will partake in an upcoming National Gotopless Protest on Aug. 23 to legally end, once and for all, this ‘nipplephobia’ justified by the American politically-correct argument that the site of top-free women is not “family friendly.” (I wonder how families manage in Europe or did in Hawaii before missionaries arrived!)

Going topless or top-free in a public place for a woman cannot be determined by whether it is deemed “appropriate” by the citizens of a particular community, but by whether it is constitutional or not uniformly across our land! (Please go to gotopless.org to better understand the legal argument at stake.) As a parallel, imagine local communities in the 1960s individually ruling over the rights of African-Americans to ride or not in the front of the bus. The rights of African-Americans and of top-free women in public are both protected by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Nadine GaryGotopless.org National Event Coordinator