OPINION:
All this talk of Republicans being on the verge of impeaching President Obama is nonsense, stoked by Democrats whipping up their base, and a few wistful conservatives who dream aloud about what, in a sane nation, should actually happen to a lawless president.
With Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, running the U.S. Senate, however, it’s not going to happen. House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, has said this over and over to no good effect other than to provide more ammo for the left. His denials have had roughly the same impact as when Richard Nixon assured us: “I’m not a crook.” It’s never good to repeat something that your opponents want to pin on you.
But now we have to listen to revisionist history on top of all this.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas Democrat, impugned the motives of Mr. Boehner for bringing to a floor vote Wednesday a resolution to sue Mr. Obama for usurping powers delegated by the Constitution to Congress. The measure passed on a party-line vote of 225 to 201.
“I ask my colleagues to oppose this resolution for it is, in fact, a veiled attempt for impeachment and it undermines the law that allows a president to do his job,” Mrs. Jackson Lee said, reading from the North Korean Constitution. (Just kidding about that last part).
She claimed, as reported by the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross, that Democrats who were upset over the war in Iraq “did not seek an impeachment of President Bush, because as an executive, he had his authority. President Obama has the authority.”
To do what? Anything he wants, apparently.
Mrs. Jackson Lee seems to have forgotten that she was one of 11 Democratic co-sponsors of a resolution introduced by then-Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Democrat, in June 2008, titled, “Impeaching George W. Bush, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors.”
If you don’t think that was about impeachment, I have some cool, arid, mountainous, seaside property to sell you in Mrs. Jackson Lee’s Houston district.
Just because the impeachment bill didn’t go anywhere doesn’t mean Mrs. Jackson Lee can rewrite history, even if that’s her hobby. In January, she said that Americans have done little to help the poor, and that the word “welfare” should be replaced by “transitional-living fund.”
As noted on the website DiscovertheNetworks.org, she declared in 2005 that the United States has been a constitutional republic for 400 years (not 217 years at the time), and that astronaut Neil Armstrong planted an American flag on Mars (not the moon).
She outdid herself in 2010 when she took to the House floor to say that, in Vietnam, “Victory had been achieved. Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace.”
The North won the war in 1975 and absorbed the South into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976.
On the bright side, at least Mrs. Jackson Lee knows that Vietnam is a country or two. Many graduates today think that “Vietnamese” is merely a type of ethnic food.
The same month that Mrs. Jackson Lee made her gaffe about Vietnam, she spoke at an NAACP meeting where, as the Gateway Pundit blog reports, she derided Tea Party members as racists, saying:
“All those who wore [Klansman] sheets a long time ago have now lifted them off and started wearing [applause], uh, clothing, uh, with a name, say, I am part of the Tea Party.”
This fits Mr. Obama’s supporters’ mantra that anyone opposing his authoritarianism or disastrous foreign policies is a hater.
Responding to the House vote to sue him, Mr. Obama actually told Republicans, “just stop hatin’ all the time.”
Whatever else that is, it’s not presidential. It’s right down there with Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. warning Rep. Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, at a hearing: “You don’t want to go there, buddy.”
In a few years, Mrs. Jackson Lee will probably tell us that the two men had been discussing vacation plans.
Robert Knight is senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.