We Need A Hero
Dec 30th, 2005 at 7:16 pm by Susie
The late, great Barbara Jordan’s speech to the House impeachment hearings in the matter of Richard Nixon:
Beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in and continuing to the present time, the president has engaged in a series of public statements and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by government prosecutors. Moreover, the president has made public announcements and assertions bearing on the Watergate case which the evidence will show he knew to be false.
These assertions, false assertions, impeachable, those who misbehave. Those who “behave amiss or betray their public trust.”
James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: “A president is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.”
The Constitution charges the president with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the president has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregarded the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, concealed surreptitious entry, attempted to compromise a federal judge while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice.
“A president is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.”
If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that eighteenth century Constitution should be abandoned to a twentieth-century paper shredder. Has the president committed offenses and planned and directed and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the Constitution will not tolerate? That is the question. We know that. We know the question. We should now forthwith proceed to answer the question. It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.”
What a woman she was. If you read her speeches, or at least read what Molly Ivins had to say about her, you’ll understand how very special she was. When she was elected to the Texas Leg, one of her colleagues called her a “nigger mammy washerwoman.”
We will never, never go back.
I remember the force of her presence in the impeachment process. I had forgoten the force of her logic.
Thank youfor reminding us of the greatness of Barbara Jordan.