American voters disapprove of the job President George W. Bush is doing 53 – 41 percent, his lowest approval rating since becoming President. This compares to a 50 – 44 percent disapproval in a May 25 Quinnipiac University poll.

—Quinnipiac University Poll

It amazes me that 41 percent of Americans approve of lying and incompetence.

The Zogby Poll that found that 42 percent of Americans would approve of impeaching President Bush if he lied about the reasons for going to war finally found its way into the Washington Post. What’s next, the New York Times? (I know, silly me!)

More than four in 10 Americans, according to a recent Zogby poll, say that if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment…

The poll results certainly illustrate the intense polarization of the American electorate — not exactly news. But they also suggest an appetite for more investigation into Bush’s reasons for war and specifically — in light of the assertions in the Downing Street memos — whether his public rationales were in fact at all like his private rationales.

One topic for further inquiry, for instance, could be whether in private conversations Bush expressed the same kind of reticence about war that he advertised publicly. Some evidence — stories like this one in Time, which quotes Bush saying in March 2002: ‘[Expletive] Saddam. we’re taking him out.’ — suggests otherwise.

More people are waking up to the fact that we went to war on one man’s whim. The politics of this rising awareness will be uncontrollable by Rovian spin.

“I, too, feel that George Bush does not represent me and the Republican Party.”

– GOP Attendee at a Veterans for Peace meeting in Wisconson.

Good thing President Bush doesn’t look at polls because the new Zogby poll would seriously harsh his mellow: “Among President Bush’s fellow Republicans, a full one-in-four (25 percent) indicate they would favor impeaching the President” if he lied about the reasons for taking the country to war in Iraq. Impeachment is favored 59 percent of Democrats.

Inside the bitter outer shell, more creamy badness:

In a … significant sign of the weakness of the President’s numbers, more “Red State” voters … now rate his job performance unfavorably, with 50 percent holding a negative impression of the President’s handling of his duties, and 48 percent holding a favorable view. The President also gets negative marks from one-in-four (25 percent) Republicans—as well as 86% of Democrats and 58 percent of independents.

Notice how the 25 percent figure shows up twice. The number of Republicans who think Bush is doing a poor job equals the number who would see him impeached. Bush has done serious damage to a quarter of the party faithful. The blowback on Republicans in Congress next year could be horrendous.

It is obvious that the president and his team did mislead the country, so additional documents and witnesses will undoubtedly come to light. As evidence against Bush mounts, the number of Republicans calling for impeachment- or at least Congressional hearings – will rise.

And that is when we will invade Syria.

The atmospherics for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney may not be right until two years from now but it’s never too early to be informed about the mechanics and consider the options that confront us. Writing in Democrats & Liberals, Bert M. Caradine, editor of That Colored Fellas Weblog, examines current thinking on what is – and is not – an impeachable offense.

He also reminds us about the four Articles of Impeachment lodged against President Clintons by the Gingrich-Dole Republican Congress. The first three were related to the president’s sex lie in the Paula Jone’s case. But the fourth article has some saliency today:

Article 4 – ABUSE OF POWER

The President misused and abused his office and impaired the administration of justice.
1. The President made false and misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States;
2. The President made false and misleading statements to members of the Cabinet and White House aides;
3. The President frivolously asserted executive privilege;
4. The President made perjurious, false and misleading statements to Congress.

Looks like a slam dunk to me!

Today the Bangor News in Maine has joined the PR’s call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Even as support trickles in, the odds are slim that Bush and Cheney will ever be impeached for lying to the public in the run-up to the Iraq War. Still, here’s a fun scenario to consider: If the Dems were to take the House in November ’06, Impeachment could move forward. If the Senate were to rule against Bush and Cheney, the big office would go to the third in line, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, right.

The Presidency of Nancy Pelosi may seem like pie in the sky but – and here’s something I thought I’d never say – let’s look at the shining example of former Talibani congressman Bob Barr whose cock-eyed optimism and black-hearted loathing of President Clinton paid off in the late 1990’s. More than a year before the world was introduced to Monica Lewinsky and her blue Gap dress, Barr ignored Clinton’s high poll numbers and filed impeachment proceedings against him :

In November [1997], long before Monica, Barr introduced a resolution to open a congressional impeachment inquiry: Clinton, reads its text, “has engaged in a systemic effort to obstruct, undermine, and compromise … the executive branch.” And since Clinterngate broke, Barr has been in a state of high gloat. He’s now preparing articles of impeachment and happily adding obstruction of justice and perjury to his list of Clintonian high crimes.

Of course, Barr made a fatal error in ignoring President Clinton’s high polling. As the impeachment played out, Clinton’s poll numbers stayed high, and it was his popularity that finally scared a few Senate Republicans into ruling in his favor.

Today, we’re faced with malfeasance in the White House far graver than a sex lie. But is there even a remote chance these men will be impeached? Norm Solomon lays it out, at TomPaine.com:

Five months into 2005, the movement to impeach Bush is very small. And three enormous factors weigh against it: 1) Republicans control Congress. 2) Most congressional Democrats are routinely gutless. 3) Big media outlets shun the idea that the president might really be a war criminal.

For now, we can’t end the GOP’s majority. But we could proceed to light a fire under congressional Democrats. And during the next several weeks, it’s possible to have major impacts on news media by launching a massive educational and “agitational” campaign—spotlighting the newly leaked Downing Street Memo and explaining why its significance must be pursued as a grave constitutional issue.

The leak of the memo weeks ago, providing minutes from a high-level meeting that Prime Minister Tony Blair held with aides in July 2002, may be the strongest evidence yet that Bush is guilty of an impeachable offense. As Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote in late May:

• “First, the memo appears to directly contradict the administration’s assertions to Congress and the American people that it would exhaust all options before going to war. According to the minutes, in July 2002, the administration had already decided to go to war against Iraq.”
• “Second, a debate has raged in the United States over the last year and one half about whether the obviously flawed intelligence that falsely stated that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was a mere ‘failure’ or the result of intentional manipulation to reach foreordained conclusions supporting the case for war. The memo appears to close the case on that issue stating that in the United States the intelligence and facts were being ‘fixed’ around the decision to go to war.”

Update: Rep. Conyers has 86,000 signatures on his letter demanding an explanation of the contents of the memo from President Bush. Even you’re lukewarm on impeachment, you’d still like to hear an explanation – right? It only takes a minute. Do it!