Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday to discuss the prospect of impeaching President Barack Obama – they just weren’t very eager to use the dreaded “I-word.”
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted the GOP’s equivocations.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said that “impeachment” is “the word that we don’t like to say in this committee, and I’m not about to utter here in this particular hearing.”
But the Republicans were given an opening when a witness, Georgetown law professor Nicholas Rosenkranz, told the lawmakers that they should not “be hesitant to speak the word in this room.”
Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX), who’s previously lamented the lack of impeachment fever in the Senate and who may or may not be a birther, wondered what recourse House Republicans may have.
“We’ve also talked about the I-word, impeachment, which I don’t think would get past the Senate in the current climate. . . . Is there anything else we can do?” Farenthold said, as quoted by Milbank.
According to Hearst, the House Republicans detailed a laundry list of Obama’s alleged transgressions that could warrant impeachment:
Examples included bombing Libya without congressional authorization; delaying implementation of some provisions of Obamacare; waiving immigration restrictions to enable children of illegal immigrants to remain in the United States; easing federal drug enforcement in states that have legalized the medicinal or recreational use of marijuana; ending mandatory-minimum prison sentences for some drug offenses; and permitting the Internal Revenue Service to scrutinize conservative organizations’ applications for non-profit, tax-exempt status.
