Impeaching, convicting and removing Dick Cheney and George W. Bush from office goes beyond punishing them for their crimes. It goes to sending a message to their successors, assuming there will be successors come January 20, 2009, that no one is above the law and failure to "preserve, protect and defend" the US Constitution, criminality and corruption will not be tolerated.

This is the message that the leaders of Congress, White House aspirants and the corporate media wish to ignore. This is the message the American people who aren�t clamoring for the impeachment and removal of this demonic duo aren�t grasping.

As to which one is the bigger monster -- Cheney or Bush -- is something for history to decide. The neocons knew precisely what they were doing when they chose Bush as their front man -- the seemingly �plain talking� good ol� boy that every Joe Six-Pack wanted to share a beer with, but who, in Texas parlance, is meaner than a rattle snake.

What is at stake here is what is left of this republic and its constitution upon which rests the principle that government is run by the consent of the people, not the corporations, religious institutions, the desires of Israel or any other foreign entity, or secretive cabals.

Given the power Bush has taken unto himself -- with the help of Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General John Ashcroft and others in his administration -- as the �unitary executive,� �the decider� who doesn�t have to explain anything or answer to anyone, who can overrule Congress with signing statements, who can rule with executive orders, who abuses recess appointments to install crooks and ideologues in important posts, who can preemptively strike any nation he pleases to wage wars of aggression, who can declare people �enemy combatants� and have them tortured and locked away for life without benefit of counsel or trial, it is as plain as day why those who seek to succeed him aren�t clamoring for his head and the heads of all the culprits in his administration, and why they don�t want the House of Representatives to undertake impeachment proceedings against Cheney and Bush. They are salivating over the prospect of the power the next occupant of the Oval Office will have.

Think about that.

That is called absolute power. Remember what Lord Acton said: �Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.�

America has been sliding toward the abyss for a long time. This round began on the day Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Jimmy Carter, whose hands aren�t entirely clean, was an anomaly. Then came Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush who gave us Iran-contra, which was far worse than the Watergate scandal. The difference, though, is Reagan and his vice president, George �I was out of the loop� Bush, got away with their nefarious deeds. So much so that when the elder Bush succeeded Reagan, he managed to bury the Iraq-gate scandal by luring Saddam Hussein into attacking Kuwait -- remember Ambassador April Glaspie telling Saddam that Bush had no interest in the �Kuwait issue�? -- so he (Bush) could attack Iraq, which previously was America�s ally. Bill Clinton, too, built on what his predecessors got away with -- albeit more sneakily -- by signing awful crime bills, strengthening the awful FISA court, keeping the sanctions imposed by Bush on Iraq, bombing Iraq, Kosovo and an aspirin factory in Khartoum, approving �extraordinary rendition� (better known as the extrajudicial shipping of a person from one state to another for what has been called �torture by proxy�). Clinton was impeached for his sexual peccadilloes not for his crimes Then, thanks to the Supreme Court and two stolen elections, Bush the younger and his sidekick, Cheney. Need any more be said?

Despite all this, the corporate media want to give Cheney-Bush a free pass on the lame excuse that they will be out of office in 18 months. Will they?

What happens when they set off the next 9-11 and Bush has his �catatrophic emergency� excuse to invoke his National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, which makes him dictator? There will be no �steenking� election -- honest or rigged. Baby Doc Bush can then declare himself �president for life.�

Have the corporate media cuties even read what is in those documents that he signed, without scrutiny, on May 9? Has anyone in Congress read them? They surely haven�t had any publicity that would make people sit up and take notice.

This is the same corporate media that dutifully blames �al Qaeda� for anything and everything, including last Friday�s and Saturday�s Mickey Mouse incidents in London and Glasgow. Worse, they don�t know the difference between a car bomb and a Molotov cocktail on wheels.