On Wednesday Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was interviewed by Ed Schultz on his radio show. Jonathan Schwarz (“A Tiny Revolution”) provides an .mp3 link and transcribed some of her remarks (emphases added):
…I’ve always said that you need to keep it on the table, and you need to look at these things, because now people are dying because of this administration. That’s the truth. And they won’t change course. They are ignoring the Congress. They keep signing these signing statements which mean that he’s decided not to enforce the law. This is as close as we’ve ever come to a dictatorship. When you have a situation where Congress is stepped on, that means the American people are stepped on. So I don’t think you can take anything off the table. Because in fact the Constitution doesn’t permit us to take these things off the table.
SCHULTZ: Would you counsel Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to put it on the table and make a statement before everybody goes home in August. Because they’re going to get an earful from the American people when they go home.
BOXER: Well, I don’t presume to tell people what to do. I have made my statements. And of course if asked I will say. I’ve been out there, I’m out here again today. I think, John Conyers is — this is where impeachment starts. When Alberto Gonzales, when it came out that he fired these U.S. attorneys, that it was politics being played with it, I thought then that we should look into impeachment hearings. So I don’t think it should be taken off the table.
Boxer also lists warrantless electronic surveillance as grounds for impeachment.
Impeachment should never really be off the table, for anyone.
I agree; I don’t see why Pelosi said it was last year before the election. Even as a political pledge, it was dumb: why drop your strongest weapon unilaterally? She lost leverage with the GOP and enthusiasm (at least with me) when she said that.