The Portland chapter of Drinking Liberally, a nationwide network holding informal, inclusive progressive social gatherings, hosted a face-to-face meeting this past Thursday night (September 6th) at the Lucky Labrador Brew Pub in SE Portland with Oregon House Speaker and Democratic candidate for US Senate Jeff Merkley.

In the meet-and-greet Merkley was engaged in both informal "working the room" style face time with voters, and gave a 10 min. or so speech outlining why Gordon Smith-R OR needs to be replaced with a solid progressive Senator, to effectively end the canceling out effect Smith has on Senator Ron Wyden, thereby effectively giving Oregon no voice in the U.S. Senate.

It was however during the substantive and lengthy Q & A following his brief speech where people got a good sense of the candidate and where Merkley, when asked about investigations and impeachment of members of the Bush administration (up to and including Bush himself) broke some new (at least within this century) ground. After making humorous note of how Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation as U.S. Attorney General within a week of Merkley publicly calling for his impeachment if Bush would not fire him over his incontrovertible dishonesty under oath to Congress, Merkley in his response stated at the outset that he firmly believes that "impeachment should never be off the table" regardless of who is president.

This signaled a much more clear-eyed and less hand-shy declaration than what, unfortunately, we have gotten from the Democratic leadership in Congress, particularly that of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. While Merkley didn't explicitly state he was calling for impeaching Bush or Cheney at this moment, he made it clear that serious investigations should be undertaken by Congress, into the most secretive and out-of-control administration in modern U.S. history. He called for robust investigation and to vigorously pursue what is turned up by such investigations in order to restore the Constitutional checks and balances.

Jeff Merkley deserves kudos for moving past the backward and ill-conceived stance by Pelosi and the House leadership which boils down to effectively negotiating against your own position in holding oversight authority of the executive branch. This came the same evening that it became public that Representatives Darlene Hooley, OR-05 said the same thing to constituents in Lake Oswego, then Rep. Earl Blumenauer, OR-03 also moved to the same position, and recognized that impeachment should always be on the table, and has been since 1789.