So I am sitting at home and reading dKos as per usual, except that today was a special day for me. I had great expectations. I got on the computer as early as I could (damn, it was already afternoon here in CA), confident that my fellow Kossacks attending the glorious Netroots Nation event in Austin, would come armed with the full arsenal of questions for Speaker Pelosi.
So I click here, I click there, my mouth waters as I get to Smitheus' report on the front page about what went down with Pelosi and Gore...and... and... then the report is over. I am stunned. I quickly peruse the article again, but nope, it's not there. Now I am totally flummoxed: THE question has not been asked! You know, The Question. The one that Ms. Speaker has taken off the table like a stressed housewife in the grips of obsessive-compulsive over cleaning, the Impeachment Question, of course!
Q: Madame Speaker, why did you take impeachment off the table?
A: THE ANSWER!
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It did not happen! The question was not asked!
Whyohwhy, dear beloved Kossack at the convention, has nobody asked that question?
You may know that Bob Barr has arrived at Netroots Nation. He bought a one-day pass and decided to mingle with the assembled conventioneers. And he drew a crowd. I first spied him when Kate Sheppard of Grist was interviewing him about his environmental policies (a lot of "we don't know if man is causing global warming, we need further study, etc). All of us wanted to talk to him, but we didn't quite know what to ask. But after a couple of minutes it hit me, and my good buddy clammyc lent me his voice recorder and I sidled up to Barr to ask my first question.
Me: Rep. Barr, do you believe the impeachment of President Clinton was a good deterrent to the expansion of executive power and the establishment of the rule of law for the executive branch?
House Democratic leaders said the proceedings would not be about Bush's impeachment, a first step in the Constitution's process of a removing a president from office.
The crimes are under review by our crime fighting congress! Oh goody, more investigations that have no result, other than casting further doubt on the notion that we are a nation of laws.
It is as if, one fine sunny day in school, a bully went rampaging through the halls, breaking into lockers, beating up students, and the hall monitor snuck over to one of the victims and whispered, "Excuse me, did you notice if he had the requisite hall pass?"
... of Cheney, or Bush, isn't going to happen.
There simply isn't enough time left on the play clock.
That doesn't mean that Kucinich and company are tilting at windmills, however. The impeachment movement is fulfilling a very important role, one vital to the welfare of our democracy. It is using the Republican's most potent weapon against them.
Fear.
Not the same way they use it against us. We are making them fear for the only thing they really care about... their own asses.
Nope, impeachment isn't going to happen. But that's OK.
Eight days ago, I saw the video of the second meeting Veterans for Peace held with Congressman John Conyers and ran completely out of patience.
The wrongdoing of this administration is clear. We have been presented with lie after lie and excuse after excuse by this complicit Congress for a lack of movement on the impeachment issue. The Bush administration has been cited with NINE subpoenas by Congress that they have completely ignored.
I wrote and emailed a letter (several weeks ago) to Speaker Pelosi, as did many people who were disgusted with her actions of late related to impeachment and FISA, and then, subsequent to this, I believe, realizing that her political career might actually be in jeopardy due to her failure to honor her sacred responsibility to defend the constitution, she made a decision to attend this year's NETROOTS convention, thinking, I believe, that she can play some spin-doctoring to change the opinions of the blogging world, given our rising power in politics ... additionally, she has made an empty gesture by sending the articles to the Senate (see video below)
... well, my request to you all in attendance at NETROOTS ... please SLAM her and let her know that her empty gestures will NOT salvage her political career!
Your enabling of this corrupt regime will be recognized. I as well as my father just donated 4600 dollars each to the honorable Cindy Sheehan. We are determined to primary you. Should we fail, we have also petitioned the International Criminal Court to prosecute you as well as the not so honorable president (lower case intentional) George W. Bush. You were complicit after the fact. You have allowed his crimes against humanity to continue unabated. This we, and the world will not forget. How can you open an inquiry to his most obvious crimes, and not move forward to hold him accountable? Your weakness is not an excuse. Just as "I was just following orders" was not an excuse at Nuremburg, it shall not be now.
In a stunning development which fell with the silence of a feather yesterday, 9 Republicans broke with their iron-fisted party to put country first, and voted to send Rep. Dennis Kucinich's article of impeachment HR 1345 to the Judiciary, where Chairman John Conyers will hold a hearings on abuses of power by the Bush administration, according to the Congressional Quaterly's CQToday. Ten Republicans abstained in this critical moment, while only 5 Dems did. The vote was neck and neck at many moments, with "Nays" pulling ahead twice.
Those Republicans are (Yea 238 - Nay 180):
Congressman Kevin Brady (TX)
Congressman Wayne Gilchrest (MD)
Congressman Walter B. Jones (NC)
Representative Don Manzullo (IL)
U.S. Congressman Tim Murphy(PA)
Congressman Ron Paul (TX)
Congressman Dave Reichert (WA)
Congressman Christopher Shays (CT)
Representative Mike Turner (OH)
One of the Republicans, Walter Jones, represents Camp LeJeune in North Carolina, one of the largest Marine bases in the country, and one which has borne heavily the sacrifice of the Iraq War.
I read once, "funny how people get peaceful once dead".
If our Congress' capitulation to Bush is supposed to somehow sate his thirst for total power over us, and if by surrendering or acquiescing to his demands we are to believe that by scrapping the 4th Amendment he will not make any more assaults against our Constitution, then we are truly dead. Surrender equates to the death of our republic-and us, just a surely and as quickly as standing in front of a firing squad.
And all the rationalizing away of the consequences of the FISA capitulation and saying, "we'll get him next year" when Obama takes office is a copout, and well, it's simply living in a dream world or alternate reality. It shows a total ignorance of the lessons of past history. Follow my rant under the fold...
Rep. Jerrold Nadler,(NY) member of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, the committee whose Constitutional duty it is to bring impeachment charges against criminal presidents, says it as baldly and plainly as it can be said:
The Bush Administration has committed War Crimes.The only thing stopping him from being impeached is politics.
"People say, 'Why do you keep doing it? Why do you want to stand outside of some fundraiser with a sign? What's the point?'" a Milwaukee activist said at a recent meeting at Peace Action-Wisconsin.
There are a lot of reasons. Some are personal. Some do it to take a stand, bear witness, confront a politician.
And every now and then something happens to make you think that it might actually be having an impact and making a difference.
Ask members of the Milwaukee Impeachment Committee about their recent experience with John Conyers.
We now know why impeachment has been off the table, and why they pushed for (torture & surveillance) immunity from lawsuits. All this while, we've been accusing them of supine fecklessness when it's been nothing of the sort. It's just plain old craven, dirty CYA Washington politics as usual.
But they forgot to immunize themselves from prosecution, and Chimpy's not likely to pardon them like he would his buddies.
A multi-count federal criminal indictment against Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer, Rockefeller and the rest for criminal collaboration and conspiracy in war crimes, illegal surveillance and torture would garner substantial well-deserved attention to their crimes & complicity and send a clear & resounding message to current and future elected officials and their appointees.
Gotta say, Glenn Grennwald does it again. Please excuse me if someone else already posted on Greewald's excellent "The motivation for blocking investigations into Bush lawbreaking", originally here on Salon. Greenwald tracks just who and when DEMOCRATS were briefed on the Bush admin doings, including Jay Rockefeller, Jane Harman, and NANCY PELOSI. Greenwald's conclusion - dems haven't investigated Bush crimes because they are AFRAID THEY'LL BE IMPLICATED TOO.
But why would the Repubs let the democrats into the loop into the first place, I found myself wondering. And then it hit me. Because they knew that letting a few in, especially those who couldn't sound the alarm on their own, and were bound by the classified nature of the briefings, could do nothing, but would likely compromise themselves out of fear for sounding the alarm too loudly back when these sorts of things were popular.
In other words, letting Dems in was an ingenious way of protecting Repubs from later prosecution.
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. In times of widespread republican incompetence, occasionally they did some things well in the cya dept.
This diary space donated for this post by ralphlopez..Please circulate
Update: HJC Republican Walter Jones (R-NC) voted with Kucinich on the winning side. That's courage.
We just ran into Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in the Rayburn Building and had a talk with him about impeachment. Although very smart, well-meaning, and gracious, he was still stuck in the tactical aspects of the game, rather than realizing that he and his colleagues were, like it or not, now making history. Either very good history or very bad. If hearings do not commence, there will never be another administration which has committed so many outrages upon the American people and the world, so openly, with so little punishment. It will set a standard for the converse of the saying about RAF pilots in WWII, never has so much been owed to so few by so many. But this time its: Never have so few gotten away with so much, so easily.
It will eclipse anything Nixon did, Herbert Hoover, James Buchanan and 10 other presidents by miles. When Bush is out, American sons and daughters will still be dying in Iraq, perhaps until few remember how we even got there, with only a Cheshire smirk hanging in the air as a reminder..
That’s why the Bush White House’s corruption in the end surpasses Nixon’s. We can no longer take cold comfort in the Watergate maxim that the cover-up was worse than the crime. This time the crime is worse than the cover-up, and the punishment could rain down on us all.
Strong words. The final words in a column appearing in tomorrow's New York Times by Frank Rich entitled The Real-Life ‘24’ of Summer 2008. While the column title invokes Jack Bauer, the column is in fact an exploration of a new book by Jane Mayer of THe New Yorker entitled The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. Rich's discussion makes the book seem like a must read. Of greater importance, what he describes from the book should lead us all to demand MEANINGFUL investigations by the Congress, NOW, even if that requires an impeachment investigation to accomplish.
