July 18, 2008
Rebuffing Dennis Kucinich’s calls for impeachment hearings on George W. Bush, the House Judiciary Committee instead will hear testimony about Bush’s “imperial presidency” and several of his administration’s scandals.
In a press release issued Thursday, Rep. John Conyers, House Judiciary Committee chairman, said his panel will explore a variety of Bush controversies, including manipulation of prewar Iraq intelligence, politicization of the Justice Department, and refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations.
11 comments:
Impeachment is off the table, so why bring it up on the worst president in US history.
What a bunch of clowns we have in Washington, they talk a lot of crap to get elected then do not respond to We The People.
Democracy is rule by mob, and most last about 200yrs. before turning into a dictatorship.
It was a good up to the Civil War, and then the corporations took over.
I think Conyers and Pelosi are traitors and deserve to be tried for treason. They have no legal valid reason for conspiring to protect a president from being impeached for his crimes against the constitution and the people.
"Over the last seven plus years, there have been numerous credible allegations of serious misconduct by officials in the Bush administration,” Conyers said. “At the same time, the administration has adopted what many would describe as a radical view of its own powers and authorities."
How is it that Conyers, and so many other elected officials know that the Bush Administration is guilty of "serious misconduct," but they refuse to do anything effective to stop it? Why not impeach? What reason do they give for not fulfilling their constitutional obligation?
More importantly, what can *we* do to urge Congress members to fulfill their constitutional obligation to stop this Administration from its many illegal actions?
Jason Leopold writes:
Before Election 2006, Pelosi declared impeachment “off the table,” in part, to avoid alarming centrist voters.
I wish the writer had brought out the biggest reason for Pelosi's "off the table" edict: to avoid any further exposure of her own complicity in the torture ignominy because of her presence in the CIA briefing room with no word of concern, much less protest.
A more serious concern for us all should be that Pelosi has deftly put the same curb on president-to-be Obama that she has muzzled Conyers with.
I only hope this does not auger a new administration starting its life with covering up war crimes.
Ben the Worrier
For another view of how the corrupt, incompetent, & illegitimate Congress protects criminals, see my article, "The Mistake Department" which Jason Leopold very kindly printed in The Public Record on Tuesday, July 15. The link is:
http://www.pubrecord.org/commentary/8-commentary/201-the-mistake-department-
one-example-of-why-american-foreign-policy-is-a-disaster.html
Mike Springmann
Thank you Jason Leopold for reminding readers that Nancy Pelosi took impeachment "off the table" prior to the 2006 Congressional elections as a partisan tactic, "to avoid alarming centrist voters." Thanks also for the fleeting reference to how this same partisan dynamic calculation is apparently underway within inner beltway Democratic party circles for the upcoming 2008campaign cycle.
What is left unsaid, however, is that this infamous decision to take impeachment "off the table" by Pelosi was itself a reaction to a well-coordinated propaganda barrage from the Faux News/Rush Limbaugh right wing media cartel.
In the run up to the 2006 elections, local AM stations here in Michigan featured six solid hours of hate talk radio every weekday from noon to six, with Rush and Hannity hysterically blathering on about how the evil liberal Democrats were planning a coup: listeners and callers were told that the fix was in for a Democratic House to impeach Bush and Cheney both, so that Nancy Pelosi could then assume the office of the Presidency (and surrender in Iraq, raise taxes, pave the way for Hillary, hold gay marriages in the Rose Garden, yada yada yada).
It was all horseshit of course. But it worked like a charm. Thus, to blunt the GOP demagoguery that was trying to demonize Nancy Pelosi for plotting to steal the last two years of Bush's presidency, the Dems opted to cleverly nullify Karl Rove's whole line of media attack by declaring impeachment off the table.
In other words, the would-be Democratic leadership succumbed to the right wing gambit, and swallowed it all hook, line and sinker. Bush and Cheney were thus immunized from fearing the one arrow in the Dems quiver that might have actually impacted Bush's lame duck decision making on withdrawal from Iraq, bombing Iran, and so forth.
Also, I suspect Leopold's reference to 2008 election strategy may prove prescient. Don't be surprized if the Obama campaign doesn't get forced to publicly declare that criminal prosecution of folks like Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Feith and Yoo (like Cheney and Bush himself) for torture and wiretap felonies is similarly "off the table."
Once again, short term electoral tactics will trump the long term value of enforcing the rule of law. Fool me once, fool me twice..... and you can laugh all the way to the bank.
Bill from Saginaw
I have always suspected that the idea of impeachment has been "discouraged" by this administration by some sort of threat - not necessarily a specific one. It's become very obvious that when this White House is challenged or crossed, the retribution is pretty severe. Witness what happened to Valerie Plame after her husband wrote his op-ed, what happened to the nice attorneys that wouldn't follow partisan instructions, all kinds of people that have criticized or opposed the Bush Administration and paid with their jobs, the governor that wound up in prison on trumped up charges after he accused the GOP of stealing an election (which they obviously did), and so forth. When they were trying to convince allies at the UN to go along with the war on terror they threatened trade reprisals if they refused, or pressed for the recall of UN envoys.... c'mon folks, bullying is the way these guys work. And now that Obama has mentioned that if he becomes president he will investigate to see "if any crimes were committed" ("IF"??? they committed crimes?), I am sure the NeoCon crowd will see to it that he gets nowhere near the White House.
In my previous post, I meant to say NINE attorneys, not "nice."
Who are the republicans that are running against Conyers and Pelosi.
Us democrates and independents need to donate to their cause so that we show the rest of the dems. that we mean business. The Democratic party can do without the likes of Conyers and pelosi.
For a good overview on this topic, go to salon.com and read Glenn Greenwald.
He hits the nail on the head.
IMO, Barack Obama should not be rewarded with the presidency because of his craven capitulation on the FAA (FISA Amendment Act). His caving purely for political expediency is a barometer of how he'd conduct himself in the Oval Office.
Obama lied BEFORE he even has the opportunity to take the presidential oath of office. At least, Bush kept most of his BIG lies until AFTER he nabbed the WH.
There is not compelling reason to trust Obama to take the required steps to hold political and corporate criminals accountable if he should become president.
Our government is devolving into a version of the "witness protection" program -- all the crooks in office will not bear witness against a fellow politician.
I'm afraid we're going to have to sink further before anything is going to get better. You can be damned sure Obama will not hold his aiders and abettors accountable for any crimes -- past, present or future.
When he was a member of the minority party, Conyers was gung-ho for impeachment of George W. Bush. He even wrote a book on the subject. My guess for his about face is his chivalrous upholding of an ignoble and unwise promise to Nancy Pelosi.
Post a Comment