Posted on 06/14/2007 2:27:53 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Senate Democrats’ failure to push through a simple vote of no-confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, following on the heels of the Democratic Congress’s abject surrender on the issue of continued funding of the Iraq War and occupation, make it clear that the only appropriate course of action for the balance of 110th Congress is impeachment.
The vaunted hearings that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised when they took control of Congress after the November election have come to nothing, as the president and his cabinet officers stonewall and ignore subpoenas. Moreover, it has been amply demonstrated that nothing of consequence in the way of progressive legislation can be passed by Democrats with the narrow majorities they have in the House and especially in the Senate. Even the raising of the minimum wage—one of Pelosi’s and Reid’s key goals for this congressional session—could only be achieved by attaching that measure to the obscene Iraq funding bill, reducing it nothing but blood money. Such a tactic—attaching Democratic bills to offensive bills that Congressional Republicans will support and that can avoid a presidential veto or signing statement--is too high a price to pay for such small “victories.”
Congressional Democrats need to forget about passing symbolic bills that can never become law, and need to stop talking compromise and comity. The public made it clear in the 2006 election that they don’t want comity; they want a genuine opposition party in Congress.
So far, what they’ve gotten instead is a cardboard cutout of an opposition in the Capitol.
We are dealing with a criminal administration, and the only way to get to the bottom of that administration’s criminality and abuse of authority is via impeachment hearings.
And the only way to get those hearings going is massive pressure from the public—a public that polls have demonstrated wants impeachment to begin.
For starters, every Democrat, and every patriotic American who cares about the survival of democratic government and the Bill of Rights, not to mention the safe return of all the men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan, needs to contact their elected representatives and say that supporting impeachment is a bottom-line issue. Do it or lose our support!
Second, every one of us needs to contact our newspaper and television editors to demand that they start reporting on the grassroots impeachment movement, and on the crimes of this administration. It is simply unacceptable for an organization that calls itself a news program or a newspaper to ignore the fact that there is, right now, a bill in Congress, with seven co-sponsors, calling for the impeachment of the vice president. It is simply unacceptable that not one of the many books (my own included) laying out the case for impeachment, a number of them by major publishers, has been reviewed by the mainstream media. It is simply unacceptable that the key so-called alternative news programs, like NPR’s “Fresh Air” and “Talk of the Nation,” have been refusing to interview impeachment experts like Dennis Loo, Elizabeth de la Vega and myself. It is simply unacceptable that no news reporters in the national media have bothered to call up House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers to ask how his book, The Constitution in Crisis, published last year, can call for impeachment, and include a foreword by former representative Elizabeth Holtzman saying, "This pattern of immunity for presidents must stop. Impeaching President Bush for lying to get us into a war will not only protect us from him, but also send an unmistakable message to future presidents: never again,” while Conyers himself, as Judiciary Committee chair, simply sits today on Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s Cheney impeachment bill (H Res. 333), and has said nothing about impeaching the president. It is simply unacceptable that no mainstream reporter has asked Speaker Pelosi how she can insist that impeachment is “off the table” in this Congress, when we’re talking about a president who has been declared a serial felon by a federal district court, and when we’re talking about a president who openly claims the right to ignore laws passed by this very Congress.
We know the situation: Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership have concluded that the Bush administration, wildly unpopular and clearly inept and tangled in a losing and hugely unpopular war, is going to lose badly in 2008, and that if they don’t do anything controversial, they stand to reap gains a the polls in November, 2008. That’s why they are down there in Washington pretending to be legislators and pretending to be an opposition, but are avoiding doing anything seriously confrontational.
We, the American public, need to let these cynical Democratic leaders know that their scheme for 2008 is going to fail. We need to let them know that this time we aren’t buying their minimalist politics. If they can’t take a stand for the Constitution when it’s in crisis, and if they can’t take a stand to end a war that has been an unmitigated disaster for the nation and the world, we’re going to let them go down. The Democratic Party has one last chance to rescue itself from an oblivion it richly deserves. If Congressional Democrats would start the impeachment process rolling, as the public wants, they would find themselves going into the 2008 presidential election on a wave of support not seen since the 1936 New Deal campaign of FDR.
If they don’t do it, they may find themselves actually losing the presidential race, and perhaps the Senate too.
And it will be time to say good riddance.
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About the author: Philadelphia journalist Dave Lindorff is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin’s Press, 2006—now also available in paperback). His work is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
We also need to refer to them for what they truly are. They are Socialists. A Democractic Republic is anathema to Socialism so they will use any mehtod possible to destroy the country.
I think it would backfire badly on the Rats and the wacko left.
Even if Bush presented his usual lackluster defense of principle, there is too much publicly available evidence of lefty Rat concurrence with the danger of Saddam and Iraq. The only pol that did not flip flop on the war or Saddam was Bush. The Rats would lose on impeachment and in 2008.
Though Pelosi and Reid are traitors, they're not that stupid.
Some of us only dreamed that the 2006 Dems would be this comically incompetent and ineffective. Another year of this and the lefty villagers with torches will storm the castle.
I am constantly amazed by the complete ignorance of “journalists” about how Congress actually works.
Ooooo......little Davie Lindorf is soooooo mad!
He’s just stamping his little feet in frustration.
Davie would just loooove to go up to President Bush, and...
Kick him in the shins!
[What a whiney little jerk]
Spoken like a true DUmmie. If this guy isn't a frequent poster on the Democratic Underground, I'd be highly surprised....
Foaming at the mouth, angry, paranoid, delusional, psychotic...this whole article reads like a page from the "Barking Moonbat Manifesto...."
BTW, is his name Lindorff, or LINDORK
Dontcha just love the way Lefties continually invent newspeak? I tellya--George Orwell was a prophet!
You can't admire 'em, but you gotta admit their eel-like slipperiness and utter shamelessness give them some strategic advantages--of which they are well aware.
‘Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the 10 presidential dwarfs are in for a rough time over the next couple of years. The lefties thought they were electing a wrecking crew or lynch mob last year, and all they got was a whine and cheese party.’
whine and cheese?
Well to be fair, 2dv, the donks also ARE getttin heapin helpins of WORD SALAD....for their money.
bwhahahaa
this outfit is one happy gang of sleuths you gotta admit it ...
busy busy bees just ‘avestigatin here ....n...’avestigatin there.....
focusin like whillie’s lasarbeam on some the republic’s most crushing concerns
ie the devastating effect of the late midnight masacre of the DC 8... those poor victims of Alberto’s revenge.
lives ruined i tell you.
oh the humanity....i for one feel the citizenry is finally gettin their tax dollars money’s worth..... clearly we are.
meanwhile the jihadis wait and the jihadis plan.....nice.
You're right, of course, and well said.
Davey, I guess being Commander-in-Chief is now an impeachable offense. If we surrender to radical Islam, is that impeachable too?
Ya can't help wondering what public this klunkhead's been polling.
The Left lives in its own little delusional system. That's what makes 'em so dangerous. If they'd face reality--even get a rare glimpse occasionally--you might be able to contact them and save us all from some of their loonier notions...
A genuine opposition party? I love it when libs bare their souls. Opposition for opposition’s sake...that’s their creed.
“It is simply unacceptable for an organization that calls itself a news program or a newspaper to ignore the fact that there is, right now, a bill in Congress, with seven co-sponsors, calling for the impeachment of the vice president. “
Only seven?
This Lindoff fellow is a hoot!
Why dontcha start impeachmet procedings agains Pelosi and Reid first? Once they're kicked out, the rest will be easy.
(Maybe that'll keep this guy busy for a while. Too bad somebody can't get him interested in stamp collecting or knitting toilet paper covers or something like that--give him something harmless to do.)
Do everything posible to encourage these moonbats.
Call Hillary a traitor for her support the war vote. Tell them Kucinich is the only candidate that can effectively push the rat agenda from the Whitehouse. And with the rat congress at historic lows in approval, encourage them to vote for the Green Party in November to punish the rat traitors.
Here's the upshot... the Democrats are failures, but we should blame George W. Bush for their failures.
Nothing has changed since Bush was elected in 2000.
Yep, the BDS Battalion, Sore/Loserman detachment.
Anybody know this author’s DUmmie name?
Actually, they could have passed the bill standalone any time they wanted. It had already cleared both the house and the senate, and was awaiting conference. The President had already agreed on the senate version, which was largely what was in the final bill.
The house leadership put the minimum wage into the Iraq bill NOT to get republican votes, but to get the anti-war Democrat votes.
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