Impeachment! Finally! Well... sort of.

And it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Well the Democrats in their efforts to set the record straight about what 'baby steps' actually are, have moved forward to begin impeachment investigations on one member of the Bush Administration. I thought the picture on the left was appropriate since it looks like a downward spiral in which metaphorically the entire Administration has been in since they stole re-election in 2004 (make no mistake about it they stole it and here's some new voter suppression details that have made their way out of the RNC from that election).

Anyway, MSNBC reported that House Democrats will introduce a bill tomorrow that requires the House Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment investigations against Gonzo.

From Crooks and Liars:



Windows Media Video: Play | Quicktime Video: Play

It's about time but still not enough. The only way to get these criminals out of office is full impeachment.

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Now some quick takes on other stuff from this past weekend...

At the CNN/Youtube debates the buzz afterwards surrounded on a riff Hillary Clinton gave towards Barack Obama based on his take on diplomacy. The question was whether the candidates would meet with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Kim Jong-Il of North Korea or Mahmoud Ahmenijhad of Iran in the first year of their Presidency. Obama said that he would and pointed to the Bush Administration's dismal record in meeting with countries that we have disagreements with and in essence using diplomacy as a reward only to those that agree with us.

Hillary countered that she didn't want a meeting in the first year without some sort of preconditions and essentially pawned the concept off to her subordinates to handle as she felt they would get too much PR out of a meeting with the President of the United States.

I see Hillary's point, but it's wrong. Now let me clarify. I am undecided for 2008. Unlike the 2004 race when I knew John Kerry was my guy by February 2003, nobody stands out to me as someone I can fully support. I have heard Obama be wrong on a variety of topics as well (see: aggression towards Iran) so this is not me picking a side in the overall race.

I believe that the President is someone who for the good of our nation, needs to meet with leaders even if they disagree with us or would publicize the meeting to the rest of the world. If we're concerned about going to meet with Kim Jong-Il in North Korea or Ahmenijhad in Iran, don't. Meet in a neutral location and have a summit with countries from the region.

One of the most spiteful things the Bush Administration has done is to shelf diplomacy and push it off on other countries in the region. With North Korea he put the pressure on Russia, China, Japan and South Korea to carry the water for American policies. Some of those countries are not in full agreement with our policies. But it's just like Bush to outsource work that Americans should be doing.

While they did that, idiot boy ran his mouth about an 'axis of evil' and scared North Korea and Iran into speeding up their nuclear programs.

Now I'm not saying Hillary would do that but it's clear that we need to meet with other leaders and hear them out. We may not agree with them on every issue but we don't have to.

When Russia was at the height of the cold war standoff with us we couldn't find much of anything to agree about with them and they were far more dangerous than Chavez, Jong-Il, Ahmenijhad and Castro combined. Yet we met with them in summits and when that didn't work we communicated with them. President John F. Kennedy had Tommy Thompson (no not the moronic former Governor of Wisconsin)as an ambassador there and he spoke with members of Nikita Khrushchev's regime frequently.

By staying in contact Kennedy had an idea of how to address him and empathize with what our enemy ultimately wanted. Did he want nuclear war? No. And I highly doubt North Korea or Iran do either. Khrushchev wanted to look good in the standoff with the U.S. to his own people and because we were smart enough to talk to him and see his side we were able to get them to stand down and a nuclear weapon was never launched in over 40 years of conflict.

Here meeting with our enemies may give them political clout at home but it also gives them piece of mind that we're not looking to attack them for their oil or to overthrow their governments. In turn we can offer Iran and North Korea light water reactors to help with their energy needs and then receive concessions in return in the human rights and diplomatic fields.

It's to everyone's benefit that Americans stand up and converse with everybody. It prevents conflict, gives the people of those countries less of a reason to hate us and ultimately attack us and it provides us with more respect and better standing in the world. Which at this point, is desparately needed. Point goes to Obama.

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-The Republican Presidential Candidates are refusing to do the Youtube debates. And with good reason. After all if you were an insensitive racist warmonger, wouldn't you be afraid to take questions from the public? Besides if these guys learned anything from Bush it's that Republicans only look good when they pre-screen audiences, have them sign loyalty oaths and then broadcast the ones where people fawn over them. Otherwise you could end up with another "Macaca" incident.

Funniest thing about it is the RNC asked their supporters to send in as many slanted questions as they could to play gotcha with Democrats. I suppose that's how they got this idiot's question in there. Of course Biden's response to it was hilarious.

-Rp

Contempt of Congress citation sent to House; White House calls it "pathetic".

Let's put all the speculation in a few of the more recent posts on here, aside. After all we're just speculating now on the worst possible scenarios. Of course the last time I did that was in 2000 when Bush was running for office. I told people he would go to war, destroy the environment, wreck our economy and disregard law like he did in Texas when he had Alberto Gonzales covered his DUI charge.

Of course I didn't realize how much worse it would be than my most extreme predictions. Whenever you rally against a candidate you really dislike more times than not you exaggerate their worst flaws to try to dehumanize them. I guess nothing I could do would dehumanize Bush enough to the crimes he has committed now.

The saddest part is, the American people didn't wake up even by 2004 and made it close enough for them to steal the election from a good man, John Kerry. And now as I predicted after that election, Bush would do as he pleased thinking this was some sort of mandate from the American people and worse, facing no relection to keep him accountable.

What Bush didn't count on was the American people finally catching on by 2006 and electing a Democratic Congress to perform oversight and try to make him accountable.

So when Bush tried to turn the Department of Justice (among other government agencies) into a political arm of Karl Rove and the Republican party, Democrats decided to serve up subpoenas, hold hearings and finally for once make Bush accountable.

The problem is, as shown by his disregard for FISA laws and his signing statements on bills that say that passed laws will only be considered advisory, Bush doesn't care about hearings or upholding the law.

So he stonewalled the committee and told Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers to refuse subpoenas.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 22-17 (yes, there were 17 angry Republican white men in that room trying everything they could to derail the motion) to send the citation to the House for a full vote where Democrats easily hold the majority.

That means this will go to the courts in which Bush still has an advantage thanks to his packing the courts with right wing cronies.

Still in the face of finally having to uphold the law, Tony Snow pretty much summed up the White House's disdain for laws and the constitution (which gives these authorities to Congress).

From The Swamp:

“From our view, this is pathetic,’’ said White House spokesman Tony Snow, suggesting that the Justice Department will make its own findings about any referral for prosecution of contempt and that this likely is “not likely to go anywhere... What you have right now is partisanship on Capitol Hill.’’

Wow. It's hard to fathom from a group of people who break every law they see, the word pathetic coming out unless it was a self description.

So now we go and play ball in the courts. Of course the way this Administration is going, they'll just pardon their own anyways.

Call your Representatives and Senators and tell them to impeach! Anything less will not stop these bastards!

-Rp

Congressman John Olver believes Bush will cancel elections and strike Iran, but won't sign on to impeach.

This is the disturbing stance Democrats seem to be taking. Apparently it doesn't matter what laws this bastard breaks, impeaching him is too drastic for them...

EVEN when they believe he will cancel the 2008 elections (does that declare him our permanent King?) and strike Iran. That's what Massachussetts Congressman John Olver (pictured) stated in a meeting with those looking to get him to support impeachment. This is fucking mindblowing.

When he aggrandized himself on his voting record, I took exception to 24 April 2007. When he asked what I was referring to, I challenged him to co-sponsor H. Res. 333; and he emphatically refused.

-snip-

He is deeply concerned whether we will actually have an election in Nov. '08, as he believes this administration will likely strike Iran from the air, declare a national emergency, and cancel the '08 elections.

The positive thing is he's not the definitive say and it seems FINALLY John Conyers is coming around and getting closer to moving on impeachment.

From David Swanson:

I was a guest today on Bree Walker's radio show. She's the progressive radio host from San Diego who purchased Cindy Sheehan's land from her in Crawford, Texas.

Bree attended an event on Friday in San Diego at which Congressman Conyers spoke about impeachment. Her report was extremely interesting. I had already heard reports that Conyers had said: "What are we waiting for? Let's take these two guys out!" But, of course, what we're waiting for is John Conyers. Is he ready to act? It was hard to tell from that comment. In January, Conyers spoke at a huge rally on the National Mall and declared "We can fire them!" but later explained that what he meant was that we could wait for two years and Bush and Cheney's terms would end. Was this week's remark just more empty rhetoric?

It appears to be more than that. Bree Walker told me, on the air, that Conyers said that all he needs is three more Congress Members backing impeachment, and he'll move on it, even without Pelosi. I asked whether that meant specifically moving from 14 cosponsors of H Res 333 to 17, or adding 3 to the larger number of Congress Members who have spoken favorably of impeachment but not all signed onto bills. Bree said she didn't know and that Conyers had declined to take any questions.

Good news. Someone has to stop these criminals. If not the Democrats... who?

-Rp

UPDATE: Apparently Conyers did not state the "3 more" comment. David Swanson is aligned with Cindy Sheehan so they are going gung ho after Democrats until they get their way. I understand their problems with Democrats not pressing impeachment but Swanson making stories up doesn't help the cause.

A Quick Note on Scooter's Commutation

I wonder what our forefathers would think of today's America. I'm pretty sure our Fourth President James Madison (right) and George Mason (left) would have gone nuts if they had heard about a President commuting a buddy to keep himself and his own administration's illegal directives from coming out or being fully investigated. Such an obstruction of justice was looked at in pretty harsh terms then and according to the judges and juries in this case, now.

Here's what they both said when they fought vehemently during the Virginia Constitution Ratification for more stringent Impeachment policies for corrupt Presidencies (also here's a link to a terrific article on the Libby topic that includes these quotes as well)

George Mason (1725-1792), the father of the Bill of Rights (1791-2002), argued at the Constitutional Convention in favor of providing the House of Representatives the power of impeachment by pointing out that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or, before indictment or conviction, "to stop inquiry and prevent detection."

James Madison (1751-1836), the father of the U.S. Constitution (1788-2007), added that "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."

What are we to expect from this Administration though? We know their plans and we know that they have zero regard for the law.

Yet impeachment is off the table.

What a sad state America is on the Fourth of July of our 231st year.

Rp

Impeachment needs to be ON the table.

Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton faced impeachment for far less and yet Democrats still haven't put impeachment on the table.

Every day this regime stays in office, they kill more soldiers and Iraqis with their ridiculous war policy, subvert the constitution and make the Presidency the role of a dictator, they work towards eliminating fairness in elections, they harm the environment by rewriting EPA reports, they loot the treasury of tax dollars for their contributor/benefactors, they alienate foreign powers and create enemies for generations to come and as a whole they flip the bird at the rule of law.

How the fuck is impeachment NOT on the table?

With the entire email scandal we're talking about the Presidential Records Law being broken. We already have Oath of Offices broken from other lies involving the war. You can make an easy case that the entire wiretapping fiasco is illegal and I don't doubt that something legally could be done about the way signing statements are being carried out.

The legal arguments are there! This isn't just a leg to stand on, this is an entire army of legs.

Not to mention the man is so ungodly unpopular, there will not be the backlash Republicans faced over the Clinton fiasco. Clinton was popular and most people did not believe he should be impeached over oral sex.

Let me point this out to Democrats who need a slap in the face.

THIS IS WORSE THAN ORAL SEX!

You might be aware of that but many of you seem too timid to act.

Also, this is NOT about retaliation. Had Bush not subverted law at every turn this wouldn't even be a discussion, no matter how much we hate his policies. He and his crew of criminals did this themselves.

My advice to Democrats is this:

Subpoena the emails all the way back to 2001. Find everything you can find. Find the 2004 Election Fraud info, find the Attorney Scandal stuff, find the memos about lying about this war, find all the wiretapping memos you can, find EVERYTHING.

And do it quickly.

America can ill afford anymore time with this man in charge. Our soldiers, our citizens, IRAQI citizens all deserve better.

No more off the table shit.

Once you get the emails the shit will hit the fan. Even Republicans won't carry water for this man anymore.

I haven't read them but I can't imagine a single person that doesn't believe that SEVERAL smoking guns will be found there.

Get the emails. Impeach Bush & Cheney. Begin criminal proceedings.

These men have broke the law numerous times and NOBODY, even the son of a rich oil-invested politician, is ABOVE the law.

Not to mention Americans SUPPORT the impeachment of this President. They supported it in November of 2005 by a 53-42 margin. 51% again supported impeachment in a poll taken on 10/21/06. 58% said they "wished Bush Presidency was over" on 1/25/07.

There are even more scandals out there today. Since January every week has seen a new scandal pass. I am willing to bet that support is higher than it has ever been for ousting Bush.

Democrats have nothing to lose. The people support them against Bush. It's time for some backbone and it's time for some action.

America must show that it does indeed run by rule of law and that applies to everybody. If not, we might as well toss our morality plays on other countries to the side because we are no different than Communism was to the Russian people. After decades of fighting off those "godless communists", it would be the ultimate irony if many of the Republicans who waged that war were the ones who essentially adopted their policies towards their people.

It is our job to demand our country back and take a stand, and as OUR representatives Democrats need to do the same.

-Rp