November 30, 2007
IMPEACH; Bill Watch
Will co-sonspiracy with CONgress, will be the subject of a grand jury investigation, nonsupport of this bill is evidence of COLLUSIONS and will be noted in upcoming international hearings on torture and war crimes.
We must pursue every single legal remedy and this is one that must be pursued.
Cheney does NOT believe that Iran is using enriched uranium to build a bomb: we has actually been providing them with a legal reason to attack.
I count 15 cosponsors to the bill below. Write them and say thank you and show them your support! And spread this notice.
We can celebrate when the first Republican comes on board.
PUT ON THE PRESSURE TO GET THIS BILL OUT OF THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE. Contact your representative today. Ask for the discharge of Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker. There is a dual party proposal to have that be done.
Remove the legal reasons justifying an attack on America by another nation or anyone else fighting back against war funding by CONGRESS.
Veeger
 | HR333: Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors [2 comments] |
- Impeaches Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.
- Sets forth articles of impeachment stating that Vice President Cheney: (1) has purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, to justify the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against Iraq in a manner damaging to U.S. national security interests; and (2) has openly threatened aggression against Iran absent any real threat to the United States, and has done so with the U.S. proven capability to carry out such threats, thus undermining U.S. national security.
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(66 support, 7 oppose) 
 View full text |  View bill history |
 HR333 at GovTrack |  HR333 at the Library of Congress |
 | Democrat Ohio http://kucinich.house.gov |
Add argument | For No arguments for this bill have been posted yet. Be the first one! | Against
blahq | October 12 at 19:16 | Rating: 3 | To rate arguments you must first select your stance This bill is a joke. How can (2) be considered a high crime or misdemeanor. Cheney, being sane, believes that a nuclear Iran is a threat to the United States, crazy Democrats, being stupid, do not. This is criminalizing a difference of opinion. But then again, what else would you expect from liberals? |
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In fact, if he HAS done the things that I and most others suspect, he should probably be in his beloved Gitmo, where he could discuss the merits of habeas corpus with his jailers.
The Democrats are implicated in every single crime IMPEACH
November 28, 2007
For those NEW TO THIS BLOG: This is argument is linked to "coming war with Iran".
Yes: I TOLD YOU SO
One comment that I've seen more than a few times typically goes like this: "Silber has been amazingly prescient. Everything he's predicted has come true. Everything. I don't know how he does it." That's all very nice, and I also think it happens to be true. But when I first saw this sort of remark a year or so ago, I would usually get very angry. I wanted to shout, or at least add a comment of my own, all in capital letters: "SO WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME NOW?" The primary subject about which I would have such thoughts is the one that ought to concern everyone, the only subject that matters now in terms of what it could mean for the future of the world, and of the United States: the probability of an attack on Iran.
Did you hear that? An attack on Iran.
Do you understand what I'm saying? A LIKELY ATTACK ON IRAN.
Never mind. The point is that even commenters who offer this kind of praise for my musings will not listen to me now, despite what they themselves admit is a track record of 100% accuracy, or as close to 100% accuracy as anyone is likely to come. For such commenters always go on to add: "Oh, but I don't read him regularly. I can't. He's just too damned depressing."
Please note that they do not contend that I'm wrong or inaccurate in what I see coming down the road. They acknowledge that I've been right before, and that I'm probably right now. But they would prefer not to think about it. It's just too depressing, doncha know. Of course, this is an entirely valid and useful approach to politics, and to life in general. When the deadly boulder topples over the edge of the cliff and is headed toward a landing directly on top of where you're standing below, it's always most advisable to close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and say over and over and over again:
"It's not happening!
There's no boulder!
It will be fine!
NOTHING'S WRONG!!
IT'S NOT HAPPENING!!!!"
Those of us who survive what may be coming will do our best to scoop up your pitifully splattered remains, and give you a decent burial. Never let it be said that we are disrespectful, or vindictive in even the smallest degree. We shall honor your memory, just as it deserves to be honored.
Many people consider it bad form to say, "I told you so." But I have, in detail, on many different subjects, most importantly in connection with trying to prevent terrible future events. Have I mentioned the likelihood of AN ATTACK ON IRAN? Forget it. Oh, you already have. Good for you! Anyway, only a few people listen to me -- I'm such a downer -- so what the hell.
For many months, I have been saying that this Democratic Congress would never, ever impeach anyone in the Bush administration. I said it in "Blinded by the Story":
But for the reasons set forth above (and a full case would fill many volumes), the Democrats are not going to impeach any of these criminals, barring events entirely unforeseeable at present. And they will not for one overwhelmingly significant and determinative reason: always with regard to the underlying principles, and frequently with regard to the specifics, the Democrats are implicated in every single crime with which they would charge the members of the administration. The Republicans' crimes are their crimes.I said it in "From the Department of Not Going to Happen":
Of course, if the Democrats had any convictions that were genuinely opposed to the corporatist, authoritarian, warfare state, they would begin impeachment proceedings against both Bush and Cheney immediately upon Congress's return in September (and they would have begun them months ago) -- because impeachment is deserved 1,000 times over in both cases, and because such proceedings might make an attack on Iran less likely. That would also assume that the Washington Democrats had some strategic smarts.I said it again recently, in "Get Out the Razor":
Democrats with deeply held convictions that impelled them to principled action that was not guaranteed to be successful, and clever about the implementation of a plan -- one that didn't directly concern an election -- that demanded their careful attention for more than a week or two? Excuse me for a moment.
Sorry. I had to collapse to the floor in helpless laughter for a few minutes, and then slowly pull myself back up so I could get to the keyboard.
So impeachment WON'T hurt the Democrats politically. Not even in terms of 2008. Why, it might HELP them -- and help them to an overwhelming victory. Not incidentally, it would also signal to the world that there are at least some people in our national life who give a damn about the Constitution, about the law (including international law), about moral law, about the value of human life, about civilization, about decency. It might save us from being unceremoniously heaved into the filthiest of trash heaps, where we deservedly belong.And I've said it in a number of other posts.
More and more Democrats themselves admit that impeachment is the unquestionably appropriate remedy, and fully DESERVED. It won't hurt them politically. So why won't they do it?
One more time -- first, what I said that is excerpted above:[Impeachment] is the one method the Democrats will categorically, absolutely not utilize -- because the Democrats are a crucial, inextricable part of the identical authoritarian-corporatist system that has led us to these horrors. They have all worked toward this end over many decades, Democrats and Republicans alike, and now the horrors manifest themselves explicitly, without apology, even with the sickening boastfulness of the mass murderer who is proud of what he has done, and who vehemently believes he is right.Or as I put it in an earlier essay:...That's why they won't do it. That's why impeachment is "off the table." Try, please try for crap's sake, to understand this. I am weary of explaining it.
Try to grasp this finally, before it is too late: the Democrats may differ from the Republicans on matters of detail, or emphasis, or style. But with regard to the fundamental political principles involved, everything that has happened over the last six years -- just as is the case with everything that has happened over the last one hundred years -- is what the Democrats want, too.
This should not be a difficult point to understand. The historical record is compelling in its clarity, and overpowering in its length and volume. A corporatist, authoritarian state is what the ruling elites want, and it is precisely what serves their interests, Republican and Democrat alike. They know it; they count on your inability or refusal to see it.
But I will keep explaining it, until at least 15 of you get it. At the current rate, I expect that to take until 2018.Even now, I'm an optimist. Go figure.
In the latest installment of my "Final Descent" series, I mentioned an illuminating conversation between Jonathan Turley and Randi Rhodes, on Rhodes' radio show. The topic on that occasion was the increasingly widespread use of a specific form of police intimidation typical of a more and more tyrannical state. When the police approach or question you, even if you have done absolutely nothing criminal and nothing wrong at all, if you do anything that the police may later construe as "resisting arrest," they will arrest you for resisting arrest -- even if there had been nothing to arrest you for in the first instance. Oh, my, you are thinking. Why that means the police could arrest anyone -- and everyone! Exactly.
understand that;
it's time more of you did.
Rhodes invited Turley to be her guest again today. Their discussion began with the government's systematic abuse of the state secrets privilege: how the government uses the privilege to shield itself from the exposure of any and all of its many criminal acts. Invoke the state secrets privilege, and the case is stopped dead in its tracks. Eventually, when the privilege is invoked a sufficient number of times and on enough points critical to a specific case, the lawsuit goes away entirely.
They then turned to impeachment, and why it is not going to happen -- and exactly how the Democrats are doing everything in their power to make certain it doesn't happen. Rhodes said she wanted Turley to explain his views, because Turley's insights had helped to make clear what Rhodes herself had not been able to understand. Rhodes said she hadn't understood at all why the Democrats wouldn't pursue hearings and investigations more aggressively, why they keep talking about retroactive immunity for the telecom companies (see "It's Called the Ruling Class Because It Rules," for a discussion of that and related subjects), and in general why the Democrats act like a pathetic, horribly abused dog that is regularly beaten almost to death. (If you'd been reading my blog, Randi, you would have understood it months ago! No, on this point I am not remotely humble.) For all the good they've done on any subject of importance, the Democrats might as well have taken the last year off. That could only have been an improvement. They have turned themselves into almost non-existent blobs of putrefying flesh, without the excuse of being non-existent or dead.
So if you didn't believe it when I said it, listen up. Here is what Turley had to say. The Democrats will never pursue hearings or investigations of the Bush administration beyond a certain point the Democrats consider "safe," they will not object to the administration derailing any case of moment by invoking the state secrets privilege, they keep telecom immunity alive, and the Democrats act in countless other ways to bury and cover up the crimes of the Bush gang, because there is one eventuality they fear more than any other: if there were ever to be a finding -- by a court, in Congressional committee, or anywhere else -- that the Bush administration, including the president himself, in fact ordered criminal acts, then they would have to begin impeachment hearings. It is inconceivable that even this repellent Congress could ignore, for example, a court determination that Bush had ordered torture -- which, as Turley pointed out, would constitute a war crime as defined by U.S. courts. The same would be true of any finding that the administration, perhaps including the president himself, had committed a crime by ordering illegal domestic surveillance.
Turley additionally noted that this is why the Democrats went out of their way to "save" the administration on the Mukasey nomination. The Democrats, or at least key Democratic leaders, didn't want Mukasey to say that water boarding constitutes torture. That would mean that administration officials had committed a war crime -- again, as defined by U.S. courts. They would have to begin impeachment hearings, once the meaning of the admission sank in. So the Democrats made certain that the question could be avoided, and that Mukasey was confirmed by a comfortable margin (see, "There Is No 'Lesser' Evil Now").
The broader point that Turley went on to make is the one I've made repeatedly, in the essays linked above and in others as well. "These are not principled people in this city," Turley correctly noted. He said he was sorry to have to say it, but it's the inescapable truth. Turley said that, with regard to the most critical dynamics in play, party designations don't matter much at all: "They don't believe in principle. They believe in power."
Turley thus made precisely the same point that I made in an article I wrote just before the 2006 elections:
Ah, but the Democrats will investigate the Bush administration's endless crimes. The investigations will restore honesty, decency and "true" American values to government. All the universes will be saved! Do people actually believe this nonsense? All such investigations will be exactly like all other government investigations of itself. People seem congenitally incapable of grasping that all politicians are now part of the same corrupt system, which aims only to protect itself and its existing prerogatives, as it simultaneously seeks to expand them. (The exceptions in the political class are so few that they don't matter.) In the end, all such investigations and committee hearings will conclude just as the 9/11 investigation concluded (and any other investigation you care to name): some criticisms will be made, general fault will be found but no one in particular will be condemned in terms that might cause distress, and some new guidelines and regulations will be proposed and enacted. Neither party wants to judge the other too harshly or cause irreparable harm: they don't want to, because they count on the same consideration in return. Both parties are happy to accede to this deal, for it is precisely how their system continues on its merry course, guaranteeing their lives of immense comfort and privilege, together with their hold on power.
Many of the rest of us, both here and abroad, will be screwed, maimed or dead -- and just when exactly did that concern the governing class?
There is still a chance -- now a very dim and remote one, I grant you -- to prevent an attack on Iran. Here's that detailed program again, with a more recent version of part of it in the concluding part of this essay.
Oh, that's right. You don't want to hear about any of that. It's just too goddamned depressing.
God, most Americans are abysmally pathetic. I don't know why I even bother any longer.
Links to this post
November 29, 2007
Holding them accountable: Nuremberg
After World War II, the Allies decided against summary execution in favor of an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg—an ... all » unprecedented move in the history of international justice. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg challenged the world to apply law to mass violence and to recognize crimes against humanity. In this excerpt from a panel discussion at Facing History and Harvard Law School's Pursuing Human Dignity conference on the legacy of the Nuremberg Tribunal, the following people reflect on the legal and educational legacies of Nuremberg: Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University; John Barrett, Professor of Law, St. John’s University; Ernie Michel, Holocaust survivor and reporter, Nuremberg Trials; Ben Ferencz, former Nuremberg War Crimes Prosecutor; Martha Minow , Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Fernando Reimers , Ford Foundation Professor of International Education, Director, International Policy Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education; and Margot Stern Strom, Executive Director, Facing History and Ourselves
The Geneva Conventions
Then the Geneva Conventions came along in 1948, and the nations of the world joined hands to transform war from an ugly business into an ugly-business-described-by-solemn-buzzwords-and-unenforceable-guidelines, which allowed countries taking part in war to disavow the ugliness of the business without actually having to conduct the business in any meaningfully different manner. This is what we call "civilization."
As a bonus, the Conventions also allowed combatants to accuse each other of very specific over-the-top ugliness, thus justifying current wars and inflaming still more wars in the future. This is what we call "humanitarianism."
After World War II, which was (at the time) arguably the worst war ever, the nations of the world started to wonder about this whole war business. Although war had been an inescapable fact of life ever since primates figured out how to sharpen sticks, the primates of the 1940s were more than a little unsettled by WWII's unprecedented body count, unspeakable atrocities, genocidal mass murder and wholesale slaughter of civilians (to the tune of more than 200,000 in a single day's work).
The Geneva Conventions were actually an update of previously drafted set of standards also known as the Geneva Conventions, but no one paid any attention to the first Geneva Conventions, so they don't count. You might be tempted to say the same thing about the current Geneva Conventions after reading this, but historians generally regard it as classier to wait 30 or 40 years before stating the obvious.
The nations of the world had two bright ideas for dealing with this problem of war. The first was the United Nations. This was a great idea. Really. You can't fault them for trying (well, you could if you wanted).
One of the first things the U.N. did was sit down in Geneva, Switzerland, and try to find a kinder, gentler way to wage war. What better place than Switzerland? (To quote Harry Lime (played by Orson Welles) in The Third Man: "In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!")
In December 1948, the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide passed the first article of what would be known as the Geneva Conventions. Genocide was defined as murder "committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Taking a page from the Nuremberg Trials, the convention drew up a list of punishable crimes "genocide; conspiracy to commit genocide; direct and public incitement to commit genocide; attempt to commit genocide; [and] complicity in genocide."
The initial statement on genocide was followed up by subsequent conventions dealing with various related and unrelated aspects of war, including prisoners of war and the treatment of civilians. Three more articles were adopted in 1949, and the Conventions were updated and expanded in 1977.
The Rules
- Prisoners of war should be "respected and protected" without regard to gender, race, politics or creed.
- Prisoners may not be murdered, tortured or subjected to scientific experiments.
- War combatants are obligated to search for, collect and care for the wounded and sick after a battle, and they are required to report these activities (as well as the names of prisoners) to the Red Cross.
- Combatants may not capture independent parties attempting to provide humanitarian aid or perform search-and-rescue missions.
- Hospital facilities may not be used for military purposes.
- Prisoners must be allowed to communicate with their families. They must not be subjected to "violence, insults and public curiousity."
- POWs are only obligated to provide their captors with their name, rank, serial number and date of birth.
- POWs must be provided with reasonable and hyginic shelter, including food, clothing and medical care. They can't be used as human shields. If they are forced to work, they must be compensated and provided with reasonable workplace conditions.
- POWs may be tried by their captors in a fair and impartial manner, and they are entitled to competent representation.
- At the end of a war, all POWs must be returned to their home countries.
- The Red Cross must be permitted to visit privately with POWs, to examine the conditions of their confinement and to distribute humanitarian supplies.
- Civilians unfortunate enough to be living in the middle of a war must be allowed to "lead normal lives."
- Occupiers of a land must honor the safety, dignity, religious beliefs and cultural mores of the people there.
- Civilians are entitled to all the protections accorded to POWs (above), as well as protection from collective punishment or deportation.
- Civilians cannot be forced to do military work for an occupying force.
- Occupying powers are obliged to support the health and safety of the population with food and medical supplies (or by allowing humanitarian shipments of the same).
- "Indiscriminate" attacks on civilians targets are forbidden.
- Dams, dikes, nuclear plants, places of worship, cultural landmarks and "objects indispensible to civilian survival" (such as crops or drinking water supplies) may not be specifically targeted.
- Soldiers must be over the age of 15.
- Weapons which cause inordinate environmental damage, "superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering" are prohibited.
- Using a protected emblem (like the Red Cross) to hide military activity or personnel is a war crime.
Breaking the Rules
Given the fact these rules were largely instituted as a response to Nazi atrocities during WWII, it's ironic that Israel is considered one of the worst offenders, racking up dozens of clear Geneva Conventions violations and hundreds more rumored or suspected violations, mostly concerning the Palestinians.
A 2002 U.N. resolution condemning Israel's treatment of the Palestianians laid out a number of violations, including "the siege of Yasser Arafat’s Headquarters in Ramallah, by the Occupying Power in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Those include annexation and settlement, the reoccupation of Palestinian cities and blocking of roads between them; expulsions and targeted assassination of scores of Palestinians; attacks on ambulances and medical personnel; house demolitions; destruction of water storage facilities; uprooting of thousands of fruit and olive trees; 24-hour curfews; almost permanent closures of towns, villages and cities; and excessive use of force, including weapons of war such as F-16 bombers and helicopter gunships used against apartment houses, refugee camps and other civilian targets, causing the deaths of numerous Palestinians."
In addition, Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, is one of the most notorious and practiced practitioners of interrogative torture in the world.
The use of War Crimes tribunals in relation to the Geneva Conventions has mostly been reserved for a) Third World countries with little power to defend themselves and b) regimes which have collapsed so thoroughly that no one cares what happens to their former leaders. This includes countries like Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the great "successes" in international war crime prosecution.
Other countries pretty much do what they want, and no one tries to stop them. Among these nations, the United States stands out as the "Untouchable." U.S. forces and policy-makers have been involved in a number of high-profile incidents over the years, which is one reason the U.S. has opted out of the International Criminal Court initiative.
The best known violations came during the Vietnam War, such as the high-profile My Lai Massacre, and countless proven and alleged incidents involving the destruction of civilian villages, mass defoliation with Agent Orange, the execution of prisoners (civilian and military) and the use of napalm and poison gas.
Former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey served on a U.S. death squad operating under orders to kill Vietnamese civilians in the Mekong Delta village of Thanh Phong. He said he was sorry (and he's not from Rwanda), so apparently he doesn't get a war crimes tribunal. And public outcry regularly wells up in calls for a Henry Kissinger tribunal every eight months or so.
After September 11, the U.S. stopped even giving lip service to the rules of war, by declaring al Qaeda operatives and allies "unlawful combatants," which American policy makers took to mean "non-entities." As part of its terrorism-inspired attack on Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, the U.S. joined forces with the Northern Alliance, a faction known for its roving rape gangs and frequent execution of prisoners.
Hundreds of prisoners from that invasion were unceremoniously shipped to detention camps in Afghanistan and Cuba where some were imprisoned in the rough equivalent of barbed-wire straightjackets — cells in which they were restrained in a standing position with no range of movement. Several al Qaeda members, from the top echelon leadership to mentally challenged footsoldiers have been shipped to undisclosed locations where they are carefully tortured with an eye toward legalistic loopholes (i.e., probably no rubber hoses or electrodes taped to genitals).
Other highlights of U.S. historical practices include feeding radioactive waste to retarded children during the 1950s and decades of active research into biological and chemical weapons, including anthrax and smallpox. During the 1980s, the fruits of this research were shared with beloved U.S. allies like Iraq.
Speaking of Iraq, the 2003 U.S. invasion looks to be a promising source of war crimes to entertain the jaded public for months to come. Although there appeared to be scores of Iraqi civilians killed as "collateral damage" by U.S. attacks within days of the war's start and hundreds (or perhaps thousands) more dying as a result of the coalition's failure to provide legally required support and humanitarian aid to civilians in occupied areas, Saddam Hussein's fighting forces have really been going the extra mile to take the heat off of whatever piddling crimes the Americans manage to muster.
It's almost as if Uday Hussein sat down with the Geneva Conventions handbook and drafted a set of orders designed specifically break every single rule listed therein. Within just the first two weeks, the Iraqis televised humiliating pictures of POWs, apparently executed some prisoners, tortured others and possibly dismembered still others. The Iraqi leadership dressed soldiers in civilian clothing and distributed them among the population, posted armed forces in hospital facilities, launched suicide attacks using soldiers dressed as civilians, and used fake surrenders for sneak attacks. About the only atrocity the Iraqis hadn't pulled off by the end of week two was the deployment of the alleged chemical weapons that provided the pretext for launching the war in the first place.
Needless to say, it's manifestly unfair to single out the U.S. and Iraq for violations of the Geneva Conventions. Not when you can compile similar lists for China (torture, mass executions, biological and chemical weapons), the former Soviet Union (torture, mass executions, genocide, civilian massacres, assassination, biological and chemical weapons), the current Russia (torture, biological and chemical weapons, trafficking in nuclear weapons), North Korea (torture, executions, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons), Turkey (torture, detention camps, ethnic repression), Pakistan (torture, mass executions, assassination, supporting terrorism, military attacks on civilians, nuclear weapons), Saudi Arabia (torture, supporting terrorism, gender-based oppression), Kuwait (ethnically-based slavery), Chile (torture, mass executions), the Philippines (torture and assassination), Iran (mass executions, religious and ethnic repression, chemical and nuclear weapons), Thailand (torture, child sex trade), Singapore (torture), Malaysia (torture, execution, illegal detentions), Sudan (torture, supporting terrorism, mass executions), the Congo (ethnic cleansing, torture, rape gangs, civilian massacres), South Africa (apartheid, torture, assassinations, civilian massacres), Kenya (gender-based persecution, torture, massacres), Uganda (slavery, child abduction, massacres, rape, child sex trade), Cuba (mass detention, assassinations), Colombia (assassinations, mass executions, civilian massacres, drug trade)...
But this is getting tedious, and unfortunately, it could easily go on for pages and pages. The long and the short of it is this: The Geneva Conventions are great fodder for politicians attacking countries they don't like, but if you feel you have been the victim of a violation, you might as well take it to Judge Judy, because you aren't getting a tribunal unless you happen to live in Rwanda, or possibly (at some point in the distant future) Iraq. Have a nice day.
November 15, 2007
IMPEACHMENT UPDATE
Why? Because IF we get rid of Cheney to get at BuZh, then Pelosi would be up for the job! Which is TOTALLY unacceptable! Obviously. She shoulda taken herself "out of the loop" long ago, the truth do tell.
I've read much in the past three weeks that indicates that the powers that be have INTENTIONS to get rid of loose cannon BuZh early (Bilderbergers), and replace this mess with HiLIARy and the heClinton as some sort of "saviours". Yeah, right. Just what we need. And we will have Pelosi to thank for THAT. They are just the "palatable" faces of the corporatocracy and the kickbacks, the bribes, the lobbying, the threats and intimidation, the BLACKMAIL going on inside the Beltway would just continue.
Effort To Remove Pelosi As Speaker, Clear Way For Impeachment Investigation: Kucinich led the effort to get Congress to vote on an Cheney impeachment resolution. It appears enough of the DNC Members of the House do not blindly support Pelosi's position that impeachment is off the table. Arguably, enough members of Congress could be motivated -- for whatever reason -- to remove the last obstacle to impeachment: The Speaker herself.
A. This outlines the idea, including the House Precedents and a sample proclamation: http://www.haloscan.com/ comments...a=36529#2692020 ]
http://www.haloscan.com/ comments...8959168#2693466 ]
Summary
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com...omment- 89790894 ]
B. It is flawed to assume Pelosi loyalists would be automatically take the Speakers position.
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com...omment- 89806154 ]
The House elects a New Speaker by popular vote, according to the Constitution: http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com...omment- 89821146 ]
. . .and House Precedents:
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com...omment- 89819378 ]
C. Phred and BMAz provided valuable comments, which have been in part addressed: http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com...omment- 89826816 ]
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com...omment- 89834660 ]
Responses Here:
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com...omment- 89997718 ]
What You Can Do
1. Get Informed: Share with your friends a sample proclamation calling for the House to remove Pelosi as Speaker
http://www.haloscan.com/ comments...8959168#2693466 ]
2. Provide your elected officials these House precedents showing a Speaker can be removed on the basis of a State Proclamation asking for Congress to remove the Speaker.
http://www.haloscan.com/ comments...a=36529#2692020 ]
3. Share This Summary: This summary to show that each individual citizen has an important role to play in this: Their efforts helped mobilize public support for Kucinich's resolution on the Cheney impeachment. It only takes one person to get this going.
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com...omment- 89790894 ]
