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Suddenly,
Impeachment Hearings Are Looking Like a Strong Possibility
By Dave Lindorff
11/09/07 "ICH" -- - -You wouldn’t know it if you just watch
TV news or read the corporate press, but this past Tuesday,
something remarkable happened. Despite the pig-headed opposition
of the Democratic Party’s top congressional leadership, a
majority of the House, including three Republicans, voted to
send Dennis Kucinich’s long sidelined Cheney impeachment bill (H
Res 333) to the Judiciary Committee for hearings.
The vote was 218 to 194.
Now the behind-the-scenes partisan maneuvering that preceded
that vote was arcane indeed, with Kucinich first exercising a
member’s privilege motion to present his stymied impeachment
bill to the full House, only to have Speaker Nancy Pelosi
arrange for a colleague (Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD)
offer a motion to table it. The Republicans, anxious to
embarrass the Speaker, threw a wrench into that plan, though, by
voting as a bloc to oppose tabling. Since Kucinich already has
22 co-sponsors for his bill, it was clear that the tabling
gambit would fail. As soon as that became apparent,
rank-and-file Democrats, unwilling to be seen by their
constituents as defending Cheney, rushed to change their votes
to opposing the tabling motion. In the end, tabling failed by
242 to 170 with 77 Democrats supporting a pleasantly surprised
Kucinich.
In order to avoid a floor debate on the merits of impeaching the
eminently impeachable Vice President Cheney, Pelosi and her
allies then moved to send Kucinich’s bill directly to the
Judiciary Committee. They were joined by three Republicans,
including maverick Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul
(R-TX).
Now the hope of the Democratic leadership is that this means
Kucinich’s impeachment bill will continue to be safely bottled
up in a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. But it may not
work out that way for them.
Whatever the explanation, this impeachment bill has been
endorsed by a floor vote of the full House, with bipartisan
support.
For the Judiciary Committee to sit on it now and not schedule a
hearing would be a gross travesty of parliamentary procedure and
custom.
Indeed, some House members not associated with Kucinich’s
resolution are now openly calling for immediate hearings into
Cheney’s impeachable actions—specifically lying the country into
a war in Iraq, and threatening war with Iran.
One indication of the change in the political climate in the
House is the announcement by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a
six-term congressman and a member of the House Judiciary
Committee, that he will call for the Judiciary Committee to take
up Kucinich’s impeachment bill. This is significant because
Wexler, no left-wing hothead, is not a co-signer of the Kucinich
bill.
In an email message to constituents, Wexler said:
“I share your belief that Vice President Cheney must answer for
his deceptive actions in office, particularly with regard to the
preparations for the Iraq war and the revelation of the identity
of covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson as part of political
retribution against her husband.”
“…Cheney and the bush Administration have demonstrated a
consistent pattern of abusing the law and misleading Congress
and the American people. We see the consequences of these
actions abroad in Iraq and at home through the violations of our
civil liberties. The American people are served well with a
legitimate and thorough impeachment inquiry. I will urge the
Judiciary Committee to schedule impeachment hearings immediately
and not let this issue languish as it has over the last six
months. Only through hearings can we begin to correct the abuses
of Dick Cheney and the bush administration; and if it is
determined in these hearings that Vice President Cheney has
committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors, he should be impeached
and removed from office. It is time for Congress to expose the
multitude of misdeeds of the Administration and I am hopeful
that the Judiciary Committee will expeditiously begin an
investigation of this matter.”
Also calling for prompt action by the Judiciary Committee in the
wake of the Tuesday House vote was Carol Shea-Porter, a
first-term Democrat from New Hampshire, who also is not a
sponsor of the Kucinich measure. In explaining her vote to send
the Kucinich bill to the Judiciary Committee, she said:
“It is the duty of the Vice President to faithfully execute the
laws of the United States of America and to defend the
Constitution. There is growing evidence that the Executive
Branch has ignored some of our laws and has attempted to bend
the Constitution to its will. Members of both parties decided
that this issue is too important to ignore. I voted with my
Republican and Democratic colleagues to investigate the Vice
President’s actions in office.”
She characterized the resolution sending the bill to the
Judiciary Committee as a “strongly bi-partisan vote.”
With these kinds of endorsements and calls for action, it is
clear both that Speaker Pelosi is looking increasingly pathetic
and out of touch with her “impeachment is off the table” mantra,
and also that Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI), who seems to
have been intimidated by the Speaker for the past year, but who
earlier had been a leader in exposing the crimes of the
Bush/Cheney administration, is getting strong support for taking
a bolder stand.
Stephen Cohen (D-TN), a member of the Judiciary Committee who is
a co-sponsor of the Kucinich resolution, says he thinks that
there will be an impeachment hearing in the committee.
The 22 House members who have already signed on as co-sponsors
of Kucinich’s Cheney impeachment resolution are: Jan Schakowsky
(D-IL), Maxine Waters D-CA), Hank Johnson (D-GA), Keith Ellison
(D-MN), Lynn Woolsey D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Albert Wynn
(D-MD), William Lacy Clay (D-MO, Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Jim
McDermott (D-WA), Jim Moran (D-VA), Bob Filner (D-CA), Sam Farr
(D-CA), Robert Brady (D-PA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Donald Payne
(D-NJ), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Carolyn
Kilpatrick (D-MI), Ed Towns (D-NY, Diane Watson (D-CA, and Danny
Davis (D-IL).
The change in attitude toward impeachment among the rank and
file, and the evident increasing willingness to buck the
Speaker, reflects growing awareness of the groundswell of
popular anger with the Bush administration and the Democratic
Congress over continued funding of the Iraq War, and over
continued erosion of Constitutional government and civil
liberties by an administration that wants unfettered executive
power and by a Congress that is afraid to act.
The latest polls show three in four Democrats in favor of
impeaching the vice president and president, while a majority of
all Americans favor impeaching the vice president and roughly
half of all Americans favor impeaching the president.
This is before hearings and presentation of evidence have even
begun!
The Democratic strategy for the 2008 election has been to do
nothing overly confrontational, to pass no significant
legislation, to collect lots of money from corporate interests,
and to hope that the Republican Party, saddled with an unpopular
administration and an unpopular war, will implode.
The strategy, however, is proving to be a disaster, as public
support for the Democratic do-nothing Congress has fallen even
below the president’s record low numbers. Just running against
Republicans, Bush/Cheney, and the continuing war risks seeing
Democrats go down to defeat in ’08.
It is awareness of this looming electoral disaster that
underlies the growing restiveness among rank-and-file Democrats
in the House, all of whom have to face the voters in less than a
year’s time.
As recently as a month ago, it didn’t look like impeachment was
in the cards,
Now it’s starting to look like we Cheney’s going to be put in
the dock.
It may not be long before we start to see bills of impeachment
filed against President Bush too.
The corporate media enjoy making fun of Rep. Kucinich, a
height-challenged but dedicated progressive who has made a
career of standing tall for his views. If his bill ends up
leading to impeachment hearings against Cheney, Kucinich will
end up having the last laugh.
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