27 minutes of Cheney impeachment in House of Representatives

Was this a foretaste of Congress in the coming months? A reasonable person will see grounds for impeachment in our vice president’s conduct over the past five years. Will it actually happen? Could it be true that many Republicans are ready to impeach?

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, one of the eight Democrats running for the presidential nomination, had the floor for 27 minutes Tuesday and laid out all his wherases to the effect that Cheney’s actions warrant “impeachment and trial and removal from office.” He claimed support of 21 colleagues in putting forth his resolution.

The crawl on the bottom of the C-Span screen said that President Bush wanted Congress to act on the trade agreements with Peru and others. Would it be that trade matter? Or a couple of months of debate on Cheney, then Bush, and whether they remain in office? Or would it be the stuff the Democratic leadership wants – health care and vetoes etc.?

The immediate following step was to bring up the next speaker and next subject, and business as usual in the People’s House.

But about an hour and a half after Kucinich spoke, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) got up and moved to table (kill) the draft impeachment resolution.

Kucinich was heard shouting no amid the voice votes.

The acting speaker, Jose Serrano of New York, declared the motion had been killed by the voice vote, but Kucinich demanded votes be recorded.

Surprise (to Kagro over at DailyKos, who said, Expect it to be killed): the House voted strongly to keep the resolution alive. It remains to be certain what the final vote was.

The C-Span announcer said at one point the result “was unexpected by many on the House floor here today.”

There was a lot of vote-switching along the way. At one point my running tally had the kill motion winning 290-102, but as the “15-minute vote” stretched over an hour, more and more Republicans came over to Kucinich’ side, while most Democrats remained with Hoyer’s kill motion.

Hoyer rose again after his kill vote failed and, looking nervous, moved to refer the resolution to the House Judiciary Committee.

“We are on the threshold of another war,” Kucinich said in a phone interview with C-Span as the tally was being recorded. Cheney misled the country into the Iraq war and now the administration “is doing the same thing with respect to Iran.”

“It’s not about me,” Kucinich told C-Span as the tally was being recorded. It’s to show “who’s on the side of the Constitution.”

Asked about the Republicans voting with him, he asserted that it wasn’t a partisan issue, and he said he was setting up a “national town hall” meeting in the coming days – on the internet and by phone – to advance what he called “a growing movement.”

Meanwhile, back here in Florida, some of our friends have been moving impeachment before the public eye whenever possible. Increasing frustration is their lot.

On Sunday Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, spoke at the University of Miami, and a crowd of my political friends held signs and tried to raise questions to demand movement toward impeachment.

Here are some of their notes and impressions.

Diane Lawrence: “Yesterday with Conyers was very frustrating for us … Conyers started by saying that ‘Impeachment is off Nancy Pelosi’s table, but it’s not off mine [applause].’ Then he proceeded to talk about the 14 months they have left to get legislation passed [oh, please]. He mentioned the threat that impeachment would fail and this it would do the Democrats harm – the corporate media would have a ball making fun of their mistake. … Of course, his standard excuse is not enough votes in the House or Senate, the Blue Dog excuse, blah blah blah. God damn it, BRING THE CHARGES, HAVE THE INVESTIGATIONS, DO YOUR DUTY UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. …

“The Republicans know the Democrats to be fools. The Republicans totally expected the Dems to impeach after taking office. Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s (R-FL-21) aide mentioned that at the beginning of our lobbying session when a constituent and I met with him. He said, ‘We couldn’t believe impeachment wasn’t started in February. We kept talking about it.’ As horrible as the Rethugs are, they are simply smarter than the Dems in their own evil way.”

Bonnie Daniels: “Conyers started by saying that never in history have there been so many people who are impeachable. The problem is that we don’t have the votes or the time. The legislative process would totally shut down and the corporate press would call us vindictive. Then he said, It’s ‘not a bad idea’ and ‘my mind is open.’ [yeah, right].

“Question asked: what if the people would rather have impeachment than any other legislation? C[onyers]: An impeachment that fails will do more harm than good. It will stop all legislation and the corporate media would turn the president into a victim and imperil the ’08 election. …

“Bush is ‘the most unconstitutional president in the 20^th and 21^st centuries bar none.’”

Simon Rose: “I love that analogy that someone made that it’s as if the police and firemen sat idly by as a gunman randomly shot people and a fire raged. The fact that our elected reps need to be reminded to do their jobs that they swore to do is outrageous. Do we need to remind the police and firemen every day to do their jobs? This lawless administration is running fast and loose over the ultimate law of the land, the Constitution. And now more and more politicians use this lawlessness as cover to perpetrate their own crimes.”

John Dean in Miami

John W. Dean with Shirley Alexiou, president of Democrats of South Dade Club

File this under Club News: One way to get a good turnout for a club meeting is to band together with other clubs and have John W. Dean come for a speech and book-signing. Almost 300 people will show up, and they’ll have a really good time and leave their names and addresses for followup.

So it went Tuesday night, as the crowd came close to filling the main hall at Temple Judea in Coral Gables. The sponsors were the Coral Gables Area Democratic Club, Democrats of South Dade Club, and Democracy for America Miami-Dade.

“I’m surprised that Republican clubs didn’t sponsor me,” Dean joked as he launched into an analysis of our present political pickle from his point of view as a registered independent.

“I am a partisan for one thing, and that’s good government. I know when it’s broken and I see when the processes are not functioning properly,” he said.

To him, Dick Cheney is at the center of all the problems that come with the Bush administration, and it derives partly from Cheney’s experience in the Watergate era, which Dean knows oh too well, partly from Vietnam, partly from 9/11 – all of which made Cheney think the power of the presidency needed to be strengthened.

“It’s going to get worse if this so-called ‘unitary executive theory,’ which no one had heard of until Samuel Alito was nominated for the Supreme Court, and then became known in the press, goes on,’’ Dean said. It had been “dreamed up by a bunch of lawyers in the Reagan Justice Department” to control regulatory departments.

The result is the title of his new book,” Broken Government,” with the subtitle “How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches.” Also available for signing were earlier books including “Conservatives Without Conscience” (2006), in which Dean describes the authoritarian personality behind the current type of conservative.

There are not only authoritarian leaders but also authoritarian followers who submit too easily, are intolerant, arrogant, likely to pick on the weak, “and they will follow the leader off the cliff,” Dean said.

He cited work by Theodor Adorno and Robert Altemeyer on the authoritarian personality. Altemeyer’s recent book, “The Authoritarians,” is available on the internet free at this link.

Republicans are good at winning elections because of their authoritarianism, Dean said, “and there is no such thing as a left-wing authoritarian.”

I guess the lesson is that to win elections we need to throttle down our eternal need to squabble about details – witness the current swamp about the early primary date – and concentrate like good little soldiers.

New Cap came in the mail

Source was the People's email network. I forget who sent the link.

This and that in the news

Regarding immigration, looks like the Roman Catholic church is on our side. At least in Miami this weekend.

Harry Reid sees enough Republican defections to try again and try harder to end the war by Congressional action, according to the New York Times.


Republicans are said to be tired of Cheney, too. Not to be missed in that article is the quote from Orrin Hatch praising the Veep as a "straight shooter." Is Hatch forgetting something?

Angler

David Letterman announces that the Washington Post is running a four-part series on the vice president, so I better get a link to it up here.

If I'm a little tardy with this, at least our county party has already passed a resolution demanding impeachment of Dick Cheney. It was on June 11.

DEC Unanimous: Impeach Cheney

If the DEC had its way, the vice president would be on the way out. We proved it at the June 11 meeting by passing a resolution backing House Resolution 333, proposed by Dennis Kucinich, to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. It was put forward by the tenacious Charlotte Kleiman, who gave an impassioned speech urging the overflow crowd to back the resolution. On a motion by Cindy Lerner, it passed unanimously.

For more information on the resolution, there's a Wikipedia link.

Wave of bad news for Bush-Cheney

We’re reaching a high point in the wave of bad news for the Bush-Cheney administration, and the 60 Minutes interview with George Tenet must be a big part of it. He sounds really mad at the White House, and he’s barely started on a marathon of interviews. Too bad he was in charge of the two biggest intelligence failures ever, or he’d appear more sympathetic.

It runs long, and the second half is the best. “I became a talking point …Men of honor don’t do this … Slam dunk … Washington blood-letting game … Intelligence officers being thrown out the door … ”

And the best was: “Let’s stand up and tell everybody why we did it” – No, Tenet, you don't have that kind of people in this White House, they never are honest and open.

CBS News web site. Click on Tenet.

News of the Veep

I didn’t see the debate last night, and I was wondering whether they brought up the impeachment resolution Dennis Kucinich has filed against Dick Cheney. Didn't find it in the Miami Herald. The New York Times has it in the national briefs section, with an additional mention that Brian Williams asked the other candidates if they agreed with Kucinich that Cheney should be impeached. No one raised a hand.

So much for impeaching the vice president. Well, there's a resolution drafted now in the House Judiciary Committee, and we'll see. Meanwhile, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported it the other day, so at least the people of China have had a chance to hear about it.

Curious how the big media do not understand why people are moving to the internet for their news, huh?

Well, if you do a Google search of the internet for “impeach cheney” you’ll see lots of hits. One of the most rewarding is the YouTube video of Cheney cartoons, to the tune of the song “Bang Bang.”