Is Impeachment a Waste?
Conniff, Ruth
Political Eye Ruth Conniff Is Impeachment a Waste? ' I Jhe blogosphere was -L aquiver with the news that Cindy Shee-han will challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as an independent, since...
...He wrote a book on it last year...
...For that theory to win the day, the pressure on Congress from voters has to continue to grow...
...To date, some fifteen members have signed on to the proposal to impeach Cheney, and twenty have spoken out in favor of impeachment generally...
...The history books will show we were vocal in condemning the President's abuses of power...
...Representative Maurice Hinchey, Democrat of New York, joined Fein-gold's effort...
...The group After-DowningStreet.org and the political newsletter Counterpunch attacked Conyers, who marched with Rosa Parks for civil rights, as a hypocrite...
...Conyers eventually called the Capitol Police to arrest the protesters and drag them away...
...Sheehan's group began a sit-in, demanding that Conyers sign on to Representative Dennis Kucinich's impeachment bill...
...Echoing the White House response to the censure effort, Reid cited all the other work the Senate needs to do, Ruth Conniff is the political editor of The Progressive...
...That same Sunday, on CBS's Face the Nation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wouldn't be joining the censure drive...
...The idea that taking up impeachment will keep us from acting on health care, gay rights, etc., is ahistoric," Nichols says...
...I want Congress to condemn what the Administration has done, both for the American people, and for history...
...She and a group of other pro-impeachment activists were arrested in Cony-ers's office after a meeting at which Conyers told the activists that he lacked the votes for impeachment...
...On August 6, they both introduced censure resolutions against Bush, Cheney, and Alberto Gonzales...
...It comes from people slowly convincing individual members to step up...
...He points out that the same Congress that initiated impeachment against Richard Nixon accomplished a great deal, in terms of dialing down the Vietnam War, raising the minimum wage, passing environmental legislation, and making other important, progressive gains...
...So the right thing to do is move immediately...
...Together we will hold this Administration accountable for its many abuses...
...Iasked John Nichols, whose book The Genius ofImpeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism hit the top twenty on Amazon, what he made of the whole Sheehan/Conyers imbroglio...
...But as more and more voters and their representatives take an interest, the chances for impeachment grow...
...It would take fifty to pose a real threat...
...Congress should censure the President not only for the illegal wiretapping program, but for the Administration's phony reasons for going to war in Iraq, for trashing habeas corpus, for giving the green light to torture, and the list goes on and on...
...His current pair of resolutions, which he announced on Meet the Press with Tim Russert on July 22, cite the Administration for its continuing misleading statements on the Iraq War and what Feingold calls Bush's "attack on the rule of law" and the U.S...
...Sheehan also expressed her disgust and dismay...
...The day before the arrests in Conyers's office, Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, renewed his call of a year ago to censure the President...
...Nichols says activists are going to have to go member by member...
...But Pelosi has made it clear she doesn't want to do it...
...He asks for support from the pro-impeachment netroots: "I know some of you may not believe these resolutions are enough, and I understand that...
...I am as frustrated as you are about this Administration's actions and I hope the proposal I made today is something you'll consider helping me with (in addition to other efforts you may support...
...Only a House member, not a Senator, can begin the impeachment process...
...The internal strife on the left probably doesn't make much difference to the chances for impeachment, he says...
...Constitution, as well as the use of torture...
...On his website, Feingold directs constituents to a blog he wrote on the subject for Daily Kos, in which he explains that he is not convinced impeachment is the way to go, even though "the list of Administration wrongdoing, misleading statements, and out-and-out lies, just keeps getting longer...
...After making her announcement, Sheehan promptly got herself arrested in the office of Representative John Conyers, who heads the House Judiciary Committee...
...The Democrats will not hold this Administration accountable, so we have to hold the Democrats accountable," Sheehan said...
...The argument that impeachment would be a time-waster is, according to Nichols, "bullshit...
...adding: "He's the worst President we've ever had, and I don't think we need a censure resolution in the Senate to prove that...
...Russert hit on the same theme, suggesting that Feingold's censure idea is "hyper-partisan," i.e., a bunch of useless posturing...
...I Jhe blogosphere was -L aquiver with the news that Cindy Shee-han will challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as an independent, since Pelosi has refused to renounce her position that impeachment is "off the table...
...While President Bush and Vice President Cheney continue to operate as if they are leaders of a monarchy, Congress should censure them and make it clear to this and future generations that their actions are entirely unacceptable...
...While Democrats give voice to public discontent with the Bush Administration, the leadership keeps talking about getting on with the important business of the Congress, and not wasting time on impeachment...
...A fight broke out online between supporters of the Democrats and leftwing activists...
...And even Feingold himself nodded to the "let's-not-waste-time-and-energy" defensive posture struck by the Democrats ever since they won back Congress in the midterm elections...
...The way Jefferson and Madison set it up, it's supposed to be an organic process," he says...
...The fact of the matter is that during the impeachment of Nixon back in the '70s, the reason Congress was so effective and got so much done was that Nixon was scared and, in a calculated move, started cooperating with Congress to avoid impeachment...
...John Conyers would be absolutely delighted if he were forced to take up impeachment," Nichols says...
...In 2006, Feingold called for censure because of revelations about the Administration's illegal wiretapping program and the cover-up that ensued...
...He moved the proposal to set up a special committee to do it...
...He said he didn't want to tie up the House and Senate with an impeachment trial, and so he proposed the lesser step of censure, though he added that Bush and Cheney may very well have committed impeachable offenses...
...That's because, he explains, no one leader in the House can make impeachment happen...
...The American people have reached a breaking point with this Administration, and they are demanding that Congress step up and hold the President, Vice President, and others in the executive branch responsible for their actions," Hinchey says...
Vol. 71 • September 2007 • No. 9
