Why is the Democratic Congress so unpopular? It isn’t because the Democrats in Congress are taking strong stands that anger Republican voters. Rather, it is because most Democrats in Congress are failing to act on the majority, mainstream view in America: That George W. Bush and Dick Cheney must be impeached.
Dennis Kucinich has introduced a resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, but Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has tried to destroy that resolution even before Congress has the chance to debate the resolution’s merits.
The editors of the Battleboro Reformer, a Vermont newspaper, rightly identify Pelosi’s opposition to impeachment as “a perfect illustration of why Congress has a lower approval rating than President Bush.” They write,
“A Democratic majority was elected to Congress last year to end the war in Iraq and rein in the Bush administration. Neither thing has happened. On issue after issue, the Democrats have caved in to Bush. And impeachment remains off the table.
Under House rules, Kucinich or any other member could introduce a motion for impeachment every day that Congress is in session. We think that sounds like a good idea. The administration has committed many crimes that rise to the level of impeachment — chief among them lying about the need to invade Iraq and sending this country into war based upon those lies. But Congress will not carry out its constitutional duties.
Bush and Cheney must not be allowed to leave office without being held accountable for their behavior. History will not look at the current members of Congress kindly if they fail to do what is right and necessary to preserve our democracy.”
Reminder came this week of what’s at stake in the movement to impeach Bush and restore the rule of law.
Former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio may or may not be an inside trader, but he is also a patriot. Nacchio is on trial on allegations of insider trading, but during his trial, he plans on bringing up the fact that, when the Bush White House came to Qwest demanding, without a search warrant, huge databases including records of Americans’ private telephone calls, Qwest said no.
CBS reports that “While AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. complied, Qwest refused after deciding the request violated privacy law,”
Thank you Qwest, for standing up against Big Brother attempts by George W. Bush to watch over the private communications of law-abiding American citizens in violation of the law.
As for Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth, well, they’ve proven to their customers that they aren’t willing to stand up against illegal government operations to spy on Americans. If these other telecommunications companies won’t protect their customers from Big Brother, why should their customers stay on?
This weekend, it has been widely reported that Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez has ended his silence and called the war in Iraq a disaster. Ricardo Sanchez was the man that George W. Bush picked to lead the way in Iraq, but now, Sanchez calls the American military occupation of Iraq “a nightmare with no end in sight”.
Of particular interest to me was the suggestion by General Sanchez that, if George W. Bush was in the military, he would be court martialed for his treachery and war crimes.
Hm. Should we court martial Bush? He is the Commander In Chief of the military, after all.
Hm… No. We should follow the law, of course, as much as George W. Bush has refused to follow the law. George W. Bush is the one who uses military tribunals for civilian crimes. Let’s not follow his stead.
Let’s impeach Bush, as he deserves, and as the law calls for. Then, when he’s no longer President, let’s prosecute Bush for his crimes, and put him in prison, where criminals like him belong.
I took a look at the blog chart on impeachment kept here on the Imprison Bush site. The results are depressing. Blog entries that reference the impeachment of George W. Bush have dwindled.
Here’s the thing that’s important to remember: There is no statute of limitations on the war crimes that George W. Bush has committed.
If we allow ourselves to become exhausted, Bush will get away with his crimes:
- starting the Iraq War with deceptions
- torturing prisoners
- taking away habeas corpus
- spying on massive numbers of American citizens without any search warrant.
To allow a President of the United States to get away with these crimes without any consequences at all is to send a message to future presidents that they will be allowed to rule above the law as well. We must not permit that to take place.
I say it once again, and I will say it until it takes place:
It didn’t take long for non-partisans to see that most of the the 2006 Democratic congressional candidates had no intention of acting strongly to confront the criminal behavior of George W. Bush. Many Democratic congressional candidates were just using anti-Bush, anti-war anger for their personal gain. Since the 2006 congressional election, we’ve seen the cost of the Democrats’ dedcation to self-interest above the good of the nation. Time and time again, the Democrats in Congress have caved in and given the Bush Republicans exactly what they wanted.
The Iraq War goes on and on. Our civil liberties are being hacked apart by laws like the Military Commissions Act, the Patriot Act and the Protect America Act. Alberto Gonzales remains in office, with more power than ever. Impeachment is off the table.
I found this video of Cindy Sheehan, talking in January, 2007, to be prescient. In the video, she predicts that the American people will need to push the Democrats to get anything done, and that the Democrats will begin to waffle and wimp out. It’s well worth a watch.
I ran across a kind of cynical (Sin Nickel) article written yesterday, about a short protest in favor of impeachment a few weeks ago. The protest consisted of unfurling a banner at a baseball game of the San Francisco Giants, in the hope of getting the banner shown on television, along with all the other advertisements.
I think the writer was onto something. What does it say about the state of our collective identity when the best way to get a message out to a large audience is with a banner at a ball game? The American people are too busy sitting, flacid, in their arm chairs, staring at the broadcast stage, to be active upon the public stage.
Those of us who support the impeachment of George W. Bush are pretty serious-minded. We believe in things like the rule of law, and the importance of liberty as guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
The trouble is, we don’t live in a serious nation. I like Harry Potter books and all, but there’s something very wrong about Harry Potter books and movies getting more attention than the serious books and documentaries that have been produced about the war crimes being committed by the American government.
We can protest all we want, but if America prefers to think of Twinkies, we’re not going to get very far.
Mark Holcombe writes in to the Rockford Register Star in Illinois, “Given the Bush administration’s apparent belief that it is above the law, accountable to no one, and its flagrant disregard for the Constitution, impeachment must be considered. The grounds are simple: failure to uphold the president’s oath of office… Dick Cheney becoming president is too horrible to contemplate? The obvious solution is to impeach Cheney first.”
I agree. A lot of people agree. The trouble is that most members of Congress are not supporting these efforts. Looking to preserve their own careers, they’re taking the easy and safe route, and letting American freedom go down the tubes in the process. This is clearly the case for Rockford’s own representative in Congress, Donald A. Manzullo, but it’s also the case for many Democrats in both the House and Senate.
Step 1: Writing the newspaper is good.
Step 2: Writing your member of Congress will help.
Step 3: Supporting a pro-impeachment challenger to your member of Congress is best.
A big deal has been made by conventional Democratic web sites like DailyKos and Democrats.com of the fact that right wing Democratic Congressman John Murtha went on the Sunday morning TV show Face The Nation this week and said, “There are three ways–four ways to influence a president, and one is popular opinion, the election, third is impeachment, and fourth is–and fourth is tighten the purse.”
Some Democrats are saying that Representative Murtha has put impeachment “on the table”, after Nancy Pelosi took it off the table.
Bull. All John Murtha did was to restate what the Constitution already says.
Let’s not hyperventilate, and let’s not fall into the trap of people who try to get us to think that the Democrats are more progressive than they really are. John Murtha is not in favor of impeachment. He just said the word “impeachment”.
Big whoop.
I’ll say the word “cannibalism”. That doesn’t make me a cannibal.
