1st hearing impeachment inquiry - viz. The Call to Justice

[Judy]

The Call of World Can’t Wait: “We need more than fighting Bush's outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history…..This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop.”

 

[LeftDemocrat]

Thanks to you, impeachment will be heard Friday (tomorrow 25 July 2008)






5:44 minutes

H.Res. 1345 focuses on Bush's ultimate crime - invading Iraq on the basis of lies.

More details from Democrats.com:

Tell your Representatives to support impeachment by cosponsoring H. Res. 1345:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/142

Rep. Dennis Kucinich has led the fight for impeachment since April 2007, when he courageously introduced 3 Articles of Impeachment (H.Res. 333/799) against Vice President Cheney. On June 10, Kucinich introduced 35 (yes, thirty five) Articles of Impeachment (H.Res. 1258) against President Bush.

When Speaker Pelosi refused to allow hearings on any of the 38 Articles, Kucinich returned to the floor of Congress to introduce one more Article of Impeachment against President Bush (H.Res. 1345).

Thanks to massive pressure from Democrats.com and our pro-impeachment allies, Speaker Pelosi finally allowed Chairman Conyers to hold a hearing this Friday. Kucinich will get a few minutes to argue for impeachment along with Rep. Robert Wexler, former Rep. Liz Holtzman, and former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson. Kucinich made a video to thank us for our efforts.

H.Res. 1345 focuses on Bush's ultimate crime - invading Iraq on the basis of lies. The evidence is overwhelming that George Bush and other top officials manufactured those lies to "sell" an invasion whose real purpose was to gain control of Iraq's oil and establish military bases in the heart of the Middle East - the agenda of the Project for a New American Century that Bush and McCain fully embraced.

When Kucinich testifies on Friday, he will naturally face hostile questions from rightwing Republicans who impeached President Clinton. But Kucinich will also face hostile questions from key Democrats who oppose impeachment.

Some of these Democrats supported the invasion of Iraq: Howard Berman (CA28), Rick Boucher (VA09), Adam Schiff (CA29), Brad Sherman (CA27), and Anthony Weiner (NY09).

But most of these Democrats oppose impeachment because they are cowering in fear of a counterattack from the White House and FOX News: John Conyers (MI14), Artur Davis (AL07), Bill Delahunt (MA10), Zoe Lofgren (CA16), Jerry Nadler (NY08), Linda Sanchez (CA39), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL20), Bobby Scott (VA03), Betty Sutton (OH13), and Mel Watt (NC12).

Only a few Judiciary Democrats understand that the Founding Fathers gave Congress the power of impeachment as the only way to stop a President from defying the Constitution and becoming a dictator, as Bush has done: Robert Wexler (FL19), Tammy Baldwin (WI02), Steve Cohen (TN09), Keith Ellison (MN05), Luis Gutierrez (IL04), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX18), Hank Johnson (GA04), and Maxine Waters (CA35).

If anti-impeachment Democrats get their way, Friday's 2-hour hearing will be the only "impeachment" hearing for this entire Congress - and then Bush will try to pardon himself and everyone else before leaving office next January, just as his father pardoned six Iran-contra criminals.

So it is crucial for all of us - now over 500,000! - to tell our Representatives today to support impeachment by cosponsoring Kucinich's H. Res. 1345:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/142

And if you can do more, please make free calls to every Judiciary Democrat who opposes impeachment through CauseCaller:
http://www.causecaller.com/causes.php?c=House_Judiciary_Democrats_Impeachment

Simply enter your phone number and click the "Start Calling" button. (Click "Call me back if I accidentally hang up" in case you hang up by mistake.) In a few seconds, your phone will "magically" ring and CauseCaller will say the name of the first Representative on the list. Listen carefully for the name of each Member so you can repeat the name to the receptionist - or just say "The Representative." Don't hang up between calls - let the receptionists hang up and CauseCaller will dial the next Representative.

If you want to do even more, call your favorite radio or TV talk shows and tell them how important Friday's hearings will be, and how strongly you support impeachment for whichever reasons are most important to you. Prepare your thoughts in advance so you sound informed and determined.

And if you're near Washington DC, join Veterans for Peace to lobby Congress on Thursday and hold a pro-impeachment rally on Friday:
http://www.democrats.com/node/17211

Lots more details and actions here:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34943

emphasis and strikeout added - the Dems who oppose impeachment should lose their seats

[LeftDemocrat]

Am watching on C-Span.org right now, and certainly the vast majority of the panelists are in favor of impeachment (with two notable, and derisive, exceptions, explained below)

It's good to see the House Judiciary proceeding as it should, finally, on this matter.  If the Democratically-controlled Congress loses its steam now, the Dems aren't fit to govern us.   

Meanwhile, it was instructive to watch the Republican Minority fail to find any decent ground to defend Bush-Cheney, today.  The Republican Minority couldn't find a leg to stand on, and their witnesses came across as either fascist or kooky (more below).

These panelists, meanwhile, were absolutely fabulous: 

Bruce Fein, author of Constitutional Peril (forthcoming)
Bob Barr, former congressman, presently Libertarian candidate for U.S. President (deserves our vote more than Obama, who proved a traitor on FISA)
Walter Jones (R-NC)
Elizabeth Holtzman, former congresswoman, author of The Impeachment of George Bush
Brad Miller (D-NC)
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)
Elliot Abrams, veteran and chairman of Vets for Peace
Rocky Andersen, former mayor of Salt Lake City
and of course,
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)


I particularly liked Holtzman's emphasis that there is no remedy, no way to safeguard the U.S. Constitution and protect the American people from the tyranny of the U.S. executive branch, than to IMPEACH, IMPEACH WITHOUT DELAY.

Fein makes me a Constitutional fundamentalist.  Our founders had predicted this very predicament, and explicitly foresaw the need for IMPEACHMENT of the President, in these circumstances.

Congress DECIDES what constitutes an impeachable offense, and there are is opportunity here to set a precedent reining in the overwrought ambitious of warmongering presidents and vice-presidents (as well as secretaries of defense, secretaries of state, or attorney generals, etc.)

IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT IN MY MIND TO LIMIT THE IMPERIALIST TENDENCIES of the likes of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice-Ashcroft-Gonzalez-Mukasey.

IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO RE-ASSERT THE POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY that defines limits on the executive branch, by impeaching, and then indicting and prosecuting, when the time is ripe, the whole coterie of executive-branch officials and administrators, starting with Bush and Cheney, before they abscond to their hideaway in the mountains of Paraguay.

Meanwhile, I found the witnesses called by the Republican minority to be either dangerous or laugable.

Steven Presser, law professor at Northwester University -- fascist, pure and simple.  He would have been happy defending Goering, at the Nuremberg trials; the Goering who eventually was hanged for crimes against peace.  Presser spoke unremitting evil from his mouth, every time he was given the occasion.

George Rabkin, law professor at George Mason University, muddle-headed woolly-thinking witness.  His entire defense was to claim for Bush a defense (not in law, either) that his misdeeds are permissible in a time of war (the presumed open-ended so-called 'war on terror' being the purported war in question).

So simple to refute:  U.S. Congress has the right to declare war; U.S. Congress never did declare a war; if it is NOT wartime, then Rabkin's line of thinking doesn't have any validity, and in point of fact, the U.S. president has betrayed both Congress and the U.S. Constitution.  Without impeachment, the president and vice-president's war-making will remain unchecked and unbalanced.

Unimpressive were the following:

Fred A.I. Schwarz, New York Univ, Brennan Center for Justice -- he conceded that impeachment should have already been done, and yet, despite the clamor for justice and his role supposedly working for justice, he trotted out the 'too late' argument. 

If it's really too late, viz. because of the tarrying of Pelosi and the wavering of Conyers, then they, and the other members of the Judiciary Committee obstructing impeachment so far in this session of Congress, have failed to protect us from domestic enemies of the Constitution, they have failed to protect us from zealots like the neo-cons keen on war, and failed to protect us from the neo-absolutist imperialist view of the presidency pursued illegally by Cheney. It's not too late, if the Judiciary Committee would simply proceed with all due diligence in the defense of the U.S. Constitution, investigating abuses of power that seem to be incontrovertibly proven already.

And also unimpressive among the Majority members were:
Mel Watt (D-NC) - a stinker, for waffling through his alloted time.  North Carolina should be embarrassed.
Zoe Lofgren (D-CA16) - does not seem to understand that Bush-Cheney provoked the confrontation in Iraq

And among the Minority:
Gohmert (R-  ) - ignorant, through and through.  I despair that Constitutional issues are in the hands of the likes of Gohmert.

Meanwhile, impressive among the Majority were:
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
and
Robert Wexler (D-FL)


IMPEACH, IMPEACH WITHOUT DELAY.    YOU HAVE SEVEN DAYS.  THE CONSTITUTIONAL CLOCK IS RUNNING.

[LeftDemocrat]

Spurred by Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s calls for impeachment, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings today on the “Imperial Presidency.”

This hearing was broadcast on CSPAN and is archived here:

Part 1 rtsp://video1.c-span.org/60days/e072508_executive1.rm
Part 2 rtsp://video1.c-span.org/60days/e072508_executive2.rm

Witnesses includes former representatives Bob Barr and Elizabeth Holtzman, former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, former Deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein, former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, and Elliot Adams of Veterans for Peace.