BREAKING:

Kucinich made a procedural maneuver to bring up his resolution on impeachment articles against Vice President Dick Cheney moments ago. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer tried to kill the resolution. But republicans, who at first also wanted to kill the resolution, changed tactics and began voting against Hoyer. Hoyer’s motion lost on a 162-251 vote.

Something about this smells funny. Top democrats voted against the articles of impeachment, while republicans voted for it. Why? Am I missing something?

From the article:

Bringing a vote on the impeachment resolution would put Democrats on record over impeachment, a move that Republicans see as a political advantage in a year that has been marked by little progress in a Democrat-led Congress, even as they vowed to rise above partisanship.

September 19th is Talk Like a Pirate Day! You can read more here.

You can also watch the short instructional video, “Talk Like a Pirate Day: The Five A’s,” or the longer (but more wry) “How to Talk Like a Pirate.”

There’s also the very useful English-to-Pirate translator.

For instance, here’s a few highlights from Bush’s latest execrable speech, translated into pirate:
Read more »

By Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive

Kevin Egler initially was charged with illegal advertising after he placed an “Impeach Bush” sign at an intersection in Kent, Ohio. The city dropped that charged but then threatened him with a littering charge. (See “Impeach Bush” Defendant Tells His Story at www.progressive.org)

On the morning of September 6, the city of Kent dropped all charges. “I just got back from the courthouse,” Egler said in an e-mail. “We entered into an agreement with the city to drop all charges against me. I signed the agreement which stated that A-if I place any type of sign on property without obtaining permission from the property owner first, that I may be cited and/or arrested for the criminal offense of littering.- We do plan on following up with city council to see that all sign placements in the future are handled in the same manner.”

Egler expressed his gratitude to people who rallied to his side.

“Thanks to all of you for the support throughout this process,” he wrote. “It has been a remarkable journey that was made easier by all of your actions. I have met many good people that I look forward to working with in our future projects. We all have to do all we can to make sure that our freedoms are not revoked. Let’s all keep up the good fight.”

Put up or shut up…….. that’s my thought.

Rep. John Conyers declared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could not stop him from beginning impeachment proceedings in the House Judiciary Committee against a ‘long list of people’in the Bush administration, although he did not make a firm commitment to begin proceedings.

“Nancy Pelosi has impeachment ‘off the table,’ but that’s off her table, it is not off John Conyers’ table,” the Michigan Democrat said during a town hall meeting in his district Tuesday. “Nancy Pelosi, who I actually supported, cannot prevent me from introducing an impeachment resolution against, well I’ve got a long list of people who are eligible.”

More at Raw Story

Continue reading at SFBayview

That’s what I’m talking about……..

From NowPublic.com

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-As many as 250 people gathered Saturday afternoon at the corner of Hwy. 22 and the Village Road to protest the war in Iraq and to decry Vice President Dick Cheney’s role in the four-and-a-half-year conflict.

Organized by Jackson Hole residents Jim Stanford, Walt Farmer and Karen Hogan, the event featured speeches by State Rep. Pete Jorgensen (D-Jackson), author Alexandra Fuller, attorney Kent Spence, and veteran war medic Nick Rowley, along with protest music by Phil Round, Derrik Hufsmith, Peter “Chanman” Chandler, Dick Barker and Carolyn Groves. Afterwards, demonstrators marched 1.4 miles down the Village Road pathway to the gates of the Teton Pines Country Club, where the Vice President owns a house and is currently vacationing.

“In this day and age it’s very easy to be jaded about politics,” said Stanford in his opening speech. “We don-t feel we can really trust the people that we send to Washington, D.C., to do the people’s business.”

A soft’spoken teacher posted the words “Impeach Bush” in a public garden, and Kent police cast him as an outlaw.

Today Kevin Egler is fighting that in Kent Municipal Court, and the case is emerging as a free’speech issue of interest well beyond the boundaries of placid Portage County.

Police ticketed Egler for unlawfully advertising in a public place because he put up a free’standing sign near the intersection of Haymarket Parkway and Willow and Main streets.

Egler said the officer who cited him July 25 asked: “Why don’t you put the signs in your own yard?” Egler said his response was that he’s a taxpayer and views the public space very much as his yard.

At 45, Egler is too young to have experienced the heyday of anti-war activity in Kent. He was only 8 when Ohio National Guardsmen shot and killed four Kent State University students during a campus protest on May 4, 1970. He went to the university a decade later, putting out an underground newspaper and acquiring an accounting degree.

Egler and about a dozen friends and associates have placed hundreds of anti-war messages around Ohio and neighboring states over the past 10 months. He said the effort is fueled by the notion that President Bush’s military response after the 9/11 terrorist attacks was both illegal and immoral.

More at the Plain Dealer

by Joe Conason

While politicians of both parties have repeatedly denounced Alberto Gonzales for public mendacity and abuse of office, a few of them finally have stepped up to do what must be done. On July 31, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., and several colleagues - including four former prosecutors - filed a resolution directing the House Judiciary Committee to open an impeachment investigation of the attorney general.

The logic of Inslee’s initiative is inescapable to anyone who has been listening to the congressional complaints about Gonzales. If legislators from both branches and both parties believe that the attorney general has repeatedly deceived Congress and the public about matters of importance, if they believe that he has committed those deceptions under oath in the Capitol, and if they believe that the president will do nothing to remedy these wrongs, then impeachment is their only serious response.

So far, the Democratic leadership - and the Republicans who likewise suspect the attorney general of grave offenses - have carefully sidestepped this obligation. Instead they urge the appointment of a “special counsel” to probe the accusations of perjury against him.

For anyone who remembers the awful excesses of the Clinton impeachment and the punishment inflicted on the Republicans in the next election for their pernicious zealotry, such caution is understandable. But the burden of confronting the attorney general’s abuses cannot be shifted onto the White House. George W. Bush will take no action against his old pal “Fredo,” who retains his confidence (and who knows far too much about this president and this administration to be discarded anyway).

read more HERE

From NBC’s Mike Viqueira
cross posted at The Huffington Post

A group of House Democrats will introduce a resolution calling on the Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) will sponsor the measure. It will be dropped in the hopper tomorrow.

It’s too early to say whether it will actually get anywhere.

Here’s the text of resolution…

RESOLUTION
Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and
misdemeanors.
1 Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall
2 investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the
3 House of Representatives to impeach Alberto R. Gonzales,
4 Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes
5 and misdemeanors.

From Information Clearing House:

By Ray McGovern

What do Rep. John Conyers (D, Michigan), chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and President George W. Bush have in common? They both think they can dis Cindy Sheehan and count on gossip columnists like the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to trivialize an historic moment.

I-ll give this to President Bush. He makes no pretence when he disses. He would not meet with Sheehan to define for her the “noble cause” for which her son Casey died or tell her why he had said it was “worth it.”

Conyers, on the other hand, was dripping with pretence as he met with Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and me yesterday in his office in the Rayburn building. I have seldom been so disappointed with someone I had previously held in high esteem. And before leaving, I told him so. Throwing salt in our wounds, he had us, and some fifty others in his anteroom arrested and taken out of action as the Capitol Police “processed” us for the next six hours.

As we began our discussion with Conyers, it was as though he thought we were “born yesterday,” as Harry Truman would put it. With feigned enthusiasm he began, Let’s hold a Town Hall meeting in Detroit so we can talk about impeachment. Get out my schedule; let’s see, we need to hear from everyone about this.

Been there, done that, I reminded the congressman. On May 29, 2007 Col. Ann Wright and I were among those who flew to Detroit for a highly advertised Town Hall meeting on impeachment, because we were assured that John Conyers would be there.

That Town Hall/panel discussion was arranged by the Michigan chapter of the National Lawyers Guild less than two weeks after the Detroit City Council passed a resolution, cosponsored by Conyers- wife Monica Conyers-calling for the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. We had hoped that Monica’s clear vision and courage might be contagious.

Husband a No-Show

I had to remind the congressman that he did not show up for the Town Hall, preferring to put in a cameo appearance and quickly leave a half-hour before it began.

Apparently, that incident was of such little consequence to the congressman that he had completely forgotten about it and was about to try to resort to the same subterfuge. And that was less than two months ago. Small wonder, then, that he has apparently forgotten the oath he took, much longer ago, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Selective Alzheimer’s? I don-t know. What was clear was that he had forgotten a whole lot. I pointed to James Madison’s role in crafting a Constitution that mentions impeachment no fewer than six times. And for those, like John Conyers, who may have forgotten, Madison had this to say at the constitutional convention, “A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.) I mentioned my career as a CIA analyst, said there is abundant proof, much of it documentary, that Bush and Cheney had deliberately deceived Congress into approving a war of aggression, and asked what could be more subversive of the Constitution.

The congressman’s reply: Madison did not say Conyers has to impeach every one. Why, if I had to impeach everyone for high crimes and misdemeanors, that’s all my committee would have time to do.

Read more »

by Andrew Bard Schmookler
from OpEdNews.com

AT LAST, IT’S CRYSTAL CLEAR WHAT OUR MOVEMENT MUST DO

Now that the Bushites have made it clear that the only way to defend the Constitution and the rule of law is to impeach them, one other thing has become clearer than it has ever been before: what the anti-Bushite movement must do.

It is time to organize to apply maximum pressure on Congress to move it to impeach the leaders of this lawless administration.

From one angle, it’s unfortunate that Congress must be pressured to do this. One would wish that they would fulfill their oath to defend the Constitution on their own.

But from another angle, this is the best way for the impeachment process to unfold. A mass movement by which the people demand that Congress impeach these lawless rulers not only pushes the Democratic majority in Congress, it also provides them political safety.

The Democrats have been inhibited by the fear that any move to impeach these would-be tyrants would be interpreted –by the media and the public– as mere partisan politics– just a move to wrest power from their opponents.

But if enough people demand that Congress defend the Constitution by impeaching this lawless leadership, it will be clear that this is not a matter of power but a matter of answering the people’s impassioned call to fulfill their oath of office. What could be more defensible than that?

What protects the proponents of impeachment also undercuts those who would defend this lawless regime. In America, the will of the people is difficult to argue with. This is our country, and whereas the American people may not be qualified to make strategic policy we are fully entitled to demand that our birthright of a constitutional democracy be protected. “You took an oath, now fulfill it. Impeach those who are stealing OUR country!”

Already, according to the polls, about half the American people favor the impeachment of Bush and of Cheney. Such public sentiment is unprecedented in American history, and such numbers demonstrate the potential for an unprecedentedly massive social movement. If we can combine a clear and powerful message with putting our movement in its millions into the streets, the force on Congress would be irresistible.

That’s our job now: to organize to accomplish it.

read more at OpEdNews.com

John Nichols
from “The Nation”

Four more members of the U.S. House signed on this week as cosponsors of H. Res. 333, the measure that outlines articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney for actively and systematically seeking to deceive citizens and Congress about an alleged threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and for openly threatening aggression against Iran.

Congressman Bob Filner, the chair of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, added his name, along with another veteran Democratic representative from California, Sam Farr.

The additional co’sponsorships from Washington Democrat Jim McDermott, a Vietnam-era veteran who has been one of the House’s sharpest critics of the war in Iraq, and Virginia Democrat James Moran bring the number of supporters for the articles to 14, including sponsor Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio.

House Members are backing impeachment for a number of reasons, including anger with Cheney’s involvement with manipulations of intelligence regarding Iraq, illegal spying on Americans and the promotion of torture, as well his recent attempt to avoid scrutiny by claiming that the Office of the Vice President was not part of the executive branch. And then there was President Bush’s decision to commute the 30-month prison sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff and co-conspirator in moves to punish former Ambassador Joe Wilson for exposing the deceptions that led to war.

The founders were very clear about the fact that abuses of the presidential authority to pardon or otherwise lift the burden of the law from subordinates was an impeachable offense. And a number of House members who take constitutional matters seriously have spoken up for impeachment since the commutation of Libby’s sentence.

read more at THE NATION

Bill Moyers talks impeachment with Bruce Fein and John Nichols. You can read transcript or watch here.

A public opinion poll from the American Research Group recently reported that more than four in ten Americans - 45% - favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half - 54% - favored impeachment for Vice President Cheney.
Unhappiness about the war in Iraq isn’t the only cause of the unsettled feelings of the electorate. Recent events like President Bush’s pardoning of Scooter Libby, the refusal of Vice President Cheney’s office to surrender emails under subpoena to Congress and the President’s prohibition of testimony of former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers in front of the House Judiciary Committee have caused unease over claims of “executive privilege.” In addition, many of the White House anti-terror initiatives and procedures - from the status of “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo to warrantless wiretapping - have come under legal scrutiny in Congress and the courts.