John Nichols: Pelosi Slips Impeachment Onto the Table

[marmar]

from the Nation:



Pelosi Slips Impeachment Onto the Table
posted by John Nichols on 07/10/2008 @ 4:08pm




Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich moved a "privileged resolution" to force House to consider the question of whether President Bush should be impeached for lying to Congress and the American people about the reasons for invading and occupying Iraq, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surprised almost everyone by suggesting that the Judiciary Committee might indeed take up the issue.

Pelosi, who famously declared impeachment to be "off the table" before the 2006 election, now suggests that hearings on the president's high crimes and misdemeanors are a distinct possibility.

"My expectation is that there will be some review of that in the committee," the California Democrat told reporters Thursday.

"This is a Judiciary Committee matter, and I believe we will see some attention being paid to it by the Judiciary Committee," Pelosi explained.

The speaker was not suggesting that members of the Judiciary panel would be voting anytime soon on formal impeachment resolutions. Pelosi said she did "not necessarily (see the committee) taking up the articles of impeachment because that would have to be approved on the floor, but to have some hearings on the subject."

Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, D-Michigan, has indicated that he is reviewing the 35 articles of impeachment Kucinich has proposed for President Bush. He has not indicated, however, whether he intends to hold hearings on any of them or on broads questions of whether violations of their oaths of office, the Constitutionally-defined separation of powers and the laws of the land by the president and Vice President Dick Cheney -- the subject of three impeachment articles submitted by Kucinich -- should be addressed by Congress. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/336149

[EFerrari]

1. I wonder if this is about that whole 9% approval rating. n/t

[tblue]

3. Yeah. Put it on the table and she'll see that number skyrocket.

[kestrel91316]

4. Who's down to 9%? Bush? Pelosi? Congress? ALL THREE???

[EFerrari]

5. Congress. I read it over the weekend. n/t

[MrCoffee]

2. And with only 4 months left until he's a lame duck...

Wow Nancy, way to, you know, not do shit.

[Kutjara]

6. The "Life of Brian" strategy.

Why actually do something when you can set up a steering committee to look into the feasibility of making a recommendation to establish a working group to develop a proposal to consider the viability of appointing a task force to investigate the possibility of exploring grounds for possible impeachment, instead? Mission accomplished!

[warren pease]

7. And Conyers weighs in with his usual plain-spoken candor...

The honorable Congressman has decided to form an exploratory committee to kick-start the process of beginning to consider the possibility that at some point in the unforeseeable future it might be an idea to look into the positives and negatives that a thorough investigation might uncover regarding an effort to take into account the feasibility of forming a task force to determine if there's any remote chance that impeachable offenses have been committed by the president of vice and his slack-jawed marionette and that said task force be granted subpoena power just in case they're not completely ignored again and if they are there's already a working draft of a strongly worded statement sitting near the bottom of the same pile of paper where H Res. 333 / H Res. 799 has been gathering dust for months now just waiting for the light of truth to point the way to a new blue ribbon fact-finding panel charged with helping the task force and the exploratory committee determine if it's politically advantageous to launch hearings that might eventually result in some form of sanctions, including but not limited to IMPEACHMENT.


Sound about right?


wp

[Kutjara]

8. I think that might be a bit too strongly worded.

I mean, there is, hidden in there, the possibility (however remote) of somebody, somewhere, actually doing something. That's probably too dangerously radical an approach for the current leadership to get behind. If I understand their philosophy correctly, every call to action must point directly to a group or committee whose principle role is to redirect it to another committee or group. If, at any time, a recommendation emerges from this procedural hall of mirrors into the light of day, the whole process will be considered a failure.

[warren pease]

9. An astute observer of the modern political process.

Remember civics class in grammar school and sometimes high school? They had these great graphics that were actually stylized flow charts mapping the path that a piece of legislation takes on the way to becoming law -- from introduction in the house through approval by the full senate.

Then, the short trip to the white house where our brilliant, noble and altruistic father figure either signs it (only if it's in the best interests of the American public) or vetoes it (because in his wisdom he's found a clause that might possibly infringe on Americans' rights as enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights).

Somewhere along the line something or things happened to this process and now it's broken, probably beyond repair. Money, money and more money; PR and advertising in place of critical thinking and analytical skills; 30-second TV spots substituting scripted nonsense and heroic imagery for anything resembling actual issues; unrelenting bullshit from our official "experts," who are almost always wrong but never get called on it; and possibly the most destructive element of all -- the sanitized infotainment passing as TV news, processed by the mass media filtration system until nothing remotely controversial or at odds with official government/corporate dogma is left.

Racism, xenophobia, advocating violence against the usual despised groups -- that's all OK. Obvious lies go unchallenged; character assassination is a spectator sport; chicken hawks are never labeled as such; there are no stolen elections; there were no lies to start wars; 9/11 was a random event and happened exactly as mass media said it did; there's no such thing as impeachment in the Constitution and those 35 articles were never introduced; no impeachable offenses have been committed; torture isn't torture unless the subject dies, and then it was probably just a weak heart caused by a birth defect.

And so on into sweet oblivion where ignorance is not only bliss; it's official policy and those not exhibiting a sufficient level of apathy are singled out as troublemakers and probable homegrown violent terrorist sympathizers.

This was a time when we desperately needed real leaders running a real opposition party, fighting the Bushies on every single issue, no matter how trivial, never giving an inch, telling the warped swine in the minority party to take a fucking walk, choosing to support the Constitution instead of a global criminal enterprise.

Instead, we get a group of the weakest, most ineffectual dweebs in US political history pretending to be the opposition, pretending to investigate the Bushies, pretending to present an alternative world view, pretending that they weren't put there primarily to end the Iraq occupation and restrain the Bushies before they can destroy the planet... They're either incompetent or accomplices in the Bushies criminality and neither is acceptable in a politician who seeks to retain their seat.

Despite their absolute failure to deliver on any of the promises they say they didn't make, they actually expect to earn our full support in November. The only thing they've earned so far is their 9 percent approval rating. It should be much lower, but single digits would be pretty embarrassing anyway if they were actually capable of feeling shame.


wp