Impeachment petition closed, but not forgotten

The PetitionOnline petition to David Price was just closed to new signatures.  Thanks to the signers and all of the impeachment activists.  All of the online and paper signatures, several hundred in all, got to Price or his staff.  Price was not moved much, but it was a useful educational campaign and North Carolina did its part to push for impeachment proceedings. 

 

Bush, Cheney, and most of their appointees are now out of office, but at least some of them now have to fear prosecution in coming years for their actions.  I expect that the members of Congress, such as Price, who refused to act on good evidence of crimes in the Executive Branch will eventually be brought to account, because their lack of concern for the Consitution and our rights is not limited to just the past 8 years.  The impeachment movement would be unwise and hypocritical if it lets Obama get away with continuing criminal Bush-Cheney policies (which should probably now be called Bush-Cheney-Reid-Pelosi policies), and I will write more about that in a future post.   

Price votes right on war funding and wiretapping

I was suprised to see in the paper Sunday that Representative David Price voted on the 19th against HR 2642, giving Bush and Cheney $162.5 billion more dollars for the supposed "War on Terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The bill even prohibited permanent bases in Iraq, but to end the war, funding has to be cut off, though that might not be why Price voted against the funding.  Then on the 20th he voted against HR 6304, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (online at thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.06304:), which abets the government's warrantless spying on Americans and immunizes those companies that gave the government access against lawsuits.  Unfortunately both bills passed in the House.  Butterfield, Watt, and Miller also voted no on the war funding bill and Watt and Miller also voted against the FISA bill, and Jones for whatever reason did not vote. 

 

Price did vote on the 11th to refer Kucinich's H. Res. 1285, Impeaching George W. Bush, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors.  I assume this means referring it to the House Judicial Committee, which probably is a neutral act, but everyone must expect the Committee to bury yet another impeachment bill. With the war funding and FISA bills, Congress bought into Bush-Cheney's crimes once again.  The Senate is even more "responsible" in its decisions than the House, so I assume the bills will pass easily, and I think Obama has expressed support for the FISA bill. 

 

One question is whether Price is voting this way because he is coming up for re-election.  Either way it is a good trend, but he needs to do more.  He is willing to lead on limiting military contractors, but he is more willing to talk about Bush-Cheney's crimes than to take decisive steps to stop them.  There is also no reason to think he won't vote to openly support imperialism again, like he did in the summer of 2006 when he voted to endorse Israel's war on Lebanon and villify the resistance to Zionist expansionism.   

Rep. Kucinich's articles of impeachment against Bush

Monday evening Representative Dennis Kucinich read his 35 articles of impeachment to the House live on CSPAN, and they were read into the record by a clerk Tuesday evening.  I think the articles are now in the House Judiciary Committee.  Scott McClellan will give sworn testimony at a hearing scheduled for the 20th.  This is something to press David Price on at his Durham town hall meeting, which is on the 16th at 7pm at the Museum of Life and Science.

 

The criminal actions of the Bush Administration need to be condemned through impeachment so that the next president will be less likely to follow Bush and Cheney's example and to stop them before they start a war with Iran.      

Which side is Rep. Price on regarding wiretapping?

Whenever Representative Price has been asked to support impeachment he has said that he is very concerned about the Administration's actions and that he is for resistance, but short of impeachment.  This past week Price, along with all of the State's Democrats and Republican Walter Jones (only Virginia Foxx voted no), did vote (on H Res 982) to cite White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolton and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers for contempt, because they ignored subpoenas by Congress regarding the alleged politically motivated firings of US attorneys.  On the other hand, Price (and Butterfield, Etheridge, McIntyre, Shuler, and Miller) supported HR 5349, which would have extended the Protect America Act of 2007 (I think the final version is on thomas.loc.gov as S 1927) for 21 days.  The 21-day extension, which was actually sponsored by the formerly pro-impeachment John Conyers, for domestic wiretapping failed to pass the House and so the program expired over the weekend.  My understanding is that investigations begun under the Act can continue, but no new surveillance can be started under that Act, but the government should have no problem doing whatever it is doing if it goes through the existing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, if it is not doing anything illegal, and companies remain open to lawsuits for betraying their customers to the government.  

It looks like Price has bought into the Administration's criminality on this issue. 

Of course this week our Republican senators voted against a bill that among other things outlawed waterboarding (this relates to HR 2082, and it passed) and tried to grant immunity to the companies involved in domestic wiretapping (AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and Verizon Communications), by voting yes on S 2248, and no on an amendment to that bill.         

Discrediting the Senate

The N&O reports that the the Senate Ethics Committee"harshly criticized" Senator Larry Craig (R-IL), saying his actions "[constitute] improper conduct reflecting discreditably on the Senate."  Craig seems to have acted improperly, but the biggest discredit on the Senate is its refusal to stand up to the Administration.  They refuse to support impeachment and really they are about as bad as Bush and Cheney, so of course they do not support punishing the criminal acts they have helped the Administration commit.  Consider another item in the news, that the Senate wants to prevent lawsuits against telecommunication companies for collaborating with the government's warrantless spying on Americans.  Even the House did not give the companies immunity.  On top of all of this, the Congress has not ended this violation of FISA.  Don't expect them to do much if an attempt to burn down Congress or some other, more in fashion style of terrorism, is used to install full-blown fascism, which is already practically legal anyway.  The 6 members of the Ethics Committee are Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Vice Chair John Cornyn (R-TX), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Pat Roberts (R-KS), and Isakson (R-GA), and it would be interesting to see how they have voted on the major issues.  The Committee's website is ethics.senate.gov.     

Bush impeachment bill delayed

Posted on www.commondreams.org:

 

Published on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 by The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Kucinich Postpones Bush Impeachment Effort

by Sabrina Eaton

WASHINGTON — After promising to mark President Bush's final State of the Union speech by introducing articles of impeachment against Bush, Cleveland Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich postponed the effort.

Kucinich said Monday that he met with members of the House Judiciary Committee after making last week's impeachment pledge. He said he came away "hopeful there will be an inquiry by the Judiciary Committee."

"I will give them the opportunity to proceed before introducing articles of impeachment," he said in a statement. The committee's spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.

Last year, Kucinich introduced a measure to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney that has collected 24 co-sponsors. His effort to bring the matter before the full House won support from Republicans who wanted to embarrass House Demo cratic leaders, but eventually was referred to the Judiciary Committee.

Kucinich told The Plain Dealer editorial board last week that nine of the Judiciary Committee's 40 members favor his bid to impeach Cheney.

"I do not believe that there will be an impeachment this year — I don't think that will happen — but I do think that the questions relating to an inquiry of both the president and the vice president are important so that our nation has a real understanding of the effort that was made, a consistent effort, to mislead the people into supporting a war," he said.

© 2008 The Plain Dealer

Articles of impeachment against Bush on the 28th

Dennis Kucinich is going to introduce articles of impeachment against Bush on the 28th, when Bush will be giving the State of the Union speech.  This is similar to the articles against Cheney the Congressman introduced in November, which the Republicans voted to bring to a vote in the House, but the Democrats (including Rep. Price) won in the end and sent the bill to the House Judiciary, where it languishes.  Unfortunately Kucinich is going to officially give up his presidential campaign Friday and faces a fight to retain his seat in the House.   

 

Below is an article from the New York Times, reposted at www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/23/6588/

 

Published on Thursday, January 24, 2008 by the New York Times

Kucinich Starts New Impeachment Drive

by David M. Herszenhorn

Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio may get excluded from Democratic presidential debates, as he has been recently, but no one can deny him the floor in the House.

And today Mr. Kucinich took to the floor to fire off his latest salvo at the Bush administration: his plans to introduce Articles of Impeachment against President Bush on Jan. 28 - the day of Mr. Bush's State of the Union speech.

Accusing the administration of lying about the need for the war in Iraq, Mr. Kucinich said he did not need to hear the president's assessment. "We know the State of the Union," he declared. "It's a lie."

He also fired a volley at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California
who has maintained that impeaching Mr. Bush is not on the table for Congressional Democrats. "If impeachment is off the table," Mr. Kucinich said, "truth is off the table. If truth is off the table
then this body is living a lie."

Mr. Kucinich introduced Articles of Impeachment against Vice
President Dick Cheney last April and in November, with the surprise help of Republicans seeking to embarrass the Democrats, he nearly succeeded in securing an hour of debate on the House floor. House Democratic leaders blocked that, however, by referring the impeachment effort back to the Judiciary Committee.

Anti-Bush groups have been urging Mr. Kucinich to undertake an
effort to impeach the president.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company