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Resolution To Impeach VP Cheney Submitted
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has submitted a resolution, HR 333, to impeach VP Dick Cheney on charges of "high crimes and misdemeanors." The charges were submitted on 24 April 2007. Congressman Kucinich has posted his supporting documents online, including a brief summary of the impeachment procedure (PDF), a synopsis (PDF), and the full text (PDF) of the impeachment resolution.
"Congressman Dennis Kucinich is invited to go hunting with Cheney."
In addition, once this road is crossed -- impeaching for , and every time the president/vp is in office, and a different party has a majority in the senate and house, you'll see an impeachment. It's the same thing that happened once the line was crossed with judicial appointments. Partisian politics has made almost every parties' political victory a Pyrrhic one for the American people. We get the shaft, while the politicians get rich fighting each other. We need a 3rd party...
Finally, does Kucinich this this will help him get elected President?
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
...but the problem is, this guy has less crediblity than the late Henry B. Gonzalez (D) San Antonio, TX who, on an almost monthly basis called for a Reagan impeachment all through the 80's.
This is nothing more than a political stunt, and only half a degree more effective than the Olympia city clownsil (Washington) passing a resolution calling for the impeachment of Bush.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Woa -- I think you're off base here on two levels.
One -- If you can't win, you still have to do it. You cannot let crimes go, even if you cannot succeed in convicting. The problem is not this president/VP. The problem is the next one. To not impeach is to say "if the congress isn't dominated by the other house, you can do anything you want."
Two -- Cheny's not the target. Cheney's going to have to defend himself, and his interactions with the president will come out. It's at least possible that real solid evidence against the president will emerge.
This isn't stupid, it's both the right thing to do, and may help land the big one.
Besides, even Republicans hate Cheney. He's an easier target.
...were're just constantly amazed that it is as bad as it is, and presumeit couldn't have always been like this. History tends to disagree - politics has always been a nasty, dirty, hellhole.
As a centrist, I would prefer neither end of the spectrum in the congress - we don't need a few more far-lefts to outweight the far-rights, we need less of both!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Now that is an impeachment worth reading. The synopsis alone is a solid piece of attack.
Let's see if your congresscritters have enough spine left to do follow the facts. Though I fear we will soon find out how much money Haliburton is willing to throw around in order to keep their sock puppet in office.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
First, given that you dudes (i.e. the US) planned, financed and partially executed the overthrow of the first ever(!) democratically elected president in the entire third world, and that that happened to be Iran, their hostility is more than understandeable, isn't it? The direct result of the forceful institution of the Sha regime was, of course, the islamic revolution. You made your bed, now lie in it.
Two, nuclear infrastructure is no threat to the USA. Even a working nuke isn't. You still need delivery vehicles. As for that, I think the ratio of USA to Iran is roughly 20,000:0
Finally, the position in the paper I read was "Cheney lied and betrayed the public while holding an office where he swore an oath to protect and serve that same public". Iraq/Iran is merely what he lied about.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You really really don't want that to happen. Most likely, U.S. politics will end up being just like France's, where street protests are a normal part of politics, and where extermists can get quite far (e.g. Le Pen). Worse, you could end up with politics like Italy's or Israel's.
I've been following this story since last week when the plan was leaked and then through Wednesday's postponement due to concerns about Cheney's physical status and through yesterday's news conference. What blew me away was the total lack of coverage it was getting in any press. In particular NPR really made me feel let down. I listened to Morning Edition and All Things Considered non-stop for days and did not even hear the slightest mention of this while I sat through literally hours of interviews with neocon assholes like freaking William Kristol.
What a sad indictment of what has become of the broadcast media. The above posts that mention the re-alignment of the "center" way off to the right is clearly evidenced by this example. NPR has no time to even mention the beinning of an impeachment of Cheney but, on the other hand, there's plenty of time for a pleasant chuckling interview with Billy Kristol on the brighter side of McCane's chances on this so-called left leaning media outlet.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Practically everything that was said regarding Iraq's WMD prowess was also said by
... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."
... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
George Bush
John McCain
John Kerry
Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton
Robert Byrd
Sandy "nothing in my underpants" Berger
Madeline "Kim Jung Ill seems a nice guy" Albright
Carl Levin
Ted Fscking Kennedy
Al Gore and a HOST of others...
It begs the question why Kusinich is picking on Dick only?
Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
"We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 1, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton.
- (D) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others, Oct. 9, 1998
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
"Hussein has
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and th! e means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam H
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Why are Libertarians insane? Because they willfully disregard any evidence that their simplistic theories will not and do not work in the real world. The free market is not magic and infallible. It is a complex system of feedback loops that does not posses any sort of true homeostasis and therefore needs external management in order to maintain its state of freedom.
Not all Libertarians are as "bug-fuck insane" as you're making them out to be; there is a clear line between Libertarianism and economic anarchism -- Libertarians generally advocate a form of government which creates as level a playing field as possible, and then lets individual actors do the rest; this is generally summed up by saying that it is OK for government to create a framework where individuals can make decisions on their own, but not to act redistributively. Although this would not allow for conventional anti-trust regulation in the conventional sense, their stance is -- and I think they have a very good point here -- much of the danger of monopolies and trusts isn't inherent in the monopoly itself, but in the accrual of power in a single organization which is then used to influence government and suppress competition; if you removed all the corporate welfare and protective legislation that large corporations have bought themselves, they would tend to be lumbering behemoths and, excepting some special cases which tend towards natural monopolies, generally aren't as competitive as they appear to be today.
There is a lot of debate within Libertarian organizations as to how those special cases should be treated, and setting aside orthodoxy, I think the vast majority of self-identified Libertarians would support some form of minimalist interventionism in order to counterbalance the distortive effects that some monopolies have had on the government, while the laws and welfare that they have purchased are repealed or dismantled.
In short, I think you're getting dangerously close to creating a straw man when you attempt to pigeonhole Libertarians so narrowly; like it or not, they're the closest thing that the United States has to a third political party, and their views are not nearly as simplistic as you seem to think they are.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Street protests are a normal part of politics in a democracy, you dough-head. Including in the US. You just don't see it because All Your Media are belong to about 3 people.
The problem isn't that the general public isn't supporting it.
The problem is that nobody takes Kucinich seriously, even within his own party. He's maybe not quite as ridiculous as Ralph Nader or Jesse Jackson on the list of "hopeless ideologues who continually run for President," but he's definitely on that list. Hell, he gets regularly ridiculed by Jon Stewart, who is practically the mainstream Democratic party's mouthpiece on national television. He is, in general, a loose cannon, and I doubt that earns him many friends on either side of the aisle. (Well, some Republicans might secretly like him just because of his entertainment value, and because he creates things they can point at and use to condemn Democrats in general with; e.g. his proposals to ban handguns make for great NRA campaign fodder.)
None of the real players in Congress are going to touch this, because they don't want to be associated with him. He's practically famous for introducing feel-good bills with no cosponsors, that get him a little media attention and then get tossed in the circular file in committee.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
with the success of the right wing campaign to reclassify righ as center and center as left.... there are no candidates representing the actual left, which make up the majority of the population, hence low voter turnout.
maybe instead of allowing news pundits in the ivory tower to scare them off their populist positions, candidates for the left should plough forward and see what kind of interest they can develop in the 250+ million people who didn't vote in the last few elections because the only candidates to choose from were a corporate schill and a corporate schill who happens to be christian.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Let's look at the articles objectively (if that's even possible). Did Cheney commit any crimes, according to Kucinich? Note that lying in a political speech is not a crime (nearly every politician in the country would be behind bars if it were). Neither is lying to Congress, unless it's under oath, and we know how fervently the Bush Administration opposes testifying under oath. It's also not a crime to break a solemn promise, like the oath of office an elected official takes. These may be reasons not to reelect somebody (except that America did), but they're not crimes.
Article I: Cheney lied about Iraqi WMDs. Reprehensible, yes. Cynical and morally bankrupt, yes. Criminal, unfortunately not.
Article II: Cheney lied about a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. But again, not a crime under any law.
Article III: Cheney's been rattling his saber at Iran. It may be foreign policy by sledgehammer rather than Xacto knife, but there's no law against this either.
So although I would really, really like to see Cheney removed from office, Kucinich's articles of impeachment don't contain any actual crimes for which he could be tried. Not that that's stopped impeachment proceedings before, but there was a better case against Clinton, because he actually testified under oath. We have some truly reprehensible people leading our country, and they should be stopped before they get us into even more trouble, but unfortunately this isn't going to do it.
Libertarians generally advocate a form of government which creates as level a playing field as possible, and then lets individual actors do the rest; this is generally summed up by saying that it is OK for government to create a framework where individuals can make decisions on their own, but not to act redistributively.
Well, the problem is that without acting redistributively, you simply can't create as level a playing field as possible. Take the inheritence tax, for example. Without the inheritence tax, you get economic dynasties where the child of a wealthy and powerful individual not only starts off with an advantage in education and political connections (that you can't really erase) but also with an entire foundation of wealth that an otherwise equally talented individual would not start with. In essence, the race is already lost. I've always been of the opinion that wealth should be earned, but a lack of inheritence tax allows for the existence of an upper class that has no need for work when they can simply let their money work for them by entrusting it to investment advisors. Most if not all Libertarians consider the Inheritence Tax to be an abomination, though it is widely considered outside of the American Right to be a necessary foundation for the creation of equality.
I think the vast majority of self-identified Libertarians would support some form of minimalist interventionism in order to counterbalance the distortive effects that some monopolies have had on the government, while the laws and welfare that they have purchased are repealed or dismantled.
The problem is that most Libertarians don't seem to believe that there's a problem with a monopoly having a distortive effect on the market or on consumers as long as they don't get the government to do them any special favors. I, too, would like to see less corporate influence on government, but until corporations are prohibited from or (by force of law) gain no profit from donating to the campaigns of politicians, you'll never see and end to special favors for industry. I find it very rare (i.e. I've never met) a Libertarian who does not consider the ability of the wealthy and powerful to spend their money as freely as they want on political donations to be a matter of their free speech rights, nor have I met a Libertarian who thinks that the idea of corporate personhood and the existence of the same free speech rights for corporations should both be abolished.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
There's a difference between "they pose a threat" and "they are threatening us." In the latter, anyone can threaten us -- whether they can do anything about it (or even plan to) is another issue. Heck, given the current climate of the world, we'd be bombing everyone if we based it on who spoke ill of the United States.
Ahmadinejad is a nut, and perhaps a dangerous one. But so is Kim Jong Il, I'd argue moreso. So is China. But we can't win those, so we've looked the other way. (Of course, given what we've seen in Iraq, I doubt we could win in Iran, either.) This is not the Iranian government posing an immediate and direct threat to the U.S. -- this is the current administration's dislike for radical Islam. I'm not too fond of the radical part myself, but we can't go around blowing up everyone who may one day pose a threat.
The American people get this (more than the White House originally gave them credit for), and therefore lies must be told to make the threat seem more imminent than it is. The first three articles of impeachment spell out this tactic fairly clearly, and the only reason the fourth doesn't do as well is because the Iran issue hasn't been around as long. Give it a year or two, and more lies will be told about them. Sadly, I think all it takes is one level of lies, and many Americans (due to media fatigue) seem to just buy it.
I don't doubt that Ahmadinejad is a bad guy. Nor did I doubt that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. But if we look the other way on North Korea, China, Sudan, and others while cutting a path through the Middle East, it looks more like either religious or oil-based profiling than it does like policing to me.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Where exactly did you study the political process? Street protests are used by groups that are in the minority to bring awareness and supporters to their cause. A lack of street protests means a suppression of the minority. The abortion issue will cause street protests forever, no matter which side wins, because the other side will always be pissed. Right now the pro-life people are in a pretty sharp minority (only 30-40% of our population), notice how much they protest?
Your attempt at false equivocation is completely dishonest. The Democrats have used a strategy of containment since Clinton was elected in 1992. It worked, there were no WMD to be found. Attempting to equivocate the fraudulent rush to war with a reasoned effort to contain a known danger is bs. Are you seriously going to argue that the interests of the United States have been served by the actions of this administration? And what freedoms or other traditions are Conservatives conserving if it is ok for the government to use my tax dollars to lie to me? How are the claims of the Bush administration not fraudulent? They were the ones advocating for war, they were the ones making the claims that a change in the course of action must be taken. Ineffective defense against fraud might lose you an election, but it is not grounds for impeachment, commission of said fraud is. The Democrats gave up their responsibility to criticize unsound evidence, but in the light of the fact that they were the minority party and could not win in either the House or the Senate their political expediency and deferment to a extremely popular president during an election season is reasonable. However, the Democrats sin was accepting the evidence as presented by the administration. Since then, they have repeatedly (except for Hillary) stated that they should not have trusted the Administration's claims and that doing so was a mistake. Again, all of the quotes you have about Iraq possessing WMD from 02/03 are based on information promoted by the White House that had no integrity. Quotes before then are based on a strategy of containment, not invasion.
Show me the evidence from an actual intelligence agency that says Saddam had weapons in 2002 or 2003, hell anytime after 1998. Other than the rockets that exceeded the allowed range (which were destroyed before the war by inspectors and had no WMD warheads), Iraq possessed no capabilities to threaten the US or it's neighbors. The Democratic strategy of containment was working until Bush decided it wasn't good enough for his delusions. It's the same thing in N Korea, the !Clinton policy of the Bush Administration has managed in 2007 to get the same agreement Clinton got in 1995, but now Pyongyang has a couple more warheads it can sell to real terrorists. How did Bush's actions advance the interest of the United States? Why did we invade Iraq? To what purpose are our soldiers and treasure being spent?
I'd really like someone to show me a person with actual intelligence credentials that believes invading Iraq was a good idea. Defectors provided by "heroes in error" over at the INC don't count, they have been exposed as frauds. Plagiarized thesis don't count either. Show me the CIA approved intelligence, show me the mid-level analysts who actually believed Saddam was capable of building nukes, would in a million years team up with Al Qaeda or provide them with WMD or would be stupid enough to attack the US with the amount of US military power already pointed at him.
I want something that didn't come out of the the White House Iraq Group, the INC, the Office of Special Plans @ the Pentagon and that wasn't a delusion with no evidence (Atta in Prague). I seriously challenge you to come up with something.
What Bush and Cheney said:
DICK CHENEY: (Speech to the VFW 8/26/02) Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.
DICK CHENEY: (Speech to the VFW 8/26/02) But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
DICK CHENEY (MEET THE PRESS NBC 9/8/02): It's now public that in fact he has been seeking to acquire and we have been able to intercept to prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge and the centrifuge is required to take low grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb."
PRESIDENT BUSH (Discussion with Congressional Lea
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
On a related note, was Hitler a moderate simply because he was at war with both the capitalist democracies of the West and the communist dictatorship of the East?
Short answer: No, who your external enemies and friend are do not necessarily reflect the economic stance of your own country.
Long answer: Hitler was an economic moderate because National Socialism was a semi-rightist totalitarian system that shared control of the country between government officials and industry leaders. The economy was semi-planned, but much of the planning was done by government recognized monopolies and cartels instead of by the government itself. In addition, property was assumed in general to belong to the citizen instead of to the state. That last distinction is very important between leftist and rightist totalitarian economies and is one of the few places where they don't blur together much.
As for defining them by allies, note that the Nazis and the Communists were initially allies until they turned on each other, and a sizeable portion of the wealthy and of the intelligentsia of America in the late 30s were more sympathetic to Germany than to England. Hilter wrote quite glowingly of Americans in his writing, praising them and considering them as potential fearsome rivals. The clash of powers was more pragmatic than ideological until the war got started and the propoganda started up. History largely writes it as a war against an evil power that massacred Jews, but it got started more out of a fear of the balance of power.
I mean, what kind of nation are we that is allied with both Norway and Saudi Arabia?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Are you aware that following every cut in Federal Income Tax, revenues received by the federal government from income taxes has gone up? When tax rates are lower economic activity is greater. At some point, this increase in revenue from decreased taxes stops, but we don't know where that point is. I am confident it is at a lower tax rate than our current one. Oh yes, when the taxes were cut the last time, the percentage of income tax collected from the top quintile of earners went up. That is, the people who earn in the top 20% of incomes in this country pay a greater share of the money collected from income tax now than they did before the last round of tax cuts were passed.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Please support H Res 333, the articles of impeachment of Vice President R. Cheney submitted by Congressman D. Kucinich, in the most vigorous terms possible. The invasion of Iraq was an international crime, and I do not need to describe to you the colossal human, economic, and social costs that have already accrued, and that will increase in the future with the inevitable multi-faceted blowback that will result.
Please make this your top priority and do everything in your power to recruit your colleagues in its support, and to ensure the successful impeachment of Mr Cheney.
Thank you very much!
I'll bite.
Look, it's not World War II. It's also not the American Revolution, and it's not the Star Wars Trilogy. The mess we find ourselves in in Iraq is more like France's involvement in Algeria, or in Indochina, or our own involvement there. It's not an honorable thing, it's not an admirable thing, and it's one of the worst foreign policy decisions ever, right up there with Operation Ajax and the Kirkpatrick Doctrine. We're not fighting Hitler or Sauron, George Bush isn't Winston Churchill or Aragorn or Feric Jaggar, or whatever your preferred fantasy trope is. This was a stupid mess, and it cannot be made better. Our options are (a) leave, and watch the region descend into utter chaos and barbarism, (b) keep doing what we're doing until the Republicans are safely out of office and the disaster can be blamed on the Democrats, then watch the region descend into utter chaos and barbarism, and (c) roll through Iraq like the Ottoman Turks, the Roman Legions, the Golden Horde, the Germans or any other empire-builder of yore, and exact disproportionate revenge on random civilians for any act of defiance, causing them to fear us more than they fear the insurgents. (I provide option (c) only for completeness; if you find it appealing, please seek help.)
Occupying a large country and pretending that we're not invaders is a stupid idea. It was a stupid idea before it was executed, and it's a stupid idea now. No good will come of it, no matter how much better you feel when you blame the person who points out that it was a stupid idea.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This is not really a joking matter. Most people in the U.S. have no idea how corrupt the U.S. government is. If you knew, you wouldn't joke.
We need to help each other educate ourselves about the corruption. Here is my summary of U.S. government corruption. Where's yours?
Umm. That's not a centrist. You've given almost the dictionary definition of a libertarian. Try the age-old political quiz.
A centrist beleives that government should control people and restrict their rights, just not completely. They believe that government should be big enough to do many unnecessary things, but it should strike a "balance" between liberty and socialism.
If you have a graph, where the x-axis is increasing personal freedom and the y-axis is increasing economic freedom, the libertarian is the furthest from the origin. A centrist would want a moderate amount of economic freedom and a moderate amount of personal freedom (for example, perhaps they have an agenda of being pro-life and anti-drugs, and want the government to control interest rates and feed the poor).
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.