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35 Articles of Impeachment Introduced Against Bush
vsync64 writes "Last night, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) spent 4 hours reading into the Congressional Record 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. Interestingly, those articles (63-page PDF via Coral CDN) include not just complaints about signing statements and the war in Iraq, but also charges that the President "Sp[ied] on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment,' 'Direct[ed] Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens,' and 'Tamper[ed] with Free and Fair Elections.' These are issues near and dear to the hearts of many here, so it's worth discussing. What little mainstream media coverage there is tends to be brief (USA Today, CBS News, UPI, AP, Reuters)." The (Democratic) House leadership has said that the idea of impeachment is "off the table." The Judiciary Committee has not acted on articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney introduced by Kucinich a year ago.
Actually, I think it's a good idea to force representatives to read out loud any legislation that they propose/endorse. Maybe then they'll actually read the fine details instead of just signing off on legislation that lobbyists wrote up for them.
The benefit I see from this is that it will go on the permanent record that SOMEONE did know what the fuck was going on in the world and decided to stand up and point it out. Regardless of whether he is booted out of office or not it is now a stain upon his much anticipated "historical legacy".
You're nothing; like me.
One could argue it is beneficial to tarnish a president's record with an impeachment when warranted by his conduct because it becomes a part of history. Particularly if this conduct is more than perjury over sexual conduct. Clinton's impeachment was a joke.
why not? Is Bush incapable of doing further damage to the US in the next 7 months? I think not. Would an impeachment send a message to the current presidential candidates that they need to do something different and that they need to pay attention? I think so. If you had a family member in Iraq, and an impeachment led to a withdrawal of troops, would it have real benefit then?
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Congressman Dennis Kucinich read off all thirty-five articles of impeachment, each one accompanied by a great deal of supporting evidence, so that the other Congress Critters couldn't avoid hearing about it, and that at least people watching C-SPAN could witness it for themselves (as he probably knew it would get ignored by the traditional media). The vile actions of this administration need to rest on the consciences of all our representatives, whether complicit or just complacent.
:)
If you want to complain about wasting time in Congress, look up which party has done more filibustering in recent years.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
It needs to be done regardless of how long GW has left in his term. If we are going to pretend that the USA is governed by the rule of law, GW and his cronies need to be held accountable for the way they have violated the constitution. It should be done now to show that the checks and balances built into the system actually work. By not moving on these articles congress is exposing the fraud that the American democratic republic has become, which may be the point Kucinich is trying to make in the first place.
Where would we be if Wheel had hid her round rock in a cave instead of showing everyone how it rolls?
What's the point?
As the American Freedom Campaign put it in an email to members this morning:
"The founders of our country feared more than anything else the prospect of an executive who put his own power and desires above the Constitution. Congress was given the power of impeachment so that it could remove any president who committed the high crime of violating the Constitution during his (or her) term in office.
A strong case can be made that no president in the history of this country is more deserving of impeachment than George W. Bush. If he is not impeached, the bar for impeachment will have been raised so high that it might as well no longer exist. Future presidents will know that they can violate the Constitution at will, confident in the fact that Congress does not have the courage as an institution to do anything about it.
We cannot allow this to happen."
That's about as simple as it gets. Even if Bush only have seven months left, Congress has to set an example and exert its authority.
I just found a new sig.
You're dead on, I think. Kucinich's primary motivation for introducing articles of impeachment against Bush (and Cheney in the past) seems to be to stop us from going to war with Iran. That would seriously damage the US!
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
How interesting is it that attempting to impeach a president because he got a BJ and lied about it gets so much more publicity than one who kills thousands in an unjust war, breaks the constitution, and effectively turns a "free" country into a police-state. /me weeps for the future
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
it's completely unfair to compare bush to a mass murderer.
no petty mass murderer has ever been responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people.
(1) It will establish a precedent of impeaching presidents who are grossly incompetent and overstep the constitutional limits on their power. Future presidents will think twice before starting wars on false pretenses or torturing prisoners of war or illegally spying on citizens without warrants. Failing to impeach him would imply that these actions are acceptable, which WILL have an effect on future presidents' actions.
(2) It will show the world that America realizes that we made a huge mistake by electing Dubya twice. Right now, we're the laughing stock of the world (see any opinion poll taken after 2003). This decline in world opinion has real economic and political consequences that, for the most part, haven't been felt yet. Impeaching Bush would help to show the world that America always does the right thing, albeit after exhausting every alternative.
(3) It will remind Americans that impeachments can be used for something other than lying about blowjobs. Sometimes I cynically suspect that Republicans impeached Clinton for lying about his affair because they had the foresight to suspect that one of their own would be in this position today. (No, I don't actually believe this, but it's funny how convenient this sequence of events turned out to be for them...) It's a lot harder to push impeachment proceedings through Congress when the only impeachment anyone alive today remembers is one that centered around a trivial, non-job-performance related non-crime. Impeachments should be about high crimes and gross incompetence related to the duties of the office of the President, and impeaching Bush will help to restore some measure of seriousness to this procedure.
No. Anyone else would have gotten away with it.
They never would have been caught because no one would have CARED.
There would not be the initial scrutiny and there would not be the continued witch hunt and bullying of witnesses.
The "Law and Order" tactics would never have come up because
under normal circumstances NO ONE would view it as a useful
expenditure of the effort.
The "crime" would never have come to light to begin with.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And then your signature tells us the irony in your ad hominem for kucinich.
Clinton was asked if he had sexual relations with Lewinsky.
He asked the judge to define "sexual relations". The *judge* told him sexual relations means intercourse.
Now, you might have a different definition, but unless you are going to try to convince us that he had intercourse with Lewinsky, then you must admit that he did not commit perjury.
The Clinton thing was blown out of proportion because they had a provable lie under oath. The fact that it was a lie about a trivial matter (trivial to the public anyway; obviously not trivial to the Clinton family) was irrelevant to the right-wingers who attacked him on what many of them saw as a matter of principal. The problem is the same principals are ignored when one of their own engages in provable lie after provable lie about matters of grave public importance such as war and peace. But Bush and co. have been smart enough not to find themselves in the position of uttering provable lies under oath (they avoided this simply by refusing to take an oath when testifying to the 911 Commission, for example, and by refusing to testify altogether). So we don't have the "gotcha" moment that we had with Clinton. I can agree that Clinton's lies were shameful whether under oath or not and that perhaps I'd have more respect for him had he come clean, but it doesn't change the fact that the issue he lied about was one I had no business knowing anything about in the first place. Whereas Bush & Co's lies have been about issues that the public does have a right to know, and thousands of Americans have died as a direct result of these lies. I hope people can see the difference.
But in this case, the crime will continue. The killing won't stop. And if Bush is a criminal, then so is the congress that authorized him and handed over the money. And so are the voters who failed to watch over their representatives. Let's just say he couldn't have pulled it off without our support. It was handed to him on a silver platter.
What?
Bush has a *Clear* fixation on historical legacy. He is always talking about how history will view him. Probably this is him wishing and hoping for a vindication of his reign, 'cause his approval ratings been in the dumps for 2 years now. If so, he's ignoring the evidence once again. Some president has to be the worst ever; according to 98% of historians he's taken the lead in that race.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
How about every bill being publicly posted without alteration for 90 days before any voting is allowed? That would stop a lot of bad legislation from being pushed through congress.
After the 2006 election, Nancy Pelosi's first action as Speaker of the House was to take impeachment off the table. Why would she do that when the vast majority of the Democratic base clearly wanted it? Because, even if it had succeeded, it would have hurt the Democrats' chances in 2008. The first interest of the Democrats was to ensure that they remained in power, or solidified their grip on power. An obligation to the Constitution and their constituents was a second priority. And before anyone thinks I'm taking sides here, I'll say that both major parties do this.
Why are they doing it now, when Bush has only seven months left in office rather than a year and a half ago? Election year theater.
And that's why I cringe when people say "We really need to get the Democrats the White House and majorities Congress in 2008" or something to that effect. They have no interest in you, the country, or anything but power and money.
Kucinich is an exception among them. We need more like him, but he is an anomaly.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Bullshit. If this country had more Kucinich it would be a much better place. Unfortunately idiots like you, and even the (what's left of) liberal press (Starting with Ed Schultz) denigrated him since the beginning preferring to spend time saying that he looks like a troll rather than what his views and accomplishments are. He never got a shot at presidency because people were too busy talking only about his looks. He would have made a great president, a honest and progressive one at least, trying to get the country out of the hole instead of burying it any further.
>Clinton LIED under oath in a federal court after taking an oath to tell the truth.
Bush took an oath to uphold the Constitution.
I'm sorry, what's your point? You going to build a time machine and travel back to 2001 so that Bush can get impeached for the human rights abuses he hasn't committed yet?
Anyway, Congress could force Bush to close Guantanamo any time they want. All they have to do is say that they war powers they gave him after 9-11 don't include the ability to invent a new category of prisoner, denied both the constitutional protections of the accused criminal and the treaty protections of the POW.
Congress is complicit in all of Dubya's excesses. That's the real reason they can't impeach him.
People that hate Bush 43 are going to have to choose: too stupid to tie his own shoes or the mastermind of the Iraq war for his oil buddies. I believe he is neither, but he can't be both.
All they have to do is say that they war powers they gave him after 9-11 don't include the ability to invent a new category of prisoner, denied both the constitutional protections of the accused criminal and the treaty protections of the POW.
They don't even have to do that. All they had to do was say "no more money" and cut his appropriations to the bare minimum needed to provide the necessary services and no more. All of Bush's blustery posturing and wild legal theories don't change the fact that Congress could have shut him down in a heartbeat, but they've chosen not to do so.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
$5 a gallon? That's nothing. That's cheap. You ain't seen nothing yet.
And do your really think that domestic drilling is going to keep oil prices low? Tell me how that works, then.
Those oil reserves have immense long-term strategic and economic value. What's your reason for tapping them now? To save a few cents for people who are wasting oil just to fill their SUV to go to the supermarket? What a total waste. Instead of just throwing it all away for frivious purposes today, why not wait until it is really needed, and use it in a more efficient manner?
It's not really a good idea wasting precious oil on fueling private cars. We can do transport without oil. But it's harder to replace when making things like plastics and petrochemicals. Sure, there are some substitutes emerging. But oil would be really useful in the case of a real national emergency where we need to manufacture or rebuild things quickly, or in the case of a real war.
I still can't get over the fact that you think current gas prices are expensive, and that's significant justification for tapping domestic supplies. That's fucking hilarious.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Even if half of it is true, it's more than enough.
No wonder Kucinich was able to snag such a young, sprightly and attractive wife. The man has the biggest balls in Congress.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Try to remove your bias and read what I typed. The facts are the facts.
No, it's very naive to think ANYONE a person who was supposedly an undercover agent 15 years prior has dealt with is "potentially exposed." Semantically, your statement is correct but it's not realistic. Everyone, you included, interacts with thousands of people over 15 years. You may have heard of the concept of six degrees of separation. Apply that and it's quickly apprent the words you used, while semantically correct, yield an impossibly large number of contacts when seen from the "outside." It's common for people who have never been in these types of environments to think that type of thing. As I said, read the Congressional Record. The sworn testimony during a Congressional investigation is more accurate than projections.
No, my "argument" does not rest on "the fact that Bush OK'd the leak." By definition, the President can't "leak" anything because "leaking" would involve unauthorized disclosure which, by definition, the President cannot do. It is impossible for the pre-requisite to exist. The President has the authority to declassify, at will, either explicitly or implicitly.
"Abuse of power" is a phrase with no legal definition. The Executive Officer is not subservient to the Representitive Brach of the Federal Government. The CIA is in the Executive Branch, under the authority of the Executive Officer. Again, the President cannot be guilty of violating classification. It really is that simple.
As as aside, the legal basis for action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq was laid years ago. The first Gulf War was never officially ended according to the U.N. conditions and Saddam's troops kept violating the cease fire agreement. An existing war cannot be "started" again, it can only be in stasis, continue or end. (The Korean War never ended, either. It's in the same situation, a cease fire agreement.) Saddam's troops violated the cease fire repeatedly during Bill Clinton's terms in office. History didn't start in February of 2001.
WRT "a campaign to make sure the secret is as widely heard as possible", it was Valerie Plame and her husband in conjunction with Vanity Fair and the traditional news media who were proclaiming a "secret" had been revealed. Those are not Federal Branch entities and, most certainly, not controlled by a Republican administration. The President didn't force all the "reporting" and speculating in the press. He didn't put a scarf and sunglasses on Valerie Plame, sit her in a convertible next to her husband, take a photo, write an article and publish them. Valerie, most certainly, wasn't trying to "hide" and wasn't concerned about any past contact who might have been "potentially exposed." If she was, she wouldn't have taken those actions. You can dig through archives such as Lexis-Nexus or even the recorded press briefings on C-Span's website if you wish. What you'll find is the Executive Branch overwhelmingly said there wasn't any "there" there.
Joe Wilson was a paid staffer for John Kerry's Presidential campaign before he wrote the article in which he claimed the VP sent him on a secret mission to gather intel in Niger. Curiously, there was no record of such a meeting, Joe's story changed significantly over time and even he said there was no written record. Additionally, he did state that Iraq was seeking to build increase imports from Niger whose primary exports are livestock products, onions and Uranium ore. Look at a map. Iraq wouldn't get importing onions across Libya then onto ships when they could come from much closer areas. Liby's public renouncement of NBC porograms wasn't an isolated occurrence. It's all in the Congressional Report.
What you are promoting fits the structure of a halfway decent conspiracy theory but only with "a willing suspension of disbelief" given the facts.
I assume this was meant to be funny, but in reality it seems like that statement is closer to the truth than it should be.
If anything, the punishment for breaking a law should be more severe the higher up in the government you are.
This would discourage people in power from abusing their power.
Granting them any kind of immunity is asking them to abuse you...
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)