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.

Comments

History will do more to condemn Bush

[antifoidulus]

than Kucinich ever could. Many historians consider Bush to be one of the worst presidents in US history. And the funny thing is that Bush still believes that history will prove him RIGHT.....

Plus, the Democrats are looking to rout the Republicans in November at least in the Senate and House(President is still a bit up in the air), doing something showboating like this can only benefit the Republicans.

Re:...Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

[Zymergy]

Well, I agree with your point there.
Now there needs just needs to be a Constitutional Amendment which requires the ENTIRE US TAX CODE to be read into the Congressional Record every single year for it to be legally binding! Of course, that would either require CSPAN to get another satellite or for the tax code to be shortened into the flat tax...

Then again, I was under the impression that "earmarks" were not required to be read into the record either? Whoops... confusing the Congressional Record's purpose with that of Official Congressional Business as Usual...
What? What was its purpose again? ...just a thought.

Re:...Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

[man_ls]

It would've taken a year to read the USA PATRIOT Act aloud.

Actually, that would've been a good thing -- the people hearing it would've actually known behind a doubt what they were stealing from us all.

nobody in congress seriously wants to impeach

[spirit_fingers]

While I applaud Dennis Kucinich for introducing his articles of impeachment in the House, I also realize that there's zero chance that the House will do anything but sit on them. The current Congress is filled with chickenshit liars and cowards. These are mostly the same spineless toadies who voted for Bush's fascist Patriot Act and his bogus Iraq War. There's no way they're going to impeach him. If they did, they'd only be implicating themselves. After all, they colluded with Bush to make it all happen. They rubber stamped his belligerence at almost every turn, most Democrats included. And to the ones who said they didn't know that Bush was lying to them when they voted for the Iraq war, I say BULLSHIT. The rest of us knew. The rest of us sat in disbelief in front on our TVs every night while the Big Lie was played out for us. A few of us protested against the inevitable nightmare. The Congress and the corporate media ignored us. And only now, when it's popular and risk-free to do so, do they cry foul.

Re:You don't seem to understand the point...

[RustinHWright]

No. There is still such a thing as a public that pays attention to these things. C-SPAN may not be your favorite viewing but plenty of people watch on a regular basis. Also, after six years of crimes, fraud, and self-dealing I think that we can afford four hours of truth.

If we were to allow Congressman Kucinich ten minutes of airtime for every legally questionable act by the Bush administration, he would still have many hours of airtime left today. Or how about we do it one to one? One minute of airtime for every minute used up in White House press briefings by their fake journalist?

Four hours is a drop in the bucket. My only regret is that Dubya didn't have to stand in a stress position and listen to all of it and then recite it back.

Re:Result: civil war

[bhtooefr]

Actually, I think we might have made it to a point that we NEED a civil war to have any hope of improving our government.

Re:You don't seem to understand the point...

[Original Replica]

The attempts to address Rove and Cheney are over a year old, but they have been ignored by our failed Big Media "press". I would like to see the charges upped to treason for War Profiteering. Creating false pretenses for a war for the purposes of profit should qualify as levying war against the United States, a treasonable offense.

Re:...Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

[Em Ellel]

Sounds like a good idea, but sometimes you need to act faster than 90 days in order to be effective. Unfortunately, any exceptions you can come up with would then be abused, much like everything else by this administration. Easy, if it is an emergency, it has a maximum time limit of 90 days before it has to be re-voted in by which point the 90 day rule is in effect.

-Em

Re:...Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

[quanticle]

Sounds like a good idea, but sometimes you need to act faster than 90 days in order to be effective.

Nonsense. The Legislative Branch should not be responding to emergencies. That's the Executive Branch's job.

The quintissential case is a Pearl Harbor style scenario, where America is under attack and we need a declaration of war. I'd argue that, in this day and age, we could have a provision stating that the President is free to deploy the troops for up to 90 days, but, following that grace period, he must get a declaration of war from Congress (not a resolution, or an authorization, but a formal declaration of war), otherwise he has to bring the troops home. This would allow ample time for the president to respond to short term emergencies, while still leaving leeway for the US to respond credibly to unprovoked attacks.

Re:You don't seem to understand the point...

[Orion Blastar]

The problem is that Bush is only guilty of incompetence the real ringleader is Cheney who keeps telling him what to do and what to sign or not sign.

Bush does not own Haliburton stock, but Cheney does, guess which one of them got rich over Iraq? It was Cheney, so you have more evidence against Cheney than Bush.

Re:Not my support.

[k3r3nsky'sr3v3ng3]

Not my support. I was called a "Saddam lover" because I opposed our invasion. Here is a word from our good friend Hermann Goering that may make you feel a little better.

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Don't you feel all warm and fuzzy now?

Re:Drill Everywhere, Drill Now

[dangitman]

We import over 2/3 of our oil now. Doesn't take a rocket sciewntist to see that is a bad thing from ecomomic and national security point of view.

So, why is it a bad thing? It means that the US gets to use up the domestic supply of other nations, preserving its own for a time of real need. Sounds great from an economic and security perspective. Would you rather we used up our own supply on petty uses? The we would really be at risk in the future, when oil becomes expensive and other nations can hold an economic gun to our heads.

Umm...heard of Supply and Demand? More Supply, cost drops. They've had that one figured out for quite a while.

Nope, not always. Especially not in this case. Demand for oil is massive. A small increase in supply is going to have negligible (or none at all) effect on prices at the pump. And why would they sell it at a reduced price to American motorists, when there are plenty of other buyers who would pay the market rate? It doesn't make any sense, economically, unless you are advocating some socialist means of distribution with controlled pricing.

And that's not even considering the costs of refining and distribution to the retail market. Domestic drilling just isn't going to have any effect on prices at the pump. Unless you are talking about some sort of charity case or government subsidy. And why should the government offer such a subsidy? I consume very little gasoline, I spend a lot more on computers, technology and food. Should the government subsidize my computer purchases because I feel they are too expensive?

Re:...Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

[Myshkin]

First, to be "outed", Valerie Plame would have had to be a covert operative. She wasn't at that time. You can check the Congressional Record to read the testimony of the author of the governing regulations. This is factually incorrect. According to the CIA, Plame was classified as covert. Who is this author, and why would they be a definitive source establishing a CIA operatives covert status? On March 16th, 2007 Gen Hayden, head of the CIA, released a statement saying that Plame was undercover, and her role classified. The CIA summary of her employment status was unclassified and entered into the court record of the Libby case on May. 29, 2007, and she was officially covert at the time of the outing in the Novak article.

Second, the ultimate classification authority is the President. This has a long history of precedent. If the President wishes to reveal something which is classified, that's his prerogative. The Soviet nuke missile sites in Cuba were classified information and JFK didn't need anyone's permission to reveal that. The classification of the information is only one of the issues involved. There is the small issue of using disproven evidence to try to bolster the case for war, not to mention a little thing called treason.

Third, it was Richard Armitage who revealed the information about Valerie Plame. Even the special prosecutor knew that before investigating.

This is a country of laws, It's the usA, not the usSR. So, the question remains, did Bush and Cheney use Armitage as their patsy, or did they seize on the opertunity of an Armitage slip to try to use the situation to push their case for war? Either way is impeachable.