Why are some obviously misguided and uninformed Democrats doing by defending Dick Cheney in liberal discussion boards?
They defend Cheney when they go in lockstep and attack Cindy Sheehan for her plans to stage a sit-in at John Conyer's office to demand impeachment. I don't care if it is Cindy, or Nader, or Howard the Duck! There is an underlying larger issue in here that transcends party label and political ideology. It is our Constitution and our beloved Republic that are at stake!
Why a sit-in at Conyer's office? Duh? Conyers is the Chair of the Judiciary Committee, the committee that will have to hold hearings to determine if Attorney General Gonzales, Dick Cheney, and George Bush have committed impeachable offenses.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that "impeachment is off the table."
Dennis Kucinich introduced H Res 333, the Cheney impeachment resolution. H Res 333 has been put on the deep freeze by John Conyers, the Chair of the Judiciary Committee. Conyers has to disregard Pelosi and move ahead with hearings to determine if Articles of Impeachment must be drawn against Dick Cheney. Conyers has to move ahead on H Res 333, and Pelosi has to put impeachment back on the table!
This is not a Sheehan issue, or even a Democratic vs. Republican issue. Or a Democratic Underground vs. DailyKos vs. Progressive Independent issue. It is our Constitution that is at stake, our Republic that is in peril. Our liberties are on the line!
The Constitution and the Republic, indeed our liberties, are more important than the Democratic Party or any other political party. And if people don't know that by now, then we deserve to live under a dictatorship.
Published on Sunday, July 8, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi
by John Atcheson
Madam Speaker:
It is time to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney.
We all know the case for doing so: the litany of this administration’s offenses is long and tragic, the damage they have wrought to our nation and the principles it was founded upon profound.
And yet many of us understood - even if we did not agree - when you said "impeachment is off the table." Your case was credible, if not persuasive. The proceedings would have been disruptive, making progress in other areas difficult, and the fact that three of the last six presidents would have been impeached by the opposition party could have damaged the presidency and sank this nation into a permanent partisan war. It could have fed the notion that impeachment proceedings were simply another political maneuver to be used by partisans to cripple their opponents, much as partisan Republicans did with Clinton. And with two years remaining, this did seem a high price to pay for getting rid of George Bush and his partners in crime. Taking the high road had a certain nobility, even if it didn’t satisfy a hunger for justice many of us felt.
But now - with scarcely eighteen months left - you have no choice but to impeach Bush and Cheney regardless of the cost, because it has become increasingly clear that the very foundations of this nation have been assaulted as never before in our history, and to let that record stand would be an act of cowardice on your part and a dangerous precedent to future presidents.
(snip)
The careful system of checks and balances, so carefully constructed in our Constitution, and so jealously guarded by elected officials throughout our history has been eviscerated by signing statements, secrecy, and lies. The de facto dictatorship of the executive has been enshrined in the theory of the "unitary executive."
This has all been done under cover of a never-ending "war" which this President and Vice-president lied the country into. Indeed, to this day, they cannot articulate a real reason for embarking on this war. The President has proffered no less than twenty-two separate justifications for it, and none has survived scrutiny. Iraq has become the ultimate - and ultimately tragic - tautology: we are there because we are there. But now, as the clarifying lens of history brings this catastrophe into sharper focus, the full cynicism and criminality of this administration’s Iraq policy is emerging: we are there because of oil interests, and the political clout a war president can wield.
http://www.commondreams.org/...