Making impeachment work

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday January 08, 2008 · 8:58 AM PST

2008/01/08 · 08:58

A common comment by cynics, including many Democrats, goes like this:

"It takes two thirds of the senate to vote to convict to get the bastards out- it ain’t gonna happen. I have no interest in impeachment unless the bastards are out."

That sentiment, like Pelosi's fiat taking impeachment "off the table," expresses no faith in our Constitution and seems not to understand the process. In what follows, I am assuming that the process would start with the impeachment of Dick Cheney, because that is the resolution presently on hand in the House Judiciary Committee (H. Res. 399/799). But at a whole number of points, Cheney and Bush were joined at the hip (e.g., in the outing of Valerie Plame). A thorough impeachment of Cheney will inevitably lead to Bush. He could be named as an unindicted co-conspirator. The evidence uncovered in the process of impeaching Cheney could uncover clear evidence of felonies committed by Bush that could force his resignation. So, let's take a look at what an enlightened leadership could do, if they thought strategically.

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday December 06, 2007 · 3:03 PM PST

2007/12/06 · 15:03

Taking impeachment off the table is a Spot on the hands of the Democratic leadership of the 110th Congress that will not go away. Like Lady MacBeth, they will find it impossible to wash away this stain.

They are clearly derelict in their failure to uphold their oath of office (to defend the Constitution). This will become known as the Congress that Would Not Impeach, even though possessed of an abundance of evidence. Oh, yes, I know all the usual rationalizations ("We don't have the votes," "There's not enough time," and other self-fulfilling prophecies). I've also heard that Deals were Made for our welfare, but the deal has been made is that the Democrats have shot themselves in the foot, and will now walk with a limp forever (Hey, I can pile on the metaphors with anyone!)

Bob in HI

Poll

54 votes Show Results

Should impeachment be on the table?

54 votes Vote Now!

Should impeachment be on the table?

No; there's not enough time left to impeach.

2 votes

No, we have more important things to do, like stopping the war

1 vote

No, because we don't have the votes.

2 votes

Yes, because it is the right thing to do.

19 votes

Yes, because as Republicans see elections looming, they won't want to be tied to Bush or Cheney

0 votes

Yes! If not now, when? If not us, who?

22 votes

It doesn't matter; it won't make any difference, one way or the other

1 vote

The Democrats are just as corrupt as the Republicans and want those executive powers for themselves.

7 votes

True leadership

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday October 23, 2007 · 10:51 AM PDT

2007/10/23 · 10:51

Polls show that Congress has fallen to new lows in public opinion surveys-- even lower than President Bush! I believe that this shows a failure of Democratic Party senior leadership.

The public wants the war to end. So what does the leadership do? They make a little gesture of opposition, but then when President Bush vetoes their bill, they cave in and send him all the money he wants, whining and wringing their hands about not having 60 votes.

Poll

52 votes Show Results

Who is the True Leader?

52 votes Vote Now!

Who is the True Leader?

Nancy Pelosi

0 votes

Harry Reid

0 votes

Steny Hoyer

1 vote

Rahm Emanuel

0 votes

Chris Dodd

15 votes

John Edwards

19 votes

Dennis Kucinich

7 votes

Hillary Clinton

2 votes

Barack Obama

8 votes

Impeachment action, revisited

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday October 08, 2007 · 3:50 PM PDT

2007/10/08 · 15:50

Last September, Conchita posted a long diary about a visit with Jerry Nadler. Her labors were only answered by 9 comments, and the comment period for her post is now closed, but her labors have not gone unnoticed. Looseheadprop drew attention to Conchita's diary over at FireDogLake today in a post titled, Sometimes We Do Better Than We Expect–Yet Again, so I wanted to provide a belated recommendation to Conchita's diary, because her call to action is still valid, as is Looseheadprop's! Please give both posts a read, and then do something!

Bob in HI

War-mongers in the White House [Update]

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday September 30, 2007 · 2:42 AM PDT

2007/09/30 · 02:42

(A previous, local version of this blog was published September 29, 2007 at http://pd-hawaii.com/...

I remember President Bush's rush to war in Iraq: While proclaiming that war was the "last resort," the President was clearly impatient. UN sanctions were actually working well. According to the Wikipedia,

The United Nations located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi WMD throughout the 1990s in spite of persistent Iraqi obstruction. Washington withdrew weapons inspectors in 1998, resulting in Operation Desert Fox, which further degraded Iraq's WMD capability. . . .

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday August 22, 2007 · 1:36 AM PDT

2007/08/22 · 01:36

Hawai'i has two representatives, Abercrombie and Hirono, and both of them are members of the Democratic Progressive Caucus. However, both of them oppose impeachment on practical grounds (more on that, later).

Both of them are on the record with published views on impeachment: Hirono on July 9, on the Maui County Democratic Party blog, and Abercrombie on July 11 in the Honolulu Advertiser's "Hot Seat" blog.

The Democratic Party of Hawaii has also taken a position on the Impeachment of Bush and Cheney, reprinted here below the fold.

Poll

72 votes Show Results

Who should be impeached first?

72 votes Vote Now!

Who should be impeached first?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

25 votes

Vice President Dick Cheney

20 votes

President Bush

2 votes

No one should be impeached; Democrats have more important things to do.

9 votes

Impeach all of them at once.

16 votes

Gore's "Public Forum"

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday July 19, 2007 · 4:12 PM PDT

2007/07/19 · 16:12

I want to write a little about Al Gore's book, Assault on Reason, after reading the first few chapters. I want to get a few observations "out there" quickly for people to react to.

Gore seems to use the phrase "the public forum" dozens of times. He seems to have in mind primarily the meaning given to this phrase by Jurgen Habermas (e.g., p.26). I see the evolution of this extending from the "town square" (remember the "town crier"? No, I'm not THAT old, but I did read about it) to. . . the Internet!

Poll

35 votes Show Results

Which of the following characteristics of a marketplace of ideas is true of DailyKos?

35 votes Vote Now!

Which of the following characteristics of a marketplace of ideas is true of DailyKos?

Open to every individual

10 votes

Meritocracy of ideas

10 votes

Duty to search for general agreement

1 vote

All of the above

7 votes

None of the above

7 votes

Don't expect the Press to do our job for us

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday July 02, 2007 · 5:09 PM PDT

2007/07/02 · 17:09

Well, the toobz are on fire today at the news that President Bush has commuted Libby's sentence. I think this may well boomerang on him--he may wind up antagonizing everyone! The Free Scooter crowd will be unhappy because Bush left in place the felony convictions, and everyone else will be unhappy that Scooter is allowed to walk. Do you remember what happened when Paris Hilton was let out a few days after starting her stay in the clink? The public outrage was sufficient that they had to hastily escort her back into confinement.

But we cannot expect the Press to do the heavy lifting for us. Now is the time to write Letters to the Editor of our local papers!!! And just to help you along a little, here's a handy quote (H/t to Peterr @ FireDogLake):

From the WaPo coverage of an outrageous White House action in a scandal a generation ago, I give you Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, after he had been fired in the Saturday Night Massacre:

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday May 20, 2007 · 12:10 AM PDT

2007/05/20 · 00:10

The idea of "priming the pump" for impeachment was suggested in an earlier post by looseheadprop, Priming the Pump. She wrote,

When you are going to bring a case to trial you have two standards to think about:

The first is, do I have a prima facia case? That is, do I have at least one piece of admissable evidence to support each and every element on which I bear the burden of proof?

The second is: Do I have a case that can win before the jury I expect to be before? . . .
Now let's think about the jury that we KNOW will be hearing any impeachment case that might come in the next 2 years. Unlike your average jury trial situation where you may have some ideas about the generic makeup of your jury pool, but no idea until after jury selection about your actual individual jurors; in the case of impeachment, we already know exactly which individuals will be sitting on the jury PLUS we already know (or can find out with minimal research skills) a great deal about what they believe and think and what motivates them. In short, it is not hard to figure out where their "buttons" are.

Poll

97 votes Show Results

Who should be impeached?

97 votes Vote Now!

Who should be impeached?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

18 votes

Vice President Dick Cheney

21 votes

Advisor Karl Rove

1 vote

Secretary of State Condolezza Rice

0 votes

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley

0 votes

President Bush

52 votes

None of the above.

5 votes

The roots of Bush-Cheney's New World Order

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday March 26, 2007 · 1:46 AM PDT

2007/03/26 · 01:46

Much attention has been devoted to Dick Cheney's role in supporting the "unitary executive" doctrine, and his assault on the Constitutional balance of powers. Much has also been made of the role of the "Neo-con cabal" of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others, including one of their most prominent think-tanks, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). But wait! There's more!

What's less well known is the association of this bunch with the elite "Bilderberger Group."

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday March 10, 2007 · 7:22 PM PST

2007/03/10 · 19:22

Many of us waited with bated breath as we listened to Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference after the verdict on Lewis Libby's trial was announced. After all, no one had yet been charged with the leak of Valerie Plame's status, which was the reason Fitzgerald had been appointed special counsel in the first place. And had we not heard that there was a "cloud" over the Office of the Vice President? Had not the trial itself uncovered evidence of a number of crimes and misdemeanors?

So, many of us went into shock when Fitzgerald said that no further indictments were planned. Why not????

There are many theories about this. One is that Fitzgerald needs Libby to flip, and be a witness against Cheney, and that he doesn't have enough strong evidence without Libby's testimony. I don't know. But some claimed that Fitzgerald's mandate was limited, and this was about all that he could do.

Poll

52 votes Show Results

Will Fitzgerald, as special counsel, bring any more indictments in the Plame affair?

52 votes Vote Now!

Will Fitzgerald, as special counsel, bring any more indictments in the Plame affair?

No, he won't. This is it. He meant what he said at the press conference.

14 votes

He will if he can shake some things loose, but right now he doesn't have enough evidence.

27 votes

He will make a few other indictments, but not of Cheney

0 votes

He will eventually make several other indictments, including Cheney

11 votes

Is 'insta-declassification' legal?

BobSchacht

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday February 19, 2007 · 5:20 PM PST

2007/02/19 · 17:20

FireDogLake is doing a masterful job following the Libby trial-- not just in the liveblogging, which itself is ground-breaking, but in the analytical blogs and comments on those blogs.

The whole investigation of Patrick Fitzgerald of the 'leak' of Valerie Plame's status with the CIA is predicated on the idea that it was illegal. Libby's trial is not grounded on the fact that he leaked the information, but that he lied about it. Fitzgerald as scrupulously avoided the issue of the leak itself, which would inevitably bring up questions about whether or not the leak was legal.

A case can be made that President Bush-- or the Vice President, acting on his behalf-- declassified Plame's status so that it was not technically illegal to leak her status. Around the same time, parts of the current NIE were "declassified" in order to leak them to the press. The trial of Scooter Libby has added new evidence to the public record of such activities. Were they legal?

Newer
Older

RSS

Making impeachment work

Out, damn spot!

True leadership

Impeachment action, revisited

War-mongers in the White House [Update]

Hawaii's Representatives on Impeachment

Gore's "Public Forum"

Don't expect the Press to do our job for us

Priming the Pump for Impeachment

The roots of Bush-Cheney's New World Order

Patrick Fitzgerald's mandate

Is 'insta-declassification' legal?