Why has Conyers Changed His Tune on Impeachment?
A recent Newhousenews piece explores Congressman John Conyers recent (both pre and post-election) change of tune on impeachment. With substantial quotes from democrats.com's own DC Director and AfterDowningStreet.org co-founder David Swanson...
Impeachment 'Off the Table,' Conyers Says
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., presumed to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in January, said Thursday that impeachment of President Bush "is off the table.... In this campaign, there was an orchestrated right-wing effort to distort my position on impeachment," Conyers said in a statement released by his Judiciary Committee spokesman. "The incoming speaker (Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.) has said that impeachment is off the table. I am in total agreement with her on this issue: Impeachment is off the table."Through his investigations as the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, Conyers became a hero to people who would like to see President Bush impeached for the manner in which the U.S. was led to war in Iraq, among other alleged crimes. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have said the new Democratic Congress will not pursue impeachment.
But Tuesday's big Democratic victory, in which Conyers secured a 22nd term and Democrats regained control of both the House and Senate, has only invigorated a large national network of grassroots impeachment activists. Conyers' statement is unlikely to dampen their enthusiasm or efforts.
"This is still in some ways a democracy and we will, as American citizens, use our voices to suggest what we think should be on the table," said David Swanson, co-founder of afterdowningstreet.org and Washington director for impeachpac.org.
Conyers laid out the grounds for impeachment in a report last December called "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Cover-ups in the Iraq War" and later updated to add "illegal domestic surveillance." It is more than 350 pages long.
The Downing Street reference is to the minutes of a secret 2002 meeting of British government officials that critics of the Iraq invasion consider the "smoking gun" indicating the Bush administration fixed its pre-war intelligence to justify an already decided-upon plan to remove Saddam Hussein.
In his statement Thursday, Conyers said, "To be sure, I have substantial concerns about the way this administration has abused its authority, but impeachment would not be good for the American people. The country does not want or need any more paralyzed partisan government -- it wants a check and balance and real progress on the issues that matter to their lives."
But as recently as May 18, in a column in The Washington Post headlined "No Rush to Impeachment," Conyers wrote that a new Congress ought to seek answers about whether "intelligence was mistaken or manipulated in the run-up to the Iraq war" as well as the extent to which "high-ranking officials approved of the use of torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment inflicted upon detainees." A select committee would forward evidence of any potentially impeachable offenses to the Judiciary Committee, he wrote.
Swanson sees it this way: "If we get a real investigation there will be one of two outcomes, or both -- either there will be clear grounds for impeachment, or there will be a crisis when the Bush administration refuses to acknowledge subpoenas."
The common wisdom from the Democratic leadership and the Washington punditocracy is that pursuing impeachment would be a fatal political mistake.
"The Democratic Party cannot repeat the mistakes of the Gingrich Republicans, which allowed themselves to get identified in the public eye as extremists," said Jeremy D. Mayer, a professor in the George Mason University's School of Public Policy.
Pelosi's first test, Mayer said, will be "reining in" those on her party's left end, many of whom, like Conyers, are black.
Ronald Walters, a political scientist at the University of Maryland and long-time observer of the Congressional Black Caucus, doubts that Conyers will press impeachment.
"There may be some pressure from the far left, but I think most people understand that is not popular among the American people at a time when the Democratic Party is trying to tee up for 2008," Walters said. "The American people just threw over the radicalism of the right and they are not going to want to replace it with the radicalism of the left."
But Swanson said the Democratic leadership, these observers, and the mainstream media have the politics of impeachment exactly upside down. "What the media is instructing (the Democrats) to do is be nice, play civil," he said. But in his view, an election in which not a single Democratic member of Congress was defeated is not a mandate for meekness.
A Newsweek poll in October found that 28 percent of respondents thought impeaching Bush should be a top priority of a new Congress, and 23 percent thought it should be a lower priority, while 44 percent thought it was a bad idea altogether. That is more support for impeaching Bush than there was at any point for impeaching Bill Clinton, Swanson said.
"My nine-year-old niece asked me, `If you're going to impeach Clinton for lying about a sexual affair, how can you not impeach Bush for lying about a war?"' said William Strickland, a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. "This is a slam dunk."
Strickland said there is a moral imperative for Congress to undo Bush's policy of pre-emptive war and repair America's standing in the world.
Pelosi, as it happens, was among the Americans in a handful of jurisdictions who has had a chance to vote on impeachment. Proposition J on the San Francisco ballot Tuesday called for the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Cheney. It passed with 59 percent of the vote. In neighboring Berkeley, a similar measure passed with nearly 70 percent of the vote.
Nov. 10, 2006
(Jonathan Tilove can be contacted at jonathan.tilove@newhouse.com)
Former Congresswoman and author Liz Holtzman provides the simple answer as to why Conyrers' tune changed...
Breathing the 'I' word
Though Democrats' gains on Tuesday were hard fought, they still pulled one big punch during the campaign. Party leaders chose to refrain from publicly uttering any "i" words -- investigation, immunity, and above all, impeachment -- and to dismiss those who did, for fear of somehow galvanizing disaffected GOP voters. But whether they admit it or not, with a Democratic Party-led Congress, pResident Bush could well become the target of congressional investigations, challenges to presidential immunity and eventual impeachment inquiries....
In other words, the Democratic leadership caught a mass case of that most dreaded of Washington DC diseases, Conventional Wisdom. This was brought on by an irrational fear of Karl Rove's dirty campaign tactics, but more importantly, by fear of the propagandistic dictats of the State controlled Corporatist Media.
Memo to Granny Pelosi: Your abuse victim mentality after Twelve Years of "Daddy Party" spousal abuse of the "Mommy Party" is understandable. But now is the time for some gonadular fortitude of both the internal and external varieties...
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Impeachment
I too am disappointed by John Conyers change of opinion, but I would hope that some other types of investigations would utimately accomplish the same thing, getting rid of Bush and Cheney. Also all the info Conyers has already assembled will be there when it is needed.
For those of you who are old enough to remember, Nixon was really brought down by "threat" of impeachment brought on by the Watergate hearings run by a real champ Sam Rayburn.
So I we should vigilant and patient and let Democracy work as it did on November 6, 2006.
Sound counsel, keyman...
Let the investigations begin and lead where they may... but while we're at it it won't hurt to stir the pot a little... sign the impeachment petition today!
CP ;>)
(Long) Comment I was asked to post [It better fit!]
I wrote a private message to Democrats.com on Saturday which I was asked to post as a Comment. First, here is an approximate summary of that message. Following it is the entire original text which I was asked to post.
KM Pruett
very VERY cautiously optimistic
{
Rough summary of the message which I sent Democrats.com on or about Saturday, 11/11/06:
1. Certainly, Impeach BOTH Cheney AND Bush; BUT PLEASE heed the following precautions and suggestions:
2. Be reasonably sure you can do this; else disaster awaits. Keeping the extremist rubber-stamp Congress which we just defeated OUT of power is of primary importance.
3. Impeachment must come as the natural by-product of fulfilling positive, constructive campaign promises: Cleaning up Lobbying-related and other Corruption; Standardizing voting-machine paper trails and dealing with other voting issues; and neither last nor least, sorting out all aspects of the War. Hearings and research for these widely-agreed legitimate efforts will naturally cause a plethora of impeachable offenses to emerge, facts in evidence which a majority of BOTH sides of the aisle cannot afford to ignore. Issues will emerge which will offend the very integrity of a broad range of the People, from the most conservative" to the most "liberal".
4. Pressure for Impeachment cannot come from the Party but must come from the People, in such a way that no one can blame the Party and no one can ignore the pressure.
}
========== Text of original message: ==========
Greetings.
I, AS MUCH AS ANYONE, would like to see BUSH removed from power AND ALL HIS ASSAULTS ON THE CONSTITUTION, GENEVA CONVENTION, ETC. UNDONE. IN FACT, *BOTH* BUSH *AND* CHENEY NEED TO GO, *SIMULTANEOUSLY*. EVEN THOUGH this will look to many like an openly cynical bid to make Nancy Pelosi the next president. And EVEN THOUGH it will look to many like an act of revenge, like a bloodthirsty mirror image to the intolerable Congress we just handed their walking papers. AND EVEN THOUGH Speaker-to-be Pelosi has promised inappropriately (disingenuously?) that Impeachment was "not on the table". I AM FULLY IN FAVOR OF AN *EARLY* DOUBLE IMPEACHMENT OF BOTH CHENEY AND BUSH, WITH TIME LEFT OVER FOR FULFILLING A FEW (MORE) OF THE POSITIVE PROMISES PEOPLE (ALSO) DESPERATELY WANT TO SEE.
**HOWEVER**, I wish to make the following additional precautions and suggestions:
PLEASE BE REASONABLY SURE you can actually pull this off. ANOTHER FAILED IMPEACHMENT would represent more bad government, more waste of taxpayers' money, and a security distraction of the sort we underwent prior to
9/11. Furthermore, it would come as an extreme embarrassment the new Democrats could not afford: the still-quite-alive political monster cultivated by Republicans since the late Carter to late Reagan years is just WAITING for us to make a mistake. Whatever we do, we MUST assure that a similar extreme-Right Congress does not return to power, and we MUST conduct ourselves in such a manner as to strengthen that assurance, not weaken it. Probably only the "incidental", "ACcidental" uncovering of several different types of motivations for Impeachment, if at all possible as a result of SECONDARY, SUBORDINATE INVESTIGATIVE ACTIVITY, in the course of fulfilling positive promises such as implementation of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, will enable the building of a broad, bipartisan consensus that Impeachment is the necessary and correct path. So I say to our newly elected leadership and their direct supporting bureaucracy, GET IN AND DIG FOR THE TRUTH while INNOCENTLY going about the fulfillment of relatively constructive campaign promises such as cleaning up K Street and standardizing the new voting machines with a paper trail suitable for recounts. HEARINGS will be necessary for the fulfillment of these promises, and a good deal of activity tantamount to Discovery in a legal trial, just to get these relatively benign jobs done. And that is where the ostensible Official Democratic focus must remain (although OTHERS may, very publicly, draw our Representatives' and Senators' attention to not-entirely unrelated facts which demand further inquiry in new directions. This is where "volunteer" help from organizations like Dems.com could make itself most useful).
(If conditions should turn out to be bad for an actual impeachment -- should they turn out to harbinger disaster in the next election -- do not despair; the mere threat, even if it seems to constitute political suicide if carried out, can provide our new leadership with powerful leverage in passing valuable legislation, thus escaping the dread "Do-Nothing Congress" label and living to fight another day.)
I see one of the primary functions of ancillary organizations such as Democrats.com to be to PROVIDE COVER for the "majority" of "hands across the aisle" "Official" Democrats by TAKING THE BURDEN OF RESPONSIBILITY ONTO A LARGER SECTOR, THE GRASS-ROOTS CONSTITUENCY THAT ELECTED THEM, A SEGMENT OF THE POPULATION SO *LARGE* that the Democratic Leadership is, transparently to the Public, *UNABLE* TO IGNORE IT.
This is highly preferable to the Leadership's having to APPEAR TO HAVE BEEN DISINGENUOUS, especially after their having allowed Impeachment to be "taken off the table" by Ms. Pelosi, and having run for office on separate, albeit once again not entirely unrelated, themes such as getting us out of the War. FOR THE BEGINNING OF THEIR TENURE, ELECTED DEMOCRATS NEED TO BE SEEN WORKING ON FULFILLING POSITIVE PROMISES, even as they in parallel quietly investigate the many crimes of this administration. Then, as new "discoveries" are made, and especially as the Administration fails to cooperate in the "First 100 Hours" or even Days -- as they most surely will in selected areas such as stem cells -- the Party regulars will be FORCED to turn to impeachable matters.
The following SOUNDS easy enough:
PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE *SEVERAL* TYPES of SMOKING GUNS that appeal to a broad spectrum of the population; COMPLAINTS THAT EVEN REPUBLICANS CANNOT DISMISS without looking downright silly. The "accidental" discovery of proof that the NSA et al. have been tracking EVERYONE's communications (i.e. not just foreigners', and certainly not just terror suspects'...) seems nearly ideal to me. Documented cases of people's having been excluded from jobs because they have not passed the Bush Loyalty test would be good. (This is a published fact pertaining to the rebuilding of Iraq; but by no means does this behavior stop at our shores. I strongly believe even a modest examination of "security clearance" black lists for employers who contract with the government will reveal that criticizing Mr. Bush makes one a "security risk". I urge, I DARE Congress to look into this.) Or much better, the SECRET PHYSICAL SEARCHES of ordinary, INNOCENT people's homes -- Republicans if possible -- would be hard for Right-wing loyalists to ignore. Serious violations of the 4th Amendment BEFORE September 11 would be excellent. Or how about the *2nd* Amendment? -->Any secret plan to relieve gunholders of their weapons in an emergency would also be excellent fodder for incontestable impeachment. (I am fairly certain they have had such a secret plan; *finding* documentation of it will be the challenge. Poke around under the heading "Martial Law".)
Anyway, you get the idea, and probably already had it. Good luck.
KM Pruett
No we don't need a failed impeachment and that is for sure
I'm a moderate Dem and my husband is a moderate Republican. I've realized that this seems to be the plan from the Party (KM Pruett's message above). My husband would like this impeachment started immediately. We both feel the same way about this presidency, but I don't want to jump the gun on this. When Clinton was impeached I always wondered how he did run the presidency at the same time, but he managed to do it. I thank KPruett for the rational message that clearly spells out the thinking behind "no impeachment for now". I hope Pruett won't mind if I print it out so I can show it to my husband. We have to move cautiously forward with investigations and that will bring about the natural order of things... but really we can't be too slow about it.
Smoking Gun For Impeachment? Who Has A Friend At ACLU ?
International Herald Tribune
14th Nov 2006,
Document shows Bush guided CIA on detention and interrogation methods: (on edit: subtitle could be it's not nice to screwover the CIA)
"The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including one signed by President George W. Bush, that have guided the agency's interrogation and detention of terror suspects.
The CIA disclosed the existence of the documents in a letter Friday sent from the agency's associate general counsel, John McPherson, to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union.
The contents of the documents were not revealed, but one document, as described by the ACLU, is "a directive signed by President Bush granting the CIA the authority to set up detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees."
....more at International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/14/news/intel.php