Nancy Pelosi

Auto Industry Bailout

music8200 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:54:07 -0500

Congress will take up the Auto Industry Bailout when they re-convene this week. There is no better time than this moment to PUSH for concessions from the Auto Industry. Time is short. Democrat.com, can you help us act NOW? Here's a copy of a letter I just mailed to Speaker Pelosi: Dear Madam Speaker,

Please make the FLEXFUEL component a MANDATORY requirement for any Auto Industry bailout.
IT ONLY COSTS $100 to install this component on a vehicle during the manufacturing process. The only EPA approved retrofit costs $1300. All cars sold in Brazil are flexfuel ready. All cars that GM sells in Brazil are flexfuel compatible. There is no excuse and there should be no delay in making all cars sold in America flexfuel capable.
THIS IS THE QUICKEST CHEAPEST EASIEST WAY to make rapid reductions in our foreign oil imports.
If ALL cars sold in the US were Flexfuel compatible, alternative fuel manufacturers would gear up without the need for incentives because they would know they have a market for their fuel products.
THEN please help remove the $0.54 a gallon tariff on imported ethanol. That would allow foreign ethanol products to compete in the American market. The American consumer would benefit. We could even lift the economies of Third World Countries by contracting them to grow switchgrass or sugarcane for ethanol fuel.
Ultimately, let's provide incentives for the production of flexfuel plug-in hybrids. These cars would get 500 MILES ON A GALLON OF GASOLINE! We would never need OPEC oil ever again! Perhaps no imported oil at all.
PLEASE PLEASE make the flexfuel component a MANDATORY part of any Automobile Industry Bailout.
If you want good references on this topic, read the testimony of Anne Korin (of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security) before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs of May 22, 2008:http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/kor052208.htm(see in particular the section entitled "17x17")
read R. James Woolsey (former director of the CIA) and Anne Korin's article in the National Review:http://energy.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTlmMjFjYWRjOWI3ZGI0MzUxZDJjYTBlMmUzOTc2Mzc=
or watch Anne Korin's lecture on CSPAN:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MVwL2PcCG8(highly recommended)
watch Robert Zubrin's FEW Keynote Address:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0O2YZwSkgM
Thank you and your staff for your time and attention,Scott Lawrence

Surprise! Congress Listened to the Voting Public!

dlindorff — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:43:24 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The most entertaining thing about this Wall Street crisis and the
refusal of the House of Representatives (not failure but refusal) to
pass a bailout bill negotiated by the Bush White House and the House
leadership is how shocked and upset those leaders and the pundit class
have been by the idea that members of Congress would actually heed the
wishes of their constituents!

The Founding Fathers always saw the lower house of Congress as
voice of the people—the elected body that, because its members had to
face the voters every two years, would be most responsive to public
sentiment.

Because of the power of money and the role of the corporate media
in filtering the information that voters get about what is actually
going on, that close connection between public and public servant in
the House has long ago broken down. This time, however, because the
crisis hit within five weeks of the national election, and because the
crisis involved something that everyone cares about—their money—it
worked.

The public is paying attention, and most of us got it. It was
obvious that Congress and the White House were out to screw us out of
our money in order to protect the millionaire and billionaire traders
and conmen who have been running the Wall Street casino for the last
decade and a half without any adult supervision.

Now that people are paying attention, it will be interesting to see
how these corrupt leaders, Democrat and Republican, will fashion that
bailout and get it passed. Once aroused from their TV-induced slumber,
the American public may not be willing to get rolled. If the anger
grows, and the calls and emails to Congress—which brought down the
Capitol website Monday and jammed the switchboard for several days
beginning last week—continue to flood in threatening an electoral
Armageddon for those who back a bailout, Congress may yet be unable to
pass a bill.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

Now let’s make something clear. The stock market crash that
happened on Monday was no crisis. The market can rise and fall with
little or no significant impact on the broader economy, or even on
those who have their retirement income invested in equities. While
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and House
leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Minority Leader John Boehner may
point frantically to the falling Dow as a dire warning to members of
Congress to take action, it is all just scaremongering.

The real issue is not the stock market—it’s the credit markets. And
these have been shut down to borrowers—both individuals and
corporates—for months. Which means that there is no sudden urgency to
pass a lousy, rip-off bailout bill in days without proper hearings and
investigations into what is really needed.

The Bush Administration’s whole idea here from the start was to use
scare-mongering and high-pressure tactics honed in the 2002 campaign to
gin up a war against Iraq to get a bill through Congress that would
make a virtual dictator out of the Treasury Secretary, and to siphon a
trillion dollars or more out of taxpayers’ accounts and into the
pockets of the already stunningly rich financial class. It was to be
one final wrecking ball by the Bush/Cheney gang launched at the
American economic and political system, allowing the people who have
run the country into the ground over the last eight years, and their
financial backers to walk away with all the cookies.

It could still happen if the public doesn’t stay fired up and
angry. But for now, it’s at least exciting and deeply satisfying to see
the Administration, and the cowards who run the so-called Democratic
opposition in Congress, scrambling frantically to come up with a scheme
to get this ripoff passed.

What should happen? Congressional Democrats should put a hold on any action until after Election Day, which after all is only five weeks off. They should say that the voters must be heard on this critical national issue of how to rescue the economy and fix the financial system. Hearings should be scheduled in the relevant committees—oversight, banking, securities regulation, housing, the elderly, health and human services, etc. (yes, Rep. Dennis Kucinich is right in observing that given that most bankruptcies in the US are caused by medical emergencies, if the US had national healthcare, we wouldn’t have the housing foreclosure crisis)—and a special prosecutor should be established to look into the corruption behind all the recent financial sector failures. The real victims of the deregulatory orgy need to be heard, as do some of the 200 economists (including at least three nobel laureates) who have opposed this bailout. Then when the true nature and extent of the crisis and its causes have been laid out in clear public view, along with some real solutions for real people, appropriate legislative reforms should be drawn up, debated and voted upon, to be finally enacted into law.

No rush to judgment! No short-circuiting of the critical process of hearings!

The economy will survive this process.

What we cannot survive is a continuation of secret government, backroom deals and trillion-dollar bailouts.

BACK TO THE PHONES!
_______________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Conyers Investigates New Impeachable Crimes

Bob Fertik — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:59:45 -0400

Investigative reporter Ron Suskind's book "The Way of the World" has exposed new impeachable crimes by the Bush Administration, and House Judiciary Chair John Conyers has launched an investigation.

Suskind's most important revelation is that Iraq's Intelligence Minister, Gen. Tahir Jalil Habbush al Takriti, became a U.S.-British spy two months before George Bush invaded Iraq. Habbush insisted Iraq had no WMD's or Al Qaeda ties, but Bush didn't want the truth because he was determined to invade Iraq.

Bush told his briefers, "why don’t you tell him to give us something we can use to make our case?"

This is the most direct proof yet that George Bush knew Iraq had no WMD's or Al Qaeda ties, yet deliberately lied about them to Congress and the American people. According to 60 Minutes, Bush received a similar report in 2002 from Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, who was also a U.S. spy.

Suskind also reveals that months after the invasion, when no WMD's or Al Qaeda ties were found, the White House ordered the CIA to forge a letter from Habbush to "prove" both. The CIA produced that forgery and gave it to neocon mouthpiece Con Coughlin of Conrad Black's U.K. Telegraph, who lied about the "letter" on Meet the Press with Tom Brokaw. (Brokaw, unlike Dan Rather, has never been held accountable for promoting a forged document.) By law, the CIA is specifically prohibited from creating propaganda to mislead Americans, so when the Bush Administration ordered the CIA to produce the Habbush forgery, they committed yet another impeachable crime.

On Thursday, John Conyers told Democracy Now that he is actively investigating Suskind's revelations and may call Habbush and others as witnesses.

Of course Conyers' biggest problem is convincing Speaker Nancy Pelosi that George Bush committed a single crime. Pelosi was asked about impeachment repeatedly this week during her book tour; even the NY Times called it her Why-Haven’t-You Impeached-the-President Tour. Yet Pelosi insists Congress has no evidence that Bush committed any crimes at all. One activist politely handed Pelosi a copy of Dennis Kucinich's 36 Articles of Impeachment, so we gave him a $1,000 reward. We will continue to offer awards up to $1,000 for citizen journalists who get Pelosi to give a substantive answer to our simple question: "Of the 36 detailed Articles of Impeachment introduced by Dennis Kucinich, do you consider any to be crimes?"

Congress will return on September 8 to work for 3 weeks before adjourning to campaign. With Suskind's new evidence Bush's crimes, Speaker Pelosi could call a lame-duck session in November to vote on Articles of Impeachment - exactly as Speaker Newt Gingrich did in 1998.

Tell Congress to impeach Bush for his Iraq Lies:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/142

Pelosi Confesses Knowing the Truth About Bush's War Based on Lies: "I don't know what could have been done..." Tell her!

Chip — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:38:56 -0400

Begins at 4:51.

Q: If you were to go back and change anything from your political career, what would it be?

A: Well, of course, the biggest disappointment for me is that we are still in this war in Iraq, and, ah, I had always thought at the time that, that, ah, people knew the truth they would not vote for this war and, I don't know what else, er, not have been supportive of this, I don't know what else we could have done, ah, but this has been the most damaging to us: loss of life, over 4,000, tens of thousands injured, many thousands of them permanently, cost in dollars, which is small compared to the loss of life and limb but the cost in dollars to the tune of trillions of dollars, the cost of reputation in the world, the cost in our military readiness, our capabi...eroding our...undermining our military capability to protect our interests wherever they are threatened, undermining our ability to fight the real war on terror which is in Afghanistan, uh, I don't know what else could have been done, ah, but I keep revisiting that every step of the way to think what could we have done to stop this President from taking us into a war on the basis of a false premise, without the proper preparation of our troops, without a plan for success, a strategy to leave, ah, that is where we have been for more than 2 years, we're there 2 years longer than we were in World War II.

Pelosi Denies Impeachment Reality in San Rafael

Bob Fertik — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:35:03 -0400

The following four interactions took place at Speaker Pelosi's book signing event in San Rafael, CA, while getting books signed by Speaker Pelosi. Each answer gives a tiny window into Pelosi's "thinking," which is nothing more than denial of the reality that Bush is a criminal who will defy subpoenas until his last day, when his final act will be to pardon himself and everyone else.

Obviously Pelosi is counting the days until Bush is gone, hoping she will soon be working with President Obama. But in seven days? On August 12, she said he'll be gone in "a hundred days," apparently referring to election day on November 4 (which was then 84 days away). But Bush will still have the nuclear button, the veto pen, and the pardon stamp until January 20, 2009, which is 160 days away. And he's happy to use them all, regardless of the disastrous consequences.

Sophie de Vries, Democrats.com:

Since I wasn't a part of the contest, my question to Pelosi was as follows:

"Do you have a plan to prevent Bush from pardoning himself and others since you've taken impeachment off the table?"

Pelosi looked surprised and responded: "Why would Bush want to pardon himself?"

I drew a blank momentarily, stunned, and responded: "Because he's committed crimes."

Pelosi with head down, writing in book: "What crimes?", said with emphasis and a tight voice.

"Impeachable crimes." I said as the guards started moving towards me. I left quickly.

Phil Burk, ImpeachBush.tv:

Phil: I have a question about power. [guards move closer]

Pelosi: OK

Phil: How does Congress enforce its oversight powers to subpoena witnesses when it does not have the threat of impeachment?

Pelosi: We can get a court order.

Phil: But they can just ignore the court order.

Pelosi: Look, they're going to be out of there in seven days.

Phil: Seven days? What does that mean? Without the threat of impeachment how do you stop them from ignoring the court order or breaking laws?

Pelosi: We will have a court ruling. Thank you. Next person.

Guard: OK, your time is up.

Phil: Without impeachment, Congress can't enforce oversight. [guard gives me a dirty look]

Phil: [exits stage left]

I have no idea what "out of there in seven days" means. I may have misheard her but it was spoken clearly.

Shirley G., Ran for Pelosi's seat in primary:

Slg--hi, how are you?

Np--hi shirley. Thanks for coming.

Slg--I'm glad we finally get to meet! I want to ask you one quick question. Conyers has said that he'd move forward on impeachment if bush invaded iran. That's his line in the sand. I'm really interested in YOUR line in the sand.

Np--well he can draw any line he wants because he's in charge. It's his committee.

Slg--but what would make you say "enough is enough?"

Np--I don't think you can impeach on the strength of an action. I think in terms of invading Iran, I don't think they'll do that. Nonetheless, I think you have to look at what they do as far as the constitution is concerned.

Slg--have you read this book (ron suskind's) yet?

Np--no I haven't but I'd like to.

Slg--would you like to have it?

Np--no, I'll get my own.

Slg--great, I hope you will because it really goes into the forgery.

Np--thanks for coming.

Slg--you're welcome.

I think her response was focused only on the "action" of invading Iran, not on any of the other criminal actions that bush has taken, which was my original take. Which makes more sense, but it's such a literal response! And of course, she never did answer my question as to her "enough."

Cynthia Papermaster, National Impeachment Network:

I listened intently to the Speaker as she told us [the audience] the three things she advises every Representative to keep in mind: Constitution; Constituents; Conscience.

As I approached Nancy I fumbled with my phone to turn on the video camera sound. Then it was my turn.

"Speaker Pelosi, it's a great honor to meet you. Thank you for writing this inspirational book-- I'm giving it to my daughter." I shook hands with her.

"Are you Cynthia?"

"Yes" (I'm thinking-- how does she know my name? Then I realize the yellow post-it in the book says my name so Nancy will know what to write) "Nancy, I have to tell you-- please follow your conscience and start impeachment hearings. You know they've committed crimes, don't you?"

Pelosi: "Yes, they certainly have" (in a low voice, with disgust)

"Well, then please, please impeach them. For the Constitution, your Constituents and your Conscience." Then security gently moved me along.

Given Pelosi's massive hostility to impeachment questions, everyone did great work!

Pelosi Arrests Citizens Who Challenge Her

Bob Fertik — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:52:15 -0400

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's tour to promote her book Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters has turned into a debacle for Pelosi.

The only "power" Pelosi seems to "know" is the power to arrest people who pay $30 to buy her book and ask her a question she doesn't like. Her only "message to America's daughters" is STFU.

When it comes to dissent, Pelosi is no different from George Bush or the Chinese government. Fortunately San Francisco voters have a choice: after an enormous grassroots effort, peace mom Cindy Sheehan will be on the ballot against Pelosi.

Pelosi was greeted at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles by activists who were outside and inside. Below are their reports and photos:

Marcy Winograd, who got 36% of the vote in a 2006 primary against BushDemocrat Jane Harman (D):

Pelosi thanked her host, American Jewish University, proclaimed her support for Israel as a Jewish state, and then talked about the importance of women owning their power – this from the woman who upon assuming her role as Speaker of the House declared impeachment off the table, thus immediately surrendering her power to hold the Bush administration accountable for war crimes.

Mid-way through Pelosi's somewhat surreal Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters book chat in Los Angeles -- Peter Thottam, founder of the LA Impeachment Center -- couldn't take the small-talk and platitudes anymore.

Jumping up, a few seats back from the stage, Thottam shouted, "Who gave you the right to destroy the Constitution and take Impeachment off the table? Our first, second, fourth, fifth and eight Constitutional amendments are being annihilated. 1 million Iraqis are dead. 5,000 Americans including Cindy Sheehan's son. We've spent over 1 trillion taxpayer dollars on a war that should never have been started. Our constitution is being destroyed, Nancy. Bring back our Constitution... Bring it back ..."

Security moved in on Peter, took him away, arrested him and threw him in jail for the night. He is scheduled to appear in court Sept. 4th.

Quote from Peter Thottam -- Security Guard called the LAPD officers and made a citizen's arrest. Spent the night in jail. The police officers were sympathetic and agreed about the role of big money in Congress. They agreed that Pelosi and these reps are just tools.

Seconds after Peter's challenge, I shot up, two rows back from the stage, smack dab in the center of the audience, asking, Nancy, were you fully briefed on torture? Were you briefed on torture? Then came Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink, holding out a copy of the US Constitution, offering it to Pelosi, just in case she missed the repeated mentions of impeachment as a remedy for abuse of power. Security moved in on Jodie, too, whisking her out of the auditorium at American Jewish University, high atop Sepulveda, just past the fifty protestors who came to greet Pelosi with Impeachment is on Our Table and Out of Iraq Now! and No Attack on Iran! signs and banners.

During Pelosi’s entire book talk, some of us -- Sara Nichols, Jodie Evans, Linda Milazzo, Marcy Winograd, Tighe Barry – held up our Nancy books with messages we scrawled in big black letters on the inside cover -- Protect Iran - Honor Your Oath - Impeach! - Hold Bolton and Rove in Contempt -- Nancy, Torture? Torture? Torture? and more about specific articles of the Constitution which called for impeachment. Security personnel whispered, watched us -- seemingly unsure of how to respond to this act of subtle, yet distracting resistance.

At one point during her talk, Pelosi, visibly nervous, looked right at us, those of us sitting two rows back, front and center, and told us, almost apologetically, "I was an activist too, I am a progressive, I want the war to end, too. I want to get out of Iraq" and then -- "We need to move our troops into Afghanistan, not Iraq."

When Pelosi finished, no questions taken, no dialogue allowed, several of us shouted at her, Use your power, Nancy, to impeach these war criminals. Use your power! Do not be complicit!

CodePink's Jodie Evans:

Pelosi is on a tour for her book "Know Your Power". At the American Jewish University we had over 40 people outside with giant "Impeach" banners. The road to parking was lined with people and messages.

Twelve of us had tickets to get in. We met at 6:30 PM to discuss the order we would stand up with our messages at the booksigning. Some were chosen to wait for their time at the book signing after Pelosi's talk to get their questions answered.

Our cameras were taken away in the search before entering. As they were looking in my bag, they got distracted by someone else and I was waved by with, "You look harmless."

Eight of us sat on the second row in the middle, including Tighe, Sara Nichols, Marcy Winograd, Linda Milazzo and others. We wrote messages with our sharpie, such as: "Use your Power, Torture?" "You Knew?" "Uphold the Constitution" etc. on the back inside covers of the books. After Pelosi had started talking, we raised the books showing the messages. It was a row of dissent!

Pelosi was flustered, couldn't remember the questions asked and stammered. Then a security guard disrupted us and tried to get us to leave, gesturing and frowning; we didn't look at him or move but stayed seated for 20 minutes.

Then Pelosi started to talk about how good all the members of Congress are and Peter Thottam lost it and stood up screaming at her. He resisted those who were trying to drag him out. As he was being dragged out we were supporting his message and yelling out our own.

Then it quieted and Pelosi talked about how she was upholding the constitution and I leapt up and said, "No you aren't!" and offered her Kucinich's 35 articles of impeachment, Bugliosi's book and Susskind's book about how Bush has broken the law. I cited her comment on the TV program "The View" [about asking for reasons for impeachment] and told her I was delivering what she asked for.

Security tried to shut me up but Pelosi said she, Pelosi "came from the streets" and I had a right to speak, until finally, she started yelling at me that she WAS upholding the constitution and that impeachment would fail. By then security had made it to the middle of the row and dragged me out.

The police escorted me to where Peter was in handcuffs and I told them I did not resist and she had told me to speak. Security told the police that was true so I was escorted to my car and told if I was found on that property that night I would be arrested. As I left there were still 20 activists outside with the Impeachment banners, they had just ordered pizza and were staying until she drove past with her 2 daughters.

After I left, in "popcorn" progression everyone else got up with their question and message, the host finally said it is over because these people have been too disruptive, and the pinkers went to get books signed. The event organizers cut off the signing before our team got to the table.

Here's Jason Leopold and Alan Breslauer in The Public Record (click link for video):

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's appearance Monday at a West Los Angeles college to discuss her recently published book was marred by dozens of protestors and several angry outbursts by audience members who demanded Pelosi immediately authorize a House committee to hold impeachment hearings against President George W. Bush.

The Speaker made it clear she would not support any effort to hold impeachment hearings against President Bush saying that the president "will be gone in a hundred days."

Halfway through her discussion at The American University of Judaism, where more than 300 people paid $30 each to hear Pelosi speak about her upbringing and her family's impact on her political career as detailed in her book Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters, the topic shifted to Congress's historically low approval rating and how it reflected on Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker.
American University of Judaism's Rabbi Robert Wexler, who moderated the 75 minute discussion, asked Pelosi to analyze a recent Rasmussen poll that found nine percent of voters dpolled believed Congress was doing a good job, far lower than President Bush's overall approval rating.

According to the results of the July poll, 72 percent of voters believe Congress is more interested in furthering their own political careers. Fourteen percent believe members of Congress are genuinely interested in helping people.

Pelosi responded to the statistics by defending her performance and the performance of her Democratic colleagues in Congress.

"I preside over the greatest collection of integrity and idealism," Pelosi said.

Prior to her appearance in West Los Angeles Monday evening, CNN’s Larry King interviewed Pelosi. She told King she was willing to drop her staunch opposition to offshore drilling and would likely allow the House to vote on the issue.

She said, in her opinion, the reason behind Congress’s historically low approval rating was largely due to the fact that Democrats could not muster up the votes to end the Iraq war, which the Democratic Speaker from San Francisco said she could not do much about because of the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in both Houses.

Wexler, however, continued to press Pelosi to elaborate on her response given that the Rasmussen poll suggested that a wide-range of issues beyond the Iraq war was responsible for Congress’s single-digit approval.
Pelosi, visibly flustered, said she was well aware that “much more work needs to be done.”

In November 2006, Pelosi explained the significance behind the record voter turnout that helped shift the balance of power in Washington for the first time in 12 years.

“People voted for change and they voted for Democrats who will take our country in a new direction,” Pelosi said during a victory speech in San Francisco on Nov. 8, 2006.

But Pelosi, who became House Speaker, never managed to exact the change she promised. She explained that she and her colleagues tried vigorously to pass legislation to end the war in Iraq.

"The public doesn’t want to know about process and 60 votes, they want outcomes, they want results," Pelosi said, explaining why Democrats could not end the war as promised prior to the midterm 2006 elections.

But Pelosi’s comments appeared disingenuous to many, since she was largely responsible for crafting an appropriations bill in backroom discussions with House Democratic leaders, passed in June, and then worked secretly with the White House budget director offering up concessions on Iraq war benchmarks if Bush would agree to the domestic spending attached to the final bill with little debate preceding a vote on the measure.

In fact, since the electoral victories in November 2006, the Democratic-controlled Congress has approved more than $300 billion in emergency spending bills for Iraq and Afghanistan without the benchmarks or withdrawal timetables that Pelosi and other leaders said they would demand.

When Pelosi launched into the reasons an administration led by presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain would be dangerous for the country, identifying the candidate's support for an endless war in Iraq and his intention to uphold many of the questionable constitutional interpretations relating to torture and civil liberties during the Bush administration, Pelosi said the only way to "dig our way out" is by electing Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“Whether it’s the deficit or the challenges to the constitution we have to dig our way out,” Pelosi said, adding “this election is like death for life on this planet as we know it today."

Her response led Peter Thottam, founder of the LA Impeachment Center, to demand Pelosi "do her job" and pursue impeachment hearings against President Bush for launching a war on false pretenses.

"Who gave you the right to take the constitution and shove it down the toilet? Who gave you the right to take impeachment off the table? Nobody told them to do this,” Thottam shouted at Pelosi moments before Secret Service agents removed him from the packed auditorium and turned him over to officers with the Los Angeles Police Department. “One million Iraqis are dead. Five thousand Americans are dead. You have destroyed the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments."

Pelosi seemed stunned by the outburst, but the way she addressed Thottam’s charges further fanned the flames and led to additional verbal protests over her decision not to hold the administration accountable for what many individuals in the audience believe are High Crimes and Misdemeanors by President Bush.

When a member of the activist group Code Pink stood up and insisted Pelosi brush up on her reading regarding evidence of the Bush administration's long list of alleged constitutional violations, Pelosi reacted angrily.

"I take an oath of office to uphold the constitution of the United States and don't tell me that I don't do that,” Pelosi said, using hand gestures to emphasize her disdain over the impeachment demands. "Why don't you go picket the Republicans in Congress that will not allow us to have a vote on the war. This is not very effective. Not very effective."

"As Speaker of the house, the third highest office, first is the president, then vice president, and then Speaker, I take my responsibilities deadly seriously,” Pelosi said. “I try to promote bipartisanship but that's not what the other side wants."

Before Election 2006, Pelosi declared impeachment “off the table,” in part, to avoid alarming centrist voters. Now, with Democrats hoping to gain additional seats in Election 2008, a similar political calculation applies, fearing a backlash against a last-minute drive to impeach Bush and Cheney. Bush knows that Pelosi long ago rejected impeachment proceedings, the one instrument included in the Constitution for Congress to wield against a President who has abused his powers.

Pelosi's refusal to consider impeachment hearings or cut off funding for the Iraq war prompted antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan last year to launch a campaign for Pelosi's congressional seat. On Monday, San Francisco election officials said Sheehan has obtained enough registered voters on her petitions to be placed on the November ballot. Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, is running as an Independent.

At the conclusion of Monday evening’s presentation, Pelosi signed books but refused to answer questions about her policy decisions. The Public Record asked Pelosi whether she would authorize the full House to vote on contempt charges against former White House political adviser Karl Rove, who has refused to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify about his role in the alleged political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat.

Immediately following his query to Pelosi, The Public Record's Alan Breslauer was grabbed by Secret Service and dragged away from the table where Pelosi was signing copies of her book. The Speaker did respond to Breslauer's question, however, saying a vote on contempt charges against Rove is "up to [House Judiciary Committee Chairman John] Conyers."

Attorney Peter Thottam:

Police booking. Interesting process. Call me if you need details. I think Linda Sutton may have audio. She and Dorothy were both sitting next to me.

Essence of the comment (made after hearing Pelosi's hour long stream of b.s./nonsense/gender role anectodes and her inane comments about how truly great her fellow congressional reps were ('all but 50' of the 460 plus Congressional House of Rep members) :

"I am going to vomit. Who gave you the right to destroy the Constitution and take Impeachment off the table? Our first, second, fourth, fifth and eight Constitutional amendments are being annihilated. 1 million Iraqis are dead. 5,000 Americans including Cindy Sheehan's son. We've spent over 1 trillion taxpayer dollars on a war that should never have been started. Our constitution is being destroyed, Nancy. Bring back our Constitution... Bring it back (being dragged out of the room)..." [there may have been more, I'm not sure. Linda Sutton was taping]

Security Gaurd called the LAPD officers and made a citizen's arrest.   Spent the night in jail. The police officers were sympathetic and agreed about the role of big money in Congress. They agreed that Pelosi and these reps are just tools.

Would do it again? Absolutely. One of the best things I've ever done. The look on her face was priceless. Deer in the headlights X 10?

We are far too passive and non-confrontational. Kumbaya moments?   People are dying...

Who are we kidding. I plan to resign and turn in my bar license. Laws? Who are we kidding.

I know Jodie spoke afterwards. Ditto w/ Jennifer.   Jodie wasn't booked. I'm not sure about Jennifer.

Insights on others? Pelosi/Congress needs to hear from Millions like us... Enough w/ the street protests. Enough with the cyberspace email streams...

I just got out of the Pacific Division station. Just caught a cab and got your voicemails (they gave me back my confiscated cell phone about one hour ago). Gotta rush to the airport. I have a plane to catch.

The system is clearly non-functional. It doesn't work. The media is a circus. A side-show. They lie. They lie.... They lie.   The disconnect b/w Nancy Pelosi (and many of the people in that audience) w/ what is going on here in the U.S. and abroad is apalling. This clown is Speaker of the House? I plan to make the failure of impeachment and of Congress a center-piece in my September 11th talk with Bowman, Griffin. Damn it...

I have an appearance in court Sept. 4th. I'll let you know how it goes.

Pelosi Video Contest Award Winner #1

Bob Fertik — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:37:58 -0400

Note: Our first $1,000 award in our Pelosi Video Contest goes to Anthony from We Are Change Ohio for his outstanding effort to get an answer from Speaker Pelosi! Andrew writes:

I confronted Nancy Pelosi with the full articles of Impeachment. The crimes were highlighted. I have the full details of the confrontation in my video.
It was extremely difficult to not only record the confrontation fully, but also to bring her the articles because security wasn't allowing any cameras or allowing anyone to bring anything to her other than her book. So I literally had to sneak all this by.
I maintained integrity by remaining polite and trying to get a response out of her without getting aggressive like other have been. I kept my confrontation on the point and not only did I confront her with this but I got two responses.
I got her to admit that she hasn't read the articles of impeachment and when I mentioned that all the crimes that Bush has done like eviscerating the Constitution she replied "that's terrible".
Unfortunately I was only able to get audio but I still have the footage in its original form on my camera intact. I hope this is the answer you folks were looking for and I did my best. She hasn't read the articles of impeachment and the crimes listed in the articles are "terrible" according to her.

The Pelosi Video Contest remains open so we encourage everyone to keep trying to get a substantive answer from Pelosi to our question: Of the 36 detailed Articles of Impeachment introduced by Dennis Kucinich, do you consider any to be crimes? If yes, which? If no, why not - and what (if anything) would you consider an impeachable offense?

Pelosi Makes It Hard to Ask $1,000 Question

davidswanson — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:38:58 -0400

By Gael Murphy Before the talk began Politics and Prose (host bookstore) passed around question cards so there was ample opportunity to jam the basket with the $1000 question and any others. Pelosi is a pro at deflecting confrontation. No cameras or videos were allowed - probably the host's policy. It was possible to yell out, but tricky to do without making us look stupid. After the talk some 750 pple lined up to have their books signed, so the time to say all that we wanted was very limited. We came with a handout of the Bush crimes (executive summary of minority report. You can download from AfterDowning). When our turn came to have our book dedicated to CODEPINK:Women for Peace, she greeted us with exceptional charm. We were hyper dressed in Pink. As she was signing we brought up the View and handed (placed beside) her the list of crimes explaining that the ones highlighted had been investigated thoroughly and so would be the easiest ones on which to initiate impeachment proceedings. "Here are the goods - the highlighted ones would take 2 days tops, so there is time for accountability Mame Speaker." Then we brought up Iran, specifically HR 362. She asked what it was and when we told her sever sanctions on Iran she grimaced and said with enthusiasm, "if Congress votes to bomb Iran for refusing to stop enrichment, I will vote "no"". What a bizzarre comment. Then Leslie aked her, "Why did you approve $400 million in covert activity in Iran. That isn't helping a diplomatic efforts?". I guess our time with her had run out because she waved us away and her secret service goons stepped in. There was another fellow in line who was planning to ask the $1000 question. We stupidly forgot to stick around to see his result. Note, that anyone in pink will be closely monitored either by cap police and/or by rent-a-cops on the scene. The rent-a-cop searched all bag before entry for signs and banners, not weapons and there were no metal detectors set up.

Why Pelosi Really Opposes Impeachment

Bob Fertik — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:19:06 -0400

This week on The View, Speaker Pelosi gave a completely insulting reason for not impeaching Bush:

If somebody had a crime that the president had committed, that would be a different story... unless you have the goods that this president committed these crimes.

As David Swanson rightly replied, "What rock have you been living under for the past seven and a half years?" before listing Bush's own confessions (wiretapping, torture) and prima facie cases (subpoenas, signing statements).

Today, Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel published a long interview with Pelosi and succeeded in getting - for the very first time - Pelosi's real reasons for opposing impeachment.

As it turns out, there is no single reason, but rather a mix of politics, policy, and stupidity. First the politics:

This is how I see it as Nancy Pelosi, not in my role as Speaker... why I ran for leadership and the rest. I was not setting out to win for two years. I did not want there to be any doubt in anybody's mind that this is going to be a long standing, get used to it, strong Democratic majority. So, in my head '06 was first, and then in '08 we strengthen and increase, In 2010, there's a little ebbing--assuming we have a Democratic President--and that's not traditionally been a big year. So we hold our own. So, 2006, we win. 2008 we grow and strengthen, and in 2010 we sustain and in 2012 with a new map: it's a whole new world. This map, we can only go so far with this map...redistricting...we need a whole new map. What we're talking about is only the next presidential election.

In other words, Pelosi is looking beyond 2008 to 2010 and 2012 and beyond. Therefore impeaching Bush in 2008 would only affect "the next presidential election," meaning 2008, and would have no impact on future Congressional elections.

That's true as far as it goes - by 2010, the impeachment of George Bush would have no political significance, just as the 1998 impeachment of President Clinton had no impact on Congressional races in 2000. But I don't know a single impeachment activist who supports impeachment because it would help Democrats in 2008, let along 2010 or 2012. The reasons we support impeachment are:

To stop Bush from committing the crimes he is now committing, like torture and wiretapping and ignoring subpoenas and negating laws with signing statements
To hold Bush accountable for the crimes he has committed
To deter future Presidents (including Democrats) from committing similar crimes

After politics, Pelosi moves on to policy, although her policy is intimately tied back to politics.

So my view in politics is deeply rooted in how I was raised in politics: It's all about economics. One of the reasons I decided to run for leadership is I thought it was absolutely urgent that we win. We see a situation where we have an economy where they are sucking the money out of the middle class. One percent of the people in this country control almost a quarter of the wealth...and it's at the expense of the middle class. We want to reward success and achievement, entrepreneurial spirit and the rest of that. But this is not what a democracy is about. So my whole thing was always about the middle class being this backbone of a democracy and I saw what was happening here was with the President and the Republican Congress a complete disregard--worse than that--for working families in our country. So I come into this picture with, they have to know we're here to stay, plus we have to have a predictable future. And I said before the election that impeachment was off the table. Now that means, in the set of facts that we know now the fact of the matter is that in order to impeach the President, you must have the information. Also, the fact of the matter is you don't get any information from these people. The further fact of this is that because of the judges that they appointed, we couldn't get any information about Cheney. So what is the risk-benefit of going down that route rather than saying we want to bring the country together so that we could win and continue to win and elect a Democratic President--absolutely essential--and change the economics of America?

This is going to be a caste system and I carry that burden as well as some more and the rest of it. I carry that responsibility. So my view of it is what is in the interest of unifying the country which--we have a responsibility to do, but to do so in a way that has a progressive economic agenda. And other people just see it as if we want it, we do this then we're going to win--well, I'm not sure.

This is actually quite interesting and worth discussing in greater depth. Pelosi believes Republican policies are creating a "caste system" in which the richest 1% steal from the middle class. She believes the only way to stop the Republican "war on the middle class" is for Democrats to convince Republicans that Democrats will control Congress for many years - that "we're here to stay."

Pelosi's economic strategy - stopping the richest 1% from destroying the middle class - is odd for a number of reasons. First, I don't think she ever presented this argument before. If she did, she got no serious coverage. Is this a secret strategy? If so, why?

Second, it's impossible to understand what this has to do with impeachment. Pelosi seems to argue that she can only accomplish her anti-caste strategy by "unifying the country," while impeachment would be divisive - or so she implies, without actually saying so.

But how would impeachment be divisive? Bush's support is below 30%, which is pretty much the irreducible Republican base. Democrats will never "unify the country" in a way that includes that 30%, as long as their minds are being controlled by all-day lectures from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and dozens of their clones. Is Pelosi too naive to understand this?

Congressional Democrats like to point out that President Clinton's polls went up during impeachment. But Clinton's approval was 60% before Monicagate broke in January 1998, and only went up to 65% because the Republican impeachment effort was so nakedly partisan. It's very hard to imagine that a serious, fact-based impeachment effort by Democrats would boost Bush's approval by 1%; it's much easier to imagine that Bush's approval would go even lower when his Constitutional crimes were fully exposed.

But perhaps Pelosi's idea of "unifying the country" isn't really about public opinion, but rather about the Republican Party and its powerful corporate backers. Does Pelosi think she can persuade Republicans to end their "caste war" through reasonable negotiations that exclude "hostile" actions like impeachment?

If so, Pelosi learned absolutely nothing from her "reasonable negotiations" with Bush over ending the occupation of Iraq, which led Bush to increase the number of troops in early 2007 by announcing "the surge."

If Pelosi really wants to end the Republican "caste war," Democrats need to work with the progressive movement to reach out to the middle class on bread-and-butter issues and broader issues of economic justice - not by giving massive taxpayer giveaways to wealthy investors in Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae.

After these digressions into politics and policy, Pelosi finally addresses a substantive impeachable offense - lying the country into war.

I have my own--what's the word I usually use about this--grievances about Democrats who voted for this war. We had a word that there was no intelligence to support an imminent threat to the United States. There was nothing. But when I was running to be Speaker they said, if you go against this war you will never go any place in this party. You're probably one of thirty-five people going against this war. I told them, I may be the only one but I won't be voting for this war. I had to oppose many Democrats, including the whip. That was a big deal. And also the Senate voted the wrong way--voted to give him the authority to go to war and use that power when there was absolutely nothing in the intelligence to support the imminent threat that the Administration was claiming...You've heard me say this before...when I said that at the time, they said you're calling the President a liar...I said I'm stating a fact. As it turns out, everybody knew that he didn't have...and now everyone's blaming it on the faulty intelligence. It wasn't there. So in terms of why should he be impeached? Because he took us to war? Well what about these other people who voted for that war with no evidence to tell them that this war? Are they going to be voting with us to impeach the President? Where are these Democrats going to be? Are they going to be voting for us to impeach a President who took us to war on information that they had also?

Of course this is an argument Republicans use all the time - how can Democrats impeach Bush for lying about Iraq when they repeated the same lies and voted for the war?

The obvious response is that Democrats cannot be blamed for believing Bush's lies. Everyone knows Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and everyone else in the White House lied repeatedly to the public on TV. But the Busheviks also lied to Congress in top-secret briefings. Bush should be impeached both for lying on TV and for lying behind closed doors.

Also, Pelosi's "head-counting" on the Iraq war vote is way off. There weren't only 35 Democrats who opposed the Iraq war, there were 126 - plus 6 Republicans and independent Bernie Sanders. Only 81 Democrats voted for the war, only 53 of those Democrats are still in the House, and several of those (like Jack Murtha) are now harsh critics of the war and of Bush. (Heck, even John McCain now claims to be a harsh critic of the war and of Rumsfeld, if not Bush.)

Still, Pelosi is correct in pointing out the problem that many of the 53 pro-war Democrats would have in impeaching Bush for his pre-war lies. But what about the other 35 Articles of Impeachment introduced by Dennis Kucinich?? Why can't all 236 Democrats impeach Bush simply for rejecting Congressional subpoenas - as they did for Richard Nixon? And why can't they impeach Bush for admitting he approved torture and warrantless wiretapping?

Pelosi ties her anti-impeachment arguments together in a strange melange of politics and policy:

How do you foresee that record being used?

I think that once we have a new President we can get more information because I think the country deserves the right to know. But we'll never get the goods on Bush to impeach him until we get the votes from the people who voted for the war, overwhelmingly, and what does that do to the country in light of the fact that the Republicans would have liked nothing better. You know who wanted us to impeach the President...it was the Republicans. All of that takes the attention away from what is the issue. They are sucking the money out of the middle class to the advantage of the wealthiest people in our country and they would like nobody to be paying attention to that. You want to go impeach the President, you want to do that...because it's all about money for them...the money their friends made on this war...the money their friends made getting us to four dollars a gallon at the pump...the transfer of wealth. So put me down as a very liberal progressive economic Democrat. We're here. I'll take the barbs, but I've got to keep us on course so that we can be a strong, assured, assumed-to-them, Democratic majority--so we can do what we have to do: healthcare, education, fairness and prosperity and let people participate in the prosperity of our country. It's only a decision and every decision has been made against working families in America and the leverage has been with the wealthy. I mean, these people at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they've joined the Wal-Mart club. That is to say, these people make in two weeks even more what it takes a minimum wage earner working full-time for his entire life. Something is very wrong.

Sadly, Pelosi's rant ends up being utterly incoherent and downright stupid. Even though Pelosi kept impeachment "off the table" for two years, there has still been no attention paid to the "wealthiest people" "sucking the money out of the middle class" - unless you're crazy enough to watch Lou Dobbs and mute his relentless immigrant-bashing rants. And instead of punishing the greedy executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Pelosi just gave them a massive taxpayer bailout.

Pelosi claims to be a "progressive" and her heart is in the right place. But her brain is somewhere else entirely - and it might require a drug test to find out exactly where.

Friday's House Judiciary Hearing on Impeachment: A Victory and a Challenge

dlindorff — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:34:40 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The dramatic hearing on presidential crimes and abuses of power
held on Friday by the House Judiciary Committee was both a staged
farce, and at the same time, a powerful demonstration of the power of a
grassroots movement in defense of the Constitution. It was at once both
testimony to the cowardice and self-inflicted impotence of Congress and
of the Democratic Party that technically controls that body, and to the
enormity of the damage that has been wrought to the nation’s democracy
by two aspiring tyrants in the White House.

As Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the committee, made clear
more than once during the six-hour session, this was “not an
impeachment hearing, however much many in the audience might wish it to
be” He might well have added that he himself was not the fierce
defender of the Constitution and of the authority of Congress that he
once was before gaining control of the Judiciary Committee, however
much his constituents, his wife, and Americans across the country might
wish him to be.

At the same time, while the hearing was strictly limited to the
most superficial airing of Bush administration crimes and misdemeanors,
the fact that the session—technically an argument in defense of 36
articles of impeachment filed in the House over the past several months
by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)--was nonetheless a major victory for the
impeachment movement. It happened because earlier in the month, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has sworn since taking control of the
House in November 2006, that impeachment would be “off the table”
during the 110th Congress, called a hasty meeting with Majority Leader
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Rep. Conyers, and Rep. Kucinich, and called
for such a limited hearing.

It was no coincidence that shortly before Pelosi’s backdown, peace
activist and Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan announced that her campaign
had collected well over the 10,000 signatures necessary to qualify for
listing on the ballot as an independent candidate for Congress against
Pelosi in the Speaker’s home district in San Francisco. Sheehan has
been an outspoken advocate of impeaching both Bush and Cheney. “Pelosi
is trying to throw a bone to her constituents by allowing a hearing on
impeachment,” said Sheehan, who came to Washington, DC to attend. “It’s
just like her finally stating publicly that Bush’s presidency is a
failure—something it has taken her two years to come to, but which
we’ve been saying for years.”

So determined were Pelosi and Conyers to limit the scope and
intensity of the hearing that they acceded to a call for Republicans on
the Judiciary Committee to adhere to Thomas Jefferson’s Rules of the
House, which prohibit any derogatory comments about the President,
which was interpreted by Chairman Conyers as meaning no one, including
witnesses or members of the committee, could suggest that Bush had lied
or deceived anyone. Since a number of Rep. Kucinich’s proposed articles
of impeachment specifically charge the president with lying to Congress
and the American People, this made for some comic moments, with witness
Bruce Fein, a former assistant attorney general under former President
Ronald Reagan, to say he would reference his listing of crimes to the
“resident” of the White House.

In the end, the rule imposing a gag on calling the president a
criminal fell by the wayside, with witness Vincent Bugliosi. A former
Los Angeles deputy district attorney, accusing Bush of being guilty of
the murder of over 4000 American soldiers and of hundreds of thousands
of innocent Iraqi civilians because he had “lied” the country into an
illegal and unnecessary war, and with committee member Shiela Jackson
Lee (D-TX) suggesting that the president may have committed treason in
invading Iraq, and that he appeared to be preparing to do it again with
an unprovoked invasion of Iran.

Conyers also acquiesced in a Republican effort to minimize public
monitoring and involvement in the hearing, allowing the minority party
to fill most of the available seats in the hearing room with office
staffers who showed little interest in the proceedings. Only a few
dozen of the hundreds of pro-impeachment activists who had come to the
Rayburn Office Building at 7 am in order to get seats in the Judiciary
Committee hearing room were allowed in, with the rest having to remain
in the hall or go to two remote “overflow” rooms to watch the
proceedings on a TV hookup. Conyers also went along with a call by
Republican members of the committee to have some of those who did make
it into the hearing ejected simply for wearing buttons on their shirts
calling for impeachment (the Republican members referred to these as
“signs”), though such small personal tokens are routinely allowed in
congressional hearing rooms.

It was clear that this was to be a tightly controlled and strictly limited hearing.

It was also clear that it was intended to go nowhere.

At one point, after hearing witnesses like Fein, Bugliosi, former
representative and Nixon impeachment committee member Elizabeth
Holtzman, former Salt Lake City mayor and impeachment activist Rocky
Anderson, former House Clinton impeachment manager Bob Barr, former
Watergate Committee counsel and current senior counsel of the Brennan
Center for Justice Frederick A.O. Schwartz, and Elliott Adams,
president of the board of Veterans for Peace, lay out the
administration’s crimes and abuses of power—which included charges of
usurping the legislative powers of Congress, violating international
treaties, war crimes, lying to Congress, an illegal war, felony
violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth
Amendment, defying Congressional subpoenas, obstruction of justice and
more, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chair of the Constitution
subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, appeared convinced that the
abuses were real and serious.

But Nadler, who for two years has been a major obstacle on the
Judiciary Committee to any efforts to move impeachment to a formal
hearing, said, “No president has been removed from office through
impeachment.” He asked the witnesses, “How would you approach
impeachment today so it would be a viable option?”

Former Rep. Holtzman responded, “The real remedy to a president who
believes he is above the law is impeachment. There is no running away
from that.” She said, “An impeachment inquiry, handled fairly, could
work. Maybe I’m a cockeyed optimist, but I believe it could work.”

The basic point, made by Holtzman, by Fein and by many others,
including this writer, is that worrying about the political opposition
to impeachment, both in the House, and in the Senate, not to mention
among the broader public, is completely wrongheaded. Even when
impeachment articles were first filed against Nixon, the public and the
bulk of the Congress were against the idea. It was during the hearings
that the tide turned, as evidence of malfeasance, criminality and abuse
of power became evident through hearing testimony. The same would
happen in the case of President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney. Most
Americans don’t even know that the president made up evidence to
justify the war against Iraq out of whole cloth. They don’t know what
the Geneva Conventions are with regard to torture. They don’t know why
Congress passed the FISA act, which Bush has been feloniously violating
to spy on them (it was passed because Nixon was using the National
Security Agency to spy on Americans without judicial warrants!). They
don’t know the Bush has been refusing to enact laws passed by the
Congress. Public hearings by an impeachment panel would make all these
high crimes and misdemeanors clear on national TV to all sentient
Americans. Moreover, as Holtzman pointed out, the president would not
be able to use the claim of “executive privilege” to withhold testimony
from aides in an impeachment inquiry, the way he has done when they
have been subpoenaed by other House and Senate committees. Impeachment
would be about violations of the very executive actions he would be
claiming privilege on. As well, an impeachment committee, unlike any
other committee of the Congress, is specifically sanctioned and
empowered in the Constitution, meaning that even strict
“constructionist” Federalists on the bench would have a hard time
backing presidential obstruction.

As Holtzman noted, “There is no executive privilege in impeachment,
because refusing to testify is itself an impeachable offense.”

Committee Republicans, aided by two law professors they had brought
in to testify, Stephen Presser of Northwestern University School of Law
and Jeremy Rabkin of George Mason University School of Law, tried to
argue that impeachment was only meant for crimes in which the official,
or the president, was seeking personal gain. This nonsense was knocked
down by most of the speakers, who quoted numerous founders who made it
clear that what high crimes referred to were actions—even taken with
the noblest of intentions—that undermined the Constitution or abused
the powers of the office. As Rep. Nadler said, “Impeachment has nothing
to do with intentions or with good faith. Impeachment has to do with
abuse of power which weakens the balance of power.”

In the end, the hearing petered out, taking no action of any
kind—exactly the result that Pelosi, Hoyer and Conyers cynically
intended.

Now it is up to the public and the impeachment movement to call
their bluff and take impeachment to the next level. Noting that even
Rep. Conyers ended the hearing by saying, “We are not done yet, and we
do not intend to go away until we achieve the accountability that
Congress is entitled to and that the American people deserve,” Rep.
Kucinich and five other co-sponsors of his articles of impeachment
(Robert Wexler, Tammy Baldwin, Keith Ellison, Maurice Hinchey, Sheila
Jackson-Lee, and Hank Johnson) are calling on all Americans to contact
their representatives (202-224-3121) and urge them to join in
co-sponsoring those articles and in calling for a formal impeachment
hearing.

They are also calling on everyone to contact their local and
national media, nearly all of whom have blacked out news of
impeachment. Incredibly, the New York Times, for example, has not even
reported on Friday’s hearing, even as a news “brief.” Those news
organizations, like the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer,
that did report on the hearings did so only in short, inside articles.
Though the hearing was aired in full on C-Span (and is still available for download), many Americans don’t even know it happened.

Time is short, but even at this late date, it would be a simple
matter to impeach the president on some issues. As several of Friday’s
witnesses pointed out, President Bush has essentially dared Congress to
act, admitting that he openly violated the FISA law—a felony, and
openly admitting that he has refused to enact laws passed by the
Congress, claiming a power—unitary executive authority—not even
mentioned in the Constitution. He has openly admitted to having known
about, and approved, “enhanced interrogation techniques” devised by his
subordinates—techniques like waterboarding which clearly violate the
Geneva Conventions and US law. No hearings would be required to
establish these high crimes and misdemeanors. They could simply be
voted on by an Impeachment Committee and sent to the full House for a
vote.

Even if there were no time for a Senate trial, the simple act of
impeaching the president for one or more abuses of power would serve
notice on future presidents that future such abuses would not be
tolerated. Failure to do so, and allowing this administration to leave
office unimpeached, would send the opposite message: that Congress is
no longer a co-equal branch of government, but is merely a consultative
body, at best, and that a president is in effect a dictator.

That Pelosi buckled and permitted a hearing on impeachable crimes
by the Bush/Cheney administration is a major victory for the
impeachment movement, but it must not be the end of the line.
Impeachment activists need to now redouble their efforts to make
Congress do its Constitutional duty, and initiate a formal impeachment
proceeding.

As former Republican representative Bob Barr, now the Libertarian
candidate for president, told Friday’s hearing, “We had a nuclear clock
during the Cold War. In the ‘90s we had a debt clock. Now we have a
Constitution Clock.”

That clock is getting close to midnight, and it is ticking.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and
columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s
Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net