The Kucinich Impeachment Resolution: Justice Delayed

I feel a long-awaited sigh of relief tonite as I listen live to the speaker of the US house of representatives read into the congressional record the resolution detailing the numerous articles of impeachment introduced by Dennis Kucinich (D-MI) and seconded by Robert Wexler (D-FL).

Regardless of the eventual disposition of this motion, one cannot deny the historical importance of this moment.

On this evening, 2 democrats have defied speaker Nancy Pelosi's spring, pre-election 2006 pronouncement that "impeachment is off the table".

On this evening, 2 Democrats have refused to continue to be complicit in the marching orders of their party elders to enable George W Bush's war crimes by refusing to hold him accountable.

On this evening Robert Wexler, who has been a staunch Obama supporter and adviser, refused to tow Obama's line on impeachment that he made clear almost one year ago:

Obama, a Harvard law school graduate and former lecturer on constitutional law at the University of Chicago, said impeachment should not be used as a standard political tool.

"I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the president's authority," he said.

"I believe if we began impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunction," he added. "We would once again, rather than attending to the people's business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, non-stop circus."

Illegal war fueled by manufactured propaganda.
Torture.
Illegal wiretapping.
Torture flights.
Secret prisons.
etc etc etc

Just what exactly is a "grave breach", Senator Obama? Could anything be more grave than killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and sending almost 4,000 US troops to their deaths? Torture isn't a "grave breach"?

You call the proper response to that - your duty as a US senator to defend and uphold the constitution - a "circus"?

How dare you?

Very few Democrats have raised their voices over the years to support impeachment as a result of their party putting the politics of convenience and avoidance above principles, basic human rights, and justice.

The Democratic party has failed to take up the responsibility, on behalf of the American people and all of the victims of the Bush administration's war crimes, to ensure that no one is above the law and that those who place themselves there through the creation of a unitary executive theory which holds that the administration is accountable to no one be punished severely.

Similarly, online Democratic party shills like Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos who proclaimed in December, 2006 that any talk of impeachment was "impeachment porn", whose bullying followers did everything they could to drive off impeachment supporters from that site and whose enlightened and so-called "progressive" political commentary about Kucinich's presidential bid amounted to an insultingly grunting "ugh" are also complicit in willfully allowing this administration to get away with what seems like an endless list of criminal activities while imploring salivating fans to send more money now! to a completely useless Democratic party.

And don't even get me started on how the mainstream media has utterly failed the American people on the impeachment issue as well. Dog forbid they should tell the truth and risk losing precious access to their government sources shills.

Integrity is a rare commodity. Too many people have been bludgeoned into complacency.

So, here we all are.

And I say "we" on behalf of citizens in all countries affected by the inaction of the Democratic party to do its job. We Canadians have had to live through and continue to be outraged by the incredible injustices the Bush administration has perpetrated on Maher Arar and Omar Khadr. We continue to lose soldiers in the other forgotten and mismanaged Bush war - Afghanistan. And we have yet to discover just how many of our citizens have really suffered as the result of the policies of this criminal gang and its so-called "war on terror". The impact will be felt for years, if not decades.

History will not be kind to Bush and it won't be kind to the Democratic party which chose to look the other way.

Which side of justice and history will you be on?

And now I'm off to watch the movie "Recount" - the story of the ridiculous 2000 election fiasco that brought all of us the George W Bush dictatorship in the first place. That seems like a ironic end to this nite, n'est-ce pas?
 

Wexler to File Resolution to Censure Bush

Via the congressman's site:

(Washington, D.C.) Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) has drafted and will file a Congressional resolution censuring President George W. Bush for his egregious and politically motivated commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence. The censure resolution, which is attached below, will be formally introduced in the House of Representatives on Tuesday July 10, 2007 when Congress reconvenes from the 4th of July recess.

You can read the text of the resolution on Wexler's site.

Here's the last "whereas":

Whereas in commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence, President Bush has finally and unalterably breached any remaining shred of trust that he had left with the American people and rewarded political loyalty while flouting the rule of law: Now, therefore let be it --

Resolved, That the United States Congress does hereby censure George W. Bush, President of the United States, and does condemn his decision to commute the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison, his unconscionable abuse of his authority with regard to the deceitful chain of events concerning the falsifying intelligence on Iraqi nuclear capabilities and the exaggeration of the threat posed by Iraq, his involvement in the clear political retaliation against former Ambassador and Ms. Wilson, and his decision to reward the perjury of Mr. Libby, which effectively protected President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other Administration officials from further scrutiny.

This comes on the heels of the announcement that the judiciary committee will hold "a full committee hearing next week titled, “The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials.”

Now, I don't know why it's taken Libby's sentence commutation to finally push the Dems into doing something to punish this pResident considering there are so many crimes they should be impeaching him for, but it's about damn time.

And, as a sidenote:

Before the holiday, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton asked lawyers on both sides of the Lewis "Scooter" Libby case to submit briefs outlining their positions as to whether the former White House aide should still be required to spend two years on probation now that President Bush has decided to overturn his 30-month prison sentence.

"Strictly construed, the statute authorizing the imposition of supervised release indicates that such release should occur only after the defendant has already served a term of imprisonment," Walton wrote Tuesday.

So, even though Bush said Libby would be on probation (after admittedly not consulting with experts on these issues in his justice department) the only punishment Libby may actually "suffer" is the fine he paid today.

Censure via wiki:

Censure is a procedure for publicly reprimanding a public official for inappropriate behavior. When the President is censured, it serves merely as a condemnation and has no direct effect on the validity of presidency, nor are there any other particular legal consequences. Unlike impeachment, censure has no basis in the Constitution, or in the rules of the Senate and House of Representatives. It derives from the formal condemnation of either congressional body of their own members.

If the Dems can't even manage to find a majority to support this slap on the wrist censure, they might as well pack their bags and sit out the rest of their terms at home.

Don't hold your breath on this one though. The Dems refused to get behind Feingold's call to censure Bush over the illegal wiretapping last year - a crime he admitted to.

Feingold, defending his censure plan today on Fox News, said: “I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide…too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues…[Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question administration, you’re helping the terrorists.”

Well Russ, they're still doing it. Having the majority hasn't changed a damn thing.

Related: The Center for American Progress has more about Libby's commutation.
 

The Question Gonzales Won't Answer

Conyers (D-MI) to the smirking asshole from hell, Alberto Gonzales: who compiled the list of attorneys to be fired?

Watch Gonzales spin and guess who he's covering for:



Robert Wexler (D-FL) blows a gasket: