The Coming Impeachment

A plan is in place to censure and impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Orchestrated and organized by the radical Left and Congressman John Conyers, Jr., this plan is ready to go should the Democratic Party take control of the House of Representatives in November.

The plan is the ultimate manifestation of left-wing hatred for George W. Bush rooted in the contentious election of 2000. Since failing to defeat Bush in 2004, the Left has focused its efforts on destroying his presidency by assembling a list of charges aimed at impeaching him.

Impeachment plans began seriously coalescing in 2005, after the NY Times published classified aspects of the NSA surveillance program. In mid- December of that year, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, asked a group of presidential scholars whether President George W. Bush had committed an impeachable offense when he authorized the NSA foreign surveillance program. John Dean, the long-time Bush critic of Watergate fame provided Boxer with the answer she and most other Democrats were looking for: “Bush is the first president to admit an impeachable offense,” he said.

Around the same time, Senator John Kerry, D-MA, told a gathering of 100 Democrats that, should they capture the House in 2006, there would be a “solid case” for impeachment based on President Bush's “misleading” the American public over prewar intelligence. Kerry was picking up where another prominent Democrat had, on November 1, 2005, left off. On that day, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called a rare closed Senate session with other Democrats to look into the “misinformation and disinformation” used by the Bush administration to justify Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Boxer and Kerry weren't the only prominent Democrats discussing the possibility of impeachment during 2005. Such matters were also being discussed by Diane Feinstein, Carl Levin and Ron Wyden, who, along with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and left-leaning Republicans Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe, called for both Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committee investigations into the NSA wiretaps. And on December 20, 2005, Rep. John Lewis, D-GA, underscored those calls, saying:

I look forward to further inquiry in the House and Senate on these matters. The American people deserve the truth. We must gather the facts and determine once and for all whether the law was violated. There is no question that the U.S. Congress has impeached presidents for lesser offenses.

More recently, Rep. Brad Miller, D-GA, said, “The Democrats on the House Science Committee are collecting stories of the intimidation or censoring of scientists. We’re building a case for hearings by the Committee, which may be unrealistic to expect under the current majority, or to be ready for hearings next year if Democrats gain the majority in November.” [Emphasis added.] Miller was making that threat in relation to accusations by leftists and Democrats that Bush was silencing those concerned about global warming.

And then there are the constant calls by congressional Democrats, led by Senator Carl Levin, D-MI, to investigate the treatment of terrorist prisoners held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay and other locations. But most telling of all was Senator Harry Reid's November 2005 attempt to begin the “Phase II“ investigation into the Bush administration's use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War. Reid said Congress must subpoena administration officials and documents in order to determine how Bush built his case for war.

To some observers, the Democrats' endless calls for investigations might appear to be simply a dead-end continuation of the 2000 election – heavy on anti-Bush vitriol and posturing, light on concrete action. And such observers might have been right, if not for the fact that a bill, H.R.635, aimed at investigating articles of impeachment, was submitted to Congress on Dec.18, 2005. The submission of that bill by John Conyers Jr. was, first and foremost, a legislative victory for the radical Left and its sugar daddy, Shadow Party leader George Soros, who for all practical purposes guides the anti-U.S., terrorist-sympathizing agendas of the Democratic Party by funding groups that push far-Left candidates and threaten the careers of existing Democratic Party members who do not tow the radical Left line.

Conyers's H.R. 635 involves creating “a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.”

Justifying the submittal of that bill, Conyers said, “There has been massive support for House Resolution 635 from a very vigorous network of grassroots activists and people committed to holding the Bush Administration accountable for its widespread abuses of power.” And he was right, for since the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, radical left-wing groups had been calling for Bush’s impeachment– and organizing petition drives to pressure legislators to that end.

International ANSWER; its founder, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark (who has advised Conyers on impeachment issues); Center for Constitutional Rights lawyer Barbara Olshansky, who advises Conyers on impeachment related issues and wrote a book on impeaching Bush that has served as a template for H.R.635; the National Lawyers Guild; Veterans for Peace; Workers World Party; and most of the 911 'truth' movement.

But the most committed and influential of those pro-impeachment groups, and the ones that gathered most of the signatures that Conyers uses as his justification for H.R.635, are AfterDowningStreet and ImpeachPAC. Both are directed by a rising star of the radical Left, David Swanson.

David Swanson was failed presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich's press secretary. He is also one of the principal organizers of the AfterDowningStreet- CensureBush coalition and the director of MeetWithCindy and KatrinaMarch. A Progressive Democrats of America board member, Swanson also directs Democrats.com and has beaten the pro-impeachment drum for the Huffington Post. His ImpeachPAC website is a high-traffic clearinghouse for the impeach-Bush movement. Its stated purpose is “electing a Congress to Impeach Bush and Cheney.”

ImpeachPAC has so far gathered well over 500,000 pro-impeachment signatures. Rep. Conyers cites those signatures, and others, as a major reason for filing H.R. 635 and its related bills: H.R. 636, which calls for censuring President Bush and H.R. 637, a bill calling for the censure of Vice President Cheney. During the time of leftist hysteria over the discredited Downing Street Memo, on June 16, 2005, Conyers delivered those and other impeachment related petitions to the White House gate. He had just finished conducting farcical impeachment ''hearings'' in the basement of the Capitol. One of the star ''witnesses'' giving ''testimony'' at those ''hearings'' was Cindy Sheehan. As he was delivering the petitions, Conyers was surrounded by a sympathetic crowd screaming anti-white, racial slurs.

Initially, H.R. 635 had 19 cosponsors, but due to an intense lobbying effort by David Swanson, MoveOn and a host of other radical Left “netroots” groups, that number has swollen to 37. Cosponsors now include prominent legislators Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-TX; Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA; Rep. Jim McDermott, D-WA; Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY; and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-IL.

The bill's most recent cosponsor is Rep. Hilda L. Solis, D-CA, who signed on to the measure on May 3, 2006. But then, less than two weeks later, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in an effort to deny the Republicans a potent election issue, announced, should Democrats win the House in 2006, impeachment was “off the table.” Her statement was a warning to fellow Democrats against further cosponsorship of Conyer's bills. Since that warning, cosponsorship of H.R.635 has died out.

Although Pelosi said impeachment was “off the table,” she also said that a Democratic-controlled House would “launch investigations of the administration on energy policy and other matters.” [Emphasis added.] When asked if those “other matters” would be related to impeachment she said, “You never know where it [investigation] leads to.”

Should Democrats gain control of Congress in November, Pelosi's politically expedient, ban on cosponsoring Conyer's bills will be lifted, and Democrats will rush to endorse them. Those bills (concerning “other matters”), will advance through Congress, since 72 congressmen, overwhelmingly Democrats, officially supported two recent lawsuits brought by the Legal Left against Bush: ACLU vs. NSA and CCR vs. Bush. Both suits allege that the Bush Administration broke the law when it ordered warrantless wiretaps of suspected terrorists and terrorist operatives. Those suits are central to the Left's drive to impeach George W. Bush, since their outcomes will officially determine whether he did in fact break the law in the NSA matter. Currently, both of them are winding their way through the courts.

Some might be tempted to dismiss the impeachment machinations of John Conyers and the radical Left as little more than fruitless protest by a frustrated, impotent minority against an individual and Administration it hates. After all, legislators often file impractical, non-viable legislation in order to dramatize an issue. But in light of five years' worth of endless calls by influential Democratic Party politicians and a few left-leaning Republicans to investigate the Bush Administration's approach to the War on Islamist Terror, H.R. 635-637 must be considered as legislation with a future.

Then there is a detailed impeachment blueprint designed by the Legal Left, and prepared at the direction of John Conyers Jr. called “The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance.”

The Constitution in Crisis (CIC) is a 354-page text detailing charge after charge against the Bush Administration. Those charges are divided into two general categories: crimes committed during the planning of the Iraq War and during its prosecution, and crimes involving the Bush administration's use of anti-terror surveillance programs since it began. In summary, the CIC claims that the entire Iraq War undertaking has been a criminal enterprise based on Bush's desire to avenge Saddam Hussein's assassination attempt on his father and to fulfill the desires of “neocons.” In other words, Bush and a predominately Jewish cabal committed crimes by misleading Congress and the American people into war. And during that war they illegally spied on and tortured people.

The Constitution in Crisis states that Bush broke numerous U.S. laws. John Conyers and the Center for Constitutional Rights have drawn up a list of laws allegedly violated by the Bush administration that are contained within the Constitution in Crisis's pages. They include:

Committing a Fraud Against the United States (18 U.S.C. 371) Making False Statements to Congress (18 U.S.C. 1001) War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148) Misuse of Government Funds (31 U.S.C. 1301) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (50 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.) National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. chapter 15) Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 222) Stored Communications Act of 1986 (18 U.S.C. 2702) Pen Registers or Trap and Trace Devices (18 U.S.C. 3121) Obstructing Congress (18 U.S.C. 1505) Whistleblower Protection (5 U.S.C. 2302) The Lloyd-LaFollette Act (5 U.S.C. 7211) Retaliating against Witnesses (18 U.S.C. 1513) Anti-Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. 2340-40A) The War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441) Material Witness (18 U.S.C. 3144)

All of these are serious charges. Unfounded they may be, but John Conyers would become head of the House Judiciary Committee if the Democrats win in November. And then, not only would he be in position to order investigations of the charges, he would be obligated by his Congressional oath to do just that.

What would the financial cost of such investigations be? In the 1990s, President Clinton was accused of perjury. That charge and the others surrounding it were far less complex than those currently leveled by the Left at Bush and his administration. The investigations of Clinton disrupted the business of Congress, became the focus of the country, and cost American taxpayers at least $80 million. Investigating all of the complex charges leveled by Conyers and the Democrats would grind Congress to a halt – in the middle of a war – and would cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

An intriguing question arises: If Democrats won control of Congress in November, why would they expend enormous political and financial capital on pursuing articles of impeachment against a lame duck President?

Some have speculated that such actions would be political payback for the Clinton impeachment. Others speculate that the Left's extreme hatred of Bush is reason enough for it to pursue his destruction through impeachment or censure. Though both rationales are plausible, either separately or in conjunction with each other, there is a more important, and therefore more likely, reason for the Democratic Party (should it win Congress) to initiate endless investigations of Bush – its obsession to abandon Iraq and end the War on Islamist Terror.

Facing the serious possibility of a pro-war Republican winning the 2008 presidential election, the Democratic Party has a narrowing window of opportunity to end the Iraq War and realize its Vietnam Dream. The best way to make that dream come true would be to level and investigate charge after charge against the Bush Administration, destroying its legitimacy to have initiated the Iraq War and to have conducted it.

Naturally, an avalanche of anti-Bush, antiwar press would accompany such investigations. Opposition to a war perceived as having been unjustly waged, would skyrocket. The public's call for an end to the war would justify its de-funding in the eyes of Congress.

The ploy of leveling serious, unfounded charges against one's political opponents has served the Democratic Party well in the past. It is the ideal one to effect a quick U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-NY, who will head the powerful House Ways and Means Committee upon a Democratic Party victory in November, has hinted that de-funding the Iraq war will be both his and the Democratic Party's priority. To Rangel, de-funding the war is a moral imperative. “[The Iraq war] is the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country…This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed,” he has said.

To carry out an impeachment of President Bush, the Democrats need to capture both the House and the Senate. But to cause serious disruptions of the body politic during our nation's time of war, they only need to win the House. With John Conyers, Jr. heading the House Judiciary Committee, Charles B. Rangel heading the House Ways and Means Committee, Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, and other far-Left Congressmen in control of important House committee chairs, endless investigations of the Bush administration in order to end the Iraq War will almost certainly commence.

Right now, the American people understand the case. Pres and VP Bush and Cheney, intentionally or negligently, lead the United States into a war under false pretext.

You make some major assumptions here. One, that Bush and Cheney intentionally took us to war under a false pretext and that the majority of the American people believe so. That might play over at the DU and it might play on the NYT's editorial page, but not here and not in flyover country. I live in "fly over country" and I travel quite a bit. I talk to a lot of people. I see far more support for the war than opposition of it. In fact, I'd say the majority of the folks I talk to think we're holding the military back and we should let them do their job. Two, many of the same congresscritters who will push for impeachment reviewed the exact same intel and came to the exact same conclusions and voted accordingly. This cannot and will not be ignored. The Brits and other members of the coalition also saw the intel and acted accordingly. This, too, will not be ignored. Third, Many of these same congresscritters also voted for regime change in Iraq as being the official policy of the USA in 1998, thus they are on record as such. This was long before Bush took office. This will not be ignored, either. They can't escape that or the sound bites and quotes that will be brought forth by the blogosphere. NexisLexis does not lie and this is not 1998. Then, there is the Sandy "Pants" Berger affair which will certainly be thoroughly investigated should impeachement proceedings be brought. The laimstream media does not wield the control of information that they once did. That genie escaped the bottle. If the Dims want to go down "impeachment avenue" I say bring it on. Maybe we can finally put an end to the mental disorder called Liberalism once and for all.

Article II section 4 says that impeachment may take place for Treason, Bribery, and High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Misleading a nation into war probably falls somewhere closer to Treason than Bribery, on the karmic scale. Also, the definition of "high crimes" is basically whatever the House of Representatives say it is. Given that we recently impeached a President for perjury, we'll have to concede that the charge qualifies as an impeachable offense.

We have to concede nothing to the Dims. Clinton did indeed lie under oath multiple times. He was disbarred as well as impeached. He also went on national TV and wagged his finger at the American public and lied through his teeth. Proving premeditated treason in this case is another matter entirely and it is one long, long row to hoe for the Dims. One of the POTUS's primary Constitutional duties is to protect and defend the country. Unless there is something I've totally missed, the Dims are going to have one hell of a time proving that Bush and Cheney had other motivations in Iraq. If they had dirt to the contrary we'd have heard about it by now. So far, nothing they've thrown up has stuck. All this impeachment saber rattling is nothing more than trying to stir up the rabid leftists.

Again, bombs were falling during Clinton and Nixon. I wouldn't put too much faith in this angle.

Apples and oranges. Clinton's bombs were seen as a "wag the dog" scenario during the Lewinsky affair. His recent "I tried but failed" mea culpa went over like a lead turd. Folks don't like whiney leaders. Nixon was clearly caught in illegal activities. The media was in full control of the distribution of information during the Nixon impeachment, too. Nixon's further attempts to cover up the scheme were his deathblow. Unless there is something I've missed, there is no clear case for treason against Bush or Cheney, IMO, even with the laimstream media's constant drumbeat. This isn't 1974 or 1998.

America will be terrorist attack free if impeachment hearings start.

I don't share your optimism here. The terrorists aren't just after us, although I would concede that they are quite media savvy, but they are loosing and loosing big time as evidenced by their own words in captured documents. They are after the western world in it's entirety. They don't distinguish between party lines. Lets assume for a moment that the Dims are successful in removing Bush and Cheney. Then what happens? Another terrorist attack? The Dims are liberal as the day is long, but for the most part they aren't fools. If another terrorist attack happens on their watch the Dims are toast for at least a decade and they know it. I assure you heads will roll if we have another 9/11 style attack, regardless of who is in charge. I believe we are far, far more likely to suffer another 9/11 with the Dims in charge as opposed to the 'Pubbies and I think the majority of voters have similar views.

As the distinguished, French looking Senator pointed out, (and I paraphrase) "We were just voting in such a way as to make the threat of force look viable. You know, to aid negotiations. It was the Executive Branch that actually pulled the trigger. We trusted them. They fooled us."

I wouldn't put any stock in anything sKerry says. This guy is a fool. Most folks I talk to think he's an idiot. (including some really hard core Dims)

I fail to see why they can't do both at the same time. Especially in the latter stages, when the case is basically made, and the impeachment process is basically going through scheduled procedural motions.

Again, assuming that the Dim's take control and assuming that a large portion of the 'Pubbies still in office go along to get along. 'Taint gonna happen, McGee...

To a great extent, this is all hypothetical, until we see who controls what after the elections. But, they only need to control the House to impeach someone. It's the Senate is required for a removal, and they'd have to win pretty big there for that to work.

I, for one, believe there are going to be some mighty shocked folks on the left side of the aisle come November 8th. I saw the line of folks at the voter registration office yesterday picking up early voting and absentee ballots on the first day they were available. Those of us in line had time to talk. About 10% appeared to be Dims, the rest seemed to support the GOP, albeit begrudgingly. I don't think the Dims are going to turn out like most in the LSM predict.

I think that many Republicans would roll over and go along with an impeachment, but wouldn't really draw the line until it got to the point of actually removing people from office.

If this comes to fruition the Rino's like Shay, Snowe, et al, will certainly roll over, but IMHO, they will be cutting their own throats.

I guess we'll both know in about 19 days.....

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