Posted on 10/19/2006 4:05:55 AM PDT by flynmudd
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.
The committed activists Conyers spoke of include:
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.
I agree, but for different reasons. If the Dims seek to impeach President Bush and they are successful at ousting him, Dick Cheney will become POTUS. As much as the Dims hate Bush, they hate Cheney even more. Either they've not thought this impeachment thing through or they've risen to a new level of stupidity that I've not yet given them credit for. Ain't gonna happen.....
Or, they're going to impeach both of them.
Like it says in the article.
Democrats are useful idiots.
That's the same song R's were singing in 54 and it took them 40 years to regain power.Just as Iraq is not Vietnam, so this off-year election is not 1954. Although I would much prefer the pubs to maintain control of everything, I don't look at it as a certain disaster if they lose the house.
We can survive a dim house victory IF (and this is a big if) W looks that loss square in the face, fires all the weasels who surround him with "uniter-not-divider" advice and go out onto the media field of battle and take on the traitors in an open fight, naming names and naming crimes. If he does this he can not lose. If he doesn't do this, we all lose.
Exactly. Someone sees a large number in the 70s and deduces from there. If you just halve the percentages of people saying "mostly R", it pushes the overall into the 80s and that's being very cautious. It's an irrelevant poll, just as the ones in the MSM are due to its national scope.
Of course they won't.,
A little history lesson is in order, friend.
In early 70's, Russia was in the forefront of spreading its "Wars of Liberation" and "we" were seeing the Cold War for all it was worth.
Many thought the same as you, yet the Congress, led by Leftist, Anti-American, Pro-Communists DhimicRATS, (with the shameful acquiesence of the wuss Pubes) succeeded in cutting off ALL funding for not only our support of South Vietnam, but any other engagment we were involved in which advance our Cold War efforts.
Also, you should familiarize yourself with the Church Amendment, which emasculated and tied the hands (for the next 30 years) of our Intelligence Agencies.
Think it can't happen again?
Think for ONE minute the Far-Left, Hate-American, Pro-Islamofacist really "CAIR" about the future of our Great Republic, other than to see it destroyed?
Think again!!!
If the Dems do gain a majority in the House it will be by one or two seats. There is no way they will get a unanimous vote from their caucus to support impeachment.
Let's take it a step further. They also have plans for going after Cheney. In a Pelosi-controlled House, guess who is next in line for POTUS? That could never happen, either. The Clintons would not allow Pelosi to become the first female Speaker and President. The latter is reserved for Madame Hillary's coronation (which I hope to God NEVER happens).
John Dean like Carter just wants to destroy President Bush. They must be upset that they did nothing in their lives that counts for anything. Poor little men.
Do you REALLY believe W would take ANY such action?
Lets face it, W is NOT a Conservative!!!!
Do you think that W would fire ANYONE?
Do you believe that W would fight back?
Sorry, after seeing 6 years of what President Bush has--or more aptly, has NOT--done, does not give me much hope for anything closely resembling your scenario.
We might could survive a RAT Senate, (after all, there isn't a dime's worth of difference between most Pubes and the Dhimis in the Senate) but we are doomed if they get control of the house.
IMHO, of course, but I am not willing to take any chances as the house is the only body (and its shaky there at best) who even makes an "effort" being somewhat Conservative in its legislation and attemtps ever so slightly to keep Bush and other libs in check for their "moderate" policies and proposals.
I hope somebody has some sort of a backup plan for splitting the country up in case the stinking rats actually win. I mean, at this juncture, you couldn't just hand the country over to them even if they DID win; that would be like handing the keys to the assylum straight over to the fricking lunatics.
That was an immortal stain on a dress, a country and a presidency.
BUMP
That part of the Dim's plan is also problematic. There simply isn't time to impeach the President, then swear in Cheney and impeach him, then campaign for 2008 and after all, we all know it's all about them staying in power. If they don't have time to campaign for office, nothing else really matters in the mind of a politico......
Book it fly. In fact, I got my mail-in ballot yesterday, so I may vote tonight. Great post btw.
Sorry, friend, but now you just Pissed me off.
Let me tell you something, I guess you are too young (or stupid) to remember the results of a RAT-Controlled Congress in the 60's and 70's?
I am NOT.
Moreover, the reason I am "wringing my hands" is that I left behind some good friends (and quite a few acquaintances) in South Vietnam who I had worked with for 18 months.
I know for a fact, that many of them did NOT survive the "occupation" by North Vietnam and it not only saddens me, but make me highly agitated to think that this same scenario COULD easily happen again--regardless of those like yourself who are unwilling to believe that History can--and does--repeat itself.
If one accepts the blood bath and horrors which followed our "bug out" from S. Vietnam as a result of the actions brought on by the (then) RAT-controlled Congress then why is it not feasible (ney, very possible) for the same to occur with regards to Afganistan and Iraq?
One must remember that today, those who wish us harm are much more dangerous than those who were in power back then.
While many who would follow such a course of action would do it simply to get even with W and the Pubes, there are far too many whose intentions are pure EVIL and wish nothing more than to see us completely destroyed.
Do we want to even chance their being given that opportunity?
Have another glass of Kool Aid and give me a break!!!!
There isn't enough time between January '07 and the start of the '08 campaigning.
I think you've got a conservative case of BDS (as do many conservatives in America). Bush has his faults but he lowered taxes (not conservative?) and invaded Iraq. The invasion of Iraq, in my opinion, was a genius move, and was HIS genius move.
As for his reaction to an actual impeachment, don't kid yourself. Bush is not a wimp. The only problem is, the advisors who surround him. Under the pressure of impeachment, I think he will decide, in his last two years, facing the unlikely but possible prospect of actually getting removed from office, to shit-can those advisors.
Under the pressure of impeachment, I predict that President Bush will surprise even you.
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