This is one of my worries if "they" take control again - a repeat in Iraq. There will be a slaughter of those who embraced liberty....unable to escape.
Fleeing Vietnamese Refugees aboard the USS BLUE RIDGE
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.
Really? I missed that pole. Is it still up?
An interesting point of history, sure, but to say that something similar happened one way once is cautionary, not predictive.
Basically, it's 2006, not 1970. Just because the Democrats did something 35 years ago doesn't mean it's in their political interest today. Never assume that your enemies are predictable.
The main difference being terrorism, while less of a threat that communism, actually made it to our shore. Also, you should familiarize yourself with the Church Amendment, which emasculated and tied the hands (for the next 30 years) of our Intelligence Agencies.
The Church amendment, IIRC, was more to limit military activities and sales in SE Asia. I think you're confusing that with the fallout that resulted from the Shamrock/Minaret investigations, when Senator Church was head of the Senate Select Comittee on Intelligence. That backlash lead, among other things, to reforms that initially ranged from the FISA law, down to EO 12333.
There isn't enough time for what? To cast two impeachment votes? How long did it take for Clinton? And for that matter, what do they care if it runs into '08 campaigning time. They'd love it.
He'd have to, because his options will be either to resign, or take it. I don't see him resigning at all. I do see him putting up a big fight over being impeached, but how much can you really do at that point? What can he try that Clinton didn't?
I assume an impeachment process would proceed with either the president or vice-president, but not both at the same time. Impeachment from the house doesn't mean that the president is out yet, there would have to be a super majority trial in the Senate. The Democrats would have to vote, along with several Republicans to kick Bush out. Even if the Senate becomes majority is Democrat, I don't think there would be enough Senators that would rule to kick out Bush (unless there are enough Republican RINO's voting with the Democrats). See impeachment process with Clinton - Republican majority house and Senate...
Anyway, back to the point....I don't think they would be able to impeach both President and Vice-President at the same time. If one of them leaves, then a new Vice-President is appointed by acting president (and approved by Congress)....Highly unlikely that Nancy Pelosi would ever become president. There would have to be a tragic accident or assasination for Nancy to ever become president.
Perhaps you should bone up on your rhetorical reading skills, chum. The "You" in Vader's post was clearly a collective pronoun referring to Congress.
I take it your recommended punishment was something you suffered frequently?
Make no mistake...this is coming
I just did. We have early voting here in Tennessee.
Why not? Because it wouldn't be fair? It wouldn't be gentlemanly? What would legally restrict them from impeaching both at the same time?
This is all that Article II, Section 4 says about impeachment:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Will they be using a tugboat or a towtruck?
It's TOE, dammit! < /verbage police >
Good luck to them. It will be among the stupidest thing they could do.
There is a little more to it than just casting impeachment votes. The case has to be presented to Congress (and to the voters) and that takes time.
How long did it take for Clinton?
Better part of a year and a half, start to finish.
And for that matter, what do they care if it runs into '08 campaigning time
You misunderestimate three things. One, the will of the American people for this sort of thing in a time of war. I just don't think the electorate is going to tolerate trumped up charges against Bush and Cheney and this will be even more prevalent if we are hit with another terrorist attack (very likely, IMO). The 'Rats may very well try if they gain control of the House, but I predict a fizzle at best. This is especially true with so many of the Congresscritters voting in favor of the war in Iraq and regime change in Iraq as being the official policy of the United States since 1998.
Two, there simply isn't time for them to impeach a sitting POTUS and Vice POTUS and leave time for campaigning for the '08 election.
And three, you assume that the 'Pubbies will just sit by and allow it to happen. If you've been paying attention the past few years you should have noted how the minority party can delay all things in Congress, even with a very narrow margin of control, i.e. the current Senate. I seriously doubt that the 'Pubbies will just sit by an allow an impeachment to occur.
With all this being said, I still don't believe that the 'Rats will take control of both houses anyway. If they fail to take both houses, the impeachment thingy is dead.
To the dems, differing political philosophy is the equivalent to breaking the law.
This is one of my worries if "they" take control again - a repeat in Iraq. There will be a slaughter of those who embraced liberty....unable to escape.
Fleeing Vietnamese Refugees aboard the USS BLUE RIDGE
How has the curent trifecta profitted Christian Conservatives?
It seems the voter turnout drive by the Republicans is strong and Rove, that magnificent bastard, is very optimistic. There may be a gain of House seats for Republicans. This whole election will swing by voter turnout and I don't think Republicans are going to sit this one out.
I've been saying this for at least three years now. IMHO, our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan will go down in history as one of the most brilliant military strategies ever executed. We have gone into the desert, their desert, and invited every would-be thug Muzzie to come and fight our professional military, instead of taking the Clintonian tact of allowing them to come here and kill our civilians and fight our police, then trying to treat it like a legal issue.
We're killing the radical Muzzies by the thousands on their soil, trashing their infrastructure and rocking their world. Nothing short of brilliant, IMHO.
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