House Repugs Deny Conyers and Skelton right to full Hearings/Supoena!

[KoKo]

http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/002019.html

Squelching Oversight

Wednesday, January 26, 2005 at 6:24 PM

Oversight has been a regular topic here, and today was an important milestone - a source who was at the Judiciary Committee meeting today sends over this account:

Today, in the House Judiciary Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, John Conyers and Ike Skelton offered amendments allowing the minority party to initiate full hearings, including subpoena power - which is the crucial element lacking in "rump hearings" the likes of which Democrats have held by themselves on issues such as Halliburton and which Senate Leader Reid has promised during this cycle. The refusal of the committees to investigate issues such as Administration legal and ethical lapses in cases like the improper payments from the Department of Education to conservative commentator Armstrong Williams has left a vacuum of accountability that Democrats cannot address without the ability to hold full hearings. This is needed because the Administration has show a complete inability and unwillingness to look into their own legal failings - such as Cheney's involvement with Halliburton no-bid contracts - and the Republican House and Senate have been totally AWOL when it comes to wrongdoing by their own. If we are to have any chance of getting to the bottom of scandal like that involving Armstrong Williams, the under the table payments revealed today to columnist Maggie Gallagher to push Bush's pro-family initiatives, or the fact that more than $88 million of taxpayer funds were expended on Republican propaganda last year, the Democrats must have subpoena power!

So not surprisingly, when Ranking Democrat John Conyers offered this modest proposal in the Judiciary Committee, the Republicans rejected it based on a red herring. Chairman Sensenbrenner claimed it wasn't necessary because Democrats could bring resolutions of inquiry requesting information from the Administration. Yet, when Democrats and Conyers did introduce these resolutions - for example in the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal - the Republicans rejected them as unnecessary. Then, when a motion was presented to the House to initiate an independent inquiry, not a single Republican voted for it, and the search for accountability was squelched - even today, we have not had anything close to a full accounting of that scandal. The Republicans on the Armed Services Committee also rejected a similar amendment offered today by Ranking Democrat Ike Skelton.

Having just gone through the embarrassing spectacle of the gutting of the ethics committee, this development is no less important. Hardly a month goes by when an administration abuse is not exposed, played down, and covered up by Republican lackeys. Refusing these amendments is just one more important stand against accountability - let all behold. There's some buzz that there may be more to come...

http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/002019.html

[theresistance]

1. You wonder what it would take for Rethuglicans

to turn against Bush. I mean Nixon was forced to resign about a break in. That could not be worse that the many lies, scandals and abuses Chimpenstein is responsible for.

[terry4kerry]

7. chimpenstein!

That is great a name for the chimp! Thanks.

[libertypirate]

15. I don't think Nixon would kill you

over a buck....

[torque]

2. When in the course of human Events,

it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its Powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government....

The First Amendment means to me ... that the only constitutional way our Government can preserve itself is to leave its people the fullest possible freedom to praise, criticize, or discuss, as they see fit, all governmental policies and to suggest, if they desire, that even its most fundamental postulates are bad and should be changed.... --Hugo Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1886-1971), from his dissenting opinion in Barenblatt v. United States, 1959

[understandinglife]

3. Yes, it is clear what we all must do. As Senator Boxer put it in ...

....her email of today --"this is just the beginning."

Gird yourself, everyone. We are entering one of those times in history that test the resolve of each committed person, maximally.

I was particularly encouraged by the full page ad in the Sunday New York Times by NOT IN OUR NAME (www.nion.us):

"IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY to stop the Bush regime from carrying out this disastrous course. We believe history will judge us sharply should we fail to act decisively."



BE THE BUSH OPPOSITION;24/7

[flyarm]

6. don't be too encouraged!!

a gal in my internet group was in on that ad, it was supposed to run the day after inaugeration, they had a confirmation , money in and were told it would run, and it didnt, they threatened to sue so it was run this sunday!nyt gave a piss poor excuse!
fly

[understandinglife]

10. It ran; that is all that matters. And, more will follow; and, "We The ...

....People of the United States of America...." WILL make happen.




BE THE BUSH OPPOSITION;24/7

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/01467.htm
http://www.nion.us

[flyarm]

14. it wasn't all that mattered ..

to the people who paid top dollar to have it run when they wanted it to run!! they paid a premium to have it run the day after inaugeration, they had the confirmation in hand, and i guess it got roved...those involved were very pissed! sorry i missed it sunday, but they were demanding that it run in the special section first page, i don't know if thats where it ran, i wonder if anyone knows what section it was in ?
it ran but it was not what they paid for.
fly

[Amaryllis]

4. So what is our action on this?

[Helga Scow Stern]

5. Yeah. What should we do?

[Amaryllis]

8. If we could get enough people tosend faxs, phone calls, emails to all

the repubs on the committee,like we did on the lead up to Jan. 6, I wonder if this would help? Hardly anyone is reading this post...don't know where we'd get those kinds of numbers. We need Conyers to send out a letter asking us what to do?

[Helga Scow Stern]

12. I faxed them all once. Maybe we should keep it up...

But you see how they've been at the hearings...the Senate anyway. "See no evil. Speak no evil. Hear no evil. Therefore evil does not exist." end of debate.

Sensenbrenner is supposed to be "his own man," not beholden to the group think of the Pubs. Coulda fooled me.

[KoKo]

9. There has to be a way. Maybe it's being worked on.

Stage a "walk out" like the Texas Dems did?

[torque]

11. No denying the stakes are high

And failure is not an option. We gotta come up with something..

[rumpel]

13. Maybe start a "Hold your rep in Congress accountable" campaign?

[Helga Scow Stern]

16. Yes, although mine is one of the biggest jerks ever,

Gallegy. He is on the Judiciary Committee, however...

Hmmmm. Worth a try.