Kucinich wins hearings but not on impeaching Bush

[Solly Mack]

Kucinich wins hearings but not on impeaching Bush

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Dennis Kucinich's single impeachment article will get a committee hearing but not on removing President Bush from office.

The House on Tuesday voted 238-180 to send the article of impeachment — for Bush's reasoning for taking the country to war in Iraq — to the Judiciary Committee, which buried Kucinich's previous effort.

This time, the panel will open hearings. But House Democrats emphatically said they will not be about Bush's impeachment, a first step in the Constitution's process of a removing a president from office.

Instead, the panel will conduct an election-year review — possibly televised — of everything Democrats consider to be Bush's abuse of power. Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio, is likely to testify. But so will several scholars and administration critics, Democrats said.

[NMDemDist2]

1. well, at least there will be a hearing.

hopefully some juicy truth will come out.

[Cleita]

2. A hearing is better than silence.

I guess we are pushing this boulder uphill, but every little bit of altitude gained is better than stagnation. We have to keep our eye on our goal and not let it go to roll downhill again.

[mmonk]

3. Televised by whom?

If it were on stations other than C-Span, demand would grow for removal from office

[Solly Mack]

4. Dunno. Didn't say. That is the whole of the article

Mebbe later we'll know?

[malaise]

7. Good start

M$M will have no choice but to cover these hearings.

[bdamomma]

16. we have to push for it to be televised on other stations.

just mention viewer ratings and how much money they will make will do it. But aren't these hearings not even scheduled yet?

[daggahead]

5. It is a good start ...

... considering everything that DK has said up to now has been ignored by the House and the Judiciary Committee.

[mod mom]

6. If the Dems were going to go through w this wouldn't they have gone after Cheney 1st?

[Solly Mack]

8. Cheney's impeachment resolution is sitting in the House Judiciary Committee

in the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, chaired by Congressman Jerrold Nadler. No hearings scheduled as of this date.

And the hearings proposed for Bush seem more like a forum than a hearing...if the AP article is to be relied upon

Perhaps in that forum they plan to combine the 2 resolutions, so to speak?

[JBoris]

9. If that is true, it is willful impotence to uphold the rule of law. Nothing short of criminal. n/t

[KharmaTrain]

10. The Long Road Finally Begins

The fact this is going for hearing is a far bolder move than I expected of leadership scared shit of doing anything that will either piss off repugnicans or their corporate media toadies. But this is just the beginning...and hopefully one that will lead to a restoration of the separation of powers and the impeachment (even if its defacto) of this regime as well as helping move the crimes of this regime to the World Court.

The damn shame is the lack of publicity for Jane Meyer's article on the IRC finding this regime has committed war crimes. Again, the key here to getting a conviction is to directly tag booosh and/or cheney with a violation of the law...be it outing a CIA agent or committing war crimes. Again, this has to move from a political impeachment into a criminal one...that there's no doubt that not only did this regime abuse its power but also used it to break laws. Hopefully today a door opened.

Here's a hope they invited Jon Turley and Bruce Fein to testify and that there is some kind of a hearing BEFORE the election. Sadly, the corporate media will ignore these hearings or play it as some political theater, but its time to get this ball rolling...and then to go further during the lame duck session to compell testimony and start tightening the noose. Better late than never.

Also, I'm curious who the 10 or so GOOPer votes in favor of the resolution came from...are there some on that side with a modicum of decency?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

11. Oh boy! Watching them mentally masturbate on teevee.......... If they don't Impeach, they are

complicit.

[elehhhhna]

12. How can they avoid it after the hearing? Oh, wait....it starts with "P" and ends with "elosi"

[crickets]

13. At least it's something, and thank you, Dennis for getting us this far

--but how pathetic are these people? The more they drag their feet, the worse they look. No matter how much the press (and the guilty) might wish otherwise, Dennis comes up roses every time.

"Possibly televised" - oh, this had better be. There's no acceptable excuse for anything less. Congressional hearings of this kind should be OPEN, unless there's something Congress itself wants to HIDE, hmm?

Thank you, Dennis Kucinich.


THANK YOU!

[Dogtown]

14. Spoiler

A little pony show to make us feel validated. While.The.Clock.Runs.Out.


Cheney and Bush belong in prison. Our party is complicit in helping them escape the consequences of their crimes.

Our party is complicit.

[Pacifist Patriot]

15. Well it confirms my suspicion on the timing of the party leadership.

This has nothing to do with accountability and the rule of law and everything to do with simply winning an election. Nothing wrong with the Democrats taking the White House (obviously), but it still reeks.

[onenote]

17. we have a winner!!

Although I don't necessarily share your view that it "reeks", you are absolutely right that the reason for the oversight hearing is not to advance Kucinich's resolution, it is to help Congressional Democrats by keeping negative stories about chimpy's gang in the news.

[warren pease]

18. "...keeping negative stories about chimpy's gang in the news."

This would be in keeping with US corporate mass media's commendable record of following the money and the corruption no matter where it leads?

Filing serious reports that have given average Americans all the information they need to evaluate this administration's behavior?

Courageous leadership by Brian Fluffhead, Katie Somepeoplesay and Chuckie Givesone and the networks' crack teams of investigative reporters, racing to scoop each other on the latest Bushean outrage, with the stories delivered every single night by the anchors in tones that reveal their utter disgust with the Bushies' constant lies and manipulation?

Those negative stories?

Are you referring to that vast body of newspaper copy and TV blurbism that's accumulated since the 2000 election theft, when they poured all that time, energy and money into investigating every single anomaly and chasing every rumor so they could help prevent this outrageous miscarriage of justice and would have resulted in a Bush presidency? That kind of media coverage? Gore is, after all, president, isn't he?

Or when some shitheel with a mic, a camera crew, a small uncritical mind and an ego the size of the QE II told us after "the events of 9/11(tm)" that "we're all neocons now." Now that's negative commentary of the cruelest kind.

Now that the official 9/11 conspiracy myth has been shot so full of holes there's almost nothing recognizable left of the approved bullshit story, even the Times of London (a Murdoch paper, no less) felt safe in featuring the remarkable saga of Sibel Edmonds, including hard data on who did what to whom on which days and who got rich as a result -- and this ran on page one for three consecutive Sundays.

Of course, US mass media -- ever on the lookout for Bushie criminality and scandal -- jumped at the chance to go with her story, too. Unfortunately, the decision-makers all seemed to have scheduling conflicts -- appointments for manicures or teeth-whitening sessions or a full morning at the spa; that standing Thursday afternoon date at the discreet mid-town hotel with the DHL delivery tart; Mitzi the Shih-tsu's appointment to get her claws trimmed and her rat-like fur poofed.

Amazing that thousands of our otherwise diligent "journalists" all had prior commitments when Sibel offered to tell them a story that could well have landed her in jail for violating enough gag orders to strangle a sperm whale. Compare and contrast Sibel's courage with the utter lack of it that characterizes virtually every single institution that's supposed to serve as a counterweight to megalomaniacs with dictatorial ambitions.

US mass media is about the last place a reasonably inquisitive person would look for useful information about actual events that take place in the US. Congressional "leadership" is corporate media's only rival for the title of most useless, mobbed up, complicit, Bushie-enabling organization in the US.

And Congress enjoys a 9 percent approval rating in recognition of all the fine work they do on behalf of the American people. You'd think getting rid of a demented despot and the sociopathic cabal he fronts for would fit in with Congress' basic job descriptions.

But then you'd still be invested in that tired old idea that the US has two political parties who represent very different constituencies with opposing priorities. That was before the parties merged to form The Business Party and agreed that the people can all take a flying fuck at the asteroid belt.

All except those who can come up with significant money to bribe their way onto the bribocracy's radar screen. And they're no longer "the people;" they're now "the boss" and our congress will do just about anything to keep their bosses happy, properly-fed, well-rested and in good enough shape to keep writing checks.


wp

[Psyop Samurai]

19. Mitzi the Shih-tsu's appointment to get her claws trimmed...

...and her rat-like fur poofed.

:rofl:

Yeah, those negative stories.