Showing posts with label Impeachment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Impeachment. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

More on the Death of Impeachment...

Some cartoons have characters that are just damn fun to draw... this week's is one of those cartoons. By the way, that is indeed supposed to be Chief Justice John Roberts at the ripe old age of 95 (or however old he'll be in 2048), presiding over the impeachment proceedings.

Most of what I was going to talk about in this 'toon (like the FISA "compromise" and Obama's toe-dipping in right-wing waters) is getting pushed to next week's 'toon. Here's a couple articles, though:
  • Dennis Kucinich on Democracy Now:
    George Bush has enough time to bomb Iran on another pretext. He has enough time to continue policies of torture. He has enough time to continue policies of eavesdropping and wiretapping. He has enough time to continue to ignore critical science with respect to global climate change. He has enough time to help facilitate more violations of election law for the 2008 election.
    We don’t have enough time. We can’t spend any more time temporizing, while the Constitution, the United States laws, international laws, are being shredded.

    Jason Leopold:
    Kucinich said the articles of impeachment against President Bush are a way for lawmakers to "create an historical record of the misconduct of the Bush administration."

  • Gore Vidal's article of impeachment:
    And as I listened with awe to Kucinich, I realized that no newspaper in the U.S., no broadcast or cable network, would pay much notice to the fact that a highly respected member of Congress was asking for the president and vice president to be tried for crimes which were carefully listed by Kucinich in his articles requesting impeachment. But then I have known for a long time that the media of the U.S. and too many of its elected officials give not a flying fuck for the welfare of this republic...

  • And, in case you missed it (and judging by the crickets coming from the "liberal media," it's entirely possible that you did):
    Ivy Leaguers and other top law students were rejected for plum Justice Department jobs two years ago because of their liberal leanings or objections to Bush administration politics, a government report concluded Tuesday.

    In one case, a Harvard Law student was passed over after criticizing the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. In another, a Georgetown University student who had previously worked for a Democratic senator and congressman didn't make the cut.

    Even senior Justice Department officials flinched at what appeared to be hiring decisions based — improperly and illegally — on politics, according to the internal report.


    I suppose this report will go with the NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program (or lack thereof), into the mainstream media's circular file cabinet... into a file labeled "Proof That the Bush Administration Lied About Important Stuff," in a redwell called "Stuff That We Will Never, Ever Talk About"...

Monday, July 30, 2007

More on Impeachment, Accountability...

Yeah, that's right... I put Alberto in a pimped out lowrider.

Some articles for this week's 'toon:
  • For info on Harriet Miers' refusal to respond to a subpoena to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, see reporting by Richard B. Schmitt. Long story short, it pays to have friends in high places.

    John Dean also has an excellent column on this. He concludes that the only way this is going to be resolved without making a complete joke out of the Constitution and the institution of Congress (since Republicans don't seem to care much about this), is for the House to exercise it's own "inherent contempt" power to "prosecute contumacious witnesses to require them to comply."

    Yeah, I had to look up "contumacious" too...

  • On Alberto, check out a WaPo editorial that documents a few of his bald-faced lies to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    And, lo and behold, it looks like some House Democrats are now going to introduce a resolution to impeach him.

  • On Evil Dick, check out another good Dean column. Just a few of the laws that the Cheney branch of government doesn't have to follow: the War Powers Act, FISA, the Geneva Conventions, the War Crimes Act, the Presidential Records Act, and Dubya's own Executive Order 12958.

    Perhaps he should be impeached, too. That might be good.

  • On impeachment, Gary Kamiya has an outstanding column on how pursuing the impeachment of Bush would force Americans to confront some unpleasant truths about ourselves:

    The problem is that the American people are not judging Bush by the standards of law.
    ...

    This society-wide diminution of respect for law has helped Bush immeasurably. It is not just the law that America has turned away from, but what the law stands for -- accountability, memory, history and logic itself. That anonymous senior Bush advisor who spoke with surreal condescension of "the reality-based community" may have summed up our cultural moment more acutely than anyone else in years. A society without memory, driven by ephemeral emotions, which demands no consistency from its leaders but only gusty patriotism, is a society that is not about to engage in the painful self-examination that impeachment would mean.


    See also Bill Moyers' discussion on the topic of impeachment, Ethan J. Leib and David Ponet's call for ethical training for politicians who refuse to follow the wishes of their constituents on issues like this, and the A28.org site, which has lots of pictures showing "the people's impeachment movement."

    What about Russ Feingold's censure proposal? Dave Lindorff is not a big fan of the idea, nor of Feingold for suggesting it. I agree... it would be meaningless.

Fighting Words: 7/30/07 Cartoon...



"Rules of the Road"...