Dave Lindorff: Cheney Impeachment Watch: Now There are 8

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1077


A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Dave Lindorff


...Almost two months ago, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) submitted a bill of impeachment (H. Res. 333) against the vice president, charging him with lying about the reasons for invading Iraq, and for illegally threatening to invade Iran -- something we know that Cheney is still doing with a vengeance. Almost no major media outlet reported on the Kucinich bill. The New York Times only grudgingly mentioned it in passing while reporting on the first Democratic presidential debate, and then only because candidate Kucinich was asked about it.

The well-trained corporate media press corps in Washington have also politely refrained from asking House Speaker Nancy "Impeachment is off the table" Pelosi about the Kucinich bill. They haven't pressed House Judiciary Chair John Conyers either (though I suspect his wife, Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers, who rammed through a council resolution calling on the House to initiate impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney, does probably ask him every morning at breakfast when he's going to act on his own professed convictions).

This polite silence is as incredible as it is shameful and unprofessional -- the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a country with a state-controlled media such as China, or in a quasi-police state such as Russia, but not in a nation which boasts of its "free" press...One wonders how many members of Congress will have to become co-sponsors of the Cheney impeachment drive before the corporate media will finally treat it seriously as a news story. A companion question is how many members will have to add their names to the bill before the House leadership will feel compelled to bring the matter up in the House Judiciary Committee.

House Democratic leaders, along with their counterparts in the Senate, are recognizing that the American public is fast losing patience with their inaction and ineffectiveness since taking power after the November election that handed them control of the Congress. We have seen that 15 state Democratic Parties have now passed resolutions calling for impeachment, along with over 70 towns and cities and one state senate (Vermont). The public clearly wants an end to the Iraq War, and polls make it clear they also want action on impeachment. Yet the leadership remains enamored of a disastrous strategy of do-nothingism, hoping that the Bush administration and the Republican Party will simply self-destruct, if Democrats just keep their heads low...The American public knows better. They know that the Bush administration is capable of anything, and that it is hell-bent on war and more war. And they are sick of this administration, with polls showing support for Bush falling still further, into the 20s (Cheney has been in single digits for some time now).


At some point, a somnolent press corps will have to react and announce that impeachment is happening. At some point, Pelosi will have to start setting the table for impeachment hearings.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

DAVE LINDORFF is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for
Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, 2006), now available in paperback. His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net.

in a police state. The American Public's desires have been ignored and there will be a heavy price to pay in November 2008 if the majority of Congressional Democrats don't do something with substance. Scuttle the illegal alien amnesty bill, settle for securing our borders and get on with the impeachment of the WH.