Impeachment Hearings: A Win is a Win-By Dave Lindorff

Impeachment Hearings: A Win is a Win
By Dave Lindorff

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Looked at in this light, the fact that the House just voted 251-166
to send Kucinich's 36 articles of impeachment to the Judiciary
Committee for a hearing, that Pelosi has had to buckle, and that
Conyers has agreed to hold even an "informational" hearing on
impeachment, at which Kucinich, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), and other
impeachment advocates in the House will be able to present their case
about the president's crimes and abuses of power, constitutes a major
victory of principle over cowardice, of integrity over complicity, of
the Constitution over creeping fascism. (24 Republicans joined in
voting to send the articles to the committee.)

The fact is that public demands to hold this criminal administration
accountable for its crimes against the Constitution, the American
people and the global community, have been mounting and have reached a
point that the Democratic leadership, as terrified as it is of
impeachment and of the accompanying airing of its own complicity in
those crimes, has been forced to allow an airing of those crimes.

Now I don't expect Rep. Kucinich to bite the hand that feeds him. He
will not present the impeachment case in a way that criticizes those
leaders. Indeed, he has publicly thanked both Pelosi and Conyers for
allowing a hearing on impeachment. But it would be surprising if
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee didn't make those points.
And that's good. Even if real impeachment hearings never actually come
to pass, we will be treated, finally, to a public airing of not just
the president's and vice president's crimes, but of the Democratic
Party leadership's participation in them.

The challenge now will be for the American people and for the
wide-spread and decentralized impeachment movement, and all
progressive, anti-war and civil liberties organizations, to press
Conyers and the Judiciary Committee to take it to the next level. If
Kucinich, Wexler and others do their job, and if we all demand that the
corporate media report on the hearings, Americans will finally know the
extent of this administration's crimes against the Constitution, and
the nature of the threat it poses to democracy and freedom in America.
At that point it will be time to demand that the Judiciary Committee
move to constitute itself as a formal Impeachment Committee, with full
power to subpoena and demand the appearance of witnesses in a real
impeachment hearing.

The hour is getting late, but there is still time to bring this criminal administration to justice.

more at:
http://www.democrats.com/node/17188

convention. I am old....that's how it started with Nixon. Articles of Impeachment followed.

Pelosi knows that peeps are talking about "those spineless Dems."

I'm not getting my hopes up, but I do believe that when the facts become known, it will be very difficult for Congress to continue to delay or ignore this process.

We know we were lied to in order to start a war against Iraq.

It just doesn't get much worse than that. Over 4,100 of our troops have died because of those lies. Someone must be held responsible for their actions, and there's no better place to start than George Bush.