Alternet: "Impeachment Talk Reaches The Mainstream"

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http://www.alternet.org/story/33373/

Impeachment Talk Reaches the Mainstream
By William Goodman, AlterNet
Posted on March 14, 2006, Printed on March 14, 2006

The groundswell for President Bush's impeachment is growing, and last week the establishment media finally took notice.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story analyzing how a planned impeachment of President Bush will play out as an "election issue," including a helpful pie chart showing 51 percent of Americans support Congress in considering Bush's impeachment if he "didn't tell the truth about the reasons for the Iraq war."

The Washington Post published a commentary acknowledging that support for impeachment is now "reaching beyond the usual suspects," and the Associated Press covered the spike in pro-impeachment resolutions from local officials across the country. Resolutions recently passed in Vermont and California, and this weekend Democratic Party officials in Michigan voted to urge local officials to pass another. Meanwhile, 14 Democratic candidates for Congress have announced their support for impeachment.

These local efforts are beginning to advance impeachment at the national level. The resolution by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., to investigate impeachment is slowly but steadily gaining co-sponsors, including three this month. It now has 29 co-sponsors -- roughly one out of every seven Democrats in the U.S. House -- a promising start that ensures that the legislation attracts more votes when it reaches the floor.

These activist and legislative efforts helped finally push the "i-word" on to the notoriously conservative cable news last week. On Wednesday, Joe Scarborough aired an impeachment debate on MSNBC -- one of the first times the subject has been debated this year on cable. Scarborough's producers invited me to make the case for impeachment after learning of the new book I co-authored, "Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush."

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William Goodman is the Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.