Impeachment Question

[omega minimo]

Poll question: Impeachment Question

Your choice:

[elocs]

1. Somebody posted that Conyers said they did not have the votes for impeachment.

That is entirely possible since there could be a number of Democratic representatives who are concerned about being reelected if they vote for impeachment without there first being extensive investigations which clearly show a need for impeachment. You investigate first, then you vote on articles of impeachment. The pending Nixon impeachment as well as the Clinton impeachment were the result of ongoing investigations and both took a year. I would think that to expose all of the Bush wrongdoing is more complex than either of those. Pelosi says that impeachment is off the table and I don't know what part of that is hard to understand. If impeachment does come up later there might very well not be enough time. As bad as things look for Bush now, that could turn around quickly depending on events. The public is fickle.

[omega minimo]

3. Have you seen the Lapham piece?

"Democracy is born in dirt, nourished by the digging up and turning over of as much of it as can be brought within reach of a television camera or a subpoena. We can’t "lay out a new agenda for America" unless we know which America we’re talking about, the one that embodies the freedoms of a sovereign people or the one made to fit the requirements of a totalitarian state....

"Like it or not, and no matter how unpleasant or impolitic the proceedings, the spirit of the law doesn’t allow the luxury of fastidious silence or discreet abstention....

"The Constitution doesn’t serve at the pleasure of Representative Pelosi any more than it answers to the whim of President Bush, and by taking "off the table" the mess of an impeachment proceeding, the lady from California joins the president in his distaste for such an unclean thing as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people."


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2934188

[elocs]

11. Believe whatever you like. Pelosi will control the agenda.

I don't know how the people who are so totally fixated on impeachment 24/7 are going to go on living when it most likely does not happen. The Democrats did not win control of Congress based upon an impeachment agenda. There are not a group of Democratic leaders or well known Democrats who are calling for impeachment. Do you really want impeachment before the case is proven and there may be even the remotest chance of conviction? Impeachment is off the table until Pelosi puts it back on it and don't hold your breath for that to happen anytime soon. Impeachment has a procedure, it does not spontaneously occur.

[omega minimo]

12. See this shows how really stupid the non-argument becomes......

[elocs]

15. I certainly wish I could better understand what your cryptic one-liners mean.

Please start viewing the entire impeachment thing based upon what actually "is" and what actually has been said and happened in the past rather than what you really, really, really want to happen.
1. Democrats did not run and win the Congress on an impeachment platform.
2. Who are the Democratic leaders and prominent leaders now calling for impeachment?
3. Pelosi said impeachment is off the table--she really, actually said that and Conyers agrees.
4. The last 2 impeachments (Nixon and Clinton) did not just happen, but were the result of ongoing
investigations.
5. There are only 2 years left in Bush's second term. There is not enough time. In any criminal
case good lawyers know who to delay and BushCo has some very good lawyers.
6. Try presenting an impeachment case without wishful thinking and the most rosy scenarios.
Please spend at least as much time explaining about how the Senate would convict as on
impeachment. Again, without the wishful thinking and fanciful and rosy scenarios.
7. Anything can happen, but that does not mean it will happen. Impeachment is one of them.
In 2 years we will find out. My arguments are based upon history and reality and not
just wishful thinking.

[omega minimo]

16. No actually you are in the "Wishful Thinking" category, hoping that all your negative assumptions

will be borne out.

[elocs]

17. How is it an assumption to say that past impeachments were the result of ongoing investigations?

That is not an assumption that is a fact. How is it an assumption to say that Pelosi has said that impeachment is off the table? That is a fact. How is it an assumption to say that there are not prominent Democrats or Democratic leaders who are now calling for impeachment? Please list them for me. How is it an assumption to say that it is unlikely that 17 or more Republican senators will vote to convict? The assumption is that they would vote to convict. My assumptions may be negative, but that is because they are based upon history and reality rather than wishful thinking.
Things don't happen just because you really want them to happen. I would really like to win the lottery, but if you say I will not are you being negative or simply realistic? Would you be making a negative assumption or making a judgment based upon reality? But if you are living in your own reality, then there is nothing more to be said.

[omega minimo]

18. See #12

The scattershot approach you are using is fun isn't it? This was a nice touch:


"...if you are living in your own reality, then there is nothing more to be said."

Back atcha. :hi:

[omega minimo]

4. If they intend to investigate, why does Madame Speaker say "Impeachment is off the table"?

"You investigate first, then you vote on articles of impeachment."

[elocs]

9. It is possible to have investigations outside of impeachment.

The Watergate hearings went on for a year until they and the events around them lead to the pending impeachment of Nixon before he resigned. There was an ongoing investigation of Clinton before his impeachment. These cases clearly indicate that the proper order is to investigate before impeachment, but impeachment itself is rare. So Pelosi is right to say impeachment is off the table. You do not put the cart before the horse.

[omega minimo]

13. So predicting the outcome makes no sense.

[elocs]

14. The point is that you investigate first

and since there is only 2 years left in a very, very complicated series of investigations, don't be too disappointed if impeachment never happens. It's predictions based upon hopes more than reality that make no sense. How about conviction after impeachment, or is that not important? Or are those Republican senators who regularly get trashed here suddenly become Constitutional patriots and uphold truth, justice, and the American way and vote to convict?

[Independent_Liberal]

7. Right, impeachment without investigations will ultimately fail.

I'd be cautiously optimistic about the timing. We already have plenty of investigations by the DOJ, FBI, CIA, etc. going on. There's Fitzgerald's Plame investigation, the AIPAC investigation, the Abramoff investigation, the Cunningham/Wilkes/MZM/Hookergate investigation, the DOJ and SEC Halliburton investigations, the New Hampshire phone jamming investigation, the FBI investigation into Niger forgeries, etc. That means many federal investigators, prosecutors and witnesses in these cases can come forward before the House and Senate Committees and we can issue them subpoenas if we have to. Many U.S. Attorneys can show us their findings from grand jury investigations. So maybe Congressional investigations won't be as long and hard as we think. One thing Conyers mentioned was that as far as impeachment goes right now, they don't have the votes and it would just bog down the whole legislative process for 4-6 months and nothing would get done. I think he's right about that. So the way he's going to go about approaching this is starting with issuing subpoenas to get some answers on things they don't already know. Then if there's enough bipartisan support for impeachment, they might get a Nixon situation with Bush being forced to step down.

[elocs]

10. Remember a year ago when all the cries were of a "Happy Fitzmas!"

and how the walls were going to come tumbling down? Has anybody heard of him lately?

[William769]

2. Actually I was raised to believe this.

(Speaking about Impeachment of Presidents) It doesn't really matter if the President is guilty or not, Impeachment is actually a political vice to be used for the will of the people. If the President has lost the confidence of the people this is a way to get rid of him/her. My father once told me a popular President will never be Impeached.

Do I believe in the belief in which I was raised? I am 43 years old and am still trying to decide.

[Senator]

19. That's why the reality today is a "Reverse Clinton"

Their unwarranted attack kicked Clinton's approval up from the 50s to the 70s.

This long overdue correction of 2 stolen elections would have a similar, but converse, effect.

And ironically, the bushkid's last act would be to unite the nation. Against him.

==

[Senator]

5. Avoiding War Criminal Status for Oneself

... and the American People as a whole.

Only Impeachment ...can do it.

--

[omega minimo]

6. LL: "a predatory government...stealing from a free but inattentive people"

Lewis Lapham


"Rightly understood, democracy is an uproar, the argument meant to be blunt, vigilant, and fierce, not, as the purveyors of our respectable opinion would have it, a matter of liveried civil servants passing one another polite synonyms on silver trays."

Lapham describes the Bush Administration as "a predatory government...stealing from a free but inattentive people their lives, liberties, fortunes, good name, and sacred honor." He lists the evidence warranting impeachment:

*A foreign war conceived as a means of advancing the Bush Administration’s imposition on the American people of a not-so-benevolent despotism, the army sent to fight and die not for the defense of country but for a corporate dream of commercial empire.

*A government that tortures people classified as enemy combatants, denies their right to hear all the evidence bearing on their confinement and arrest, forbids their resort to petitions of habeas corpus.
The administration’s systematic plundering of the Federal Treasury on behalf of its accomplices in the arms and construction trades.

*The National Security Agency directed to monitor, without first obtaining a court order, any and al telephone and email traffic suspected of carrying the germs of terrorism.

*The president’s use of 136 signing statements since he took office to exempt himself from the rule of more than 1,000 federal laws.

[porphyrian]

8. I love (and hate) that line. - n/t