On the run, impeachment watchers, so just a telegram this morning. Take a look at Constitutional attorney Bruce Fein's op ed in the SF Chronicle: Pelosi Needs to Put Impeachment on the Table.

Reminder: We are a month away from our September 17th Redress campaign -- I'll post an education blog over the weekend as a gathering point for focusing our ideas. Please check in whenever you can with your thinks and updates! Looking forward to seeing you, as always.

Best Constitutional wishes,

Tish

Cicero learned Greek in his seventies and Socrates took up playing the lyre in his dotage. So if you missed out on having your formative years in The Sixties, there's still hope. In addition to catching up on sex, watercolor painting, yoga, and world travel, your senior years could be that second activist childhood you never had.  Could happen, peeps.  I don't have my AARP card yet, but I am writing a poster for my home office on large chart paper:  

If Bush leaves office un-impeached, there's still hope for better living through filing criminal charges. 

It's true, according to Representative Conyers -- as previously reported on Impeachment Watch -- and now Senator Biden:   

Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden has suggested criminal charges could someday be filed against members of the Bush administration. In a recent interview with Newsweek, Biden said there are alternatives to the impeachment of President Bush. Biden said: "I think we should be acquiring and accumulating all the data that is appropriate for possibly bringing criminal charges against members of this administration at a later date."  [emph. mine]

That means that the clock does not run out when Bush leaves office. Impeachment-related efforts do not need to be governed by the election cycle. Not to take the heat off, but criminal charges don't expire because a criminal leaves his job. That means, no false linkage between elections and impeachment -- no cancellations of impeachment efforts by a super-ordination of the 2008 elections.

In that spirit, I wish to salute Kate Tepper of Norwalk, Connecticut who, among the 15 demonstrators, mostly senior citizens, gathered last Thursday by the Connecticut Impeachment Movement waiting for Pelosi.  The seniors said they were disappointed in Pelosi for not supporting U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, in his efforts to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. 

"This war is a criminal, criminal act, and the Democrats need to get some courage, and they are being a yellowbelly," said Kate Tepper, 70, of Norwalk. Her daughter, a U.S. Army doctor, spent six months in Iraq early in the war, she said."She came back safely, but so many did not," Tepper said.

Duffee, who is active with impeachment committees in Stamford, Westport and Weston, said they are trying to drum up support in advance of the Democratic State Central Committee's vote on an impeachment resolution next month.

"It's not just the war - it's a constitutional issue," Duffee said.

We, the People of Generation I,  seek to impeach criminals who violate the Constitution while they serve in public office  -- and we'll file charges against them when they leave office. 

Impeachment is an intelligent design. Intelligent, inspiring, ingenious. Yours for generation I, all ages are welcome!

Happy Sat and Sun, peeps -- and Perseid meteor showers,

Tish

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update 8/12/07: Further discussion here. 

Ah, a pause that refreshes. After lesson planning and swimming a mile, here's an Impeachment Watch quickie to cool our summer files:

Harper's: Six Questions (without Answers) for Congressman John Conyers on Impeachment and Alberto Gonzales

Carl Bernstein:  Bush More Disastrous than Nixon

Ken Silverstein op ed: Keep your politics out of my impeachment

Yay LA Impeachment Center: Waxman open minded on impeachment

Off to mist hummingbirds.

Happy day, fellow blog-birdies!

Tish

8/12/07 Update: Further discussion here. 

With thanks to Dave Swanson for The Dumbest Thing the Washington Post Could Print.

As I see it, today's WAPO impeachment article by Michael Tomasky is stupidity for dummies.

Let's recap, my fellow blogmates. The Democrats in Congress just bent over, legalizing Bush-Chain's illegal spying.  Now isn't that getting the People's work done?

Impeachment sage, Dave Swanson, points to the following recursive pattern of Congressional impotence:  (1) They can pass bills that should not be passed (it clearly won't be easier to reverse the spying law in six months than it was yesterday); (2) Any useful bills have been vetoed -- and will continue to be vetoed -- by the Bush-Chain. I think in songs. Like "Chain of Fools."

Not that I know anything about it personally, but I overheard some male colleagues in the lounge at work the other day talk about needing viagra.  I took that as my cue to leave, but walking to my lecture theater, I started to wonder: what is the viagra for Congressional Dems to set themselves free from the chains that bind them?  

Swanson notes two options: (1) They can declare zero additional funding bills for the occupation of Iraq.  (2) They can impeach Bush and Cheney.

Impeachment would force Republicans to defend Bush and Cheney for the next year and a half, which ought to be deadly to any politician. In fact, if enough Republicans recognize that, a conviction in the Senate will be possible. But the point is to impeach in the House, to put Bush and Cheney on the defensive, and to pass bills at the same time with an increased chance of them actually becoming law.

But Tomasky claims that impeachment would be the dumbest move the Democrats could make. How do you figure? By standing up for 54% of Americans and 76% of Democrats, Congressional leaders would, according to Tomasky, somehow hurt themselves.  

Swanson counters:

He makes no mention of the people who would die in Iraq as a result of other Bush-Cheney policies while the Democrats wisely refrained from impeaching. Nor does he recall the last time they listened to arguments identical to his, when they took the impeachment of Ronald Reagan off the table. A pack of criminals got off easy, and the Democrats LOST the elections. Nor is there any mention of Richard Nixon, who was more popular than Bush and Cheney are, but whose popularity did not get any boost from Congress's efforts to impeach him. In fact, the Democrats won the biggest victories in recent memory.

 "Sympathy?"  recoils Swanson. "People disapprove of Bush and Cheney in record numbers because they view them as criminals. Getting tough on crimes rarely creates sympathy for the criminals in the hearts of Americans." 

"Just as bad," says Tomasky, [impeachment is] "the one move that would definitively alienate nonideological voters and ... harm the Democrats' otherwise excellent chances for winning congressional seats and the White House in 2008." 

 "Definitively?" protests Swanson.  "Fewer than 5% of voters in 2004 ever planned to vote for Bush or Kerry and switched to the other. Isn't a candidate's relationship to the much greater number of voters who support their party going to prove much more important than how they play to that 5 percent?" 

Tomasky fantasizes on:

 "One of the Democrats' strongest arguments for 2008, regardless of their nominee, will be that it's time for the country to set aside rampant partisanship and ideologically driven government. Impeachment would take away that argument."  

As I have set forth in Impeachment Watch, just because impeachment was used speciously against Clinton, does not signify that it should not be applied wisely against Bush. The fact that, after impeaching Clinton for faux sex, Republicans hung onto both houses and the White House is something that Tomasky dismisses simplistically by claiming that Republicans are different. Right. And different would be a Democratic Party that finally stood up and impeached, contends Swanson:

The Democrats' strongest arguments will not include a promise to end partisanship, which most Democratic voters don't give a rat's ass about. The Dems strongest arguments will derive from whatever they do in the next year and a half to develop partisanship, to distinguish their party from the other one. Their strongest criticisms of the Republicans will include Bush and Cheney's numerous crimes and abuses. Accusing people who are guilty of routine law-breaking, lying, detaining, torturing, and murdering, of "partisanship" misses the mark entirely. 

... launching an unpopular illegal aggressive war on the basis of lies, jettisoning the Bill of Rights, and transferring massive wealth from the rest of us to the filthy rich ... Anyone who believes this country is united, and united with the least popular president on record, had better acquire and keep a regular job with the Washington Post.  

Moreover, as I tried to draw out of Max last night, what would Tomasky have Congress do instead of impeaching? 

 "There are plenty of ways to hold the administration accountable that don't carry so high a price. Last I looked, Democrats were doing a pretty aggressive job of it. According to Pelosi's office, 13 high-ranking administration officials have resigned rather than face genuine congressional oversight." 

That's no plan. Running out the clock in tacit agreement with lawless Republicans? Making subordinates resign? What about all the subordinates -- resigned or no --who have refused to comply with subpoenas? Have they been held accountable? Has Bush? Has Cheney?  

These are serious questions and the American people know it. Even WAPO reported that the very high point of Congressman Dennis Kucinich's speech at the 2007 Yearly Kos convention was the phrase: 

 'With respect to Dick Cheney he should be impeached for lying.'

"Kucinich couldn't have scored better with the audience if he announced he was handing out $100 bills after the forum." 

Tomasky grants that impeachment is on the table outside the beltway.  But although WAPO has never reported it, impeachment is also alive and well in Congress. Forty-three Members of the United States Congress now stand, in one manner or another, for impeachment.  Hm ...viagra ... impeachment.  Sounds like a plan.

More at Impeachment Watch: August 3-4. 

See you soon,

Tish

Update: See also impeachment guru, Dave Lindorff's, Tomasky on Impeachment: Dumbest Advice Democrats Have Ever Gotten