Raising the Issue
                    of Impeachment
By John Nichols
thenation.com

All I can say is, it's about time someone on the Hill demands accountability from the crooks who have hi-jacked our country! Thank you John Conyers! I can't believe the Downing Street Memo wasn't enough to reveal their nefarious intentions early on... to top that, it's now completely obvious (to me) that Bush, Rove, Cheney and Libby all had a hand in the outing of the CIA operative, Valerie Plame. When will it end?. The corporate media is just as culpable for letting them get away with anything and everything.

At a time when we are seeing an attack on our civil liberties like never before and cuts are being made to social programs who help the most vulnerable in our society, I find it ironic that the radical right has been so concerned with keeping "under God" in the pledge of allegiance and yet they conveniently ignore the last sentence; "with liberty and justice for all." What an oxymoran... Even Orwell would be amazed!

As President Bush and his aides scramble to explain new revelations regarding Bush's authorization of spying on the international telephone calls and emails of Americans, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has begun a process that could lead to the censure, and perhaps the impeachment, of the president and vice president.

U.S. Representative John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who was a critical player in the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations into presidential wrongdoing, has introduced a package of resolutions that would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a select committee to investigate the Administration's possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.

The Conyers resolutions add a significant new twist to the debate about how to hold the administration to account. Members of Congress have become increasingly aggressive in the criticism of the White House, with U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, saiying Monday, "Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country's law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution." Even Republicans, including Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, are talking for the first time about mounting potentially serious investigations into abuses of power by the president.

But Conyers is seeking to do much more than schedule a committee hearing, or even launch a formal inquiry. He is proposing that the Congress use all of the powers that are available to it to hold the president and vice president to account – up to and including the power to impeach the holders of the nation's most powerful positions and to remove them from office.

The first of the three resolutions introduced by Conyers, H.Res.635, asks that the Congress establish a select committee to investigate whether members of the administration made moves to invade Iraq before receiving congressional authorization, manipulated pre-war intelligence, encouraged the use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and used their positions to retaliate against critics of the war.

The select committee would be asked to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

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