IMPEACHMENT-The American People Are Once Again Ahead Of The Politicians

[Jcrowley]

Impeachment Call Echoes Near Independence Hall

In 1974, Elizabeth Holtzman, then a Congresswoman from New York City, served on the House’s Judiciary Committee, which drafted Impeachment charges against then-President, Richard M. Nixon. On Nov. 11, 2006, she appeared on a panel, in Philadelphia, PA. Holtzman believes George W. Bush has “subverted the Constitution” and that “the people are ahead of the politicians” and will bring Bush and Dick Cheney “to impeachment.”

"In the U.S., our first executive magistrate is...subject to censure, if necessary, to punishment. He is the...'accountable' magistrate of a free and great people." - Del. James Wilson (1)

Philadelphia, PA - Within shouting distance of fabled Independence Hall, representatives from a nationwide coalition of organizations met on Saturday, Nov. 11, 2006, to call for the impeachment of George W. Bush() and Dick Cheney. In the National Constitution Center's Kirby Auditorium, across the street from where the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed on July 4, 1776, and the U.S. Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, voices were raised demanding "real change" in the most lawless administration in the history of our Republic. A panel of seven activists shared their views. Elizabeth Holtzman, who gained prominence for her distinguished role in the 1974 House Judiciary Committee's Impeachment Inquiry into the Watergate-related crimes of then-President, Richard M. Nixon, set the tone for the event. (2) Today, this panel launched a grassroots movement, a "Citizens Impeachment Committee," to restore the honor and integrity of our federal government. (3)

Holtzman, a Democrat, from New York City, and a former state's attorney and expert on impeachment, served in the House of Representatives from 1973-81. (4) She told the audience: "It is an extraordinary subversion of the Constitution to send people to die, to be maimed on the basis of a lie...The president knew if he told the truth we wouldn't be in this war...Those framers of the Constitution knew that some day there was going to be a Richard Nixon as President of the United States. And they knew there was going to be a George W. Bush as President of the United States. They knew that subverting the Constitution was the greatest danger to befall our country. So, that all of us here have to be soldiers in that cause." Holtzman added that the illegal acts of Nixon, the lying and the unlawful wiretapping, "are not too different.

http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/14044/index.php

9 Minute Video Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwiSyIbeYjI

[Cincy911Truth]

1. Let the investigations begin...

Check out this new website entitled "Congratulations Democrats NOW DO YOUR JOB!! It is a great resource for activism with lots of issues and contact information for the soon to be Democratic controlled Congress of January 2007.
Source: http://congratulationsdemocratsnowdoyourjob.com/

Pick a few of your favorite crimes perpetrated by the criminal Bush administration and let the leaders of the House begin their investigations:

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Representative Nancy Pelosi
2371 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-0508
[phone] (phone)
[phone] (fax)

San Francisco District Office
450 Golden Gate Ave. - 14th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
[phone] (phone)

Contact form online for email:
http://www.house.gov/pelosi/contact/contact.html

---------------------------------------

Representative Henry Waxman
2204 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
[phone] (phone)
[phone] (fax)

Los Angeles District office
8436 West Third Street, Suite 600
Los Angeles, CA 90048
[phone] (phone)
[phone] (phone)
[phone] (phone)
[phone] (fax)

----------------------------------------

Representative John Conyers, Jr.
2426 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
[phone] (phone)
[phone] (fax)

Detroit District office
231 W. Lafayette
Detroit, MI 48226
[phone] (phone)
[phone] (fax)

Contact via email:

[e-mail]
_______

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves" - Edward R. Murrow

[Hubert Flottz]

6. Welcome to DU!

:toast: to IMPEACHMENT!

[Eurobabe]

2. Honor the Constitution, the Framers, We the People

Let the investigations begin...

[rainy]

3. The people will decide not the politicians!

[wildbilln864]

4. Here, here!

Let the investigations begin!
IMPEACH the entire PNAC cabal!
I believe they are guilty of murder and treason!

[novalib]

5. JUSTICE NOW!! IMEACHMENT NOW!!

Impeachment means JUSTICE!!!

Failing to IMPEACH means allowing CRIMINALS to escape the JUSTICE they SO RICHLZY DESERVE!!!!

IMPEACHMENT NOW!

[kiahzero]

9. You don't seem to want justice, you want vengeance. (n/t)

[suston96]

7. Think about this, please....

Prosecutors never bring a case to trial unless they are sure that they can get a conviction. Sure, they lose a few, but the majority of their prosecutions are successful.

When Andrew Johnson was impeached he would have been easily convicted but for a few Republican Senators who saw through the partisan vendetta against Johnson, and by one vote he was acquitted.

Nixon resign precisely because his Republican colleagues notified him that there were enough votes in the Senate to find him guilty and remove him.

But with Clinton, his impeachment became a laugher because although impeached by the right wing Republican House, they could not even muster a simple majority in the Senate on any of the counts.

Whatever Democrats attempt to do, there will not be enough votes in the Senate to convict Bush or Cheney.

All this energy being wasted on a futile impeachment vendetta when it could be focused on the most serious problem the Republic and its citizens face - corrupted elections......

.....which will, unless fixed before the next election, cause a reversal in fortunes and hand the government monopoly back to the Republicans.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. That's the whole reason for the investigations. When enough of

the little fish are sitting in jail, it will be impossible not to impeach. We all know where the buck stops, and it should not stop anywhere short of impeachment.

When the justice dept goes after a mob boss, they don't just pick him up because they 'know' what he did -- they do it only after enough soldiers have been successfully prosecuted, that the sum of those convictions reveal a direct link to the boss. Technically, * could be impeached for several things -- the mis-use of the 'signing statements' that subvert the legislation passed by congress; the deliberate lies to congress, as in the 2003 SOTU address, which deceived congress about the threat of Iraq, thus starting an unjustifiable war; the abrogation of the Geneva Conventions by authorizing torture. But, as you say, we won't get a conviction on those very real issues. However, the rampant corruption; the Abramof connections, denied by the president but attested to by public records; the no-bid contract profiteering by * and Cheney connected corporations -- those things we are seeing prosecutions on now, and with those convictions we have a direct link to them. With the public fully aware of these things, how could any sitting congressman or senator fail to support impeachment? If they don't it would be their butts on the line in the next election.

So yes, stop calling for impeachment. But prosecute, vigorously, every sign of corruption, and by doing so, make impeachment inevitable.

[H2O Man]

8. I remember JFK

saying, "We don't want to be like the leader in the French Revolution who said, 'There go my people. I must find out where thy are going so I can lead them'."

(This quote can be found in: {a} The Kennedy Wit; Bill Adler; Bantam; 1964; page 44; and {b} The Thousand Days: John Fitzgerald Kennedy as President; J. Raymond & P. Ballot; Citadel; 1964; page 15.}

[Jcrowley]

12. Will they escape?

How Bush and Cheney plan to escape.

by Kagro X

Sun Nov 12, 2006 at 06:19:56 AM PST

So, Democrats have won back the Congress. Impeachment is "off the table," but Pelosi apparently stands by her assertion that the most valuable part of the victory will be "subpoena power." We're going to have investigations. And the environment is "target rich" enough, it seems, so that Rep. Henry Waxman, the presumptive chair of the Government Operations Reform and Oversight committee (the Republicans changed the name from Operations to Reform and Oversight in the wake of their 1994 victory, perhaps preemptively overcompensating for their later intention not to conduct any) says, "The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose."

But as we've discussed in the past, it's entirely possible that the "administration" may simply refuse to comply with Congressional subpoenas (or may comply only very selectively), whether by invoking the power of the "unitary executive" to block the service of those subpoenas and/or the prosecution of charges of contempt of Congress (the presumptive penalty for non-compliance), or by engaging in a delay-and-litigation strategy aimed at running out the clock before the issues are settled in court -- if they can be settled there at all.

Recall that Congressional subponeas are served by the U.S. Marshals Service, and contempt is prosecuted at the discretion of the  U.S. Attorney, both under the control of the "unitary executive." And that Cheney has said  he will not testify, even if subponaed. And that the "administration" is apparently promising to resist any effort to curtail executive power with "a cataclysmic fight to the death" that will include a program "to assert that power, and they're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation."

<snip>

But along the way, Democrats who had counted on taking impeachment "off the table" and depending instead on their plan to expose the wrongdoing of the Bush "administration" will find that they're once again stuck defending the "nuanced" position, against a White House brazenly claiming the mantle of True Defenders of the Constitution, as always, in defiance of all logic. We'll be stuck in the position of seeking to violate the separation of powers in order to nail the "administration" for violating the separation of powers -- a doctrine we were for, before we were against, I guess. And at the end of the rainbow? A pretty good chance the courts will say, "This is a political problem. You know what your remedy is."

Then, the clock strikes noon, a successor is sworn in, and so it is that this panoply of impeachable crimes joins those unpunished in the wake of Iran-Contra.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/12/91956/971

[Loge23]

10. The crimes are simply too great to ignore.

There has been considerable debate about whether or not to pursue impeachment.
Clinton was ultimately impeached because Repukes simply hated him. Eventually, after years of fruitless investigations of Clinton's personal, outside activities - they backed into something that stuck (no pun intended).
With the current reckless administration, the offenses are all in-house - nothing personal here.
First and foremost there's Iraq: Thousands of Americans dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's. Why?
Katrina: The administration's indifference violated their professional responsibilities.
The Treasury: They mis-managed a surplus into a crushing deficit.
The Lies: More informed, more well-read people are out there to document the many lies of this administration.
Big Oil: Need I say more?

I'm not a lawyer. But surely, there are a myriad of legal violations to investigate. Just don't call Mr. Fitzgerald, please.