Apart from endorsing Obama?
Wexler announces support for impeachment hearingsIn an e-mail to supporters on November 7, 2007, Representative Robert Wexler, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, stated about H.R. 333:
“ I will urge the Judiciary Committee to schedule impeachment hearings immediately and not let this issue languish as it has over the last six months. Only through hearings can we bring begin to correct the abuses of Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration; and, if it is determined in these hearings that Vice President Cheney has committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors, he should be impeached and removed from office. ”
In mid December of 2007, Congressman Wexler launched a website (Wexlerwantshearings.com) to promote his effort for impeachment hearings. The site included a You Tube video where he explained his position and a petition for like-minded people to sign. Wexler set a goal of getting 50,000 Americans to join his cause. In just two weeks, over 160,000 people signed the petition and over 70,000 people watched his You Tube video.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wexler John Conyers and the Downing Street memoOn May 5, 2005, Conyers and 88 other members of Congress wrote an open letter to the White House inquiring about the Downing street memo, a leaked memorandum that revealed an apparent secret agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom to attack Iraq in 2002. The Times reported that newly-discovered documents reveal British and U.S. intentions to invade Iraq and leaders of the two countries had "discussed creating pretextual justifications for doing so". The documents go on to say that Tony Blair decided the U.S. would need to "create" conditions to justify the war.
The memo story broke in the United Kingdom, but did not receive much coverage in the United States, prompting Conyers to lament: "This should not be allowed to fall down the memory hole during wall-to-wall coverage of the Michael Jackson trial and a runaway bride."
CNN picked up the story on May 12. Fox News had a story about two weeks later on June 1.
Conyers and others reportedly considered sending a congressional investigation delegation to London.<3>
What Went Wrong In Ohio
In May, 2005, Conyers released What Went Wrong In Ohio: The Conyers Report On The 2004 Presidential Election, which discusses the voting irregularities in the state of Ohio during the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election. The evidence offered of wrongdoing consists of statistical abnormalities in the differences between exit poll results and actual votes registered at those locations. The book also discusses reports of faulty electronic voting machines and the lack of credibility of those machines used to tally votes.
He was one of the 31 who voted in the House to not count the electoral votes from Ohio in the United States presidential election, 2004.<4>
The Constitution in Crisis
On August 4, 2006, Conyers released the final draft of his report, The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retributions and Cover-ups in the Iraq War, an edited collection of information intended to serve as evidence that the Bush Administration altered intelligence to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The Constitution in Crisis examines much of the evidence presented by the Bush Administration prior to the invasion and questions the credibility of their sources of intelligence. In addition, the document investigates the conditions that led to the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, as well as further evidence of torture having been committed but not made known to the public. Finally, the document reports on a series of "smear tactics" purportedly used by the administration in dealing with its political adversaries.
The document calls for the censure of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Notably, however, he refuses to back impeachment proceedings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Conyers
Waxman had a reputation for a vigorous approach to oversight long before becoming ranking Democrat on what was known as the Government Reform Committee in 1997. He was well known for insisting that witnesses appearing before his subcommittee testify under oath, thus exposing them to perjury charges if they didn't tell the truth. For example, in 1994, he forced the chief executives of the seven major tobacco companies to swear under oath that nicotine was not addictive.
In 1998, he created a "Special Investigations Division" to investigate matters that he felt the full committee had neglected. This was possible because the committee has broad powers to investigate any matter with federal policy implications, even if another committee has jurisdiction over it. <1> He has also harshly criticized the Republicans for ignoring their "constitutional responsibility" to conduct oversight over the government. <2>.
On the day after the 2006 elections, Waxman directed his aides to draw up an "oversight plan" for the panel. He had already let it be known that he wanted to investigate Halliburton, as well as its alleged malfeasance related to government contracts in Iraq. It is very likely that he could also investigate the numerous scandals surrounding Jack Abramoff. This led to concerns among Democratic aides that the Government Reform Committee under Waxman would stage a repeat of the committee's performance under the Clinton administration, when it issued over 1,000 subpoenas.
However, Waxman told Newsweek that he is interested in accountability and not retaliation. <3>. Despite this behavior, Waxman has refused to allow whistleblower Sibel Edmonds to testify on various issues involving alleged crimes and cover-ups of the US government<4><5>.
On March 16, 2004, at Waxman's request, the Committee on Government Reform Minority Office published "Iraq on the Record, the Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq"<6> a detailed and searchable collection of 237 specific misleading statements made by Bush Administration officials about the threat posed by Iraq. It contains statements that were misleading based on what was known to the Administration at the time the statements were made. It does not include statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight. If a statement was an accurate reflection of U.S. intelligence at the time it was made, it was excluded even if it now appears erroneous.
On January 4, Waxman changed the committee's name to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, or the Oversight Committee for short.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Waxman They speak truth to power.....always!
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
