Gathering Signatures In Cyberspace, Lawmaker Sets Out To Impeach Cheney
WASHINGTON — Rep. Robert Wexler is taking on the Bush administration — in cyberspace.
The Florida Democrat has launched a Web site — www.wexlerwantshearings.com — and is gathering signatures calling for impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney.
“Our constitution mandates that the House of Representatives hold presidents and vice presidents accountable when they commit high crimes,” Wexler says in a video on the site, which suggests, among other things, that Cheney manipulated intelligence to boost the case for war against Iraq and was involved in the revealing of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity.
On Tuesday, the site said it had nearly 133,500 signatures. Wexler’s goal is 250,000.
Though the push is, as Wexler acknowledges, a “huge uphill battle” because House leaders haven’t been interested, the quest has made him a favorite of left-leaning activists.
Wexler, a veteran member of the House Judiciary Committee, hopes to deliver the signatures to the committee in January, when Congress returns to Washington.
Democratic House leaders, however, have sought to quash earlier efforts, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying before Democrats even took control of Congress that impeachment was “off the table.”
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat and presidential candidate, introduced a resolution this year calling for Cheney’s impeachment. It was referred to the Judiciary Committee.
Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said the vice president “is focused on the serious issues facing this country.”
© 2007 McClatchy
Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said the vice president “is focused on the serious issues facing this country.”
She could have added that an awful lot of those serious issues were created by her boss.
Or she could have just snickered while she was talking.
These people would be outrageously funny if they were in positions of lesser power.
it’s about time we saw something about wexler here.
so nice of you to catch up to the rest of us, commondreams.
guess you may have been too busy trying to figure out how to talk to your kids about britney’s sister getting pregnant.
satr9etc: commondreams is very on top of impeachment. if you want to find a laggard, go to the huffingtonpost or the new york times.
i just hope whoever needs more support in the house judiciary committee will see it soon and act.
satr9prodxns,
i agree with mary lou. commondreams has very much been on top of the subject of impeachment. it’s obvious that either you are new to commondreams or have somehow missed the many pieces posted on this site. i send my sarcastic remarks to the groups who deserve them and commondreams certainly is not one of them. peace.
Question to satr9prodxns from a regular reader: Who is Britney?
Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said the vice president “is focused on the serious issues facing this country.”
So that must mean he’s focused on the impeachment issue too because there’s nothing more serious than that! :–)
Thanks for the link, sir. I agree that it’s an uphill battle but I signed the thing, anyway.
mcpete: good to hear there’s some other coverage going on, it made it to p. 12 in the Detroit Free Press today, a paper that normally shuns the impeachment word.
Also, the higher the hill the greater the view from the top: spamed my entire email list on this one and passing it along to the neighborhood.
What’s that Lennon lyric getting play right now: War is over if you want it…impeachment can happen if you want it…
I signed Congressman Wexler’s petition about a week ago, having learned about it through this website.
With all the latest news of the latest scandal about the destruction of the torture tapes, there may be an avenue to prosecuting this White House yet–if Congress is more inclined to investigate than to grant retroactive immunity.
The Impeach Cheney movement needs a graphic that communicates clearly and quickly with people. Today people will not take the time to read text. I know there’s a clever and adventuresome person here that can do a good graphic that can be distributed everywhere fast. People posting here probably have great ideas too. We just need to marry the two.
Two connected things happened a week or so ago. Cheney got the final word that the NIE was going out and there weren’t nothin he could do about it. Second was a small notice that Cheney had some sort of ‘failure’ in his bionic heart. In a real human that would have been a heart attack.
Speaking of great ideas, isn’t there something we could all “do” for the big fella to make sure he has the “really big one” next time?
And I do truly hope that all of us are posted on Mr. Wexler’s Big List. Getting 250k people out of 190mn adults to sign on had BETTER be a simple thing to do at this late date.
And before somebody says it, “Yes, Louise part of the Democratic betrayal from the top down is their plan to Impeach No One, Challenge Nothing, and Change Nothing - the second part of the plan is to make themselves into richfilth at our expense. Overseers are always like the Master, they love only their POWER. Are you listening John Conyers?
And finally, for anyone who listens to Air America, virtually all I’ve heard is that whatever cockroach the DLC Dems nominate, Air America will sit up and bark like well trained dogs - FAITH BASED POLITICS. You are required to BELIEVE that whatever piece of shit they put on us, somehow that Overseer when sitting in the Black House will “do good for us” - even though they’ve all promised to keep everything the same - the WOT, the Terror Laws, the Signing Statements, the Imperial Presidency, and the Occupation of Iraq til 2013. And that’s without mentioning that they will continue to bail out the richfilth while sending our middle class jobs to slave pits around the globe - while they sell us into HELL - as they have done for 35 years.
America waited too long to wake, waaaay to long, and they haven’t yet. It is the tragedy of the last 40 years. America will lay down for Martial Law. They will obey. What’s the choice as an atomized subject of Empire? Don’t want to lose your job do you? Want to get sent to a camp?
We have hugged the tar baby. America wanted “Billionairefilth”, “Exclusion” (human slavery & gender slavery), “White Male Supremacy”, and “Constant War”. Our actions say we did and do. The price for that was our Middle Class, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the future of our children. America said yes. It refused to leave behind 3000 years of feudalistic history - even if it destroys the planet, bankrupts the Federal Gov’t (yes Grover gets his wish), and shatters the Union into 50 separate states, some of them Nu-cu-lar. And what states exactly have nukes now? Those are our future Nu-cu-lar States and properly targeted those missiles will hold great coercive threat over their neighbors. Speaking of coercive power, how about the Former Confederacy? Those States are of course currently “enlightened” places of racial harmony and “relative” gender equality, sort of. That will last about 20 minutes. Laws can say anything you want them to. Everything done in the III Reich was Legal, just like Bush, just like every jumped up psychotic fundamentalist warlord America will produce in the next 40 years. Are you listening Mr. Eric “Blackwater” Prince? These guys are as old as the Crusader rape of the Hagia Sophia, they just have better technology and a little better hygiene, for the moment. Same beliefs. Same theology. Same psychosis. It should be noted, Warlords never build anything. Psychotics seldom do. They consume everything. Sound vaguely familiar?
Happy New Year Children, go watch the bonfire of our cities, you can tell your grandchildren about it, if you’re one of the survivors. “The avalanche has begun, too late for the pebbles to vote.” Kosh, Vorlon, Babylon5.
Thank you I needed that. Will the last free, autonomous, and self directing human who leaves, please turn out the lights? We’re already in bed and Master is very busy fucking the slaves.
Peace.
After reviewing the site for the Petition I realized something. Did anyone see anything on the site that says this info will not be used for other purposes? This petition may put you on Democratic phone and email lists - for the rest of your unnatural life. Will the Repugs also get your phone and email? How about your address from a reverse directory? If they’re connected, can they get your Driver’s License from Name/Ph/Email/Addr? 400,000 beds in the Halliburton Gulag. Room for everybody.
Is that the kind of shit people think about in a Police State?
Get it NOW?
Peace.
Yes, Doom n Gloom.
Maybe, for someone with enough talent for the graphics, make a simple one-page flyer with Cheney’s picture, and a summary list of reasons not only justifying but requiring that he be impeached; such as, f.e.:
*) Started planning war on Iraq in official terms in January 2001;
*) Needed, strategically, a new ‘Pearl Harbor’ to get the support of the population of the U.S. for the then upcoming wars;
*) That ‘Pearl Harbor’ happened on Sept. 11, 2001;
*) To make sure that that “sneak” attack would complete the mission intended, Cheney ORDERED NORAD TO STAND DOWN, to not interfere;
*) Pres. G.W. Bush declared to the whole world that the Taliban had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. in a televised speech broadcast internationally;
*) Pres. G.W. Bush and Cheney claimed justification for war on the Taliban on the basis that they refused to hand over Usama Bin Ladin, but it was only true initially; they accepted to hand him over to Pakistan before the war was launched on them, but Pakistan, a then U.S.-ally in the ‘war on terrorism’ rejected the Taliban’s offer, an act that the Bush administration had to be aware of due to their strong ties with the Pakistani govt;
*) They, the Bush administration, ensured the escape of Usama Bin Ladin and other top members of Al Qa’ida, to leave Afghanistan and go to Pakistan, where Usama Bin Ladin had received medical, dialysis care from the Pakistani military medical division on Sept. 10th, 2001;
*) …;
*) The UN weapons inspections in Iraq were proving to be very successful, proving that Iraq had NO WMD that could be found, and with around or more than 700 sites having been verified; before the Cheney-Bush administration criminally forced the end to these inspections that proved the Cheney-Bush administration to be AGAIN LYING.
Oh, and another thing that could be added is that the UNSC refused to authorise the two wars, so not only the one on Iraq, but also the one on Afghanistan.
Some of that is not wholly short, but if we consider that much more could be and has been said about all of these matters, then the above is a list of briefly stated reasons that justify the impeachment of Cheney; while, of course, also Bush.
The reasons could all fit on a single page, so easily printed with any printer capable of priting also the graphic parts. And this flyer could then be placed in residential mail boxes, handed out at shopping malls, placed on windshields of vehicles at malls and other public locations, etc. Very inexpensively too.
luckylefty, hate to be the first to inform you of this, but the government already has our names and information. If not you, WHO?
This is just a waste of time. Cheney will never be impeached and neither will bush. Pelosi won’t be impeached. Condoleeza Rice won’t be impeached. It’s time to face the music. The song is “Unaccountable” and is being sung by the entire government.
Take the paper with all the signatures, make a little airplane out of it, and play for awhile. It’ll be more productive.
Has it occurred to anyone that the reason Impeachment has been “off the table” since about two seconds after the 2006 elections is because it might actually be effective? If we get rid of Cheney and the Smirking Chimp, guess who gets to be the first woman President, even if only for a few months? That’s why — I’ll betcha — Nancy Pelosi got the word in no uncertain terms from the Clinton camp: Impeachment Is Off The Table.
Hillary must be beside herself at the prospect of being beat out for being the first female President…
luckylefty December 27th, 2007 2:33 am
Nobody reads looonnng posts. I read the first two paragraphs and lost interest, then scrolled on, If you want to rant get your own blog, please or STFU!!!
I hope Cheney dies a horrible death like spitting out his own blood in the middle of a mental breakdown or a heart attack from his bionic heart. There is a special hot room im hell for this bastard, and I’m not even religious. HA!!
Mike Corbeil December 27th, 2007 3:25 am
luckylefty December 27th, 2007 2:33 am
Same for you as lefty. Nobody reads long posts ’cause we don’t care.
If you go past three paragraph, nobody listens, they scroll on. Condense or be unheard!!
About SIX years too late, Wexler! This is just another obvious phony offering to the deluded ‘democRAT’ base. This is going NOWHERE. Where were you when Kucinich was proposing this FIVE years ago?
The VERY MINUTE these pricks foisted the Patriot Act, they should have been tried for treason and thrown in fucking jail.
You know what? Bush and the DOJ are RIGHT: the Constitution doesn’t mean shit. If it did, you would have exercised it’s powers in Sept/Oct of 2001.
Today, it’s “just a piece of paper”.