Look at our logo! Of course I think Bush should be impeached. I think he should be arrested. I make no secret of that. Let other web sites navigate politically, trying to ‘frame’ the progressive agenda effectively. Fuck that. I am not about that. I’m about frog-marching corrupt politicians, no matter what party they belong to. I’m a proud Democrat, but I won’t tolerate corruption from anyone. And all the kiddies that are afraid to wade into the deep end, take a look at this:
To Interview Bob Fertik:
http://democrats.com/contact
According to a poll released by Zogby today, 42% of Americans say they would favor impeachment proceedings if President Bush misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.
“The results of this Zogby poll are astonishing and reveal the depth of anger among the American people over President Bush’s lies about Iraq, even among 25% of Republicans” said Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com.
“These results are especially remarkable because few Americans are even aware of the secret Downing Street Memos, which prove that President Bush was determined to invade Iraq long before he consulted Congress or the United Nations in the fall of 2002,” Fertik said. “These official minutes of Prime Minister Blair’s national security council meeting prove ‘the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy’ – that Bush knowingly lied to the world to sell his war plans.”
Democrats.com helped create a grassroots coalition at AfterDowningStreet.org to break through the blackout of the “Downing Street Minutes” by the White House, Congress and the American news media. This coalition worked closely with Rep. John Conyers on his June 16 hearings about the memos, which was attended by 35 House Democrats and broadcast by C-Span.
On July 23, grassroots activists around the country will hold events to mark the third anniversary of the Downing Street Minutes. These events will feature veterans of the Iraq War, families of those killed in Iraq, Members of Congress, and experts on the Iraq War. The theme of these events is to “Mourn the Losses, Learn the Truth, and Investigate the Lies.”
Following the publication of the Downing Street Minutes in May, Democrats.com also renewed its campaign to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. This campaign, at ImpeachCentral.com, has collected 20,000 petition signatures so far. Democrats.com members are lobbying Members of Congress to introduce Articles of Impeachment to begin the impeachment process, which requires a majority vote in the House of Representatives before a trial is held in the Senate. Democrats.com hosts the ImpeachBush Meetup, which has 295 chapters and nearly 6,000 members.
Several Democratic Members have said Bush’s lies might be impeachable offenses, including Rep. Charlie Rangel. The Democratic Parties of Wisconsin and Nevada have officially called for Bush’s impeachment, as well as the Green Party, Veterans for Peace, and numerous Web sites including ImpeachBush.org and Impeach.TV.
Before President Bush spoke to soldiers at Fort Bragg on Tuesday, Democrats.com urged Bush to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by Thanksgiving, and to resign by New Year’s Day to “let a new team put American on a new road to security and peace.”
According to Fertik, “President Bush gave a prime-time speech with all the trappings of the Presidency to urge Americans to ‘stay the course’ in Iraq. Bush’s speech fell on deaf ears because the American people know that we are in Iraq only because of the deliberate lies told by the President. The War in Iraq has already cost the lives of 1,744 young Americans and added $200 billion to our national debt, but it has only increased global terrorism and made America less secure. Americans want a change, and if President Bush won’t change his policies, then the American people will change their President through impeachment,” Fertik said.
Recent polls show Americans have turned against the war in Iraq. A solid majority believes the war was a mistake, and over 60% of Americans believe Bush has no plan for winning – or leaving. The Zogby poll shows Bush’s speech actually reduced his dismal approval rating by one more point to 43%. This is the lowest approval rating for a President in his fifth year in the history of polling. At this stage in his Presidency, Bill Clinton’s approval ratings were 60%, and they rose to 70% when Republicans tried to impeach him for a personal weakness.
Democrats.com, founded in 2000, is the largest online community of Democratic Party activists with over 300,000 subscribers. Democrats.com recently co-founded AfterDowningStreet.org to end the media blackout of the explosive Downing Street Minutes and to demand a Congressional investigation of grounds for impeachment.
EGGGG-CELLENT!!
</Mr. Burns>
I just stayed true to myself. Forget all the strategy advice and the prism of realism–what should we do?
Win back the House and impeach Bush. We could get our honor back.
It’s not hard to do. It really isn’t.
Those results don’t surprise me too much, think about all the anger that we have regarding Bush’s “elections” in 2000 and 2004. For a lot of us, his Presidency has never been legitimate; his actions have reinforced my thoughts on it.
</bush>
is a global poll on the ‘depth of anger’ against GWB
for what he has done.
The meter would run off the scale.
booman,
It’s your site and all, but the scrollable frame within the content window thing is – IMO – most obnoxious. I hate having to move the mouse in order to get set focus on the new frame so I can spacebar or pgdown through the text. Would much rather click a link to read the material below the fold and get to the comment forums. JMO. –M
the scrollbar annoys many people. However, this is an email I received, so I couldn’t easily link to it.
I understand your annoyance.
I like the scroll boxes. I mean, what’s the difference between scrolling down the page or inside a box, same amount of clicks and taps required.
It was just a nit-pick anyway. Certainly not anywhere near as important as the content contained within the scroll-frame. –M
I like the scroll boxes. They work well, and allow a good bit of content in a small space. No accounting for taste, I guess.
Bill Clinton for lying about sex looks more puerile every day.
Fuck you, Henry Hyde.
The impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about sex looks more puerile every day.
Look on the bright side. Impeaching Clenis for lying about a BJ certainly lowered the bar for what we consider “high crimes and misdemeanors”. Who knows? We could wind up thanking Ken Starr, Bob Barr, Tom DeLay, Lindsay Graham, and all those other wonderful Republicans for making Shrub’s impeachment possible.
Funny how things work out…
Speaking as a Clinton hater (for his policies and what he did to my former party, not for his sexual peccadilloes) who was deadset against impeachment, I totally disagree with you.
Lowering the bar for impeachment sets a dangerous precedent. I’m all in favor of restoring powers to Congress that the executive branch has coopted (war making being numero uno, IMO), but the framers never intended Congress to be able to remove a president simply on a whim, and as a firm believer in checks and balances, I think it would be a grave mistake to make it impossible to govern if Congress and the White House happen to be in different hands.
Without lowering the bar at all, there are serious arguments that our current president should be impeached. If we want to make them, let’s make them on the basis of serious, pre-Clinton standards.
I’m a firm believer in checks and balances myself. And I certainly don’t believe in impeaching Presidents for light and transient causes(if the Clinton case doesn’t fall into that category, nothing does). And I totally agree that the sort of flimsy standards used by Hyde & Co. should be the last ones to use in any impeachment case.
What I meant–and should have expressed more clearly–is that the Clinton case made a possible Bush impeachment easier to win in the court of public opinion. Leave aside the legal aspects for a moment. It was Clinton’s popularity that bailed him out in the end. People who accepted that he didn’t tell the truth about his escapades still didn’t consider his misdeed impeachable. The only Republican talking points that cut any ice were the endless refrains about the rule of law and how no one should be above the law.
My point is that these same arguments can now be turned around and used against Bush, but with far better justification than was the case with Clinton.
What liberal bloggers have been telling each other for the past two years–that lying about going to war is a lot worse than lying about a blow job–is finally starting to resonate with the larger public. And the public has–thanks to the Clinton-bashing Republicans–become accustomed to the idea that presidential lying is a serious matter, possibly serious enough to warrant an impeachment investigation.
Just explainin’…
But I’m not sure I agree with this either:
I think you’re right about the specific political dynamics of the impeachment fight, but wrong about where we ended up. The bottom line, as you know, is that the public overwhelmingly rejected impeachment, and saw it as an overstretch. One would hope that if the GOP tried to make this argument about a Bush impeachment, everyone would smell the rank hypocrisy. But the (equally hypocritical given their Clinton impeachment cheerleading) press would happily do the job for them.
I think a lot of Americans think that “impeachment” is another word for “congressional overreaching.”
So purely in terms of the politics, I actually think that the Clinton impeachment — which was entirely partisan and largely rejected by the public — is not a helpful precedent for any attempted Bush impeachment. In this sense, Watergate was a much better precedent. It’s the one truly bipartisan presidential impeachment in US history, and the only one that had clear public support.
I agree that the Watergate investigation is in theory by far the better precedent to follow, not least because of its bipartisan nature. Which is precisely why in practice its applicability is limited in the present case.
There are no present-day Republican equivalents of Howard Baker or Lowell Weicker. And I can hardly visualize a House Judiciary Committee where half the Republican membership votes for an impeachment article against a Republican President, as was the case in ’74. Of course, it would be nice if Chuck Hagel or Lincoln Chaffee got on board, but don’t count on it.
Any serious impeachment effort against Bush will have to be narrowly partisan by necessity and will therefore have to hurdle a high wall of public incredulity. Therefore, any talking point that transcends partisanship, such as the “rule of law” argument, is worth considering.
I’m not sure what effect it has myself. Back in Andrew Johnson’s impeachment it was used in very much the same way.. as a political weapon (by the Republicans of that day as well.. eep) during the tumultuous times of the Reconstruction.
Impeachment used in this way is about power, pure and simple, used by people either power blind or ideologically mad. The Republicans didn’t really set a precendent during the Clinton impeachment since they had already set it with Johnson. Nixon tucked tail and ran before the nation could actually impeach him (and Ford pardoned him.. and Carter pardoned Agnew.. what the hell was up with THAT).
So, really, the real precedent will be set by impeaching Bush. He would be the first President to be impeached for -good cause!-
Ain’t it hard to stumble
And land in some funny lagoon?
Ain’t it hard to stumble
And land in some muddy lagoon?
Especially when it’s nine below zero
And three o’clock in the afternoon.
For some reason I heard Bob Dylan’s ‘Outlaw Blues’ when I read this. Well I might look like Betty Ford, but I feel just like Madame DeFarge. You’re my hero Boo – say it loud, I’m amphibian and I’m proud.
So much has shifted in the last month or so regarding public opinion regarding the Bush Administration. And judging from the Op-Eds on Bush’s speech and the reality on the ground, I have a feeling it’s not just a blip.
I’m feeling cautiously optimistic.
I haven’t been able to locate the specific polling data, but here’s the presser from Zogby International. Notable excerpts include:
Impeachment is overwhelmingly rejected in the Red States–just 36% say they agree Congress should use it if the President is found to have lied on Iraq, while 55% reject this view; in the “Blue States” that voted for Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry in 2004, meanwhile, a plurality of 48% favors such proceedings while 45% are opposed.
A large majority of Democrats (59%) say they agree that the President should be impeached if he lied about Iraq, while just three-in-ten (30%) disagree. Among President Bush’s fellow Republicans, a full one-in-four (25%) indicate they would favor impeaching the President under these circumstances, while seven-in-ten (70%) do not. Independents are more closely divided, with 43% favoring impeachment and 49% opposed.
The other results of the poll are just about as bleak as these for Mr. Bush. The poll was taken on June 27-29 of 905 “likely” voters (though I’m not sure how much meaning that term has at this stage of an election cycle).
Wow! Just, wow.
What were we saying a while back about Dems regaining some ground in Western states?
Doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen next week, alas, but that is, to me, just a staggering stat from the land of ranchers and wide-open spaces and guns and Republicans.
I talked briefly this afternoon to a well-connected friend who lives just outside DC but within the Beltway, who said lots of political happenings hopping in town now. I said I wanted to see those war criminals in the dock at The Hague. Dream on, quoth she, not going to happen.
Well . . . maybe, maybe not. Let’s have a few more weeks, months of numbers like these.
Double Wow.
Here is how Americans felt about Pres. Clinton being impeached.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER FOR THE PEOPLE & THE PRESS
Even if you take the Early Oct 1998 poll which looks the worse for Pres. Clinton, only 32 percent of Americans favor impeachment. That is 10 percent less than President Bush and please keep in mind that everybody knew about the blue dress at the time. I am not sure how many Americans know about the Downing Street Memo.
Does anybody have any statistics on how many Americans know about the Downing Street Memo? I wish they would ask that question in the polls.
I know many, including you oh Booman (hugs), were skeptical about calling for impeachment because of possible repercussions to the Democratic party and its supporters, but those numbers mean that we, who support this movement, have nothing to fear. I’m glad to see you make such a strong statement about what this is really all about: getting those criminals out of the WH one way or the other.
Sidebar: Is Conyers still taking the DSM discussion to the House floor this evening? I’ve already done my 2 diaries today, but I’m willing to put up a live diary for the event if people are interested.
I hereby grant you my diaries for today. You may click to post. š
You have power? All I got was a cookie. š
(Thanks.) š
Go ahead Nip. Man Eegee bestoweth, and you receiveth.
I bow humbly before my masters.
HA! YOU WISH! š
deflate my enlarged head. I may not fit through the door otherwise.
Sidebar: who said you can walk out the door anyway? š
There’s a story about immigration highlighted on Conyer’s blog that…ahem…may be on interest to you.
I forgot he set a blog up, adding that to the bookmarks!
Once again, we have evidence that doing the right thing would be popular, but Democrats shy away from it because Republicans tell them it would be bad for them.
This is a crucial point:
“…but Democrats shy away from it because Republicans tell them it would be bad for them.”
Democrats, whether out of ineptness or simple naivete, tend to retreat whenever the Republicans say they’re out of line. When Democrats are really out of line, the Republicans just shut up and let them injure themselves, just like the Dems did when the GOP impaled itself on the Schiavo fiasco. When the Democrats are actually managing to do some damage to the GOP, that’s when they trot Cheney out to the talk shows to talk about left-wing extremism.
Democrats need to come to terms with the fact that their enemies aren’t offering them helpful advice.
There are 1744 American voices that have been silenced……forever, because of a lie. There are thousands upon thousands of Iraqi dreams laid waste because of a lie. The bottom line is that this evil fuck should never, ever be given a pass just because the task of removing him will be difficult. It is silence and complacency that has allowed him to bring us down this far and it is time for it to stop, now.
John Conyers and the Out of Iraq Congressinal Caucus, I believe 52 members, have just filed a FOIA (freedom of imformation act)request, seeking documents relating to the Downing Street Minutes. They surely aren’t wasting time checking to see which way the wind is blowing. They are the wind, and they need all the support they can get, and if 40 something percent of Americans are ready to impeach, then that just makes the job a little easier.
Peace
I like that!
To the nay-sayers regarding impeachment, I’d say there’s a tipping point that’s being reached (or at least damned close to being reached) with regard to public opinion. The thing to do is to keep hammering away at the DSM: Bush did in fact lie. The whole Iraq war sales pitch was a pack of lies. The evidence is there! Let’s hope Conyers continues his excellent work in exposing the Charlatain in Chief.
WIll it ever happen? We do not know but what I now feel in my heart and sould is the obligation to my country to serve it well and in my opinion, that means marching all these criminals right staright to jail. Bush never has been and never will be this grammy’s president.
Bravo! I’m with you.
they won’t move without 15 Republicans co-sponsoring. kinda conflicts with the “low hanging fruit” theory. Impeachment won’t happen without the support of Jim Leach (R Iowa.)
see my earlier comment here for elaboration.
And I just deleted it.
You know it is truly amazing what a few weeks can do. When I stated my support for impeachment on dkos a few weeks ago and felt that we had to keep pounding away, I received low ratings for my perfectly civil comments. Like what I said had no useful purpose. What a difference a few weeks make.
in favor of impeachment since bush was first elected and said so often and as loud as I could…
Now we have grounds and an ever building case.
I have a google alert for Impeachment news, and I am getting multiple alerts a day for this and not just from “Dem” sites or sources….More and more Reps. are talking this way..
I am very encouraged at the events unfolding and the very good coverage all of this recent news is getting.
See my tag line, I saw June 12th as the turning point in this whole deal.
Booman I say pound this dough until its ready to put in the red hot oven. We need to go full force on this…
My blog is dedicated to the impeachment of this president….If I disappear from the site, please call FBI, no that won’t work, ‘just ask Shirlstars’….
If we do what we can (in 2006), Bush won’t make it to 2008.