Did anyone NOT see this coming after another Democratic Congressional Leadership very special “sternly worded letter” to Mukasey (a man that would never have been Attorney General if Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein had any sense of dignity) about subpoenas being ignored by Miers and Rove?
Did anyone NOT think that the House Democrats would ultimately waver for a possible cave on telecom immunity after Reid let Rockefeller’s telecom immunity bill pass the Senate, despite the fact that nearly 60% of people are against telecom immunity?
Did anyone NOT think that the RNC would decide to just stop looking for the emails that were erased on purpose, despite the fact that they were ORDERED to be turned over to Congress?
And while we are at it, does anyone think that a republican Congress would have at least pursued inherent contempt against Rove and Miers if they were Democrats? Or that Mukasey would have been confirmed (hint, think Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood and the horrific crime of an undocumented household worker)? Or that impeachment charges against Mukasey would not be pursued for blowing off Congress about waterboarding, illegal wiretapping or ignoring subpoenas?
Is Congress dead?
Back in 2006, the cry was “we can’t do anything because we don’t have a majority”. Then, “we don’t have 60 votes in the Senate” was the cry. And then “we don’t have a veto proof majority” was the cry. And now, there isn’t even an attempt to do anything constructive until 2009 – with the hope and assumption that a Democrat will be in the White House.
Way to do your jobs, Congressional Democratic majorities and leadership.
Does Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and others in leadership positions realize the following:
- If McCain becomes President, he will ignore Congress much the same way as Bush has.
- If and when the republicans are back in the majority, they will NOT hesitate to use whatever tools they have at their disposal to neuter a Democratic President or a Democratic Congressional minority.
- That they are setting a horrific and dangerous precedent by letting all of these criminal actions slide in the name of “hoping for a bigger majority in the future”.
- That they are aiding and abetting all of this lawbreaking – complicit in the actions of Mukasey, Gonzales and Ashcroft as well as Rove, Bush, Rice, Cheney, Goodling, Rumsfeld and all others who have lied under oath, and
- That they are breaking their oath to uphold the Constitution as well as their promise to those who they are supposed to serve, and
At this point, there are three options. Pursue impeachment, pursue inherent contempt or effectively render Congress as meaningless. If they do not take option one or option two, then they might as well resign and let those who are actually interested in the Constitution do their jobs for them.
This is a disgrace – how anyone in any leadership position can’t see (or thinks it is a good idea to ignore) the consequences of their inactions is beyond me. And if the reasoning is, as my good friend thereisnospoon says, “cynical manipulation” for political gain, then how is that different from the “party before country” that we have seen from the republican party?
To bank on enough people not knowing all that is being done (or being allowed to be done) in the hopes of convincing enough people to put more Democrats in Congress so they can get bigger majorities is the height of disingenuousness. It is self serving and renders any argument of what the Bush administration is or isn’t doing moot.
Congress has the power. It has the power of the purse to stop spending over $200,000 EVERY MINUTE in Iraq. It has the power to pursue inherent contempt (as Kagro X has pointed out so very well). It has the power of oversight, and to impeach.
Leadership has made a calculated decision to not use any of those powers, and to let tens of billions be wasted, hundreds of US troops lives be lost, thousands of US troops lives be forever altered, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people’s lives ruined, to let laws be broken with impunity; all in the name of “if you just give us more power, it won’t be that way anymore”.
To that I say, bullshit.
You have a job. You have been given tools to perform that job. Use them or let someone else who actually cares about this country and the Constitution use them.
But don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining and I should buy an umbrella from you too.
and as I point out in Booman’s post right below this one, Conyers knows damn well that there is more than “no choice other than a lawsuit”.
Book ’em, Danno.
Time for the American public to get a civics lesson on impeachment.
There’s another reason, of course, why the silence.
The current House term is ending, and everyone needs to tend to their own re-election (those in contested seats).
I actually think it’s better they do nothing that do something WORSE.
They also understand that the smallest misstep will be seized upon and trumpeted as a reason to throw the Democrats out of Congress in the general election.
They can’t pursue impeachment now because it would be a rallying cry for the right, uniting them in hatred against the Democrats.
The time to pursue that was right after their first few bills failed. I understood the argument – we have so much to fix after all these years of Republican rule. I know impeachment was seen as something that was more of a feel-good than a genuine remedy. (They were SO wrong on that point.)
But the first veto – that should have been their clue. They don’t control anything without a veto-proof majority. That is true, to a large degree.
However. There are plenty of Republicans whose constituents are as frustrated as we are. You’d think a few smart Dems and Repubs would have started to get together, to bridge the divide, to try to get something useful done, if for no other reason than to protect their own seats.
But then there are the lobbyists. They’re all tied to that mother’s milk.
The greatest thing about Obama’s campaign is that it shows there is money for the taking if people just ask for it. We will help. They shouldn’t depend on lobbyists. And all the ads in the world won’t buy you the seat if people don’t think you’re on their side (that’s what Romney taught us).
Anyway – I think it’s easy for us to rant from outside. But we don’t know what they’re facing on the inside, what strongarm techniques are being applied, what worse horrors have been threatened. I think we need to hold their feet to the fire but not to the point where we burn their feet off, is what I’m trying to say. 😉
My question is this: will it be any easier to impeach after the election? I think not. Newcomers to Congress will be reluctant to get bogged down in impeachment. The problems facing the Congress and President in 2009 will be horrendous. They will all “move on.”
Makes me sick.
I’d argue we already missed the impeachment window. It was a two year process with Nixon, and the Dems had the help of the CIA, I mean the press, in uncovering what happened in a way that made it so obvious to everyone that even the Republicans went along with the impeachment of one of their own.
We didn’t have that this time around. Half the CIA was promoting the war in Iraq (even as a significant faction within was opposing it) and the Republicans were still supporting both the war and Bush, all the moreso because of allegations of the election having been stolen. So there was no way an effort would have succeeded. It would have ratcheted up the hate factor between partisans, and it would have stalled the chance to get other legislation passed.
BUT.
Once Congress saw all that was going to happen anyway, they should have moved swiftly to impeachment hearings, and they should have started with Cheney, as Boxer told an LA audience they could do, if they wanted. There was never any point doing that the other way around.
I’m not trying to excuse them. But again, it looks so simple from where we sit. It’s not so simple from where they sit.
I agree. There will be no will for any indictments after the election.
Again, more of a reason to be furious with Pelosi and Conyers.
Personally, I think Conyers has had his life threatened by the Powers That Be, and he’s laid off all the many things his committee should be working on, especially impeachment of Cheney and Bush.
But I’m too radical for this site some of the time.
That wouldn’t surprise me at all. Is there any evidence of that, or is that just your hunch?
Just a hunch based on my many years following politics as an activist and concerned citizen.
You’re not alone, Isis. I have no doubt that many of our representatives have been made offers they can’t refuse.
yes, and there is a link in this diary to a post that quotes Obey (head of appropriations) as saying just that.
But why not bring up bill after bill and let Bush veto them, or the republicans vote against the interests of the country?
Then at least the D’s can say they really did try….
Now that’s a good point.
And why not put forth the ideal legislation – the stuff that would never pass anyway, like Single Payer, to make people hunger for a Democratically controlled White House AND Congress…!
My fallout with Schumer began with his contribution to the coup against Dean, and concluded with his role as a stalwart in the nomination of Mukasey. I even took advantage of the opportunity to reply to his Hill blog post on why Mukasey was a good as we could expect. I don’t think he’s listening.
Schumer is S-C-U-M.
I’m one disgusted New Yorker, that’s for sure. Schumer has got to go, has got to get voted out of office. He’s worse than a parasite, he is genuinely explosively destructive.
What a pig.
Yes, Resign Chuckie, Resign and go the fuck to Hell with Cheney and Wolfowitz and Perle.
I lived in NYC for a number of years and always supported him.
Until the Mukasey debacle. That was a new low, even for him.
I recall a line from The Big Chill. Tom Beringer, who plays an actor, talks about how manipulative and calculating the agents and producers in Hollywood can be.
“How was I to know what they were like? They looked like us and talked like us, how was I to know they were lying, cheating scum?”
depth of reality.
who else, pilgrim?
What makes any of you believe that this Congress and the the Democrats in charge of it aren’t just as complicit?
They see what Bush is doing with the “unitary executive” and they like it. They are waiting for the time when they feel that they will be able to turn the tables and impose one-party rule and rubber stamp things over the GOP.
The difference is the GOP will fight back on every goddamn inch of ground.
I agree, and don’t think that my posts assumes otherwise….