Bob Fertik Reports on Conference: "How Can We 'Take Back America' Without Impeaching Bush/Cheney? [View All]

http://tba2007.confabb.com/conferences/tba2007/sessions

How Can We "Take Back America" Without Impeaching Bush and Cheney?

Submitted by Bob Fertik on June 19, 2007 - 6:31am. ImpeachForChange
Here at the top progressive political gathering of the year, every topic is on the table - except impeachment.

Thanks to the efforts of Philadelphia impeachment activist Jane Dugdale, David Swanson, Glen Ford, and I held a "self-organizing session" on impeachment. But it wasn't on the printed schedule and it was in a remote section of the exhibit space. Even so, we attracted 20 committed impeachment activists from around the country.

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David covered the top ten reasons for impeachment, drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of the publicly available evidence of Bush's crimes. As David made clear, we have more than enough evidence on all ten issues to establish "probable cause" - the standard for a criminal indictment. Since the role of the House is simply to vote on Articles of Impeachment - the equivalent of an indictment - the House really has little to do. They could simply send Articles of Impeachment on to the Senate for a trial.

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What's stopping Pelosi? In a word, politics. Pelosi probably agrees with us (and Conyers) on the reasons for impeachment, but she sees overwhelming political obstacles. In her view (not ours):

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Of course we have answers to all of these objections:

- In 1974, Democrats didn't have a 2/3 majority when they began the impeachment process for Richard Nixon, but it didn't matter - after the House Judiciary Committee adopted three Articles of Impeachment, Republican Senators knew the case for impeachment was so overwhelming that they went to the White House and urged Nixon to resign to avoid a humiliating trial.

- In 1974, Democrats got lots of other good work done.
As John Nichols pointed on in The Genius of Impeachment, every time Congress has considered impeachment, the party running Congress won the next election.

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