Is it all about Madame Speaker?

Nancy says that she won't impeach because it's too divisive. And without taking into account the potential bipartisan groundswell of popular support that House investigations and hearings would generate, she wants us to believe that she can see into the future because she knows that removal by the Senate would fail.

I'm thinking the issue for Nancy is one, or some combination, of three things:

1. Blackmail. Bush and Cheney have major dirt on her.
2. A deal with the devil. She's made a secret quid pro quo agreement of some sort with Bush and Cheney.
3. Vanity. She doesn't want her name forever associated with the grimmest Constitutional duty the Speaker is charged with overseeing.

Any other ideas?

hate to say it, but damn the torpedoes, Bush has shoveled shit to both Republicans and Democrats and is one still standing.

although she always speaks well of me - yuk -yuk!!!!

If Bush and Cheney were impeached. Nancy Pelosi would become the first woman President. Enter Hillary who already has her name on that distinction. Also Nancy might think it better for history to record that the first woman President was elected by the people instead of seizing power by Impeachment.

:nopity:

And, if Nancy is holding back because of some agreement she has with Hillary, they're both traitors.

I wonder whether she has been shown the edge of the economic abyss that this nation is about to plunge into and warned not to give the lemmings anything to hold onto. I have seen one or two images of her where she appears shell-shocked about something.

she is placing a permanent bad mark on the first woman Speaker of the House by failing to do her job.

It is not up to her to decide whether or not to follow the Constitution, so she is just as guilty as those she is covering up for. This will be a blemish on an unprecedented event in United States history. The history books could have read very differently. Pelosi could have been a hero. Instead, she will has tarnished this momentous event.

...she doesn't think it's the right thing to do.

5. Maybe it's not the right thing to do.

Those are two difficult-to-hear reasons.

Others here, and elsewhere, have compiled and documented the impeachable offenses of these criminals. Go educate yourself.

Read my post more carefully. In a list of reasons why Nancy Pelosi did not opt for impeachment, two were left off the list:
1) she may not think it is the right thing to do,
2) it may actually not BE the right thing to do.

Those are two variables--whether we want to hear them or not, if we're being logical.

Your two points are not logical variables. At best, they're absurdities.

What the Bush* Cabal has done is Criminal. Destraying evidence is Criminal. Doing UnConstitutional things is Criminal. IMO not holding Criminals accountable is Criminal...

and that forcing a vote on starting the issue will (1) divide Democrats and (2) unite repubs. Not necessarily the best strategy in the months leading to a presidential election

It has to be that she's being blackmailed, or that she's secretly on the side of Bush! Who cares whether an impeachment will work, or whether it will end up destroying the country!

Not only would Impeachment work and happen but it would put into the public realm all of the coverups and incompetence of the Administration. We don't need removal from office to enter the history books with accountability...

Starting a formal impeachment inquiry involves a vote by the full House to authorize and direct the House Judiciary Committee to conduct such an inquiry and to report back to the House with recommendations. The Nixon impeachment inquiry started with a vote of 404-10 (this was a year before the "smoking gun" came out). The Clinton impeachment inquiry vote attracted the support of 31 Democrats. At this point, I don't see any repubs voting to start a formal impeachment inquiry and can easily see more than enough blue dogs etc voting against it for it to lose.

Democrats have a substantial majority in the House..

who are exceedingly unlikely to support starting an impeachment inquiry if it lacks any repub support. Its just one of those unpleasant political facts of life.

They can't even line up to stop Bush's budget hissyfits, and you think impeachment would work easily?!? What planet are you from?

There are not the votes in either the House (to impeach), nor the Senate (to convict and throw out of office).

Personally I would certainly leave impeachment on the table as well as pretty much all other weapons. My goal wouldn't be conviction necessarilly, but to get as many concessions out of these guys as I possibly could.

so little confidence in herself that she allows herself to be smacked around like a red-headed stepchild by the most unpopular president in our history. I think a major factor is the dems fear of the M$M. They figure if they try to impeach they will be crucified by the media and would not get re-elected to their phony-baloney jobs.

when discussing impeachment of bush - the nixon-watergate hearings are often brought up as an example of how it led to nixon's resignation

Many in Congress were against impeaching Nixon, minds changed after the hearings and all the dirty little secrets emerged.

Watergate scandal was pretty much confined to the white house/nixon campaign. There was no vote in Congress authorizing nixon to break into the Watergate, and no vote in congress authorizing nixon to cover it up. Congress was not involved at all.

What we have now are impeachable offenses where CONGRESS was involved at one level or another. Be it though authorization votes, or rubber-stamping, ignorance or claims of being misled - whatever the excuse - Congress was involved.

to impeach bush-cheney would mean admitting complicity with those offenses. It would mean every congress-critter running for re(s)election would have to explain and defend their votes in a
(s)election year.

While the issue of impeachment may come up on the campaign trail, it's easier to squash those questions if there are no hearings or impeachment process occuring. Hearings/impeachment would not be in the headlines.

...which makes her an accomplice in supporting BushCo's anti-humanitarian crime wave and, by definition, a war criminal.

Giving her that "virtual tour" back in 2002 of the CIA's offshore black sites and revealing the use of water-boarding as a standard interrogation method was a genius move.

It made her complicit in the Bush administration's crimes against international treaties, as well as failure to uphold her oath of office to support and defend the Constitution. In this case, she specifically agreed to ignore gross violations of the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. It put her in the administration's pocket and completely eliminated her as a political threat.

And any time she might have considered killing a military appropriations bill or actually putting impeachment on the table, she might get a quick phone call or email from some untraceable source who would immediately remind her that she could be outed at any moment as a war criminal and that her continued cooperation is much appreciated.

If all the above's true, or close to it, then why is she still there? Why hasn't she simply resigned her speakership on some vanilla pretext and handed the job over to somebody not under BushCo's thumb? I have no idea, and that's another conversation anyway.

Note too that Rep. Jane Harman was one of the others briefed on these CIA hellholes. It's interesting that she also introduced one of the most radically totalitarian bills yet, HR 1955 or The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. If a republican had introduced this vile piece of draconian shit, democrats could have publicly denounced it as another move by the Bush administration to convert this country from a republic into a national security state. Not that congressional democrats would actually take such a principled stance, but at least they would have had a choice.

But by getting Harman to sponsor it, HR 1955 became a democratic initiative that the GOP could point to as evidence of bipartisan cooperation in the war on terror. And that would make it even more politically difficult to defund the Iraq occupation while trying to position themselves as ultra hawks in the money sucking scam on terrorism. So I think it's possible that the Bushies used Harman's vulnerability re torture to force her to introduce HR 1955.

Of course, nearly every democrat voted in favor of further restrictions on basic freedoms and guarantees of privacy. The bill passed by a 404 - 6 margin and is now in the Senate as S 1959, where it's almost certain to be approved -- particularly if Harry has any say in it -- and will surely be signed by The Commander Guy in one of those smiling, group hug fascist fest photo ops he's so big on. And another right wing assault on free speech, the right to freely assemble and the right to privacy will be lost -- killed by a tin-plated dictator and his terrified accomplices in the "opposition" party.

It's nice to have a little something on all your political enemies, or so J. Edgar Hoover always said as he was busily ruining lefties' lives while pretending to fight the "Red Stain of Godless International Communism."


wp

...Bush and Cheney may be real but it doesn't trump her constitutional duty. Anyway, whenever this administration has tried to say that Congressional leaders were fully apprised of its decisions, it turns out not to be quite true. The devil is, as they say, always in the details.

I hate her more than Bush

Let us first look at the current political landscape:

1) Bush is deeply unpopular with a majority of the American public.

2) The Republican Party is more divided than at any time in the past quarter of a century at least. Due to this and point 1, we have a fairly strong chance of re-taking the Presidency this year.

3) The Democrats have a slim majority in the House, with a fair number of that slim majority elected from traditionally conservative districts, and no majority to speak of in the Senate.

4) Until the outcome of the primary process is no longer in doubt, Pelosi and Reid are more or less custodial leaders of the Party until our Presidential nominee sets the agenda.

So let's bring impeachment hearings into this landscape. The two most immediate and tangible effects would be to (1) Change the public's focus from the Presidential race to impeachment, and (2) Unite the Republicans. The Republicans have tried every wedge issue they can think of to unite their party in this cycle and nothing has worked. This would, and the effect would be immediate and disastrous. Let me be completely clear on this, because it is important:

No Republican member of Congress has anything to lose by opposing impeachment. Vociferous supporters of impeachment are unlikely to have voted for a Republican in the first place. On the other hand, there are plenty of Democratic members who might stand to lose a lot by supporting it - first or second term members from relatively conservative districts, for instance. And these members have little to lose by opposing imeachment for much the same reason as the Republicans. And in fact there is another reason that these members might have to oppose it above and beyond the Republicans - namely to cement their national security / moderate-conservative stances with a skeptical moderate-conservative electorate. I think it is fair to say that some of the staunchest opposition to impeachment would come from within the party itself - not from the Republicans.

Back to the Presidential race for a second...

As I said, impeachment would either overshadow or fiercely compete with the election for the public's attention. It is likely that these two issues would in many ways merge into one - the impeachment becoming one of the prime issues of the campaign. This is especially true for our side, since our nominee will be a currently sitting Senator. Having to answer a constant barrage of impeachment questions will effectively drown out any message the candidate might have concerning any of their own policy objectives. Thus, the campaign would go as follows - the Democrats on the defensive about impeachment, against a united Republican party, operating from a position of strength, completely in control of its message. This is exactly the opposite of the current situation. Are you willing to impeach if it meant another 4-8 years of Republicans in the white house?

...you would need to live in a universe where your average DUer is your average American on political issues.

Most of us probably believe the same thing about our own views but we just keep it to ourselves. If you feel the need to make yourself feel superior by suggesting that I'm average, it's okay. I understand. But you'll forgive me if I put you on ignore, because I come here for thoughtful discussion, not to insult or to be insulted.

Not blackmail but a truth that could suggest, in amongst the mush, he's doing something *right*.

Not likely, how would I know, but there are plenty of options none of us is seeing.

I should get back to studying and exercise... who knows how everything will pan out. But why think the worst? Just so others here can accuse me of thinking doom and gloom? I'd rather hold a bazzoom.

She's absolutely right, no matter how much it bothers you, with all due respect.

I'm guessing that you think the respect due to me is zero. Otherwise, I think you might be more diplomatic than to refer to my points as "completely moronic" and offer no discussion of why you disagree. I know you've had a hard time of it, lately, OMC, and you have my sympathy. But characterizations like that are needlessly unkind and add nothing to the debate.

1. Blackmail. MORONIC

2. A deal with the devil. MORONIC

3. Vanity. MORONIC


Sorry, but I just call it as I see it. And no, I'm not calling you a moron. But those three reasons are most definitely moronic positions to hold.

You may you disagree with my views but your opposition is not self-evident, OMC. Maybe my points aren't self-evident to you, either. Nor do I have facts to support them. What I do have is frustration with Nancy Pelosi's dismissive attitude toward advocates of impeachment and I have a deep cynicism regarding "politics as usual," inside the beltway. It seems to me that, at that level of power, Ds and Rs fade away and voters cease to matter.

Now, do you have facts to support your position or just your own sense of the situation. Either would be perectly valid but, instead of rude characterizations of my position, why don't you tell me why you think what you think.

Now tell me... Do you need to present facts in order to be on pretty firm ground that the theory would in fact be a moronic one?

Not all things need to have facts presented in a detailed fashion, in order to stand on their own merits.

Declaring that Nancy is not putting impeachment forth due to her being blackmailed, having sold her soul to the devil, or for simply reasons of vanity, is just quite simply a moronic thing to say. Yes, that stands on its own merits.

Have a good day,

OMC

You're back on "ignore" where you should have stayed, all along. My mistake.

No biggie.

the WHY of it no longer matters.

let's concentrate on winning the general & saving this country from fascism.