35 Articles of Impeachment Introduced Against Bush

vsync64 writes "Last night, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) spent 4 hours reading into the Congressional Record 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. Interestingly, those articles (63-page PDF via Coral CDN) include not just complaints about signing statements and the war in Iraq, but also charges that the President "Sp[ied] on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment,' 'Direct[ed] Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens,' and 'Tamper[ed] with Free and Fair Elections.' These are issues near and dear to the hearts of many here, so it's worth discussing. What little mainstream media coverage there is tends to be brief (USA Today, CBS News, UPI, AP, Reuters)." The (Democratic) House leadership has said that the idea of impeachment is "off the table." The Judiciary Committee has not acted on articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney introduced by Kucinich a year ago.

History will do more to condemn Bush

than Kucinich ever could. Many historians consider Bush to be one of the worst presidents in US history. And the funny thing is that Bush still believes that history will prove him RIGHT.....

Plus, the Democrats are looking to rout the Republicans in November at least in the Senate and House(President is still a bit up in the air), doing something showboating like this can only benefit the Republicans.

Sex vs. Violence

How interesting is it that attempting to impeach a president because he got a BJ and lied about it gets so much more publicity than one who kills thousands in an unjust war, breaks the constitution, and effectively turns a "free" country into a police-state. /me weeps for the future

Re:Sex vs. Violence

I highly agree. To me this is worse than watergate and yet both houses in congress sit by and do nothing. Really every representative in congress who does nothing should not be voted back. They are as much to blame as the president, maybe even more so because they gave him most of his power. But if G.W. got a blowjob by Condolezza (SIC) Rice there he would suddenly be impeached like crazy.

Re:Sex vs. Violence

"attempting to impeach a president because he got a BJ"

Correction. "Impeached a president because a lying about a BJ". Yes, Bill was impeached. Look it up.

The very best thing about this story...

Is that I finally have a good reason to use the phrase "Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D'OH!)" in casual conversation.

Kucinich...

... is awesome. He's the only candidate I would have bothered driving to the polls for, despite the fact that when I got there diebold would have just erased my vote.

nobody in congress seriously wants to impeach

While I applaud Dennis Kucinich for introducing his articles of impeachment in the House, I also realize that there's zero chance that the House will do anything but sit on them. The current Congress is filled with chickenshit liars and cowards. These are mostly the same spineless toadies who voted for Bush's fascist Patriot Act and his bogus Iraq War. There's no way they're going to impeach him. If they did, they'd only be implicating themselves. After all, they colluded with Bush to make it all happen. They rubber stamped his belligerence at almost every turn, most Democrats included. And to the ones who said they didn't know that Bush was lying to them when they voted for the Iraq war, I say BULLSHIT. The rest of us knew. The rest of us sat in disbelief in front on our TVs every night while the Big Lie was played out for us. A few of us protested against the inevitable nightmare. The Congress and the corporate media ignored us. And only now, when it's popular and risk-free to do so, do they cry foul.

Re:...Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

Actually, I think it's a good idea to force representatives to read out loud any legislation that they propose/endorse. Maybe then they'll actually read the fine details instead of just signing off on legislation that lobbyists wrote up for them.

Re:...Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

Well, I agree with your point there.
Now there needs just needs to be a Constitutional Amendment which requires the ENTIRE US TAX CODE to be read into the Congressional Record every single year for it to be legally binding! Of course, that would either require CSPAN to get another satellite or for the tax code to be shortened into the flat tax...

Then again, I was under the impression that "earmarks" were not required to be read into the record either? Whoops... confusing the Congressional Record's purpose with that of Official Congressional Business as Usual...
What? What was its purpose again? ...just a thought.

You don't seem to understand the point...

Congressman Dennis Kucinich read off all thirty-five articles of impeachment, each one accompanied by a great deal of supporting evidence, so that the other Congress Critters couldn't avoid hearing about it, and that at least people watching C-SPAN could witness it for themselves (as he probably knew it would get ignored by the traditional media). The vile actions of this administration need to rest on the consciences of all our representatives, whether complicit or just complacent.

If you want to complain about wasting time in Congress, look up which party has done more filibustering in recent years. :)

Re:You don't seem to understand the point...

No. There is still such a thing as a public that pays attention to these things. C-SPAN may not be your favorite viewing but plenty of people watch on a regular basis. Also, after six years of crimes, fraud, and self-dealing I think that we can afford four hours of truth.

If we were to allow Congressman Kucinich ten minutes of airtime for every legally questionable act by the Bush administration, he would still have many hours of airtime left today. Or how about we do it one to one? One minute of airtime for every minute used up in White House press briefings by their fake journalist [wikipedia.org]?

Four hours is a drop in the bucket. My only regret is that Dubya didn't have to stand in a stress position and listen to all of it and then recite it back.

Re:Silliness

I don't understand why this is silly. If "GWB's assault on the Constitution" doesn't merit impeachment, what does?

Re:Silliness

I don't understand why this is silly. If "GWB's assault on the Constitution" doesn't merit impeachment, what does?

a blowjob.

Re:Too little too late...

The benefit I see from this is that it will go on the permanent record that SOMEONE did know what the fuck was going on in the world and decided to stand up and point it out. Regardless of whether he is booted out of office or not it is now a stain upon his much anticipated "historical legacy".

Re:Too little too late...

One could argue it is beneficial to tarnish a president's record with an impeachment when warranted by his conduct because it becomes a part of history. Particularly if this conduct is more than perjury over sexual conduct. Clinton's impeachment was a joke.

Re:Too little too late...

why not? Is Bush incapable of doing further damage to the US in the next 7 months? I think not. Would an impeachment send a message to the current presidential candidates that they need to do something different and that they need to pay attention? I think so. If you had a family member in Iraq, and an impeachment led to a withdrawal of troops, would it have real benefit then?

Re:Too little too late...

You're dead on, I think. Kucinich's primary motivation for introducing articles of impeachment against Bush (and Cheney in the past) seems to be to stop us from going to war with Iran. That would seriously damage the US!

Re:Too little too late...

There are several benefits to impeaching Bush now:

(1) It will establish a precedent of impeaching presidents who are grossly incompetent and overstep the constitutional limits on their power. Future presidents will think twice before starting wars on false pretenses or torturing prisoners of war or illegally spying on citizens without warrants. Failing to impeach him would imply that these actions are acceptable, which WILL have an effect on future presidents' actions.

(2) It will show the world that America realizes that we made a huge mistake by electing Dubya twice. Right now, we're the laughing stock of the world (see any opinion poll taken after 2003). This decline in world opinion has real economic and political consequences that, for the most part, haven't been felt yet. Impeaching Bush would help to show the world that America always does the right thing, albeit after exhausting every alternative.

(3) It will remind Americans that impeachments can be used for something other than lying about blowjobs. Sometimes I cynically suspect that Republicans impeached Clinton for lying about his affair because they had the foresight to suspect that one of their own would be in this position today. (No, I don't actually believe this, but it's funny how convenient this sequence of events turned out to be for them...) It's a lot harder to push impeachment proceedings through Congress when the only impeachment anyone alive today remembers is one that centered around a trivial, non-job-performance related non-crime. Impeachments should be about high crimes and gross incompetence related to the duties of the office of the President, and impeaching Bush will help to restore some measure of seriousness to this procedure.

Re:Too little too late...

it's completely unfair to compare bush to a mass murderer.
no petty mass murderer has ever been responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people.

Re:Pointless and stupid

It needs to be done regardless of how long GW has left in his term. If we are going to pretend that the USA is governed by the rule of law, GW and his cronies need to be held accountable for the way they have violated the constitution. It should be done now to show that the checks and balances built into the system actually work. By not moving on these articles congress is exposing the fraud that the American democratic republic has become, which may be the point Kucinich is trying to make in the first place.

Re:Pointless and stupid

What's the point?

As the American Freedom Campaign put it in an email to members this morning:

"The founders of our country feared more than anything else the prospect of an executive who put his own power and desires above the Constitution. Congress was given the power of impeachment so that it could remove any president who committed the high crime of violating the Constitution during his (or her) term in office.

A strong case can be made that no president in the history of this country is more deserving of impeachment than George W. Bush. If he is not impeached, the bar for impeachment will have been raised so high that it might as well no longer exist. Future presidents will know that they can violate the Constitution at will, confident in the fact that Congress does not have the courage as an institution to do anything about it.

We cannot allow this to happen."

That's about as simple as it gets. Even if Bush only have seven months left, Congress has to set an example and exert its authority.

Disqualification from office

>Everyone knows Bush will be gone in seven months. What's the point?

There's a value beyond the symbolic one. Article I, Section 3 allows the outcome of impeachment and conviction to include "disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States". We've had convicted felons re-hired into the Executive branch before. Impeachment and conviction could remove the risk of something like that happening.

Re:For the readers from Europe ...

From http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/clinton/clin826.htm [usatoday.com] How impeachment works: The Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power of impeachment - the constitutional equivalent of an indictment - and gives the Senate the power to try all impeachments. The first step in removing the president is the approval of articles of impeachment by the House Judiciary Committee. A majority vote of the full House is then needed to impeach and send the case to trial in the Senate. The chief justice of the United States presides at the trial, and a two-thirds majority of those senators present is needed to convict. Conviction results in automatic removal from office. Most of the house and two thirds of the senate are needed, and they have to decise that he has committed a crime. If so, the person being impeached will be removed from office and the next in command takes the post. *shudders at a Cheney presidency*

Re:For the readers from Europe ...

IANACL (I am not a Constitutional lawyer) but the Impeachment process goes something like this:

1.) One or more Congressmen in the House of Representatives present the Articles of Impeachment for consideration.
2.) The House considers the Articles and says "yea" or "nay"; A yes vote (a simple majority is required) acts like an official indictment against the President. This is the actual "Impeachment" that everyone talks about. A common misunderstanding is that Impeachment means removal from office. That takes place in step three.
3.) If impeached, the Senate acts as the jury in a trial presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. If convicted (this part requires a 2/3ds majority of Senators), the President is then removed from office.

Two Presidents have ever been impeached. Andrew Johnson (succeeded Lincoln after his assassination) and Bill Clinton. Johnson resigned before his Senate trial and Clinton was aquitted. Richard Nixon was never officially impeached, but he resigned after it became clear that not only would be be impeached, but that the Senate would remove him from office.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment#United_States [wikipedia.org] The Wikipedia entry has more info.

Re:Kucinich should know the law

>all that is needed is approval from the Attorney General

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, requires approval from a judge for eavesdropping.

Even if the Attorney General could repeal laws, in this case the Justice Department had decided the program was illegal and Ashcroft refused to sign off on it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500864.html [washingtonpost.com]