Impeach Bush - Illinois to Drop a Bombshell

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 [TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=4 width="100%" border=0] [TBODY] [TR] [TD width="80%"][FONT face=Verdana size=2]April 22, 2006[/FONT]

[FONT face=Verdana color=#000080 size=4]Bush Impeachment - The Illinois State Legislature is Preparing to Drop a Bombshell[/FONT] [/TD] [TD width="25%"][/TD][/TR] [TR] [TD width="75%"][FONT face=Verdana color=#1f003e size=3]Utilizing a little known rule of the US House to bring Impeachment charges[/FONT]  [P align=left][FONT face=Verdana size=2]by [A href="vny!://www.opednews.com/author/author75.html"]Steven Leser[/A][/FONT]

[/TD] [TD width="20%"] [DIV align=center][A href="vny!://www.usalone.net/cgi-bin/oen.cgi?qnum=373" target=_blank][/A] [/DIV][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE] [P align=left][FONT face=Verdana size=1][A href="vny!://www.opednews.com/"]vny!://www.opednews.com[/A][/FONT]

 [P align=center][FONT face=Verdana size=2][img]vny!://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/uploaded/steven_leser_060416_3736.jpg" width=102 border=0]
Steven Leser[/FONT]

 [P align=left][FONT face=Verdana size=2]The Illinois General Assembly is about to rock the nation. Members of state legislatures are normally not considered as having the ability to decide issues with a massive impact to the nation as a whole. Representative Karen A. Yarbrough of Illinois' 7th District is about to shatter that perception forever. Representative Yarbrough stumbled on a little known and never utlitized rule of the US House of Representatives, Section 603 of Jefferson's Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature. From there, Illinois House Joint Resolution 125 (hereafter to be referred to as HJR0125) was born.

Detailing five specific charges against President Bush including one that is specified to be a felony, the complete text of HJR0125 is copied below at the end of this article. One of the interesting points is that one of the items, the one specified as a felony, that the NSA was directed by the President to spy on American citizens without warrant, is not in dispute. That fact should prove an interesting dilemma for a Republican controlled US House that clearly is not only loathe to initiate impeachment proceedings, but does not even want to thoroughly investigate any of the five items brought up by the Illinois Assembly as high crimes and/or misdemeanors. Should HJR0125 be passed by the Illinois General Assembly, the US House will be forced by House Rules to take up the issue of impeachment as a privileged bill, meaning it will take precedence over other House business.

The Illinois General Assembly joins a growing chorus of voices calling for censure or impeachment of President Bush including Democratic state committees in Vermont, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina as well as the residents themselves of seven towns in Vermont, seventy Vermont state legislators and Congressman John Conyers. The call for impeachment is starting to grow well beyond what could be considered a fringe movement. An ABC News/Washington Post Poll Conducted April 6-9 showed that 33% of Americans currently support Impeaching President Bush, coincidentally, only a similar amount supported impeaching Nixon at the start of the Watergate investigation. If and when Illinois HJR0125 hits the capitol and the individual charges are publicly investigated, that number is likely to grow rapidly. Combined with the very real likelihood that Rove is about to be indicted in the LeakGate investigation, and Bush is in real trouble beyond his plummeting poll numbers. His cronies in the Republican dominated congress will probably save him from the embarassment of an impeachment conviction, for now, but his Presidency will be all but finished.



[A href="vny!://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_david_sw_060424_california_becomes_s.htm"]Developing News; California Becomes Second State to Introduce Bush Impeachment[/A]
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[TehBorken]

 OH YEAH!!!!!!!!!!
 

[kitten]

Aha!  Now it's getting very interesting.  Good for them!

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 [A href="vny!://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=04-25-06&storyID=23981"][FONT face=Arial]vny!://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=04-25-06&storyID=23981[/FONT][/A] [H1]Berkeley Daily Planet[/H1]Edition Date: Tuesday, April 25, 2006
 [H2]Editorial: Impeach Bush in the State Assembly[/H2]By Becky O'Malley (04-25-06)

Monday morning's e-mail brought a dispatch from the lively Op-Ed News website, the first to report, as far as we know, that Assemblymember Paul Koretz has just introduced in the California Legislature a resolution to impeach not only the despised Dubya but also the odious Dick Cheney. He has submitted it as amendments to his prior Assembly Joint Resolution No. 39. They reference Section 603 of Jefferson's Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature. A similar resolution is already underway in Illinois, and proponents have high hopes that it will be passed.  Koretz's press release says that he "bases the call for impeachment upon the Bush administration intentionally misleading the Congress and the American people regarding the threat from Iraq in order to justify an unnecessary war that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives and casualties; exceeding constitutional authority to wage war by invading Iraq; exceeding constitutional authority by federalizing the National Guard; conspiring to torture prisoners in violation of the Federal Torture Act and indicating intent to continue such actions; spying on American citizens in violation of the 1978 Foreign Agency Surveillance Act; leaking and covering up the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, and holding American citizens without charge or trial." Whew. That's a stunning assortment of high crimes for one president to have committed, and Bush did them all and more.  We first called for impeachment in this space around Christmas time, which doesn't seem like so long ago. Since then the smoking gun in the Plame Wilson case has been deftly placed in the Bush-Cheney briefcase by the incomparable Patrick Fitzgerald. Bush's lawless spying on Americans has been documented even more fully. No one, even many conservatives, believes any more that the presidential propaganda leading up to the Iraq invasion contained an iota of truth. In fact, what's most shocking at the moment is the question of why not more has happened now that all of this is out. Why do members of the U.S. House of Representatives seem to be dragging their feet on the bill of impeachment introduced by John Conyers and others?  One answer, the simplest one, is that the Democrats know that they'll never get it passed in the Republican-dominated House. That's why the November election looms large at the moment. As of this writing, we can't find any reliable authority to tell us what the consequences of the state legislatures' passing these resolutions might be. It doesn't seem likely that the U.S. House of Representatives would be out of the picture altogether, but it would at least give Congress members something to think about.  The job now for people around here is to persuade our local state Assembly members to quickly add their names to the Koretz crusade. He represents West Hollywood, a district as progressive as ours if not more so, but there's no reason Loni Hancock and Wilma Chan shouldn't jump on board immediately, not to mention the rest of the Bay Area members who are in safe Democratic districts. And for our Internet readers, there are several safe Blue States (Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts come to mind) where an impeachment crusade has a chance of success.  While we're talking about persuasion, however, and about the usually excellent Op-Ed News site, could we make yet another plea to be left out of their robot-mail operation? Their home page contains a button which generates this option: "This special one click action page is brought to you by OpEdNews.com and The People's E-mail Network (P.E.N.). It will submit your personal message on any issue YOU care about to your local newspaper as a Letter to the Editor. We can either determine your closest daily paper from your address, or you can pick on a particular one in your area yourself."  The result of this is that the Planet (and probably other papers as well) is being deluged with the written equivalent of sound bytes on "everyone-around-here-agrees" topics like, in fact, impeaching the president. The format of the auto-mailer limits writers to 250 words and encourages less, so they don't do much except shout hallelujah with the choir. We can recognize these letters easily because many signers don't notice the box where they're supposed to select an honorific to add to the signature, so a letter might be signed "Mr. Sarah Glutz." They're nothing more than spam, even if they're progressive spam. All we do is press the delete button—we don't even count such letters.  Some of the attached names are our friends, local people we know to be thoughtful and good writers. We'd love to get well-written letters from them, tailored to the Planet's literate readers, but please, folks, skip the People's E-mail Network form. You're filling up our mail boxes and driving us nuts. Better you should write good letters to Hancock, Chan et al., urging them to join Koretz's crusade. He probably needs all the help he can get at this point.

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 [DIV id=cart_byline] [H1]Revolutionary Thinking: State Legislatures Push Impeachment[/H1][SPAN class=byline]By Matt Hutaff, Apr 25, 2006[/SPAN]

[DIV id=cart_sum]Leave it to the states to do the federal government's job.

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[A onclick="window.DOH!('vny!s://www.hexanet.net/opt/join.php?list=thesim01', '' , 'width=375,height=400,top=125,left=200 location=no,toolbar=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no,resizable=no');return false" href="vny!://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/01141_revolutionary_thinking_state_legislatures_push_impeachment.html#"][/A]

The ineffectiveness of the United States Congress at times is so pronounced it's laughable. We are six years into a presidency that elevates graft, corruption and criminal behavior to new heights and neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate have begun impeachment charges against the Bush Administration.

Perhaps they're waiting for a stained dress to make its entrance?

 33 Republican senators that voted guilty in the 1999 proceedings against Bill Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice still remain in office. Not surprisingly, they now stand mute against President Bush's [A href="vny!://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/01043_illegal_wiretaps_just_another_high_crime.html"]wiretapping[/A], [A href="vny!://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/0886_is_karl_rove_new_benedict_arnold.html"]treason[/A], warmongering and profiteering. And why? Because of partisan politics? That's shameful.

 Forgive me if I find the idea of lying our nation into war distasteful; it is, after all, one of the worst forms of treason imaginable. The loss of life, credibility and real wealth since we invaded Iraq in 2003 is incalculable and was done with deliberate malice. Intelligence was ignored or fabricated, dissenters were [A href="vny!://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/0886_is_karl_rove_new_benedict_arnold.html"]silenced[/A] and blood was spilled. When will the representatives we elect brush the cobwebs from their eyes and do their job? What else needs to happen before we can expect an honest-to-goodness inquiry into the White House's crimes?

 Some people are tired of waiting for Congress to stop dealing with minutae like [A href="vny!://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:4:./temp/~bdgQ2T::"]honoring the Sons of the American Revolution[/A] to find out. That's why two states - Illinois and California - have taken advantage of a never-used House rule this past week to [A href="vny!://www.impeachpac.org/resolutions"]demand impeachment proceedings themselves[/A]. An announcement like this could rock the insulated little world that exists on Capitol Hill.

 Leave it to the states to do the government's job.

 [P align=center]· · · · ·

 California Assemblyman [A href="vny!://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a42/"]Paul Koretz[/A] is livid.

 "At both the state and national levels, we will be paying for the Bush Administration's illegal actions and terrible lack of judgment and competence for decades," he says. "Bush and Cheney must be impeached and removed from office before they undertake even deadlier misdeeds, such as the use of nuclear weapons. There are no bounds to their willingness to ignore the Constitution and world opinion – we can't afford to wait for the next disaster and hope that we can survive it."

 Koretz is the sponsor of the California initiative to impeach the president and vice president. It's inspired in part by his digust with the current regime and in part by similar legislation drafted by [A href="vny!://www.ilga.gov/house/Rep.asp?MemberID=975"]Karen Yarbrough[/A] of the Illinois General Assembly. Both items take advantage of Section 603 of Thomas Jefferson's Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which "allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature."

 What would they impeach Bush for? All the [A href="vny!://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=50&GA=94&DocTypeId=HJR&DocNum=125&GAID=8&LegID=25794&SpecSess=&Session="]right stuff[/A], it appears:

  [UL] [LI]Violating provisions of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a felony;  [LI]Violating provisions of the Geneva Convention by authorizing torture;  [LI]Holding American citizens without due process;  [LI]Initiating an illegal war against Iraq, resulting in loss of life and diminished security; and  [LI]Leaking classified information and exposing a covert operative -- Valerie Plame -- as means of silencing his critics. [/LI][/UL]

When you read that list how does your stomach not turn? It's not like the abovementioned talking points are still being disputed; Bush has defended his wiretapping, torture and war and recent allegations have all but proven that the authorization to leak Plame's identity came from the president himself. If these charges were levied against anyone else they'd stand in front of the International Criminal Court for war crimes charges.

 The majority of the people in this country do not approve of the Bush Administration -- 33% is the highest pollsters can skew the numbers. Even publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post are talking about impeachment (if only in abstract terms). People are tired of the rising body count and lowering quality of life here in the United States. Bush's lame duck presidency is one brave vote from becoming a statistic; all that stands in the way is the political process.

 That's why it's so important to get the word out on these two pieces of legislation now while they're still in the birthing stages. It's received scant attention in the mainstream media (shocking, huh?) despite the revolutionary steps being taken. The Bulldog Manifesto has [A href="vny!://bulldogpolitics.blogspot.com/2006/02/letter-to-state-legislators.html"]compiled a list of e-mail addresses[/A] for state legislators in 23 states; if you support what's happening either let your representatives know you support their actions (citizens of California and Illinois take note) or demand similar bills in your own home states.

 This is not some partisan stab or revenge tactic. The crimes visited upon us by our head of state are many and pernicious and rise above the party one identifies themselves by. Any elected leader who is caught lying, no matter how trivial the issue, should be fired. The Constitution doesn't allow for the president to lie to the people... but it does allow us to remove him from office.

 So while Rep. Jim Conyers continues to investigate the possibility of starting impeachment proceedings (an investigation that has corralled just 29 members of the House), let's look to the states for change. Let them use the law passed down by one of our greatest Founding Fathers to rid ourselves of complete opposite of what he wished for this nation of ours. And while we're at it, let's rid ourselves of the weak and cowardly congressmen that refuse to stand by the guiding principles of our republic by endorsing Bush's actions with their silence; they'll only stand in the way when one of these state bills makes their way to Washington, DC.

 And heck, if the impassioned rhetoric of two state officials and this columnist don't sway you, maybe [A href="vny!://redhotchilipeppers.com/news/journal.php?uid=192"]Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers will[/A]: "George W. Bush should definitely be impeached, he is a liar and his lies have bought misery to millions of people and bought no good to anyone except for the corporate oil billionaires who are making huge profits."


Canon Fodder is a bi-weekly analysis of politics and society.

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 [TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=4 width="100%" border=0] [TBODY] [TR] [TD width="80%"][FONT face=Verdana size=2]April 26, 2006[/FONT]

[FONT face=Verdana color=#000080 size=4]Bush's Siege Mentality[/FONT] [/TD] [TD width="25%"][/TD][/TR] [TR] [TD width="75%"] [P align=left][FONT face=Verdana size=2]by [A href="vny!://www.opednews.com/author/author2.html"]Kall, Rob[/A][/FONT]

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 [P align=left][FONT face=Verdana size=2]Bush's choice of Tony Snow as the new Whitehouse spokesman is telling. This right wing commentator for Fox news will have plenty of credibility with Fox News regular viewers, but he will be seen as a right wing propagandist and Bush shill by the rest of the US and the world.

Bush goes on TV and promises to investigate the charges of energy company gouging. What a joke. Most of us, most of the US, most of the world will view this as the Fox offering to investigate deaths in the henhouse. It's good enough for his "base" though.

It's becoming clearer that Bush is not going to get back any of his lost poll percentage points by doing business as usual and he's unable to do anything not usual. He continues his history of never firing anyone. He waits for resignations, probably lubricating them with juicy deals. Look at what happened with Michael Brown, the closest he's come to a firing. The guy bit back. I imagine there are dozens of Bush appointed incompetents who could, if they were fired, do massive further damage to Bush, just telling the truth about Bush's incompetence and probably his lies. No Bush can't fire people and that makes things tough for him to make any real changes.

When it comes to Rumsfeld, it's not just a matter of getting rid of Rumsfeld. It's about Bush facing the fact that his vision of a democratic Iraq, which he's had Rumsfeld orchestrate, is a disastrous joke. He can't, by his thinking, fire Rumsfeld without admitting defeat. So he'll keep supporting Rumsfeld, keep mouthing the same tired, mindless mantra about staying the course.

Bush is really hunkered down, in a bunker, feeling besieged. He might even empathize with Davy Crocket and the men who died in the Alamo, a Texas place. I fear that Bush will, in a desperate effort to stay alive, will use his congressional permission to wage war, which his criminal Attorney General has advised him basically allows him to do anything he wants, regardless of how illegal it would be for anyone else, to attack Iran. This is an insane, totally unjustifiable act. But he will be working, in concert with his progpandists at Fox, Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, the lying dirtbags on rightwing talk radio-- Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Beck, O'Reilly, etc. (Will they sue me for such language? I dare them. There are already books on their lies.) The right wing echo chamber, continuing to betray US interests, will support Bush and his corporate backers.

Bush WILL get some help from Big Oil. They can see they've gone too far, that Bush may not be able to provide the shielding and protection they thought they could trust him to provide. They'll back off the high prices in hopes of cooling the fires under congress to investigate and tax them. The damage is already done though. We shouldn't stop going after them just because gasoline drops a few dimes in price.

Bush is under siege partly because of his own doing. He's been incompetent, deceitful, and has been selling out US resources to corporate friends. But his "besiegement" is also due to the beginning of a process of abandonment by the Republican party. He has become a pariah. Not all the Republicans know it yet, but they are gradually awakening to this reality. Being associated with Bush, this November, will like being an unwashed visitor to a leper colony, my apology to lepers. As the Republicans disown Bush, he will be left with his "base"-- some corporations that use him, and still feel they can get some use out of him, religious extremists who still buy him being a good Christian and those who are still drinking the koolaid, and people with money, who think they are better taken care of by Bush. Then there are the little-dick boys, who use Bush's bluster and bravado to vicariously feel more manly. These are the same ones who would take away all of women's rights.

Most of Americans who aren't in those hopelessly right wing categories have abandoned Bush. The problem is, that makes him more dangerous than ever. He has no reason to try to appear moderate, to compromise. He will do more than ever to pander to his ever more extreme "base."

Now that Bush has become besieged, desperate and unaccountable to moderate forces, it is essential that we the people let our legislators, including the Republicans, know that they must de-claw Bush-- take away his right to wage any further war, take away his excuse for doing anything he wants, which includes illegal acts that his puppet-in-crime, attorney general Gonzalez, will authorize as permitted.

A desperate, cornered animal is a dangerous thing. Expect the worst from Bush. But at the same time, we must continue to tighten the noose, push harder for impeachment. The impeachment efforts that seemed impossible and mere fantasies at first are looking more solid, more ominous. They may still be impossible, but now that they've been picked up by the mainstream media, now that the potential results of a Democratic sweep of the congress, come November, is being discussed, with a LOT of politicians being investigated, I think it will move even more voters away from the Republican side of the aisle. The Republicans may even conclude that the only way to rescue their jobs is to face the hard truth about Bush-- that he must be impeached. Now we're talking about taking the besieging of George Bush to a whole 'nother level. It all starts with a vision, no matter how remotely possible.[/FONT]

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 [FONT face=Verdana size=2]Rob Kall is editor of [A href="vny!://www.opednews.com,/"]OpEdNews.com,[/A] President of [A href="vny!://www.futurehealth.org/"]Futurehealth, Inc[/A], and organizer of several conferences, including [A href="vny!://www.storycon.org/"]StoryCon[/A], the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The [A href="vny!://www.brainmeeting.com/"]Winter Brain Meeting [/A]on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology.[/FONT]