What's That About Impeachment?

[See Counterpunch below]

I'm still not certain that impeachment proceedings wouldn't distract Congress from its main job right now: get us out of Iraq and into universal health care and stabilization of the environment. The jury, as it were, remains out. Nothing of substance will ever pass as long as this President - among all presidents ever - remains in office. Despite the extent to which many believe he must be guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, most believe we must win and win big in 2008.

The debate rages over the courage and wisdom of an assessment that prevents us putting this madman and his Machiavellian Vice President on trial for destroying most of what remained a democracy in this nation until these men came along, not to mention the global well of goodwill we once enjoyed.

So, why can't Congress get it up to impeach? Congress remains, in effect, impotent by virtue of simply lacking the votes it would take to succeed. Not enough Democrats are in place to run the country, to institute real change or merely to stop this incredibly outrageous war.

Senates Democrats hold the slimmest of majorities in a body that requires to 51 votes to pass serious reform, but 60 votes to get past a filibuster, and 66 votes to override presidential vetoes. Blaming Democrats on issue after issue is a waste of time for progressives until progressives hold veto-proof majorities – or replace this form of government with a more accountable parliamentary system.

Which option do you think will come first?

The LA Times' Ron Brownstein advanced an interesting argument this morning on "Meet the Press": that the White House is engaging Congress in legislative after constitutional after legislative battle to both keep them preoccupied from serious legislation while repeatedly making them look like sterile nerds because, in fact, the votes are never going to be there to pass anything as long as the Senate remains nearly tied.

The public's view of Congress is at a low ebb: 25% or so, because the 2006 election had raised expectations incredibly high for getting out of Iraq almost immediately. Reality checks are often too arcane for a passionate public to understand, but let's get something straight: it takes more than one election to people the Congress with enough votes to override a trenchant president who couldn't care less about his legacy, about his party, about the people. In the present case, and under our Constitutional presidency form of government, one vote – the President's – kills everything, absent a supermajority in the Congress.

Conyers and a number of his colleague chairmen in both the House and Senate have probably been there too long, but that's the system. While Cindy Sheehan, Ray McGovern, and Lennox Yearwood are right about the problems and what needs to be done about getting out of Iraq and even impeaching, they cannot expect to raid a Congressman's office and not be arrested. Even Conyers'. It makes great theater and headlines, but little sense to alienate the only powerful people generally on your side as the real enemy sits back and laughs at your folly.

Andy Driscoll
Saint Paul
--
/*CounterPunch*/

July 24, 2007

*Conyers Calls Cops to Arrest Cindy Sheehan and Other Impeachment Demonstrators

Overcoming John Conyers*

By DAVE LINDORFF

Rep. John Conyers, venerable member of Congress, finally chair of the House
Judiciary Committee, is a man who worked with Rosa Parks in Alabama and who
hired her on his staff after he won election to Congress in Detroit. Years
in Washington DC change a man. Yesterday Conyers had 48 impeachment
activists, including Gold Star Families for Peace founder Cindy Sheehan,
Iraq Veteran Against the War activist Lennox Yearwood and Intelligence
Veterans for Sanity founder Ray McGovern, arrested for conducting a sit-in
in his office in the Rayburn House Office Building. The three, together
with several hundred other impeachment activists who packed the fourth
floor hallway outside Rep. Conyers' office, had come to press Conyers to
take action on impeachment, and specifically to start action on H. Res. 333,
the bill submitted nearly three months ago by Rep. Dennis Kucinich calling
for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.

After nearly an hour of talking with Conyers, a clearly angry Sheehan
emerged together with Yearwood and McGovern, and announced to the waiting
throng in the hall that Conyers had told them "impeachment isn't going to
happen because we don't have the votes." Sheehan said Conyers had insisted
that the best thing was for Democrats to focus on "winning big in 2008." To
volleys of boos and hisses, the three went back inside Conyers' office
suite, where they were joined by some thirty other supporters, and all were
subsequently arrested, at Conyers' request, by Capitol police, who cuffed
them and walked them off for booking. Several of those who sat in refused
to walk and were carried or dragged out of the Rayburn Office Building, as
the activists in the hall chanted "Shame on Conyers! Shame on Conyers!" and
"Arrest Bush, Not the People!"

It was a disgraceful scene wholly unworthy of a dean of the Congressional
Black Caucus. Before returning to sit in the Judiciary chairman's office and
await arrest, Sheehan publicly announced her intention to run in 2008 as an
independent candidate for Congress against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and
she called on Americans everywhere to run not just against Republicans in
2008, but against Democrats too. Yearwood, who is a chaplain in the Air
Force, said that Conyers had been a mentor to him, but he declared that he
now felt betrayed and that Americans needed to take back their government.
As he was led down the hall to his arraignment, the handcuffed Yearwood
sang "We Shall Overcome!"

This reporter subsequently called Conyers' press office for an explanation
of Conyers' true position on impeachment. Only a few days earlier the
congressman, at a San Diego meeting on health care reform, had told members
of Progressive Democrats of America that it was time to "take these two
guys (Bush and Cheney) out" and had promised that if just "a few more"
members of the House signed on to the Kucinich bill (it already has 14
co-sponsors), he would move it forward for consideration in his Judiciary
Committee. Asked how that statement squared with what he had told the group
of activists in his office, the spokesman said Conyers' "must have been
misunderstood" in San Diego. He said that in view of Conyers' statement to
Sheehan and the others today, the Kucinich bill was "not going to go
anywhere."

As impeachment activist David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org has said,
there "seem to be two John Conyers." There's the one who, in 2005 and early
2006, while Republicans controlled the House, was systematically making the
case for impeaching the president and vice president. This Conyers had even
submitted a bill, with 39 co-sponsors, which called for creation of a select
committee to investigate possible impeachable crimes by the administration.
And then there's the Conyers who submits to the wishes of the new House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and is keeping impeachment off the table. Occasionally
the former Conyers breaks out, saying things such as that the president
needs to be "taken out" or, as he put it at an anti-war rally last spring,
that "we can fire him!" But then the other Conyers comes to the fore, and
stands in the way of impeachment action.

Yesterday, however, was worse than just doing nothing. The arrest of
impeachment activists and their forcible eviction from his office was a
betrayal of people who were doing the very thing that had allowed Conyers
to make his way into Congress in the first place: sitting in to insist on
action on their demands for justice. It was, after all, sit-ins that helped
lead to the Voting Rights Act which allowed African American candidates like
Conyers to finally win seats in the US Congress.

It's ironic that Rep. Conyers, speaking in 2005 on "Democracy Now!"
following Rosa Parks' death at the age of 92, said her passing "is probably
the end of an era." Certainly, with his request to have Capitol Police
officers enter his office (the very office where Parks once had worked as a
staff member!) to cuff and arrest peaceful protesters who were trying to
defend the Constitution, he has made that point far more clearly than he
could have expressed it in mere words.

But as in the case of Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement, arrests and
fines will not stop the national grassroots drive to impeach this president
and vice president. With polls showing that a majority of the country now
favors impeachment, and with Conyers, Pelosi, and the Democratic Congress
sinking deeper and deeper into disfavor even as the president continues to
add to his list of Constitutional crimes, something's gotta give. After
all, the Founders, in writing impeachment into the Constitution, did not
say the test was whether Congress had the votes to impeach. They wrote that
if the president abused his power, or committed other high crimes and
misdemeanors, bribery or treason, Congress "shall" impeach.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death
Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled
"This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's
newest book is "The Case for Impeachment", co-authored by Barbara
Olshansky.

He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com