<p>Having lunch with 90 year mom, listening to CSPAN, </p>
<p>What the ??? Democratic Leaders don’t want impeachment and Republicans want the issue to come to floor? </p>
<p>[Impeach</a> Vice President Cheney. - By Bruce Fein - Slate Magazine](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/id/2169292/]Impeach”>Impeach Vice President Cheney.)</p>
<p>Dems want to block impeachment talk because they worry about disenfranchising “moderate” swing voters. Spineless chickens.</p>
<p>This is dumb. The Congress needs to show more restraint; you cant just impeach the opposition party’s leader every time you get a majority in Congress.</p>
<p>Not surprising though considering the bill’s head sponsor is a man who looks like he’s 14 and thinks he saw a UFO.</p>
<p>There are constitutional issues associated with the impeachment of a Vice President. Since he is the presiding officer of the Senate, and the Senate presides over an impeachment trial, legislatures typically expel members from the body, as opposed to impeaching them.</p>
<p>This bill was a privileged resolution introduced by Mr. Kucinich to force the Democratic leadership into a bind. The Republican leadership, in a show of strategic maneuvering, decided to vote against the motion to table (which would have killed the bill). The motion to send the bill to committee passed, where it will languish in the halls of Congress until the end of the 110th.</p>
<p>An impeachment trial takes up a tremendous amount of resources. At the moment, Congress has to deal with approps legislation before the end of the year, as well as several key pieces of legislation. Impeaching any administration official will take months (Bush only has what, less than 14 left). If we were, say, at the beginning of President Bush’s first or even second term, perhaps the endeavor would have been worthwhile, but not now.</p>
<p>The more liberal members of the Democratic Party need not concern themselves with the general political trends of the nation; after all, their seats are all bastions of their particular political philosophy, and it’s unlikely that their incumbency will truly be challenged. This was merely a campaign stunt on Mr. Kucinich’s part, methinks, one that may have put the Democrats in mild danger.</p>
<p>It may have been a campaign stunt, or it may have been the truly unthinkable - a Congressman defending the US Constitution and acting as a check/balance. In other words, doing his job. Imagine that?!</p>
<p>weenie, I’m with you - on both of your comments. Spineless chickens, indeed. I can see why people like Ron Paul (who holds some very extreme opinions) - at least he speaks out clearly on the constitutional crisis. So does Al Gore. His speeches over the past several years are well worth searching the C-Span archive for.</p>
<p>Where was Mr. Constitution when Clinton was up for impeachment for perjuring himself to America? Oh yeah, he was voting “no” along party lines.</p>
<p>Vyse, give me a break. That kind of response isn’t even an argument.</p>
<p>I could respond to you with “well, where were all the Republicans when Scooter Libby’s sentence was commuted?” but that doesn’t really move anything along.</p>
<p>The real point is, the kind of unconstitutional behavior that Cheney has been perpetrating is on a completely different scale of immorality and seriousness than Clinton lying about a blow job. Sorry if you don’t agree with that, but when it’s the Constitution and related issues vs. a hummer, I think the difference is clear.</p>
<p>Nice strawman, but I’m not biting.</p>
<p>He was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice, not being horny.</p>
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<p>…so hang on, where was the straw man again?</p>
<p>And your “Mr. Constitution” line was the actual straw man in here. You still have yet to respond to my point regarding the relative magnitude of contempt for the constitution vs. perjury (the kind of perjury that the Bush administration has already proved it doesn’t care about, by the way).</p>
<p>Kucinich’s reasons arent even good. Democrats believed and hyped the WMD story too prior too 2003. And the Democrats were his enablers for his aggression against Iran, voting to chastise him for not labeling the Iranian National Guard a terrorists group.</p>
<p>Im glad he at least acts on his convictions unlike his peers who use the “Bush lied” line for political reasons and then do nothing about it, but he’s still severely misguided.</p>
<p>If I were going to try and impeach Bush, I would go after him for spending 7 minutes reading “My Pet Goat” to a bunch of school children right after his adviser had told him “the country is under attack” instead of for citing bad intelligence that was accepted across partisan linesa t the time.</p>
<p>Oh don’t get me wrong, I think the current democratic congress are a bunch of spineless enablers too. But that doesn’t make Bush and Cheney’s repeated flaunting of the constitution, absurd attempts to operate outside the law, criminal tactics to scare and suppress those who dare to publicly question them and so forth any better.</p>
<p>The Democrats may be total hypocrites, but to my mind that does not mean that Cheney (and probably Bush as well) don’t deserve to be impeached.</p>
<p>I agree Bush doesnt follow the constitution very well (which is why im voting for ron paul), but I dont understand where the outrage is coming from. Some of the most celebrated Presidents in American History soiled all over the Constiution under the subterfuge of protectionism. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, spent money unilaterally without consulting Congress, and locked sympathizers of the Northern Democratic Party for merely voicing their disagreement with him. FDR decided to send all Japanese Americans to prison camps simply because of their heritage.</p>
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<p>OK, well, that works too.</p>
<p>Uhh, Vyse, the two presidents that you mentioned were president long enough ago that they’re basically not comparable to what the standards are for modern presidents.</p>
<p>I would say (I would HOPE) that if a president locked up political opponents or created racially-motivated internment camps, they would be impeached in this day and age.</p>
<p>That question has no bearing on whether or not Cheney or Bush deserve to be impeached, however.</p>