[act-ma] [ot] impeachment is pass for debate!!

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   The Nation  /1 hour, 29 minutes ago/

The Nation 
<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/thenation/cm_thenation/storytext/15249290/25108170/SIG=10qa2akrp/*http://www.thenation.com> 
-- The move by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich to open a House debate 
on the question of whether to impeach Vice President Cheney turned into 
a imbroglio for the Democratic leadership of the chamber Tuesday as 
mischievous Republicans joined dozens of Democrats in rejecting a move 
to table the resolution.

Kucinich had been thwarted in his efforts to get the House Judiciary 
Committee to take up the proposal to hold the vice president to account 
for lying to Congress and the U.S. public in order to enter into a war 
in Iraq, and for trying to mislead again in order to start a war with 
Iran. So he used a privileged resolution to bring the impeachment 
question up before the full House.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, then moved to table 
Kucinich's resolution. "Impeachment is not on our agenda. We have some 
major priorities. We need to focus on those," said Hoyer, echoing House 
Speaker Nancy Pelosi's stance that presidential accountability is "off 
the table."

That should have been the end of it. But it wasn't.

A combination of Democrats who sincerely favor impeachment of Cheney 
band Republicans who thought that an impeachment debate would embarrass 
Pelosi, Hoyer and other House Democratic leaders blocked the motion to 
table.

Only 162 members -- 27 Republicans and 135 Democrats -- supported 
tabling the proposal. A total of 251 members -- 86 Democrats and 165 
Republicans -- opposed it.

What followed was wrangling between Kucinich and Hoyer on whether to 
refer the resolution to the Judiciary Committee.

That set up more votes, as Democratic leaders continued to scramble to 
block Kucinich's impeachment proposal.

As of late afternoon, the voting continued, with the prospect that a 
limited impeachment debate might occur on the House floor. That's what 
Kucinich wants. That's what Hoyer is trying to avoid.

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John Nichols is the author of THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: The Founders' 
Cure for Royalism 
<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/thenation/cm_thenation/storytext/15249290/25108170/SIG=12gddkf24/*http://www.amazon.com/Genius-Impeachment-Founders-Cure-Royalism/%20dp/1595581405>. 
Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson hails it as a "nervy, acerbic, 
passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich 
examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the 'heroic 
medicine' that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to 
'reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for 
the defense of our most basic liberties.'"

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