Go to the following site to see the current House Resolutions:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/L?c110:./list/c110 hr.lst:1

The first 10 House Resolutions are House rules, then the substantive ones begin. Do any of you see anything proposed yet in Congress about impeachment? What is taking so long?

My favorite is the one about “national inflammatory skin awareness month.”

Useless. And the Senate only has one resolution up so far.

There are others—joint resolutions, for example, but I saw nothing about impeachment anywhere.

Go to:

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c110bills.html

I believe that Congress should rescind its 2003 authorization to deploy U.S. Forces to Iraq.  None of the original reasons for that authority exist today:  No Sadam Hussain; no W.M.D., no threat of invasion by Iraq of its neighbors; etc.By President Bush’s own statements Iraq today is a “young democracy” with a democratically elected “Unity Government” that needs to be protected from insurgents (who are mainly Iraqis) and saved from internal strife and violence amounting to civil war.  If American lives and treasure are to be expended for those purposes, President Bush should go before Congress and the American people and request such authority after making a clear, honest, and convincing case for such a policy. The results of the November 2006 election mandate such actions by Congress and President Bush!

This so called surge is not going to help Iraq.  My own feeling is that Iraq is a stepping stone to Iran.  This adminstration is most likely going to go to Iran before the idot gets out of office and leave the mess for the next president.  If he goes to Iran than I think this President should be impeached.  He was elected to office.  He is not the king of the US.

I certainly have no way of proving what I am about to say, but I do believe that Mr. Bush has nothing but contempt for the American people and that includes the ones in uniform and in harms way. I believe this attitude began when the majority of Americans voted his father out of office and has hardened over the years.

So many of his actions indicate this: Closing his campaign events to anyone who is not a dues paying follower, putting American dissenters in “first amendment zones,” which amount to animal cages, orange alerts based on little to no real information, thus scaring people, unnecessarily, for purely political reasons, taking a 2% election majority and calling it a mandate, thus spitting in the faces of the minority, bold-face lying to the people and disrespect for our other elected officials and, now, that the majority of Americans have let him know, in no uncertain terms, at the polls in November (not to mention on-going polls) that he is taking this country in the wrong direction, that they no longer trust him (and his team of nitwits) to be the local dog-catcher, let alone “Commander-in-Chief,” he has spurned all advice he doesn’t want to hear and, reportedly, intends to do as he damn well pleases, no matter what we think or what the Congress, we elected, does.

It is really past time for us to understand his contempt for us and our elected officials and act accordingly.

The anti-war movement, numbering millions before the war ever started, has, up to this point, acted with great restraint. Other than peaceful protests, often numbering in the hundreds of thousands in NYC, Washington, San Francisco, Seattle, L.A. and points in-between, and largely ignored by the corporate news media, we have worked in and through the electoral process and every other legal, non-violent means we can think of to end this criminally insane war in Iraq.

If, as is being reported, Mr. Bush intends to ignore us this time, after we have spoken very clearly in an election, it is time that he hear from us in a more direct way, up close and personal.

It is time to descend on Washington like a plague of Biblical proportions. There are many opportunities to do so, beginning this month and leading to a protest in March, from which many do not intend to leave, until we have been heard and heard clearly.

Millions of people, camped out on the National Mall, would be impossible to ignore. Such a protest will require sacrifice, much discomfort and, perhaps, even worse unpleasantness, but our sacrifice would still be small, compared to what our young men and women in uniform and their families have been and are continuing to sacrifice for nothing but the Little Emperor’s ego.

Such a protest, demanding that our troops be brought home or responsibly re-deployed, as well as truth and accountability for the people who put them in harms way, based on lies, will do more for Democracy here and around the world than anything this administration has done or can do.

I do not exaggerate when I say that our Democratic Republic depends on it.

detail his lawbreaking, then impeach. The majority of the country does not fear it, they demand it.

Its hard to understand the Dems timidity in halting this surge any way possible. With an 11% approval if they let Bush rub this war in the face of the majority of the American people then the takedown of democracy is complete.

Here is what Congress needs to do:

Whatever motives led the president to ask, and Congress to grant, authority to use the U.S. military to invade Iraq, the justifications stated in whereas after whereas are not true today. Yet they remain on the books, still the official position of Congress.

So the vital decision is not President Bush’s alone, and Congress should not wait to proceed on its own. Congress is morally obligated - now - to review its outdated joint resolution authorizing force against Iraq, and to undertake a new joint resolution declaring, in essence:

“Whereas the purposes of the original authorization have been served;

Whereas the stated reasons justifying the authorization no longer exist;

Whereas the objectionable Iraqi regime has been removed and the new Iraqi regime poses no military threat to its neighbors or the United States;

Therefore, U.S. military forces are no longer authorized to remain in Iraq.”

Far-fetched? Not in the least. Congress used this very procedure in 1993 to withdraw U.S. troops from Somalia.

The troops’ orderly departure should begin as promptly as the military protocols for force protection will allow and be completed within six months of the passage of a new joint resolution.

It is important to note that this approach bypasses, for now, a divisive debate about Mr. Bush’s war policies. It also does not require stopping funding for Iraq.

If Congress wishes to examine the causes of this war, that is a separate matter that should not interfere with an immediate rational review of a joint resolution that is obsolete.

The above is quoted from an article posted in Common Dreams on-line.

The House needs to set its Speaker Nancy Pelosi straight on this matter. If the Democrats fail to stop this president’s criminality, they are no better than the Repugs.

If the president’s trashing of the Constitution is not a ‘high crime”, what is? And Congress’s failure to bring this president to account is a failure to carry out its sworn duty to protect the Constitution—also a crime!!!

I was happy to see the Democrats take control of Congress, but if they do nothing, as I suspect will happen, they will have again failed us.

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush sat down to play poker with the biggest stack of chips at the table, the odds-on favorite to win one of the highest-stakes games ever played. This huge initial chip advantage was built from a unified and supportive citizenry at home, a mainstream media that rarely questioned his judgment or intentions, an international community prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, and a military machine bigger than the next couple dozen countries combined. But since those early heady days, Bush and his close advisers and neocon allies have made one horrendous decision after another. The great tragedy, of course, is that the president has not only been playing with his own chips. Rather, in this game his poor play has cost the lives of our courageous soldiers and many Iraqi civilians, our country’s stature in the world, and our national resources desperately needed for other purposes, domestic and international.

Others, realizing how poorly they’ve been playing, would recognize that they don’t belong at the table—or at least conclude that they had entered the wrong game. Not so with the president. Rather, all signs suggest that this stubborn poker player is unlikely to learn any constructive lessons from his abysmal performance. There are at least five reasons why this is so. First, although a relative novice at the game, he has refused to prepare adequately, hasn’t mastered the likelihood of various outcomes, and seemingly hasn’t even tried to understand his opponents and their style of play. Second, he has cultivated and embraced an Old West saloon mentality where a loaded six-shooter and a quick draw can turn losing hands into winners. Third, he has a personal history of being bailed out whenever he has come up short in the past, whether through family connections or the highest reaches of our judicial system. Fourth, he has convinced himself that God is personally by his side, presumably with an unlimited supply of aces. And fifth, he is now concerned about his legacy, and likely suspects that only a miraculously successful reshaping of Iraq and the Middle East can save him from being a frequent answer in “worst president ever” debates in the decades ahead.

My list is undoubtedly incomplete, but it is daunting. It suggests that Bush will ultimately be driven to go “all in” regardless of any wiser counsel he might receive. And at the very least, “all in” means continuing to play the Iraq hands as he has done thus far--or perhaps with even greater recklessness and abandon. More frightening still, “all in” may mean saving his very last stack of chips for Iran. As a new year begins, we should all be asking whether anyone can pull him away from the table before it is (again) too late.

P.S.  As an addendum, the appeals Bush and his supporters will use in defense of their actions are predictable. I describe some of them in detail in an online video entitled “Dangerous Ideas: How Conservatives Exploit Our Five Core Concerns” that can be viewed HERE

It seems reasonable to assume that the framers of the Constitution purposely left it up to Congress to fund wars for good reason.  How best to stop, foreinstance a mad King George bent on warring wherever, than by not letting him get his hands directly on the people’s money - and sacrificing the people’s children in the process.

Treasury’s part of the Executive branch so it would be quite simple for a mad president to fund whatever war took his fancy. The framers realized that, thus they involved Congress.  Today’s Congress needs to ponder what the framers were intent on preventing.

Mr. Biden tells us that cutting off funds is a “hollow threat”. Cutting off funds is exactly the method devised at the beginning of the American experiment to curtail the exploits of presidents who would be King’s. Mr. Biden is at best an idiot.

The entirety of the mainstream press is currently promoting the notion that Mr. Bush has the power to do whatever he wants in this next phase of the Iraqi crusade. If Congress allows Mr. Bush’s request for another $170 billion to be spent on the Iraqi “liberation”, we will not only have to impeach Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney but also the vast majority of Congress men and women.

The last Texas Governor to live in the White House also had the same solution for Viet Nam - just keep sending in more troops, although it was called an ‘escalation’ back then.  We surged into Iraq 4 years ago, longer then it took to win WWII and the situation only gets worse. America has the greatest military but complete incompetence and negligence is the only description due the civilians in Washington who run it, which is why American can’t win wars anymore.  Its time the Iraqis started fighting for themselves -

IMPEACHMENT. It’s overdue for both Bush and Cheney. They took power in shady circumstances and have predictably been a disaster for this country. Bush has been an incompentent throughout his life and will certainly continue to botch his occupation of Iraq. The power must be taken away for this administration and the United States must find a credible way to re-connect with the rest of the world to find a sensible solution to this maddening hell in Iraq.

To quote Stanley Hauerwas, ethics professor at Duke University: “A leadership which cannot stand the force of truth must always rely on armies.  But a leadership so constituted must always respond to the slightest provocation that might reveals its essential weakness.”

When Bush said he would work with the Democrats,
he meant he would allow the dem’s kids to go to Iraq and he is ready to listen to ideas from anyone as long as the message is “stay the course.”
What a bunch of dummies that voted for this idiot!!!! You must bear some of the responsibility!

Write, e-mail, phone members of Congress and tell them to stop funding this war.  Write, e-mail,and phone members of Congress and tell them you do not want more troops sent, you want our troops brought home.  This is pure insanity to let George W. Bush keep our children in the killing fields in this illegal and immoral war.  It feels like one of those nightmares where you are trying to scream but no sound will come out. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this war.  It breaks my heart every time I hear the numbers continue to go up.  Please, everyone, do not relent in your resolve to make your voices heard to stop this illegal and immoral war in Iraq.  We must bring our children home and we must stop killing theirs.

I keep asking “Just What are our troops doing in Iraq?  They don’t keep the peace. They are not pursuing any “enemies”.  They are not effectively governing or training the Iraqi in governance. They are not effectively rebuilding an infrastructure.  They (some of them) manage to get killed or wounded even as ethinic cleansing proceeds swiftly on civilians. So why more troops, why surge our troops in Iraq?

Charles Newlin, comment #45716, has got it right:  1) refuse to fund enlargement of the war, and 2) if Bush refuses to accept this, then he is a candidate for impeachment.  So go for it.

To understand where we are we have to understand how we got there.  That is the crux of our Iraq debacle and a careful reading of the history that got us there must necessarily land us in the House of Representatives at the desk of Rep. John Conyers and an Inquiry into the Impeachment of George W. Bush. If the Congress deems that an Inquiry is an impossibility then I agree with Dennis S. that it is time to find a new form of government that will/can & does serve the will of the People.  The celebratory Democrats of the 110th are exalted with delight but I wonder do they understand the heavy burden of responsibility they are about to bear?  May we remind Mdme. Speaker that Rep.Conyers has all of the nesessary paperwork in place to begin the Inquiry.  It will only take one telephone call to set in motion that process given to us by the Founders to address the terrible abuses of power that have been consistent in the Bush Administration.  One phone call Mdme. Speaker.

The surge barely covers the final withdrawl of the “coalition of the willing”.  Except for a token Australian force and a soon-to-be reduced British force in the south, we are now essentially alone.
The internationals patroled the two or three highways on which supplies are transported to our troops in Baghdad and the western provinces.
Unfortuneately, the surge is directed towards Baghdad to confront Sadyr’s militia who will, in turn, attack those supply lines.
Another in a series of fatal mistakes; fuel, food, and ammunition being transported from Kuwait will be in continual jeopardy. 
This administration is either totally incompetent or aiming for headline-level disaster using our young people as a sacrifice for increased and expanded conflict.
Stolen weapons without serial numbers from Irag armories, tens of thousands of rogue, corporate mercenaries, and an ever-intensifying civil war ... Stop the madness ... stop the murders ... stop the profiteering ...

@ Charles Newlin

I do not think that it’s so much a matter of Democrats supporting Bush or his policies as much as it is glaring proof that our political system it utterly corrupt and broken.

Journalists call it political will. I call it doing the job. And it seems that our elected officials these days are really only interested in TALKING about issues and collecting a paycheck and pension.

Cutting funding is an obvious place to start. The problem with this approach is that we in this country are given to glorifying the military above all else. Politicians trip over themselves (Democrat and Republican alike) praising our armed forces. It’s a requirement when attacking the president and his faulty policies. Cutting the budget would be spun into “not supporting the troops” and no politician would come near that with a 10 foot pole. And believe me, Bush knows this. He know’s there’s very little that anyone can do to stop him and acts accordingly. And with no real accountability for any of our officials, the broken system lurches on.

I think you’re probably right about the bruised ego. With 3000 of his troops dead, George still, incredibly, seems focussed on himself. Everything is directed at him, all the metaphorical guns, no one else is hurt, no other cause has any merit to the citizens of the world: they all just want to cause pain to George Bush.

Nothing can be done to stop this dictator? He has the powers of a dictator. He is a dictator. Look for the dictator to outlaw elections before 2008. Look for the dictator to outlaw all news outlets other than state controlled FOX. Look for the dictator to open and read your mail. Look for the dictator to sport Saddam’s pistol in his belt. Look for the dictator to be preparing a camp for you to live in. Which way to Baghdad?

Bush’s ego isn’t bruised.  He’s accomplished almost everthing he set out to accomplish. He stole the Presidency, he manufactured a subterfuge for war for personal gain, he’s packed the Supreme Court with fellow christo-fascists.  It seems the only think he failed to do, so far, is kill social security.

He and his administration are laughing, thumbing their noses at the U.S. and the world.

There is a very good way for Congress to stop this madman - impeach him.  For a great review of impeachement, read John Nichols new book “The Genius of Impeachment.” A great read.

Just say NO! Change your tax withholding, if employed, to pay less federal taxes. When it is time to file, don’t pay all that you owe. If you are in the military, show some real courage and refuse to deploy. George Bush cannot force you to go. Generals cannot force you to go. Lieutenants can’t, and sergeants can’t. You may die here from friendly fire, or go to Iraq and die from a roadside explosive. You choose. You do have a choice.
Peace,
St. John

Its time for the internet tough talk to stop and action to take place--right in the halls and offices of Congress and on the streets of DC, especially outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  If you all really want to help stop this “surge”, the continuation of the war, this move by Bush to secure his “place in history”, then go to Washington on January 27th. Look at this link:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=3436
Maybe, just maybe, the surge of citizens, on the streets of Washington, against this war will save an American kid’s life. Its too late to save my son’s life, I lost him in combat in Iraq in 2005.  Join me in saving the lives of the rest of these poor troops in Iraq and going there who are just following, albeit illegal, orders.

If the congress fails to stop this lunatic, the people must revolt.

So Congress is basically powerless to do anything to stop this madman. I think we’d better find another form of government which represents the will of the people since our current one doesn’t work. It’s short comings have been exposed when a virtual dictator either uses or co-opts every available avenue of power in it to himself.
The simultaneous impeachment proceeding for George and Dick should start immediately, they are both a danger to this country. Even if they’re not completed before the end of 2008 it will effectively tie them up for the remaining two years of our sentence and perhaps save some lives. Standing by and doing nothing is not a solution to the problem.

Bush appears to be the only person in the world who thinks with his entrails.  This might explain a lot, but surely not the Democratic Party’s continuing prostration before him.

Cutting off funds is the Constitutionally mandated way for Congress to assert its authority in this situation.  The only reason it could be a “hollow threat” is that enough of the Democrats still support the war to continue that funding in the face of their new mandate from the voters.  This is the pattern we have seen all along:  either a majority or at least enough of the Dems in Congress support Bush’s policies, no matter how awful or murderous.  This is the real reason they cannot impeach him or carry out the hard-hitting investigations that are needed:  they would be investigating themselves.

Even if Congress does withhold funding, which the House of Representatives alone could accomplish and which could not be vetoed, would Bush obey?  Probably not.  Such a direct violation of the Constitution would be sufficient grounds all by itself for impeachment, and would force Congress to act against him.  This is a bad thing?

From all they say, the Democrats in Congress are determined not to actually stop the war or impeach Bush.  Occupying their offices at home until they do seems like an idea whose time has come.  They’ve run out of excuses.  We can’t wait till ‘08, people are dying in droves.

Anyone who expects the Democrats to do anything more than put a transparent patina on the surface of an absurd government is naive. Those now in control will soon prove that they are part of the problem.