Nadler Is Blocking Impeachment
Submitted by davidswanson on January 23, 2008 - 9:01pm. ImpeachForChange
By David Swanson
A private off-the-record meeting was held on Capitol Hill on Wednesday that included House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Subcommittee on the Constitution Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Judiciary Committee Member and advocate for opening Cheney impeachment hearings Robert Wexler, and several other committee members, activists, staffers, and former staffers from the Watergate days. I wasn't there, so I'm free to talk about what happened.
Wexler proposed opening impeachment hearings on Cheney. Conyers committee staffer Perry Appelbaum laid out instead a schedule for non-impeachment hearings over the coming 11 months. Conyers' notion is to hold non-impeachment hearings on "the imperial presidency" and run out the clock. I guess that would be sort of like a dozen police officers paying a non-arresting visit to the home of a mass murderer. Seriously? An "imperial" president, and you don't impeach him, and you don't retire or commit suicide? This baffles me.
Now, there are topics that have not been touched in congressional investigations over the past 12 months, such as the Iraq war lies. But a lot of the other topics have already been gone over, just absent the I word. What will differentiate the new non-impeachment hearings from the past year's worth of non-impeachment hearings? Of course, getting witnesses to show up and testify would be a change, but without impeachment, nothing will compel any witnesses to testify who have previously refused.
more at:
http://www.democrats.com/node/15492