Kucinich introduces resolution to impeach Dick Cheney

Go DK!

Also, looks like other people are catching on to the Kucinich conspiracy to rig online candidate-matching quizzes.

But remember, guys, the important thing about Kucinich is not that this legislation, nor that he's the only candidate who's never voted to fund the war (and is actually for defunding it), nor that he wants to start a "Dept. of Peace," nor that he believes we should pull out of NAFTA or turn Medicare into a single-payer government health insurer of all Americans.

No no no. What is important is that he once saw a UFO with Shirley MacLaine and has a smokin' hot wife. Those are what are important to know about Kucinich, and thus must be the beginning and end of every conversation about him, like Edwards' haircut and Hillary's pantsuits.

contempt of Congress charges against Miers pass out of committee

From AP:

CAPITOL HILL (AP) - A House panel has cleared the way for contempt proceedings against former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Miers today obeyed an order from President Bush and did not appear at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing. Miers had been subpoenaed to testify about the firing of 8 federal prosecutors.

Addressing the empty chair, the panel's chair, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, ruled that White House claims of executive privilege were out of order. Current White House counsel Fred Fielding has asserted that executive privilege gives Miers "absolute" immunity.

The subcommittee voted 7 to 5 to sustain Sanchez's ruling.

She knows there is no legal backing for this whatsoever. Harriet Miers knowingly broke the law because Bush told her to.

Remember, everyone, our president wanted to make this woman a Supreme Court Justice.

General Odom on "playing chicken with the troops"

You may have heard by now that General William Odom, Ronald Reagan's old NSA chief, is now calling for withdrawal. But look at this, from his essay on the matter:

To force [the president] to begin a withdrawal before [he leaves office], the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what "supporting the troops" really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.

The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the "high crime" of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.

Apparently Odom suspects the same thing I do, and that in my interpretation, Barack Obama does as well: if Congress cuts off funds, the president may keep the troops there anyway, threatening to let them run out of bullets, and dare Congress not to pass a funding bill to save them, hence Obama's verbiage about "not wanting to play chicken with our troops."

This is what even Republicans have been hinting at and implying all this time when they say "defunding the troops" or "defunding the war endangers the troops." What could they possibly mean other than the Commander in Chief letting the troops run out of bullets? And for that matter, why aren't Democrats screaming from the rafters that this is what the Republicans are telling us?!?!

why didn't I think of that?

John Aravosis figured out why the Democrats chose to issue warrantless wiretapping subpoenas now:

But of course, Cheney just said he and his office are not part of the executive branch. But he'll have to change his tune immediately in order to squash the subpoena by claiming executive privelege. And that is why the subpoena was issued right now, to force Cheney to recant his recent claim that he's a new and independent 4th branch of government. Two points for the Dems.

I don't give Patrick Leahy enough credit sometimes.

when all you've got is a Hammer...

I just listened to the first part of the Diane Rehm show, where I had the pleasure of hearing Newt f*^king Gingrich lecture today's politicians on, yes, being too partisan. Then, in his answer to the very first caller's question, he claimed that the only answer liberals have to global warming was "to raise taxes and give more power to trial lawyers."

That was right after he totally evaded the first emailed question about his own dubious role in the country's polarization with the Clinton impeachment.

But damn those politicians and their partisan soundbytes!

UPDATE 12:06PM: My landlady tells me that Gingrich eventually skipped out on Diane only 40 minutes into the show, which royally pissed her off, as he had promised her the whole hour, so she had no guest for the last 20 minutes (apparently, she spent it ranting about Gingrich's performance).

Gingrich is perhaps the worst of these hyperpartisan politicians (Tom Delay being second) when it comes to practicing oppositional politics. He doesn't care about actually fixing anything. Rather, his entire being is geared toward soundbytes and framing and political maneuvering. Everything, and I mean everything, that comes out of Gingrich's mouth has one purpose: to disparage and discredit his opponents. There are no moments of candor with him; he's always got one hand on his dagger and one eye on the backs of Democrats, liberals, and intellectuals.

This is what, to me at least, is emblematic of current Republicanism: defeating Democrats and marginalizing liberals is the point of every word and every action. You don't see this with liberals, or even most major Democrats (with perhaps the exception of Rahm Emmanuel). When Al Gore is talking about climate change or John Edwards about poverty, you don't get the sense that they've got Republicans or conservatives in the back of their mind, and they hardly ever come up.

Republicans, however, just won't STFU about Democrats and liberals and how stupid and evil and weak and traitorous and fascist they are, and Gingrich is one of the main reasons for this. He showed them a way of winning that was no holds barred, that had no vision, no answers, no end other than winning, and he molded the GOP to work like him. It's all they know, and that probably goes a long way to describing just why they've been so singularly ineffectual administrators and lawmakers. They can cut taxes, they can start wars, they can stage PR stunts, and they can denigrate liberals, but that's all they've got. That's the entire GOP playbook: 4 moves designed and poll-tested to win elections. They're not so great at maintaining healthy economies or keeping government running smoothly or answering societal problems or stopping impending environmental catastrophies, but for a decade and a half the GOP has been winning by pretending everything is a nail and they put all their other tools in hock when Gingrich proved to them that responsibility and openness are unnecessary in government. Now, of course, they're reaping what Gingrich and Armey and Delay sowed, as these tried-and-true techniques are diminishing in their returns. Authoritarian cultism, propaganda, and corruption can only hide one's incompetence for so long.

AG chief of staff admits Gonzales lied to Congress

There's going to be an impeachment over this, I can all but guarantee it. From ThinkProgress:

Today, under questioning from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sampson said, under oath, that he “shared information with anyone who wanted it.” Specifically, Sampson said he did share information with McNulty and Moschella prior to their testimonies before Congress. Schumer responded: “So the Attorney General’s statement is wrong, is false. How could it not be?” Sampson froze. Ultimately, he acknowledged Gonzales’s statement is “not accurate.”

Gonzales testified to Congress that Sampson didn't tell anyone in the Dept. what really happened in the Attorney purge, and that's why Congress got conflicting accounts between himself and others in the dept. Thinkprogress has the video, and I suggest you watch it: the most damning evidence of Gonzales' wrongdoing, in my mind, is seeing Sampson's face when Schumer springs the trap. It was pretty smart: Schumer put Sampson on his heels using Gonzales' testimony and made him defend himself against (Gonzales') charges of incompetence. The only way Sampson could defend it was by contradicting Gonzales' testimony. The look on his face when Schumer flips it around and says "So the Attorney General's statement is wrong, is false" shows pretty clearly that the gravity of what he just admitted is very serious.

a primer on the coming constitutional crisis

Here is a quick-and-dirty rundown of the constitutional issue of congressional subpoenas and the full implications of W's willingness to burn the whole house down, from Kagro X at dKos. A sampling:

Realize that the resolution of this stand-off will determine the extent to which the Congress is able to investigate everything that's still on their plate. If they lose this showdown, they lose their leverage in investigating NSA spying, the DeLay/Abramoff-financed Texas redistricting, Cheney's Energy Task Force, the political manipulation of science, the Plame outing... everything.

The entirety of the Dems tenure in congressional leadership has been building up to this confrontation. In my opinion, it was inevitable. They've let this bull run amok in our china shop for far too long under the cowed GOP leadership and the cowed Dem leadership before that.

It's time for the corraling.

the dictionary definition of hypocrisy

From TPM:

In the wake of the Libby verdict, Fox News has wheeled out a brigade of legal analysts and their usual TV hosts, all of whom are reaching oddly similar conclusions: The verdict is flawed, and there was no underlying crime.

So the conservative gasbags on FOX News were complaining about the verdict because there was no underlying crime. That is, though Libby lied, he lied about something that is not, in fact, a criminal act. In a perjury and obstruction of justice trial. Of someone in the White House.

Of course, I'm just being facetious. After all, there is a major difference between the two cases: unlike adultery, leaking the identity of a clandestine CIA operative is, in fact, a federal crime. It could even constitute an act of domestic terrorism according to the Patriot Act.