By a bipartisan vote of 251-166, the full House of Representatives sent Dennis Kucinich's 35 Articles of Impeachment to the Judiciary Committee.

That means Chairman John Conyers now has the power to decide whether to hold impeachment hearings - or not.

Incredibly, 24 Republicans voted with 227 Democrats; the 166 no votes came exclusively from Republicans.

Our friends at the American Freedom Campaign think it's long past time for Conyers to subpoena Ashcroft and Yoo over torture - and if they refuse to appear, begin impeachment hearings. We couldn't agree more. 

American Freedom Campaign Urges Chairman Conyers to Subpoena John Ashcroft and John Yoo

Call for action follows FBI Director Mueller’s testimony that Justice Department prevented investigation of CIA torture

Contact:  Steve Fox, American Freedom Campaign, 202-822-5200

Thanks to your emails (over 58,000!) and calls, House Democrats once again stood up to Bush! 

House Democrats stood up to endless televised rants by Bush, lying TV ads against key freshmen, and bullshit news articles and editorials throughout the Corporate Media.

Instead, Democrats carefully wrote a bill that will let telecom giants try to defend themselves against lawsuits by giving judges the power to review White House secrets.

I have no sympathy for New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the hot-shot prosecutor of call-girl operations who was hoist on his own petard, as it were. I mean, what a jerk! And aside from the hypocrisy, what a fine message he was sending to his three teenage daughters about the role of women.

Having said that, Spitzer's bust should give pause to those in Congress who are ready to hand President Bush a free pass to continue his six-year campaign of warrantless spying on Americans.

By Dave Lindorff

Who’s minding the store in Washington?

While President George W. Bush was standing before the members of Congress on January 28 laying out his plans, such as they are, for the final year of his second term in the White House, he was also seriously and perhaps fatally undermining the authority of Congress with a new signing statement, attached to the latest National Defense Authorization Act, in which he declared that he would simply violate or fail to comply with four provisions.

Let me say that again. The president states in writing that he is not going to obey and will not be bound by four parts of a law duly passed by the Congress.

Just so you know that we’re not talking about the naming of a bridge or a new ship, the four provisions of the act which the president is going to ignore are:

It's not being reported in the corporate media, which also refused to publish an opinion piece penned by six-term Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). But a whopping 50,000 people responded in just one day to Rep. Wexler's call for people to sign his on-line petition supporting an immediate start to hearings on Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Cheney Impeachment bill (H Res 799)

As of Sunday morning, 54,000 people had signed the petition at WexlerWantsHearings.com calling for action now. And names are being added at a rate of one every one or two seconds!

Wexler has said he wanted at least 50,000 signatures. But why stop there? If people get behind this, and if the impeachment movement spreads the word, he could easily get closer to 500,000 signatures over the next few days.

Faced with an obstructionist leadership in the House, and a mainstream media that have forsaken their role as a Fourth Estate monitor of government abuse, three Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee are calling on the public to demand that the Congress initiate impeachment hearings immediately against Vice President Dick Cheney.

When Nancy Pelosi took impeachment "off the table" during the 2006 campaign, what was her justification? She said the most important reason to elect a Democratic majority was to give them "subpoena power."

Well We the People beat the unbeatable Bush-Rove political juggernaut, elected Democratic majorities, and made Pelosi the Speaker of the House. And then the Democratic chairs of the various committees started issuing subpoenas. And then White House counsel Fred Fielding told the Democrats (politely and very slowly) to go Cheney themselves.

So now Speaker Pelosi has to make a decision - whether to enforce those hard-earned Democratic subpoenas, or simply throw them into the trash can.

Rep. John Conyers has never explained why he went along with Nancy Pelosi's decision in 2006 to take impeachment "off the table," but Rob Kall (on right in photo), creator of the remarkable site OpEdNews, got as close to an answer as I've seen.

I was doing some end of year email clean-up and came across this William Pitt interview with incoming House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers shortly after the release of the "Conyers Report". Curious how things have "changed" after just a few months...

..."Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.)... has released a 350-page report titled "The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance." Within the pages of this report lies the hard, ugly truth of our sorry situation...." (more)