On Friday, Congressman John Conyers of Michigan announced that his investigation into the Constitutional violations of the Bush administration had drawn to a close. The final written report, entitled “The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance,” was then made public. The culmination of several year’s work, the report should have garnered intense media attention. Instead, however, the story barely made a blip on the nation’s radar. Some are suggesting that it’s all part of the vast corporate media conspiracy not to dissemenate news items unfavorable to Dear Leader, but I suspect that it has more to do with Conyers not actively pursuing the press. If he had really wanted coverage, at least it seems to me, he wouldn’t have released the report on a Friday.
One of the few organizations to comment on the report was the National Review, whose article today started as follows:
There’s a word you won’t find in the text of Democratic Rep. John Conyers’s new “investigative report” on the Bush administration, “The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance.” And the word is…impeachment. Yet the 350-page “Constitution in Crisis,” released last week, is, more than anything else, a detailed road map for the impeachment of George W. Bush, ready for use should Democrats win control of the House of Representatives this November. And Conyers, who would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee — the panel that would initiate any impeachment proceedings — is the man who could make it happen…
As the author points out later in the article, it would be silly to think that Conyers, who has stated on several occasions that these matters should be brought before the House, wouldn’t pursue Impeachment if the Democrats were to take back control of the House in November, and he were made Chairman of the Judiciary committee… I’m not sure why Conyers slipped the report out so quietly (especially as I think he held press conferences upon the completion of the hearings which led to this report), but my guess is that he doesn’t want to give the Republicans more fuel to enrage their base and motivate them to take to the polls come this November. Whatever the reason, it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. Cleary, the extreme right is trying everything they can to generate a huge turnout (even having the state-run news agency, Fox News, issue a terrifying prediction of a Democratic landslide), and my guess is that we’ll begin to see this idea coming up more in next few months — that if the Democrats are allowed to win, they’ll formally begin Impeachment proceedings against Bush.
I’m not saying that I don’t think that’s true. I think that’s exactly what will happen, and I think it’ll be a good thing for our country. I just think that we can expect to see the Republicans using that, along with gay marriage, abortion, and everything else in the little bag of tricks they use to motivate the not-so-bright among us. As the election draws near, you can be sure that we’ll begin hearing more about the irreparable harm that such proceedings would do to our country during wartime. (Personally, I think that Impeachment is about the only thing that can save us at this point in American history.)
4 Comments
I wish that “Impeachment” had been on the ballot this morning.
The real shame is that the blogosphere is not picking up on it very much, either. Ther have been a few, such as here, but not as much as I would have hoped for.
Perhaps everybody is being quiet so as not to motivate the Right into voting en masse in November.
That’s my hope too, Kathleen. Things seem to be going their way, so my guess is that they’re just letting things play out, while, behind the scenes, they get things in order. Of course, you never know what Rove might have up his sleeve. Fear may again prove to be the deciding factor… Speaking of which, I’d better finnish drinking my water before getting on this plane.