McKinney Steps Up to the Plate
Put forth on December 9, 2006 by XicanoPwr
Posted in Cynthia McKinney, Democrats, George Bush, Henry B. Gonzalez, Impeachment
On Friday, outgoing Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney has filed articles of impeachment against President George W Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
McKinney charges that Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld manipulated intelligence and lied to justify war, and that Bush abused the Office of the Presidency by engaging in illegal domestic spying. But now that the Democrats have taken control of both houses of the Congress, they are slavishly following the bidding of incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, to make the Democratic Party look good - as opposed to the Republicans - rather than immediately address the crisis that was affecting this nation. Pelosi has already made it clear that “impeachment is off the table” and has warned members of her party not to pursue the impeachment of an Administration who has violated approximately 26 laws and regulations.
The Democratic Party is failing to act as the legislators that their constituents voted them into office to be. After six years of enduring a cultural of corruption put forward by the Republican Party, we can now look forward to an era of a culture of hypocrisy and a continuance of political cowardice by the Democratic Party. Change was their battle cry. Wasn’t it Pelosi who declared it is time “drain the swamp” of a decade of Republican rule. What about the “First 100 Hours” Agenda where a recent Newsweek poll indicated that 51 percent of Americans would definitely want to see Bush impeached, are we are no longer needed, now that the Democrats control Congress?
The Democratic Party continues to hold this belief to seek a middle ground - otherwise known as taking the moral high road, the same moral high round that got Bill Clinton impeached, that led Al Gore and John Kerry to give up their fight after a stolen election. Look where that got us. This country is deeply injured by the actions of a Commander in Thief and because it we are soon becoming the world’s pariah and Congress has a Constitutional obligation act now to begin the healing process. They must address our own concerns, and not become confused by the verbiage that has nothing to do with us.
The only person who is willing to step up to the place by electing to do her job as a public servant is Cynthia McKinney. Truth be told, she reminds me of the last public servant in modern time who also courageously provided a voice to the voiceless in a time where members of Congress also severed to corporate masters, a representative I had the pleasure of meeting when I was undergrad, a representative from the once great of state of Texas - the late Democratic Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez.
The showed true courage and was unafraid of taking on the Republicans - in 1991, Gonzalez sought to impeach the first President Bush; and like McKinney, Gonzalez wasn’t afraid to butt heads with members of his own party.
“I stand before you today, accepted, but seen by some as an inconvenient and unwelcome obstacle,” he told a closed-door meeting of House Democrats in 1996, beating back yet another challenge to his leadership.
As McKinney will be alone for her final act as a public servant in her last week in office, I know Rep Henry B Gonzalez will be looking down on her with a smile and probably wondering why his own flesh and blood is not standing by her.
The day after the first Gulf War started, Congressman Gonzalez appeared alone in the Well of the House to announce his Impeachment Resolution, which he then introduced. He had been abandoned by every other Member of Congress who had previously stated their willingness to co-sponsor his Resolution. Not only did he seek to impeach Bush, but he also went after President Ronald Reagan and not only once, but twice.
March 6, 1987 New York Times: “Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who asked the House to impeach President Reagan after the Grenada invasion in 1983, today introduced new articles of impeachment against Reagan regarding the Iran arms affair.”
This is Cynthia McKinney’s last week in Congress, unsupported her own party, she will be leaving public office in a blaze of glory, doing something no other member of her own party has the courage to do - start that process by putting impeachment back on the table. Thank you Rep McKinney.
Technorati Tags: Cynthia McKinney, impeachment, George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Party, Henry B. Gonzalez
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This is the blog of Edmundo "XicanoPwr" Rocha, a social worker, an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary. My interests include: immigration reform, critical race theory and it's interaction with equality/inequality and freedom/oppression as they relate to the experiences of people of color in the Americas.
Para Justicia y Libertad is a Latino-centered political blog focusing on the humanistic perspective of politics, history, and society as they relate to the Latina/o community throughout Texas and the United States.
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The Democrats will be missing a huge opportunity if they don’t launch a series of investigations into the selling of the war, the domestic spying, the extreme rendition, the policy of torture, and the sweetheart deals that the administration has handed out to its friends.
I’ve always thought that Clinton and the Dems in congress missed a huge opportunity back in 1993, when they controlled the presidency and both branches of congress, but decided to “let bygones be bygones” and “move forward”, instead of aggressively investigating the wrongdoing of the Bush administration.
Corruption and lawbreaking are things that evreryone is against, so if you know the other side is dirty, press your case. It will be a lot easier to convince people that you’re right on the issues once you’ve demonstrated that the people on the other side are a bunch of crooks.
The whole let “bygones be bygones” is what always gets us in a mess. I am not talking about now, but, the whole Clinton thing you mentioned. How many people actually remember the Articles of Impeachment submitted by Gonzalez, probably less than 10% of the American population. In those Articles of Impeachment, Gonzalez mentions Gates, who at that time was the CIA Director, and now he is our War Czar, we put back a guy who help put Saddam into power and the only question the Senate Committee could muster up, Are we winning the war? Hello, now that he is our War Czar, I think he is going to finish the job he left behind. We just handed the thief the keys to the house.
This just too maddening. Doesn’t anybody give a shit anymore?
Isn’t it convenient how network television news and the print media in many cases ignore these charges by Georgia Congressional Representative Cynthia McKinney? And that’s just the tip of a long list of high crimes by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their group of cronies. The looting of the American taxpayer, so the Bush Administration can finance record profits for Halliburton, the American Oil industry, and the Carlyle Group, and then coat it with the blood of American soldiers. Yet, that very same network television news and print media swarmed and festered all over Bill Clinton and his administration because he got a blow job in the oval office? Talk about journalistic ethics being traded for gossipmonger behavior.
The late great Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez would be proud that there is at least one Congressman on Capitol Hill still representing the interests of the American people. It would be nice if there were two.
Very convenient. Like father like son because it seems like the sins from the father is being continued by the son. And all those who think GW is different from Papa Bush are not looking very closely.
It is just sad that Henry’s son is not continuing his father’s legacy.
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