Impeachment Talk Reaches the Mainstream

[senorsalvia]

I completely agree 'bout tha 3-party thing....  Question...  What's anyones opinion as to whether we'll see a viable 3rd part anytime in the next , say, 2-3 election timespan???  I hope so, but unfortunately, I think the entrenched parties have a lock on the whole politico-machinery apparatus, and hence; we'll see nothing more than the 'charade in perpetuity'.... ------------  sal

[cenacle]

White House 'Discovers' Emails Related to Plame Leak
By Jason Leopold

Published Friday 24 February 2006 at Truthout.org

    The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.

    The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.

    Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status to reporters.

    Cheney was not under oath when he was interviewed. He told investigators how the White House came to rely on Niger documents that purportedly showed that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country.

    Cheney said he had received an intelligence briefing on the allegations in either December 2001 or January 2002.

    Cheney said he was unaware that Ambassador Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to look into the uranium claims, and that he never saw a report Wilson had given a CIA analyst upon his return which stated that the Niger claims were untrue. He said the CIA never told him about Wilson's trip.

    However, the emails say otherwise, and will show that the vice president spearheaded an effort in March 2003 to attack Wilson’s credibility and used the CIA to dig up information on the former ambassador that could be used against him, sources said.

    Some of the emails that were turned over to Fitzgerald contained references to Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status, and developments related to the inability of ground forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the start of the war in March 2003.

    According to sources, the emails also contained suggestions by senior officials in Cheney’s office, and at the National Security Council, on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.

    Last month, Fitzgerald disclosed in court documents that he discovered from witnesses in the case that some emails related to Wilson and his wife, written by senior aides in Cheney’s office and sent to other officials at the National Security Council, had not been turned over to investigators by the White House.

    “In an abundance of caution,” Fitzgerald's January 23 letter to Libby's defense team states, “we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.”

    Sources close to the case said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales withheld numerous emails from Fitzgerald’s probe citing “executive privilege” and “national security” concerns. These sources said that as of Friday there are still some emails that have not been turned over to Fitzgerald because they contain classified information in addition to references about the Wilsons.

    Attorneys representing Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to his role in the leak, were in court Friday arguing that Fitzgerald should be required to turn over classified material, including highly sensitive Presidential Daily Briefs, to Libby’s defense team.

    The defense hopes that the classified materials will establish that Libby was dealing with more pressing matters facing the White House and that he simply did not intend to mislead the grand jury when he testified that he did not disclose Plame Wilson’s name to reporters.

    In another development in the leak case Friday, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said another administration official, who does not work at the White House, also spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson. This individual, according to sources close to the case, works at the National Security Council.

    Walton said that Libby’s defense team was not entitled to be told of the individual’s identity because the person is not charged with a crime in the leak. However, the person is said to be one of several people in the administration who is cooperating with the probe.

    Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak investigation, and is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.

[cenacle]

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46450

hehe! :twisted:

[Stonehenge]

I completely agree 'bout tha 3-party thing....  Question...  What's anyones opinion as to whether we'll see a viable 3rd part anytime in the next , say, 2-3 election timespan???  I hope so, but unfortunately, I think the entrenched parties have a lock on the whole politico-machinery apparatus, and hence; we'll see nothing more than the 'charade in perpetuity'.... ------------  sal

I agree, the powers that be are not keen on changing the crooked system we have right now. A viable third party is needed to break up the one party system we have now. I will no longer vote for any D or R. It will be third party candidates only.

I still am not seeing any of this in the news. The censure action seems to have been removed from the public radar screen. Only a few independent news outlets here and there seem to mention it.

[senorsalvia]

Just a quick thought; maybe it's singing in the rain, maybe it'll help a bit....  How's about everybody e-mail and write (yes, a real letter)  to the editor of their local paper telling them that you would be interested in a more in depth covering of the censure/impeachment issue.....   Yeah, I know most of the rags are owned by some some corporate behemoth and have their own agenda, but what the hell...  It would only take a couple of minutes.....  {ya gotta have active participants in 'da revolution, or their just aint 'a gonna be one} :wink: ---------------  sal

[cenacle]

Senate hearing set on move to censure Bush

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060324/pl_ ... NlYwN0bWE-

The Republican-led U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Friday it would hold a hearing next week on a call by a Democratic lawmaker to censure President George W. Bush for his domestic spy program.

In a one-sentence notice, the panel said the hearing would be held next Friday by the order of its chairman, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, who has opposed censure.

Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record) of Wisconsin introduced a resolution last week calling for a Senate censure of the president, charging that Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program was illegal. Revelation of the once-secret program has triggered a political uproar.

Feingold, who has attracted little support from fellow Democrats for censure, said unless a hearing was held he would push for a vote by the full Senate on his resolution.

The White House and many Republicans in Congress have denounced Feingold's censure resolution as a political stunt.

"Some Democrats in Congress have decided the president is the enemy and the terrorist surveillance program is grounds for censuring the president," Vice President Dick Cheney told a Republican fund-raiser in Orlando, Florida, on Friday, adding, "The American people have already made their decision. They agree with the president."

The Senate has censured a president, which amounts to a formal rebuke, only once before and that was Andrew Jackson in 1834 in a banking dispute.

Bush secretly authorized warrantless electronic eavesdropping on Americans while in pursuit of suspected enemies of the United States shortly after the September 11 attacks.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist sought to dismiss the censure resolution against Bush with an immediate vote last week but was blocked by some Democrats who said the resolution needed to be at least debated.

Specter has questioned the legality of Bush's surveillance program but has argued that censure is not justified.

In Senate comments last week, Specter noted that experts had disagreed about whether the president has the constitutional power to conduct the program without court warrants.

"When he (Feingold) comes to the resolve clause and speaks about censure and condemnation of President Bush, I think he is vastly excessive," Specter said.

As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Feingold will have an opportunity at next week's hearing to debate Specter.

The Wisconsin Democrat, traveling overseas, could not be reached for an immediate comment on Specter's decision to hold a hearing, his office said.

[cenacle]

Fitzgerald Will Seek New White House Indictments
By Jason Leopold

Published Tuesday 28 March 2006 by Truthout.org
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032806Z.shtml

    It may seem as though it's been moving along at a snail's pace, but the second part of the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is nearly complete, with attorneys and government officials who have remained close to the probe saying that a grand jury will likely return an indictment against one or two senior Bush administration officials.

    These sources work or worked at the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council. Some of these sources are attorneys close to the case. They requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the details of the investigation.

    In lengthy interviews over the weekend and on Monday, they said that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has started to prepare the paperwork to present to the grand jury seeking an indictment against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

    Although the situation remains fluid, it's possible, these sources said, that Fitzgerald may seek to indict both Rove and Hadley, charging them with perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy related to their roles in the leak of Plame Wilson's identity and their effort to cover up their involvement following a Justice Department investigation.

    The sources said late Monday that it may take more than a month before Fitzgerald presents the paperwork outlining the government's case against one or both of the officials and asks the grand jury to return an indictment, because he is currently juggling quite a few high-profile criminal cases and will need to carve out time to write up the indictment and prepare the evidence.

    In addition to responding to discovery requests from Libby's defense team and appearing in court with his attorneys, who are trying to obtain additional evidence, such as top-secret documents, from Fitzgerald's probe, the special prosecutor is also prosecuting Lord Conrad Black, the newspaper magnate, has recently charged numerous individuals in a child pornography ring, and is wrestling with other lawsuits in his home city of Chicago.

    Details about the latest stage of the investigation began to take shape a few weeks ago when the lead FBI investigator on the leak case, John C. Eckenrode, retired from the agency and indicated to several colleagues that the investigation is about to wrap up with indictments handed up by the grand jury against Rove or Hadley or both officials, the sources said.

    The Philadelphia-based Eckenrode is finished with his work on the case; however, he is expected to testify as a witness for the prosecution next year against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff who was indicted in October on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators regarding his role in the leak.

    Hadley and Rove remain under intense scrutiny, but sources said Fitzgerald has not yet decided whether to seek charges against one or both of them.

    Libby and other officials in Cheney's office used the information they obtained about Plame Wilson to undermine the credibility of her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson was an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. He had alleged that President Bush misspoke when he said, in his January 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq had tried to acquire yellow-cake uranium, the key component used to build a nuclear bomb, from Niger.

    The uranium claim was the silver bullet in getting Congress to support military action two months later. To date, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and the country barely had a functional weapons program, according to a report from the Iraq Survey Group.

    Wilson had traveled to Niger more than a year earlier to investigate the yellow-cake claims and reported back to the CIA that intelligence reports saying Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger were false.

    On Monday, though, attorneys close to the leak case confirmed that Fitzgerald had met with the grand jury half a dozen times since January and recently told the jurors that he planned to present them with the government's case against Rove or Hadley, which stems from an email Rove had sent to Hadley in July of 2003 indicating that he had a conversation about Plame Wilson with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

    Neither Hadley nor Rove disclosed the existence of the email when they were questioned by FBI investigators or when they testified before a grand jury, the sources said, adding that Rove testified he found out about Plame Wilson from reporters and Hadley testified that he recalled learning about Plame Wilson when her name was published in a newspaper column.

    Rove testified before the grand jury four times. Rove testified before the grand jury four times. He did not disclose the existence of the email during his first two appearances before the grand jury, claiming he simply forgot about it because he was enmeshed with the 2004 Presidential election, traveling around the country attending fundraisers and meetings, working more than 15 hours a day on the campaign, and just forgot that he spoke with Cooper three months earlier, sources familiar with his testimony said.

    But Rove and Libby had been the subject of dozens of news stories about the possibility that they played a role in the leak, and had faced dozens of questions as early as August 2003 - one month after Plame Wilson was outed - about whether they were the administration officials responsible for leaking her identity.

    The story Rove and his attorney, Robert Luskin, provided to Fitzgerald in order to explain why Rove did not disclose the existence of the email is "less than satisfactory and entirely unconvincing to the special counsel," one of the attorneys close to the case said.

    Luskin did not return numerous calls for comment. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council said she could not comment on an ongoing investigation and has vehemently denied that Hadley was involved in the leak "because Mr. Hadley told us he wasn't involved."

    In December, Luskin made a desperate attempt to keep his client out of Fitzgerald's crosshairs.

    Luskin had revealed to Fitzgerald that Viveca Novak - a reporter working for Time magazine who wrote several stories about the Plame Wilson case - inadvertently tipped him off in early 2004 that her colleague at the magazine, Matt Cooper, would be forced to testify that Rove was his source who told him about Plame Wilson's CIA status.

    Novak - who bears no relation to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, the journalist who first published Plame Wilson's name and CIA status in a July 14, 2003, column - met Luskin in Washington DC in the summer of 2004, and over drinks, the two discussed Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame Wilson leak.

    Luskin had assured Novak that Rove learned Plame Wilson's name and CIA status after it was published in news accounts and that only then did he phone other journalists to draw their attention to it. But Novak told Luskin that everyone in the Time newsroom knew Rove was Cooper's source and that he would testify to that in an upcoming grand jury appearance, these sources said.

    According to Luskin's account, after he met with Viveca Novak he contacted Rove and told him about his conversation with her. The two of them then began an exhaustive search through White House phone logs and emails for any evidence that proved that Rove had spoken with Cooper. Luskin said that during this search an email was found that Rove had sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley immediately after Rove's conversation with Cooper, and it was subsequently turned over to Fitzgerald.

    "I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in the email to Hadley immediately following his conversation with Cooper on July 11, 2003. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."

    Luskin wound up becoming a witness in the case and testified about his conversation with Viveca Novak that Luskin said would prove his client didn't knowingly lie to FBI investigators when he was questioned about the leak in October 2003, just three months after Rove told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

    The email Rove sent to Hadley, which Luskin said he found, helped Rove recall his conversation with Cooper a year earlier. Rove then returned to the grand jury to clarify his previous testimonies in which he did not disclose that he spoke with journalists.

    Still, Rove's account of his conversation with Cooper went nothing like he had described in his email to Hadley, according to an email Cooper sent to his editor at Time magazine following his conversation with Rove in July 2003.

    "It was, KR said, [former Ambassador Joseph] Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized [Wilson's] trip," Cooper's July 11, 2003, email to his editor said. "Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The email characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger... "

    It is unclear whether Rove was misleading Hadley about his conversation with Cooper, perhaps, because White House officials told their staff not to engage reporters in any questions posed about Wilson's Niger claims.

    But Fitzgerald's investigation has turned up additional evidence over the past few months that convinced him that Luskin's eleventh-hour revelation about the chain of events that led to the discovery of the email is not credible. Fitzgerald believes that Rove changed his story once it became clear that Cooper would be compelled to testify about the source - Rove - who revealed Plame Wilson's CIA status to him, sources close to the case said.

    If any of the people named in this story believe they have been unfairly portrayed or that what was written in this story is untrue, they will have an opportunity to respond in this space.

[cenacle]

Impeachment Talk Becomes More Than Whisper
by Jack Torry
 
Published on Friday, March 31, 2006 by the Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0331-03.htm

WASHINGTON â€" It began with Santa Cruz City Council in September and was regarded as merely another quaint episode in California history.

The council called on the House Judiciary Committee to determine whether President Bush committed an impeachable offense by sending U.S. troops into Iraq.

Since then, the resolutions have continued to pass â€" from the New Mexico Democratic Party to four small towns in Vermont to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who trumped everyone by demanding that Congress impeach both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

This little-noticed impeachment debate is taking place as the Senate Judiciary Committee today considers a censure resolution introduced by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a likely presidential contender in 2008. Feingold argues that Bush violated law when he authorized the interception of Americans’ communications with suspected terrorists without obtaining a warrant from a federal judge.

"There is movement and it is gaining momentum," said Sophie de Vries, who serves as impeachment coordinator for Democrats.com in California. "It’s not just fringe people. You’re going to see towns and cities in red states soon and that will show it’s no bicoastal affair but encompasses large swaths of the country."

Yet though progressive Democrats are pushing impeachment, the national party is trying to avoid a messy debate on such a divisive issue. Many Democrats are convinced that they can win either the House or Senate in November and the last thing they want is an impeachment drive that could energize Republican voters.

"I think we need to let Bush continue to hang himself," said James Ruvolo, former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. "I’m not in favor of Democrats pushing that. We ought to be talking about the issues that matter and the public gets tired of the process stuff."

Joanna Kuebler, a spokeswoman for Rep. Sherrod Brown of Avon, the likely Democratic nominee for the Senate this year, said, "Sherrod agrees there is a consistent cause for concern in the way the president wiretapped without a warrant. However, the issues that affect everyday Ohioans as he travels the state are job losses, soaring prescription-drug prices and tuition that’s out of reach for many American families . . . That is where Congressman Brown’s focus has been ."

Republicans have welcomed the impeachment calls with barely disguised gusto. With surveys showing that Americans would like to transfer control of Congress to the Democrats, GOP strategists are doing their best to warn their voters that if Democrats win, Bush could be impeached like President Clinton in 1998 when he faced charges from the Republicancontrolled House.

Senate Republicans, despite warnings from Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, to stay away from "sideshows," are pushing for a floor vote on Feingold’s resolution. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., scheduled a hearing on censure even though no other committee Democrat seemed interested in even acknowledging the existence of the resolution.

Sal Russo, a California Republican consultant, said Democrats would be "making a big mistake by going down that road. They’re appeasing the far left of their party and alienating Middle America."

Yet there is mounting pressure from Democratic activists to challenge Bush on the war and wiretaps. Although no Ohio city has passed a resolution, 10 towns, five state Democratic parties and 19 local Democratic committees have approved resolutions calling for an impeachment inquiry.

When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told a community forum in San Francisco that she wanted to focus on the November elections instead of impeachment, she was greeted with boos.

"I think the national Democrats have their own agenda," de Vries said. "They …don’t understand impeachment would a valid tool to support taking back the House. The public is ahead of Congress."

[cenacle]

In Court Filings, Cheney Aide Says Bush Approved Leak
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published April 6, 2006 by the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-C ... r=homepage

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.

Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

But the disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Bush's political foes jumped on the revelation about Libby's testimony.

''The fact that the president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain and put the interests of his political party ahead of Americas security shows that he can no longer be trusted to keep America safe,'' Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, ''The more we hear, the more it is clear this goes way beyond Scooter Libby. At the very least, President Bush and Vice President Cheney should fully inform the American people of any role in allowing classified information to be leaked.''

Libby's testimony also puts the president and the vice president in the awkward position of authorizing leaks -- a practice both men have long said they abhor, so much so that the administration has put in motion criminal investigations to hunt down leakers.

The most recent instance is the administration's launching of a probe into who disclosed to The New York Times the existence of the warrantless domestic surveillance program authorized by Bush shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The authorization involving intelligence information came as the Bush administration faced mounting criticism about its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the main reason the president and his aides had given for going to war.

Libby's participation in a critical conversation with Miller on July 8, 2003 ''occurred only after the vice president advised defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate,'' the papers by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald stated. The filing did not specify the ''certain information.''

''Defendant testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller -- getting approval from the president through the vice president to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval -- were unique in his recollection,'' the papers added.

Libby is asking for voluminous amounts of classified information from the government in order to defend himself against five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in the Plame affair.

He is accused of making false statements about how he learned of Plame's CIA employment and what he told reporters about it.

Her CIA status was publicly disclosed eight days after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction.

In 2002, Wilson had been dispatched to Africa by the CIA to check out intelligence that Iraq had an agreement to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger, and Wilson had concluded that there was no such arrangement.

Libby says he needs extensive classified files from the government to demonstrate that Plame's CIA connection was a peripheral matter that he never focused on, and that the role of Wilson's wife was a small piece in a building public controversy over the failure to find WMD in Iraq.

Fitzgerald said in the new court filing that Libby's requests for information go too far and the prosecutor cited Libby's own statements to investigators in an attempt to limit the amount of information the government must turn over to Cheney's former chief of staff for his criminal defense.

According to Miller's grand jury testimony, Libby told her about Plame's CIA status in the July 8, 2003 conversation that took place shortly after the White House aide -- according to the new court filing -- was authorized by Bush through Cheney to disclose sensitive intelligence about Iraq and WMD contained in a National Intelligence Estimate.

The court filing was first disclosed by The New York Sun.

[Hyakitaki]

I'm begining to write my letter to my tiny local newpaper...it's not that big but still what else can I do?

Bush needs to be impeached

[Avery L. Breath]

Bush Impeachment - The Illinois State Legislature Is Preparing to Drop a Bombshell
    By Steven Leser
    OpEd News

    Saturday 22 April 2006

Utilizing a little known rule of the US House to bring Impeachment charges.

    The Illinois General Assembly is about to rock the nation. Members of state legislatures are normally not considered as having the ability to decide issues with a massive impact to the nation as a whole. Representative Karen A. Yarbrough of Illinois' 7th District is about to shatter that perception forever. Representative Yarbrough stumbled on a little known and never utlitized rule of the US House of Representatives, Section 603 of Jefferson's Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature. From there, Illinois House Joint Resolution 125 (hereafter to be referred to as HJR0125) was born.

    Detailing five specific charges against President Bush including one that is specified to be a felony, the complete text of HJR0125 is copied below at the end of this article. One of the interesting points is that one of the items, the one specified as a felony, that the NSA was directed by the President to spy on American citizens without warrant, is not in dispute. That fact should prove an interesting dilemma for a Republican controlled US House that clearly is not only loathe to initiate impeachment proceedings, but does not even want to thoroughly investigate any of the five items brought up by the Illinois Assembly as high crimes and/or misdemeanors. Should HJR0125 be passed by the Illinois General Assembly, the US House will be forced by House Rules to take up the issue of impeachment as a privileged bill, meaning it will take precedence over other House business.

    The Illinois General Assembly joins a growing chorus of voices calling for censure or impeachment of President Bush including Democratic state committees in Vermont, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina as well as the residents themselves of seven towns in Vermont, seventy Vermont state legislators and Congressman John Conyers. The call for impeachment is starting to grow well beyond what could be considered a fringe movement. An ABC News/Washington Post Poll Conducted April 6-9 showed that 33% of Americans currently support Impeaching President Bush, coincidentally, only a similar amount supported impeaching Nixon at the start of the Watergate investigation. If and when Illinois HJR0125 hits the capitol and the individual charges are publicly investigated, that number is likely to grow rapidly. Combined with the very real likelihood that Rove is about to be indicted in the LeakGate investigation, and Bush is in real trouble beyond his plummeting poll numbers. His cronies in the Republican dominated congress will probably save him from the embarassment of an impeachment conviction, for now, but his Presidency will be all but finished.