BUSH IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES SENT TO JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
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PanARMENIAN.Net
12.06.2008
The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to send articles of
impeachment against President George W. Bush to a committee that is
not likely to hold hearings before the end of his term.
By 251-166, House members dispatched the measure to the Judiciary
Committee on Wednesday – a procedure often used to kill legislation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi long ago declared the prospects for
impeachment proceedings "off the table."
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who ran for president earlier this year,
insists that his resolution deserves more consideration. He spent more
than four hours Monday night reading his 35 articles of impeachment
into the record, including charges that Bush manufactured a false
case for going to war against Iraq.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday that the Democratic-led
Congress was holding the Bush administration accountable and
questioned spending time on impeachment in the "waning months of this
administration’s tenure."
An election looms in which every House seat, a third of those in
the Senate and the presidency are up for grabs. House leaders are
staunchly against spending the remaining time in the abbreviated
legislative schedule on impeachment proceedings.
The House vote sent the impeachment articles to the House Judiciary
Committee, chaired by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who had once vowed
to hold impeachment hearings. He wouldn’t immediately comment on the
articles’ prospects for hearings.
Democratic aides widely suggested those gauging the bills prospects
look to a precedent: the impeachment articles against Vice President
Dick Cheney, which were sent to Conyers’ committee in November. There’s
no evidence they will be considered before the Bush administration
leaves office in January.
Those were Kucinich’s, too. Republicans, seeing a chance to
force Democrats into an embarrassing debate, voted to bring up the
resolution. Democrats countered by pushing through a motion to scuttle
the bill from the floor.
Kucinich’s articles also charge Bush with failing to provide troops
with vehicle armor, illegally detaining both foreign nationals and
Americans, condoning torture, mishandling the government’s response
to Hurricane Katrina and undermining efforts to address global warning.
"It is imperative that members of Congress have a thorough opportunity
to read the articles of impeachment and study the documentation,"
Kucinich said in a statement, the AP reports.