Rep. Capuano Flips for Impeachment

Ralph Lopez, Dailykos — Congressman Mike Capuano (D-MA) has just signed onto Wexler’s letter supporting immediate impeachment hearings against Dick Cheney, after a long period of stubborn intransigence in the face of constituent pressure. He has been written to and visited repeatedly by constituents associated with the New England Impeachment Coalition, always giving a response similar to the S.O.S. he wrote me in a recent email, “I do not believe that we should pursue articles of impeachment against the President in the absence of a strong record of facts compiled by the Congress.”

Bygones are bygones. Capuano is a smart and articulate voice to have onboard. He’s a hardball politician from the tough ward politics of Somerville, who can be an attack dog when he wants to be. Who knows what flipped him, but I know of one friend personally who faxed him a letter this month with what I think is the creative message that “We did not elect a King. Ask for his resignation letter to be signed unanimously by Congress, and if done, and Bush does not accept, then begin impeachment.” This friend is homeless, and it’s a hardship for her to spend 5 bucks on a two page fax at Kinkos, but spend it she did…

You never know what works. We are each tiny compared to the power of a man who lives in the sky aboard the magnificent Air Force One, complete with F-16 escorts, but we are relentless. We are a free people who have not learned the habit of staying silent as our rights are taken. We squeal like stuck pigs every time. And the would-be tyrants, King George being the latest and most determined, always fall into the trash-heap of history.

Netroots Media Mission on Impeachment: Help Us!

Dennis Kucinich will introduce articles of impeachment against President George Bush this Monday January 28, the same day as Bush’s State of the Union speech. The media is sure to try to ignore it to the best of its ability. So I have made it easy for the netroots to write to many major media outlets at once, so we can swamp them with letters and messages asking them to cover impeachment.

This experiment in the netroots “pushing it down” to the major media will send the message that we are paying close attention to the fact that the media is not doing its job. We were alerted to this when Kucinich gave his historic speech on November 6th, 2007, calling for the impeachment of Dick Cheney, and there was a deafening silence from all but the Internet media. There is excellent reason for The Fourth Estate to actively bury the impeachment story.

With impeachment on the lips of 54% of Americans in the case of Cheney and 45% in the case of Bush, impeachment is a dam ready to burst. Perhaps never in American history has the true sentiment of the country been as removed from the blatherings in Congress as the Earth is from the Moon.

Once it hits one newspaper, it will have to hit others. Woman in Omaha calls sister in Dallas, Did your paper report this? Sister in Dallas says no, calls local editor, WTF is going on? It always unravels very quickly for the bad guys.

There’s no sense in suggesting a form letter, since these are discounted as coming from an interest group. This is the time to write from the heart, on what you feel about impeachment, on what has happened to our country, and on our media’s duty to uphold “the people’s right to know.”
You never know what works. We are each tiny compared to the power of a man who lives in the sky aboard the magnificent Air Force One, complete with F-16 escorts, but we are relentless. We are a free people who have not learned the habit of staying silent as our rights are taken. We squeal like stuck pigs every time. And the would-be tyrants, King George being the latest and most determined, always fall into the trash-heap of history.

Write the best letter you can, then send to all the listed media, something the multiple addresses feature of email makes easy. Will it help? I don’t know. But Dennis is going out on a limb on Monday, as he did last November, as Rep. Wexler did earlier this month, and it’s up to us to do everything we can to support these brave efforts for us, with everything we’ve got. We can’t leave him hanging.

We have three days to make ourselves heard. This list will be updated.

Write early write often. These email addresses are all publically available online at Wikipedia listings of media, so this is not spamming. It’s using the power of the Internet to achieve the breakthrough for democracy that this country so badly needs. Please bookmark this post and spread it around.

Also I have included the hometown newspapers of two key Republican congressmen in the Judiciary Committee, Howard Coble (NC) and Mike Pence (IN). The idea is if we can manage to flip one Judiciary Republican from the heartland, the rest of the Committee will come tumbling down. This is the kind of cover Barry Goldwater gave to his fellow conservatives when he told Nixon he would no longer support him. The Democrats would be left with their pants hanging around their ankles trying to explain why, if impeachment is OK for a Republican, it’s not ok for them.

We’ve got until Monday to swamp them with appeals to their patriotism, how their children will grow up in this country too, and we don’t want our children to grow up in a country governed not by laws, but by the whims of men. Use this resource for talking points with which to help compose your own missive, if you need it: “Impeachment is a Non-Partisan Issue.” Also this site has a full list of Judiciary Committee members, and a local media email tool, in case you get into it and want to google some more papers in these guys’ districts. Their homepage at name.house.gov will have a link called “district” which tells the names of the major cities and towns. Do a little “Podunket newspapers” google search and you’ll almost always come up with a few.

Maybe some of us will get a letter to the editor in. Maybe some of us will stumble across a patriotic American.

Lock and load. Let’s go.

Mike Pence (R-IN), Judiciary Committee:
The Anderson Herald Bulletin, INDIANA
The Star Press, Muncie, IN

Howard Coble (R-IN), Judiciary Committee:
The Greensboro News-Record, NC

Email addresses of major media editorial departments, compiled from Wikipedia and the Fair Media online contact list:

Minneapolis Star Tribune letters form:
Minneapolis Star Tribune form

MARK says:

January 26, 2008 at 4:50 pm

It took lots of phone calls, meetings, faxes and emails for him to Finally support Impeachment! He was very resistant and kept giving people the S.O.S excuses. Contact the Republican Members of the Judiciary and go to http://asknadler2impeach.org and Sign the Petition asking Nadler to Impeach Bush NOW!

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