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06.05 The Guardian view on Trump and climate change: galvanising the globe

06.05 Asian cities set to benefit most from green growth as US retreats

06.04 THE RENEWED IMPORTANCE OF POPE FRANCIS’S ENCYCLICAL ON CLIMATE CHANGE

06.04 The Doctor Is In. Co-Pay? $40,000.

06.04 No unborn baby is safe from toxic pollutants[“Stupid is as stupid does.” – Forrest Gump]

06.03 Proposal for first offshore windfarm has 250 turbines off Victorian coast

06.03 Need climate hope? Imagine the promise of green left-wing victories in Canada

06.02 Air pollution doesn’t just harm humans – it is destroying nature too

06.02 Fight to stop controversial Canadian pipeline gets fresh backing in BC

06.01 'Appalling' Draft Rule by Trump Threatens Contraceptive Access for Millions of Women

06.01 New Analysis Shows 'Medicare for All' Can Cover Everyone While Cutting Costs [and costs could be further reduced if more states join a common public option]

06.01 Not My Job?

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06.05 Contractor CEOs Shouldn’t Make Ten Times More Than the POTUS

06.05 Trump’s Plan to Make Government Older, More Expensive, and More Dysfunctional [shrink bad government instead...]

06.05 What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Fairness

06.05 The Single-Payer Party? Democrats Shift Left on Health Care

06.05 Is There an Emerging Democratic Agenda?

06.04 Retirees flock to Latin America to live an upper-class lifestyle on $1,500 a month

06.04 The US is the biggest loser on the planet thanks to Trump’s calamitous act [The dumbest government shows the way forward]

06.03 Pruitt Offers 'Incoherent Distortions of Reality' in Defense of Paris Exit

06.03 Michael Bloomberg: US states and businesses will still meet Paris targets

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06.04 The best way to resist Trump ditching Paris? Divest from fossil fuels

06.02 Super-rich evade on average nearly third of their due tax [deregulation enabled tax-avoidance (a.k.a. "loopholes") hurts the 99%]

06.02 Elon Musk and Disney boss quit Trump's business panel over Paris pullout

05.30 Malta Leaks: Playing the Shell Game in the Mediterranean

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06.04 20 million starving to death: inside the worst famine since World War

06.04 Diarrhoea kills half a million children globally, shows Lancet study

06.04 Canada calling: tech industry lures workers north in wake of Trump

06.03 Trump's reneging on Paris climate deal turns the US into a rogue state

06.03 Technology is making the world more unequal. Only technology can fix this

06.03 In China, the water you drink is as dangerous as the air you breathe [You can fix this, China!]

06.03 George Soros attacks Hungarian prime minister for building a 'mafia state'

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  Dropping the First Shoe
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COMMENTARY:

Dropping the First Shoe

by Dave Lindorff
The mainstream corporate media, which has so far been largely ignoring the issue of impeachment, will have to go to extra lengths of censorship to block out the popular movement now, with a bill on the floor of the House, and with impeachment resolutions passing in the Vermont state legislature.
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has dropped the first impeachment shoe, filing a bill calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Kucinich, defying the leadership of the Democratic Party, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who have been struggling mightily to prevent impeachment from occurring during the waning years of the Bush presidency, on Tuesday filed three articles of impeachment, claiming that Cheney violated his oath of office and the Constitution, for deceiving Congress and the American people about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about alleged but nonexistent links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and finally for making threats to invade Iran.

The bill now goes to the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and the rest of the committee's members will have to decide whether go hold formal hearings on the charges.

The move by Kucinich comes as impeachment is gaining ground among the broader public. Today, the Vermont House of Representatives will hold a floor debate and vote on a resolution calling for Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against both President Bush and Cheney. That measure would be a companion to a similar resolution passed last week by Vermont's state Senate. If the state's lower house passes its version, Vermont will be the first state in history to pass a bi-cameral resolution on impeachment.

Under Thomas Jefferson's Manual for the Rules of the House, under which the US House of Representatives has operated for over 200 years, such a resolution would require the House to take up the impeachment issue, just as would a member's bill of impeachment.

The speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, Lynn Symington, had strenuously opposed the resolution, and has been keeping it bottled up in the House Judiciary Committee, but following passage of the resolution in the state Senate, and a massive grassroots campaign by Vermont impeachment activists, she has been forced to relent and let the measure go forward. Passage is not a sure thing, however.

Similar measures are being pushed in at least 10 other state legislatures, while two such efforts, in New Mexico and Washington state, were killed thanks to pressure from the national Democratic Party leadership.

On April 28, demonstrations are planned in Washington, DC and all around the nation, calling for impeachment to begin against both Bush and Cheney. To find the location nearest you, click here.

The mainstream corporate media, which has so far been largely ignoring the issue of impeachment, will have to go to extra lengths of censorship to block out the popular movement now, with a bill on the floor of the House, and with impeachment resolutions passing in the Vermont state legislature. It will be interesting to see how the nation's news gatekeepers handle the story now that it is breaking out into the open so forcefully.


Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Another book is of CounterPunch columns, titled This Can't Be Happening!, is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's latest book is The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky. Visit his website for more information. Lindorff may be reached at [email protected]. This story is published in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.


Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.

This story was published on April 25, 2007.
 

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