SPREAD THE WORD!
AND SEND YOUR HANDWRITTEN LETTER TODAY!

Send 10,000 hand written letters to Pelosi via Sheehan

update: What Nancy Pelosi wants

Nancy Pelosi is reported to have replied to the question of impeachment
that if she received 10,000 hand written letters she would proceed with it.
What are we waiting for? Letters should go to her SF office.

Nancy Pelosi
450 Golden Gate Avenue, 14th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: (415) 556-4862


From: Cindy Sheehan
Date: 11/11/2007 12:35:51 PM
Subject: Letters to Nancy Pelosi on Impeachment


Dear Friends

Instead of sending your impeachment letters for Dick Cheney to Nancy Pelosi's
office, send them to my office so we can get an official count.

Please send them to:
Cindy for Congress
RE: Impeach Dick Cheney
1260 Mission Blvd
San Francisco, Ca 94103

Please pass this around and have them sent by Friday, November 16th and we will
have them delivered to her office in San Francisco before Thanksgiving.

Spread this far and wide so we can take sacks of letters to her.

Don't include anything besides the letter.

Love
Cindy

WCW-Cleveland web site and news:
http://ohioworldcantwait.blogspot.com/

Odd position for a constitutionalist. As a lawyer, would you think it a waste of time to submit evidence to a grand jury because you thought some jurors (at trial) would be prejudiced in favor of the defendant?

Happens all the time. Prosecutors declining to prosecute. And impeachment is not a purely legal proceeding.

But the outcome, and even the political fallout, are less important than the precedent set for future presidents.

Since we've discussed the process of impeachment here quite often, I won't belabor the point....Except to say that I used the grand jury analogy because both impeachment and grand jury presentations are simply mechanisms to determine if sufficient evidence exists to go to trial. That the jury (senate) might not do it's job is no reason for the house to not fulfill it's constitutional responsibility to examine the evidence. That over twenty congressmen feel such evidence exists should require that they do so.

What precedent would that be?

The precedent that is currently being set is that a president can order his officers to ignore and violate any law he feels like.

Only by impeachment can Congress defend its prerogative of having its laws faithfully executed. The courts are not dependable, and more importantly, Congress should not have to depend on them.

I think the "precedent" set by the Johnson and Clinton proceedings is, if Congress is in the hands of the other party and they're unreasonable in their hate, they'll impeach.

Yeah. So what? Your reasoning is circular: Unfulfilled impeachment bad because it's bad. Why is it bad?

I'm not aware that the Constitution identifies examining the evidence, or any other part of impeachment, as a "responsibility" of Congress. One might also say that Congress has examined the evidence (they've certainly had ample opportunity) and decided not to impeach.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07132007/profile.html
Bruce FeinBruce Fein is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on Constitutional law.

Graduating from Harvard Law School in 1972, Fein became the assistant director of the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice. Shortly after that, Fein became the associate deputy attorney general under former President Ronald Reagan.
His political law career would take him to various outlets, including general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, followed by an appointment as research director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran. Mr. Fein has been an adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a resident scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a lecturer at the Bookings Institute, and an adjunct professor at George Washington University.
Fein has also penned a number of volumes on United States Constitution, Supreme Court, and international law, as well as assisted three dozen countries in constitutional revision, including Russia, Spain, South Africa, Iraq, Cyprus, and Mozambique.
Fein currently writes weekly columns for THE WASHINGTON TIMES and CAPITOL LEADER, and a bi-weekly column for the LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER devoted to legal and international affairs.
Recently, Fein has been in the national spotlight after his editorial in the online newsmagazine SLATE called for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, in which he outlines the various cases against the Vice President. Fein also testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee on June 27, 2007 about President Bush's use of "signing statement."
According to Fein, Cheney has:
Asserted Presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes.
Claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the President's say-so alone.
Initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists.
Championed a Presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.
Engineered the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
Orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications.
Summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force.
Retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, through chief of staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration's evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq. (Read Fein's SLATE article)

Some of your peers have another perspective. In addition to Fein, other constitutional scholars are quoted at the link.

Great news! I can't think of any way Congress could better spend its time and effort than to engage in an impeachment that cannot produce a conviction.

Nichols most recent book, THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT, argues that impeachment is an essential instrument of America's democratic system. Nichols' argument also bases the power of impeachment in the hands of the people, rather than the congress. In his recent article, "In Praise of Impeachment," Nichols argues "While the Constitution handed Congress the power to officially check such despotism, Jefferson and his colleagues fully expected the American people to be the champions of the application of the rule of law to an errant executive."

Sorry, I thought you were being sarcastic here when you suggest that an impeachment that might not result in conviction would be great news and time well spent. Guess I'll have to learn to read you more literally. It would seem that you and I, Fein and Nichols and half of the American public are in agreement!

He says there's a case for impeaching Bush. I agree. I just don't think it would be worth the effort.

Your sarcasm needs work. It's neither subtle nor clever. Keep practicing.

You're right of course, your sarcasm was much more clever. Subtle enough?

No, but nice try. Have a lovely day.

OK, so why can't we go after the criminals in civil court AFTER they leave office?
Would this not send the same message as impeachment would, and not clog up the political system?

Sadly, they have probably eliminated the paper trail. We may just have to be content with them slinking back to there ranches and wallowing there in their own filth.