"Our effort to hold the Bush/Cheney Administration accountable has taken another dramatic step forward. Last night, Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced the first Articles of Impeachment ever to be introduced against President Bush. It includes, in total, thirty-five Articles detailing this Administration's blatant abuse of power. Today, I enthusiastically co-sponsored this vitally important bill.

I am grateful for Dennis' leadership on this issue and for the steadfast support that countless Americans have given to both of our efforts to redeem our government and expose the crimes of Bush and Cheney.

I will now expand my efforts to secure impeachment hearings in the Judiciary Committee for these new Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush.

Many of the charges against President Bush are well known – and would shock the conscience of everyday Americans if only the national media would be willing to report on these stark facts.

The Articles present a stunning narrative of offenses that have go well beyond previous crimes committed by any US chief executive. In fact no President or Vice President in history has done more to undermine our constitution.

These charges are broad, with 35 separate allegations including the deliberate lies regarding WMDs that led us to war and the approval of illegal wiretapping of American citizens. The Articles also include new allegations of high crimes – including the explicit approval for high Administration officials to violate treaties and US law banning the use of torture.

The Democratic Party gained a majority in the House and Senate due in large part to our promises to end the corruption of the Republican majority and to hold the Administration accountable to the law. This courageous bill is a crucial step towards fulfilling this promise, but – like the Articles against Cheney – they require your support to convince Democrats and open-minded Republicans to support this bold but necessary action.

Time is running out so we must work together to spread the message and apply pressure.

First, please encourage your friends and family members to sign up at WexlerWantsHearings.com – as it will allow us to keep in touch with you and speak to a wider audience. If you haven't yet put in your phone and address, please sign up again, as we will be doing telephone town halls in the near future.

Second, call your representative and urge them to support Impeachment hearings.

Finally, contact newspapers, news stations, and your favorite bloggers and urge them to report on this movement. We need to keep Impeachment a significant news story until the Democratic leadership sees the value in it.

McClellan Agrees to Testify:

I was pleased to inform you yesterday that Judiciary Committee Chairman Conyers met my call to have Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan testify under oath. I am thrilled to inform you that McClellan has agreed to testify on June 20th at 10AM. This will be the first step in what we hope will be ongoing and deepening examinations of the stark evidence and charges against both President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Thank you for your continued passion and advocacy. Your support means so much to me.

Sincerely,

Congressman Robert Wexler"

Be sure to turn off the auto-renew option on your accounthat Salon.com oh-so-nicely turns on as a default so you don't experience the traumatic "interruption of service."

Because she's a vapid infotainment talking head and always has been?

Do I win the prize?

Advocates of "Capitalism with a Human Face" like Soros are regarded as class traitors by the Wall Street crowd, forgetting that the only thing the kept the U.S. from having a socialist revolution in the 1930's was FDR and the New Deal.

Just what exactly is your malfunction?

To build on something Paul Dirks said, the Been-There-Done-That line is so common at this point as to be an actual tactic for suppressing/ignoring inconvenient (read: correct, accurate, or prescient) opinions.

It's a brilliant tactic, actually, which turns the accuracy of a critic's predictions against him. Critic says, "Bad-thing-X will happen if you do Stupid-thing-Y." The Wizened Wise-men of Conventional Wisdom say, "Nonsense! Wonderful-magical-thing-Z will happen, and you better get down on your knees, kiss my toe, and apologize forever when it does - and I'll quit my job, eat my hat, and get me to a nunnery if it doesn't!"

When X happens, the Critic says, "See! Iraq is a cluster-f*ck!" or "The government is spying on us!" or "We're torturing people!" or "We making terrorism worse!" To which the Wizened Wise-men say, "You're still on about that? Old news! Now let's talk about Iran..."

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Had a spread detailing how McCain's so-called Reform Institute, staffed with lobbyists, does and end-run around the very campaign finance laws on which McCain championed and on which his "maverick" reputation rests.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/05/page/0050

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/05/page/0051

I was going to refer to an article I saw in The Week a few years back about how the regions of brain that process irony are less active in conservatives than liberals, but I couldn't find the article online.

Though, admittedly, it can be hard to tell the difference between satire and actual NeoCon arguments these days since the latter have become so outlandish and extreme that it's hard to write in a genre reliant on outlandishness and extremity to deliver its message.

Even worse, conservatives are notorious for not understanding irony (a study published. These days, a satirist runs the risk of having his ideas co-opted by conservatives who took them literally, so don't be surprised to see the "Persian Empire Argument" start coming up to defend action against Iran, complete with facile comparisons of the U.S. to the Macedonians/Greeks, the spreading of Hellenic civilization as spreading democracy, and John McCain as the new Alexander (albeit much older and less gay-gay-gay), the only man with the guts to cut the Gordian Knot of the Middle East with a few thousand tons of cluster bombs and a bunker-buster nuke or two.