Blacked Out by the Corporate Media, Impeachment Advances

Blacked Out by the Corporate Media, Impeachment Advances

By Dave Lindorff

Created Jul 1 2007 - 9:55am

The corporate media are disgracing themselves even further, if that is

possible, on the impeachment story.

On Thursday, three more members of Congress signed on to Rep. Dennis

Kucinich's bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney (H Res 333), bringing

the total number of co-sponsors of the bill to 10. That in itself would be

national news, but there is more to it than simple numbers. The new sponsors

include two freshman, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, who ran for office

calling for impeachment, and Hank Johnson, who took over the seat of

pro-impeachment Rep. Cynthia McKinney (McKinney filed her own bill of

impeachment against President Bush in the waning days of the last Congress),

but the group also includes Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA).

What makes McDermott significant is that he is a senior member of the

Washington state delegation to Congress, a 9th-term legislator with

considerable clout in Congress who sits on the House Ways and Means and

Judiciary Committees, who chairs the subcommittee on income security and

family support, and who has, in the past, said he was opposed to

impeachment. While most of the other nine co-sponsors of H Res 333 were also

among the group of 39 representatives who last year had signed on to Rep.

John Conyers' bill in the last Congress calling for creation of a special

committee to investigate possible impeachable crimes by the administration,

McDermott was never a backer.

In a related development, Kucinich's bill, which was filed back on April 24,

amid an almost complete news blackout, and which has languished for over two

months, with the House Judiciary Committee, headed by Conyers (D-MI) taking

no action on it, suddenly was referred this week to a Subcommittee on the

Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, chaired by US Rep. Jerrold

Nadler (D-NY)-a sign that it will be taken up by the full Judiciary

Committee.

Despite all these breaking developments in the impeachment story, Friday's

and Saturday's news reports around the nation had little or nothing on

impeachment. The New York Times, whose front pages and national pages

influence the news decisions of editors across the country, has ignored the

story completely, as has the Washington Post, which is supposed to be

covering Washington-both astonishing examples of corporate media censorship.

Even in Washington, Minnesota and Georgia, the main local papers only ran

short briefs on the actions of their local Congress members.

But despite this journalistic lockdown, it is clear that the national

grassroots impeachment is gaining power and momentum by the day.

Washington impeachment activists had long been pressing McDermott to join

the impeachment campaign, but had been unsuccessful until this week.

His switch on the issue seems to have been the result of that pressure from

his constituents, as well as from the latest actions of and revelations

about the vice president. A powerful series of news articles that ran in

late June in the Washington Post has disclosed that the vice president was

the driving force behind President Bush's decision to violate the Geneva

Conventions and to illegally deny international protections to captives in

what he has called the War on Terror, including captives from Afghanistan

and Iraq, and to establish a program of torture of captives. Cheney also

made the ludicrous assertion this week that he did not have to respond to

Congressional subpoenas and requests for information about the activities of

his office because as vice president, he is president of the Senate, and

thus is not a part of the executive branch, (It is a claim that is

contradicted by his own earlier assertions of "executive authority" in

refusing to respond to Congressional requests for information.)

The Post's silence about McDermott and about impeachment developments is

particularly peculiar, given that the latest developments are in part due to

the paper's articles on Cheney's actions. Normally, newspapers are quick to

point to or even grab credit for the results of their scoops and

investigative reports.

While other representatives who have signed on the H Res 333 have done so

relatively quietly, or in Rep. Maxine Waters' case, in a press conference,

McDermott made his move with a public speech in the House.

In that Thursday evening address, he said the vice president should "resign

or face impeachment," saying, "The vice president holds himself above the

law, and it is time for the Congress to enforce the law,"

In addition to citing Cheney's role in deceiving Americans and Congress into

supporting an invasion of Iraq, and threatening war with Iran, which are the

charges in Kucinich's impeachment bill, McDermott cited Cheney's claim to be

exempt from Congressional investigation and his refusal to comply with rules

for the handling of classified information as grounds for his impeachment.

It is not clear whether he intends to file his own impeachment bill on those

issues, or to have them added to Kucinich's bill.

Johnson also cited the vice president's refusal to submit materials in his

office to control by the Information Oversight Security Office as a reason

for his decision to back impeachment.

So far, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), has not changed her position that

"impeachment is off the table." Rep. Conyers, for his part, has not spoken

in favor of the Kucinich bill either.

But with seven members of Congress signing on to the Cheney impeachment bill

over the past month, and more likely to do so in coming days and weeks, and

with polls showing that the public both wants impeachment and is losing

patience with the timidity and inaction of the Democratic Congress, it seems

increasingly likely that their hands will be forced.

An interesting question will be when the corporate media will finally begin

to honestly report on the impeachment story, and how news organizations will

explain its seemingly magical appearance as a full-blown campaign in

Congress.

_______

About author Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation

into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal [1]. His new book of columns

titled "This Can't be Happening! [2]" is published by Common Courage Press.

Lindorff's new book is "The Case for Impeachment [3]," co-authored by

Barbara Olshansky. He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com [4]

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson