At This Weekend's California Democratic Party Convention, Activists Want To Know Who's For Impeachment-- And Who Isn't

Earlier this week, L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer, hosted a Q&A with House Intelligence Chair and L.A. area congressman, Adam Schiff, Constitutional Clash. An exasperated Schiff went after his Republican colleagues' moral character. He said many of them come up to him in private to "express their deep concerns and worries" about Trump and his regime and to offer encouragement to him for his work in getting to the bottom of Russian interference with our elections. "But," he told Feuer, I’m, frankly, exhausted by the private misgivings. People need to speak out... I think there’s been an epidemic of cowardice in the GOP. This president doesn’t stand for anything that the Republican Party said it stood for."

Some might find it... ironic that Schiff himself is not one of the 50-some odd Democrats now openly calling on Nancy Pelosi to start the formal impeachment hearings. "I’m not there yet, he told Feuer, "although the president seems to be doing everything in his power to get me there."

This weekend, the California Democratic Party is holding its annual convention in San Francisco. Many of the congressional delegation are there as are pretty much all the 2020 congressional candidates-- and Bernie, who endorsed impeachment Thursday. (In fact, pretty much all the presidential candidates showed up except human chicken Status Quo Joe who avoids party activists like the plagued.) And, believe me, the Congress members are all hearing from party activists, who are aggressively in favor of impeachment. So far the eleven California members who have signed on to impeachment are:

• Barbara Lee
• Ted Lieu
• Mark DeSaulnier
• Katie Porter
• Alan Lowenthal
• Jared Huffman
• Maxine Waters
• Brad Sherman
• Jackie 'Speier
• Norma Torres
• Juan Vargas

That's a mixed bag of progressives, moderates and conservatives. Alan Lowenthal is bringing his constituents along with him on this by helping to educate them. Yesterday he wrote to them: "I am proud that during my time representing Long Beach and Orange County I’ve fought for what I believe is right. I’ve fought to make life better for my constituents, and all Americans. The same cannot be said for our president, and after reviewing the Mueller Report, hearing directly from the Special Counsel, and listening to my constituents, it’s clear to me that it is time for Congress to do our constitutional duty and begin an impeachment inquiry into the president."

If anything is to be learned from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s public statement this week, it’s that Attorney General William Barr has repeatedly misled the American people. Despite what Barr and the White House want you to believe, Mueller has now made clear the president was not cleared on all charges. Instead, Mueller said clearly about his obstruction of justice investigation, "...if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." The report simply, in the Special Counsel's own words, did not clear the president.

With frightening levels of Russian interference in our elections and a president who seems to disregard our laws, it’s important to remember that while the presidency may be the highest single office in our government, Donald Trump and the executive branch he leads is still one of our three coequal branches of government, along with Congress and the Judiciary. The president is not a king. He is not above the law, and he must be held accountable.

We have listened to the lies of the president and his attorney general for too long. We need leaders who will put aside partisan politics and do what’s right for the survival of our democracy.

These are the Californians who have not signed on yet-- progressives' names are in blue:

Pete Aguilar (New Dem)
John Garamendi
Mike Thompson (Blue Dog)
Doris Matsui
Ami Bera (New Dem)
Jerry McNerney
Josh Harder (New Dem)
PELOSI
Eric Swalwell
Jim Costa (Blue Dog)
Ro Khanna
Anna Eshoo
Zoe Lofgren
Jimmy Panetta
TJ Cox
Salud Carbajal (New Dem)
Katie Hill (New Dem)
Julia Brownley (New Dem)
Judy Chu
Adam Schiff (New Dem)
Al Cárdenas (New Dem)
Grace Napolitano
Jimmy Gomez
Raul Ruiz (New Dem)
Karen Bass
Linda Sanchez
Gil Cisneros (New Dem)
Lucile Roybal-Allard
Mark Takano
Nanette Barragan
Lou Correa (New Dem)
Harley Rouda (New Dem)
Mike Levin
Scott Peters (New Dem)
Susan Davis (New Dem)

And, by the way, here's how Republican candidates are attacking Democrats on impeachment. A slimy little right-winger, Don Sedgwick, an unpopular Laguna Hills city councilman. campaigning against Katie Porter in central Orange County sent out a typically right-wing distorted press release: CA-45 CANDIDATE SEDGWICK PUSHES BACK AGAINST PORTER'S RADICAL SHIFT TOWARDS IMPEACHMENT-- Porter Yet Again Panders To Her Ultra Liberal Cronies Pushing For Impeachment Instead of Focusing On What Matters.

Don Sedgwick, candidate for Congressional District 45, today pushed back against Katie Porter’s radical shift towards impeachment. Speaking on impeachment at a town hall meeting Thursday, Porter called it “a real turning point,” saying “the time is nigh.”

Don Sedgwick stated, "Porter has chosen to play Washington insider games with her ultra left-wing friends like AOC, Warren and Sanders instead of focusing on what matters-- solving veteran homelessness, fixing our broken healthcare system and growing our economy. Shame on her.”

“She’s out of touch and out of control. Representative Porter, do your job and get to work on what matters, instead of pandering to your liberal DC cronies," concluded Sedgwick.

Mike Quigley (D-IL) is neither from California nor particularly progressive. He's a New Dem representing Rahm's old seat in Chicago. This morning, though, he explained to his constituents why he just came out for impeachment. "For three years," he wrote, "I've been part of the critical House investigation in to the Russian government’s attack on our democracy. It’s never been a question for me whether President Trump was fit for office-- he is not; it has never been a question of whether he has abused his powers-- he has; whether he obstructed-- he certainly has, and I believe he and his cohorts conspired with the Russians. But, up to now, I have not called for impeachment because getting to the truth of what happened, and being able to prevent future attacks on our democracy, is my priority. Now that the President and his administration are continuing to obstruct Congressional investigations-- ignoring our legally-binding subpoenas-- we can’t fulfill our constitutional duties with him in the White House. It’s time."

He wrote that he's calling on Pelosi to start the formal impeachment inquiry. "As bad as Russia’s attack on our elections was, the response to it by the President is far worse-- and has done lasting damage to our country. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s message earlier this week was loud and clear: it’s Congress' job to carry his work forward and assess consequences for the President’s actions. Mueller very clearly believes President Trump obstructed justice, but he believes long-standing Department of Justice policy leaves him powerless to act. In the past few weeks, the Trump administration has responded to Mueller’s report with obfuscation, obstruction, and blatant lies to the American people. They’re ignoring our subpoenas and won’t show us the unredacted Mueller report or let us talk to the witnesses Mueller interviewed. It’s become clear that the President is intent on blocking Congress from doing its job. Opening an impeachment inquiry will help us get the information that they’re keeping from us. I have given this tremendous thought these past few months and believe there is no other option but to take this step... I take this decision seriously. Foreign interference in our elections compromises the sanctity of our democratic system and we need to get to the bottom of it. This is more important than Watergate, and vastly more complex."

Will House Democrats Join With Republicans To Escalate In Afghanistan?

The White House is trying to bum rush tens of billions of dollars through Congress to fund the Afghanistan escalation without a debate on the war. But Bush is gone. And Hope and Change are here. Right?

I recall when President Clinton, a former DLC Chairman, had decided to move the first President Bush's catastrophic NAFTA legislation-- that did so much to accelerate the destruction of the U.S. manufacturing base-- through Congress, he couldn't find enough Democrats to join with the Republicans to pass this obvious disaster-in-the-making. So he turned to a little-known, vicious pitbull in his political department and asked him to do whatever he had to do to round up the Democratic votes needed to turn the GOP minority into a majority. When the vote came, on November 17, 1993, most Democrats voted against NAFTA but that little-known, vicious pitbull Clinton sent up to the Hill oversaw a bloc of 102 Democrats to join almost all the Republicans to pass the bill. That vicious pitbull, by the way, was Barack Obama's first appointment after he was elected, the current Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.

Last June he was at it again-- this time on behalf of the war supplemental budget-- bribing and beating up Democrats to vote for more money to occupy Afghanistan-- even going so far as organizing primaries against at least one of the 32 courageous Democrats who voted against the supplemental (Donna Edwards).

As David Swanson pointed out at After Downing Street, "The U.S. Constitution leaves the decision to wage war to Congress, and Congress can enforce its decision not to wage war by refusing to fund it." Will more than the same 32 Democrats stand up to Emanuel's bullying and rush through the billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to escalate an unwinnable and pointless war? Well, it looks like there will be far more than the first 32. Many Democrats are calling for a war tax to pay for any expenses instead of foisting it-- and the immense interest payments it will generate for the bankster class-- off onto future generations the way Bush did. But paying for the war will lose Republican votes. So Obama is just going to pull off the mask entirely now and expose us to the misery of seeing he really is just Bush-Cheney all over again? Maybe on the jetway as he gets off the plane in Oslo tomorrow?

Funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is included in the Defense appropriations bill this year. The Defense bill likely will be wrapped into a huge omnibus spending measure, a technique Congress uses when it needs to quickly clear a huge backlog of unfinished appropriations work.

And because the Defense spending bill does not limit troop levels, Obama can use the money to send more troops to Afghanistan. By the time the money runs out this spring, many of the new troops will already be in place when Obama asks for another $30 billion or so.

While some Democrats have pointed to the spring vote as the key vote for or against the surge, some liberal Democrats intend to make a stand on the issue now, including Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairman Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.). Grijalva spokesman Adam Sarvana said the Congressman plans to vote against the omnibus and rally opposition to the war funding in it.

It’s not clear how big of a problem the nascent progressive revolt will be; just 23 House Democrats voted against the Defense spending bill in July.

“There were also a lot of Members who wanted to give Obama a chance to lay out a better course and who are not likely to continue necessarily to give him the benefit of the doubt,” said Darcy Burner, executive director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation, a policy group allied with the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Nevertheless, leadership is considering a legislative maneuver that would split the Defense bill into a separate vote on the House floor as they try to wrap up a catch-all year-end omnibus spending bill. House liberals could then vote for the domestic spending items they support, and Republicans could help carry the Defense spending.

Blue America's No Means No page is raising money to support the Democrats, like Donna Edwards, Alan Grayson, Barbara Lee, Eric Massa, Carol Shea Porter, Lloyd Doggett, etc, who already voted against the June supplemental. And we're willing to add new members to the list. All they have to do is get up on the floor of the House and make a barn-burning anti-war speech pledging to vote against this travesty that is alienating the grassroots Democratic base from the Inside the Beltway establishment Obama leads. Here's a good example from Rep. Mike Quigley, ironically, the congressman who won Emanuel's Chicago seat when he left Congress to work in the White House again:



We'll be working on bring along more and more Democrats to stand up to this gigantic mistake. But speaking of "irony," in two days Obama will be swinging by Oslo to pick up his shiny new Nobel Peace Prize.

When Obama won the prize in October, you had to wonder whether the self-esteem movement, where every kid gets a trophy, had made its way from little league to the Nobel Committee. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr.-- and a guy running two wars, who'd been president for two weeks when nominations closed?

Despite the committee chairman's defensive insistence that Obama "got the prize for what he has done," clearly it was awarded for what the committee hoped he might do (which is rather like giving a physics Nobel to a guy who hopes he'll invent cold fusion).

Well, if the committee hoped a pre-emptive prize would influence Obama's behavior, they must feel pretty silly right now. On Dec. 1, the former surge critic spoke at West Point, defending his decision to throw 30,000 more troops into an unpopular, unwinnable, and unnecessary war.

Sure, the president packaged the decision as part of a plan to "begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011." But that's not the beginning of a genuine withdrawal. It's, er, an "inflection point," according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at which, maybe, "some handful, or some small number" will be able to come home.

If we're lucky, maybe as many troops as the president just surged, but "it's hard to envision that conditions [will allow] a further withdrawal beyond that," says another senior adviser. "We're going to be in the region for a long time," says National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones.

That's not a popular policy. Nearly 70 percent of Americans in a new CBS News poll think the war is going badly, and the latest numbers from Pew show the largest share of respondents favoring a drawdown.

UPDATE: This Morning Dennis Kucinich Is Offering A Resolution To End The War

Kucinich was up on the floor of the House early this morning railing against the escalation in Afghanistan and today he's asking his colleagues to sign his priviledged resolution (below):

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