Seen on the newswires:
Thick black smoke billowed from a fire Wednesday on the White House compound in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
The blaze appeared to be located in Vice President Dick Cheney’s suite of ceremonial offices on the second floor of the building. Cheney and President Bush were across the street in the West Wing of the White House when the blaze broke out. It appeared to be under control within an hour.
I have to admit the first thing that crossed my mind when reading about the fire was wondering if Cheney and his minions accidentally started out the fire due to overworking paper shredders.
Sometimes, reality is far more entertaining (or disturbing) than anything striking script writers could have come up with. As seen at the Miami Herald:
The impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney was the last thing that House Democratic leaders wanted to confront Tuesday, even though a determined band of antiwar House Democrats was eager to force the issue.
Then, in a vote that stunned even the antiwar forces, the House of Representatives—helped in no small part by Republicans eager to debate the issue and portray Democrats as radical—voted 251-162 to keep the Cheney impeachment measure alive. The majority was formed by 165 Republicans and 86 Democrats.
Over at RedState, Shaggy Dog observed:
Apparently Rep. John Shaddeg (R-AZ)came up with the idea of throwing Republican votes in favor of bringing the measure in order to embarrass Pelosi & Co. by 1) letting the American people actually see the unvarnished nuttiness of the House Democrat back-benchers and 2) forcing Pelosi to then have to (presumably) go on record voting against the impeachment of Vice President Cheney and deal with the ensuing wrath of the nutroots.
I say three cheers for Rep. Shaddeg. If we can do more of this type of thing- holding the Democratic leadership accountable for the lunacy of their base, we will have a good shot of regaining a majority vote from the American people in 2008.
Meanwhile, the militant doves are peeved at the Democratic leadership’s attempt to squash the measure. For example, Bob Cesca noted at HuffPo:
It was yesterday, on the one year anniversary of the collapse of Karl Rove’s thousand-year Reich, when the Democrats subjected themselves to both public embarrassment and public disgrace, and each within a few hours of the other.
The public disgrace was naturally Senator Schumer’s and Senator Feinstein’s votes to endorse the Bush administration’s pro-torture policy. Make no mistake, despite their wet-bread excuses, that’s what they did, say nothing of their endorsement of the regime’s unitary executive theory. The reality of the committee vote—the Democrats’ failure to hold their voter-mandated high ground—is what history will remember. Not the excuses.
If some of what has been alleged about Cheney is correct, I think a very strong case could be made for impeachment. For example, the notion that intelligence workers in the Middle East may have been sacrificed due to nasty political games is an offense of the same order of magnitude as obstruction of justice when investigating a hotel break-in.
However, I also think that the moment for acting on that is long since passed. If such allegations are true, the call for impeachment should have been issued once sufficient proof had been amassed to support those allegations.
To have waited this long…well, Kucinich’s resolution would seem to be pretty far down in the depths of the political circus abyss, even before considering the strategery being demonstrated by the right wing to embarrass the left.
And the circusness being demonstrated by the right? Well, I’ll admit that I always appreciate such clever tactics in the name of good entertainment….but it reeks of childishness and irresponsibility. For the good of the country (and not because it’s embarrassing to Dems) the measure should have been tabled, absent some new revelation about Darth Cheney’s antics.
Are centrists/realists ready to defect from the nuts and sleazy politicians in both wings yet?
