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06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable Health & Environment
06.29 Thinking about Climate 06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN 06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare 06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All 06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate 06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex 06.22 Thinking about Recoveries 06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo 06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform 06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers 06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care 06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations Media Watching
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform 06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage 06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right 06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess US Politics, Policy & Culture
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy 06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity 06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail 06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission? 06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership 06.25 America's "Bases of Empire" 06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town 06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins 06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program 06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black 06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix 06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran? 06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program? 06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory 06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed High Crimes?
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement" 07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure 06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq 06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release 06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War 06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future 06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record 06.14 Fear Rules Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America 06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control 06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney International
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean 06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New 06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise' 06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil 06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?” 06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran 06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections 06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters 06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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POLITICS TRUMP DEMOCRACY:Democrats Kill Democracy and Protect a Criminal Presidency in New MexicoIt seems increasingly evident from the strange behavior of turncoat senate Democrats in New Mexico, that pressure was brought to prevent the passage of a joint resolution that would have put the impeachment issue front and center in the US House of Representatives.
The unseen dead hand of national Democratic meddling seems to have killed a promising example of grassroots democratic activism in New Mexico that could have been a model for reviving the Democratic Party nationwide and in that key swing state.While no one has yet come forward and identified the culprits, it seems evident from the behavior and explanations of some key one-time backers of a proposed legislative joint resolution calling on the US House to impeach President Bush, who at first supported the measure but then joined 17 Republican members of the state senate in killing it, that pressure was brought to bear on them to trade sides.
But then something strange happened. When accepting the resolution for debate was put to a vote, the Senate’s 17 Republicans were on hand but most Democrats were out of the room. The person chairing the session, Senator Ben Altamirano, a Democrat who had been a supporter of Ortiz’s resolution in committee, allowed the vote to go ahead despite the absence of many Democrats, and moreover, permitted a voice vote. The Republicans yelled their “nays” loudly, and Altamirano ruled that the measure had passed. Democrats came back the next day and demanded for a voice vote on the measure. It went down to defeat, 26-17, with Altamirano and eight other Democrats voting against it. Altamirano later insisted that he had not voted against Ortiz’s resolution, which he improbably claimed to still support, arguing that all he had done was vote that the prior day’s controversial ruling declaring the measure dead by voice vote had been proper. He failed to mention that he was referring on his own ruling as president pro-tempore and chair of the session the day before. Meanwhile, another turncoat on the issue, State Senator Carlos Cizneros, a co-sponsor of Ortiz’s resolution who also surprised Ortiz and other resolution backers by voting to kill the bill, offered another explanation altogether. “I didn’t vote to kill the bill,” he said in an interview days later. “I voted to send it back to committee because the votes weren’t there to pass it. I didn’t want to see it die, so I voted against it.” “That’s pretty weasily,” commended Desi Brown, an aide to Sen. Ortiz. “The bill was killed and it cannot be brought back to the Senate floor, unless Sen. Cizneros knows something about senate rules that we don’t know.” A third Democratic turncoat, Sen. David Ulibarri, failed to return calls to explain his reason from voting against the resolution after earlier backing it in committee. Ortiz aide Brown said only two of the nine Democrats voting against the resolution represent majority Republican districts, a situation which might explain their taking a negative position on the resolution. Others of the nine represent fairly conservative Democratic districts, but of course, the Bush presidency is unpopular among Democratic voters of all political stripes, and among independents too. Brown says that prior to the vote killing the resolution, five of the nine Democratic senators who voted with Republicans had been seen conversing privately, suggesting a coordinated strategy to kill the measure. Brown and impeachment movement activists in the state insist that days before the debacle in the Senate, they had clear support for passage among senate Democrats. Brown says he does not have evidence of any pressure on senate Democrats, but speculation is focused on Gov. Bill Richardson, an announced candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, and on Sen. Jeff Bingaman. The Democratic National Committee has targeted New Mexico as a key battleground state for 2008, and given the national party leadership’s clear desire to avoid an impeachment battle in the House, it seems increasingly evident from the strange behavior of turncoat senate Democrats in the state, that pressure was brought to prevent the passage of a joint resolution that would have put the issue front and center in the US House of Representatives. This seems particularly likely given the overt pressure that has been brought to bear on state senators in the state of Washington by two members of that state’s congressional delegation. A similar joint resolution is facing a do-or-die vote in the Washington state senate today or tomorrow. One curious aspect in this story is the behavior of senate Republicans in New Mexico. Last spring, when impeachment talk was first surfacing, national Republican leaders argued in the media that a Democratic-led impeachment campaign would be good for Republicans since it would “rally the base” of the Republican Party. Many Democratic Party leaders have bought into that theory, which is why they are afraid of the growing impeachment movement. But if impeachment is good for Republicans, why would they have acted in concert in New Mexico to kill Sen. Ortiz’s resolution? Democrats should think twice before joining Republicans in such efforts to kill off citizen impeachment campaigns at the state level. Clearly Republicans don’t really want to see an impeachment hearing in Washington, DC, which suggests that Democrats should be pushing ahead for those hearings, not helping Republicans to fend them off. Democratic state Senator John Grubesic, a backer of the Ortiz resolution, said after the vote killing the measure, “The action taken by the Senate was not the action taken by a body that protects the freedoms of a sovereign people. The action was a carefully orchestrated option designed to protect the integrity of an institution and perpetuate the well-oiled workings of government.” He added, “Our actions today showed where our priorities are, we forgot that the Constitution was not designed to serve government, but to protect the people. There should have been a debate, argument, uproar. Instead, we quietly gutted the sovereign power of the people with polite political procedure. When future generations look back on our time, the shock will not be because of the violent, impolite nature of the fight that preceded the destruction of Constitutional government, but by the meekness with which we watched it die.” Erich Kuerschner, a local impeachment activist in the state, notes that at the state party convention held in 2006, 80 percent of the delegates endorsed a plank calling for impeachment of the president. “The party constituents made a pretty clear choice back then,” he says, “and it’s not being reflected by the actions of the party leadership.” Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns, titled This Can't be Happening!, is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's latest book is The Case for Impeachment, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky. Visit his website for more information. Lindorff may be reached at dlindorff@yahoo.com. This story is published in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.
Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on March 13, 2007. |
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