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Ref. : Letters to the editor
01.02 Blaming the Victims - The Dominant Media Vilify Hamas
12.30 Shock, Awe and Lies: The Truth Behind the Israeli Attack on Gaza
12.10 We All Failed Gary Webb
01.07 Gaza Voices, American Silence
01.06 The $6 Million Social Worker
01.06 Bush Spins Scandalous Neglect of Vets
01.02 2009 is Starting Off with a Shameful and Criminal Bang
12.27 Two Dangerous Bush-Cheney Myths
12.24 Madoff Scandal Exposes Government Failure
12.22 Cheney's Contempt for the Republic
12.19 Obama's New Appointments
12.18 Obama v. Washington Mythmaking
12.17 The Electoral College Has Got To Go
12.16 A Million McVeighs Now: The American-Made Insurgency in Afghanistan
12.15 Thinking About Illinois
12.14 Obama and US-Russia Tensions
12.12 A Time Machine to Save America
12.11 Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?
12.10 Workers of America: Wake Up! We All Need a Union!
12.31 America's War On Islam - The "Fort Dix Five"
12.30 Henry Kissinger: Eminence Noire
12.28 The Grinning Skull
12.22 Obama v. Richard Falk on Israel and Occupied Palestine
12.19 White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy, But That’s Not the Biggest Scandal
12.18 Judge Declines to Jail 'Ghosts of the Iraq War'
12.18 Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture: No One Can Be Above the Law
12.17 Cluster Bomb Treaty and the World's Unfinished Business
12.17 Abandoned by the World: UN Declares Open Season on Somalia
12.17 Assessing the Bush Legacy: The Measure of the Man and His Administration
12.16 Cheney Admits Detainee-Abuse Role
12.15 The Abduction, Secret Detention, Torture, and Repeated Raping of Aafia Siddiqui
12.12 Torture Trail Seen Starting with Bush
12.11 Atrocity Unlimited: US Seeks to Turn Somalia into Global Free-Fire Zone
12.10 The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi
01.05 Thinking About the 2008 Numbers
12.29 Thinking About Realities
12.26 Early Suspicions About Bernard Madoff
12.24 The Federal Reserve Abolition Act
12.22 Thinking About Expectations
12.12 Excess Debt and Deflation = Depression
01.07 The Quartet's Hypocrisy and Failure in Occupied Palestine
01.07 Gazing at Gaza's Destruction: Israelis Sip Pepsi, US Progressives See 'Silver Lining'
01.05 Fallujah by the Sea: Aping America, Israel Unleashes Chemical Weapons in Gaza
01.05 Global Human Rights Groups Protest Slaughter in Gaza
12.30 How Hypocrisy on 'Terrorism' Kills
12.29 Israel's Wanton Aggression On Gaza
12.26 Christmas 2008: Hell in the Holy Land
12.17 Canada's Prince of Darkness Assumes Leadership of the Liberal Party
COMMENTARY:
Pelosi's Stand on Impeachment is Killing the Democratic Party
Her position on impeachment is killing the Democratic Party too, by driving away not just progressived members of the party, but independents who voted for Democrats last November expecting some action in defense of the Constitution.
My own little call for people so sign an “I Quit This Party” petition has seen a jump from 300 to now 400 signers. (Sign up on the column to the right.) When it gets to 500 I'll be sending the list off to Pelosi, as well as to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean.
Four or five hundred party defectors may seem like small loss, but it reflects a larger trend across the country.
Here's a letter I got from the head of a group of active Democrats in central Pennsylvania-the very kind of heartland area that Democrats will need if they are going to win the presidency and hang on to or make gains in Congress next year.
Writes Kathy Ember, a Democratic Committee member in Pennsylvania, and president of the Kutztown Democratic Club:
I am the president of a very active grassroots Democratic club just outside Philadelphia in PA. Recently, I got an email from Nancy Pelosi, asking all of us to help build the grassroots.I believe that the aptly named Ember is just one spark in a prairie fire that is going to sweep away the conservative Democratic establishment in 2008. Whether it is by turning to third party candidates, or just sitting out the next election, these angry and frustrated Democrats are showing that they've been betrayed one too many times by the Democratic Party.
EXCUSE ME Nancy, but we have been working our butts off out here for years trying to do just that. WE are the ones that put the Democrats back in power in Congress. We've been there for you, but you have let us down by not holding the current administration responsible for their crimes.
Not only are you losing us . . . you are making it impossible for us to “build the grassroots.” Do you know how people look at you now when you ask them to join the Democrats? They laugh in your face. Why, they want to know, should we join or support a party that has done nothing toward getting out of Iraq or impeaching this president?
I am in contact with other Democratic clubs across PA. Some have recently changed the word “Democrats” in their name to a lower case “d.” Others have abandoned their association with the Democrats altogether and have formed instead “citizen action groups.”
When will the Democrats in Washington wake up and realize that it's not impeachment that will hurt the party . . . it is the lack of it.
Either Pelosi-who is facing an election challenge by Cindy Sheehan in her own San Francisco district-better do an about face and open the path to impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. Otherwise, she and her fellow party leaders are going to find themselves either ousted in primaries, or back in the position of minority “leaders” in 2009.
About the author: Philadelphia journalist Dave Lindorff is co-author, with
Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for Impeachment
. His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on August 20, 2007.
