The list of House members who have signed on as cosponsors of U.S. Representative John Conyers’ resolution calling for the establishment of select committee that would examine whether President Bush and Vice President Cheney should face impeachment continues to grow. Four more members of the House have added their names to the resolution, bringing to 27 the total number of representatives, including Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who are calling for the creation of "a select committee to investigate the administration’s intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment."
The new cosponsors, all Democrats, are Wisconsin’s Gwen Moore, New York’s Nydia Velasquez, and John Olver and John Tierney of Massachusetts Wisconsin’s Gwen Moore. Olver made his decision to sign on after meeting with Massachusetts members of the national group Progressive Democrats of America, which has been spearheading the drive to attract cosponsors.
Another cosponsor, California Democrat Barbara Lee, put the effort to hold the president and vice president to account in perspective Friday with a powerful critique of the administration’s attempts to justify warrantless spying on Americans and other assaults on civil liberties and the rule of law.
"What separates us from terrorists is not simply that our principles are deeply offended by the idea of torture or the murdering of innocents, but that we are a nation of laws. Our principles are enshrined in our Constitution and a system of duly enacted laws, and in a government where all are accountable and no one is above the law," explained Lee, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
"Our Constitution gives us a system of checks and balances and divided powers because our founders were bitterly familiar with dealing with an unaccountable executive and were determined that our nation should not have a king, nor any office like it," Lee added. "The president and his advisers have tried to make this a question of whether we will defend our nation. This is misleading. Democrats and Republicans alike are committed to vigorously defending our nation. The real question is whether we will just as fiercely defend those principles that define our nation and separate us from terrorists, namely our commitment to constitutional government and our respect for the rule of law."
