You won't have Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia to kick around much longer, but she appears to be squawking as loudly as possible as the limelight slowly fades. Today she introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. How she missed former Secretary of State Colin Powell I'll never know.
WASHINGTON - In what could be her final legislative act in Congress, outgoing Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney introduced a bill Friday to impeach President Bush.
The legislation has no chance of passing and serves as a symbolic parting shot not only at President Bush but also at Democratic Party leaders. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has made clear that she will not entertain proposals to sanction Bush and has warned the liberal wing of her party against making political hay of impeachment.
McKinney, who drew national headlines this spring when she struck a Capitol police officer, has long insisted that Bush was never legitimately elected. In unveiling her legislation in the final hours of the current Congress, she said Bush had violated his oath of office to defend the Constitution and the nation's laws.
The legislation says Bush misled Congress into approving the war in Iraq and violated the law with secret surveillance practices. The bill also calls for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Right there is the problem. Those members of Congress, they're just so easily misled. Interestingly these articles do not mention any of the charges from her first foray into drawing them up - in 2001!.
She also had this to say.
"We're being told by them to wait on ending the war, wait on torture, wait on civil liberties, wait on learning the truth about Sept. 11," she said, speaking to more than 100 people at a panel discussion on stopping the Bush agenda. "We know that the world can't wait."
I'll type slowly, so that she can understand this.
The September 11 attack was the suicide mission of 19 Muslim men, all members of a terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda, with a profound hatred of America, who hijacked four planes and flew three of them into the World Trade Center buildings in NY City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC - you know, where you work - with the fourth crashing in a field in Pennsylvania when the passengers fought back. Nearly 3000 Americans died that day.
McKinney also this week quietly introduced a bill that would deny federal funding to law enforcement agencies "whose officers use excessive force or violence" and that don't have transparent procedures for investigating officers accused of brutality.
The bill is her response to the police shooting last month of 92-year-old Atlanta resident Kathryn Johnston, who was killed in her home as she fired on a group of plainclothes police officers who, with a warrant, knocked down her door searching for drugs.
Funny. I thought the bill might have been aimed at cops who react after being assaulted with cell phones.
