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National Impeachment Movement Ignored by Corportate Media

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 8 April 2006
5 comments

Governments USA

National Impeachment Movement Ignored by Corportate Media
http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/impeach.htm

By Peter Phillips

If a national movement calling for the impeachment of the President is rapidly emerging and the corporate media are not covering it, is there really a national movement for the impeachment of the President?

Impeachment advocates are widely mobilizing in the U.S. Over 1,000 letters to the editors of major newspapers have been printed in the past six months asking for impeachment. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette letter writer George Matus says, “I am still enraged over unasked questions about exit polls, touch-screen voting, Iraq, the cost of the new Medicare...who formulated our energy policy, Jack Abramoff, the Downing Street Memos, and impeachment.” David Anderson in McMinnville, Oregon pens to the Oregonian, “Where are the members of our congressional delegation now in demanding the current president’s actions be investigated to see if impeachment or censure are appropriate actions?” William Dwyer’s letter in the Charleston Gazette says, “Congress will never have the courage to start the impeachment process without a groundswell of outrage from the people.”

City councils, boards of supervisors, and local and state level Democrat central committees have voted for impeachment. Arcata, California voted for impeachment on January 6. The City and County of San Francisco, voted Yes on February 28. The Sonoma County Democrat Central Committee (CA) voted for Impeachment on March 16. The townships of Newfane, Brookfield, Dummerston, Marlboro and Putney in Vermont all voted for impeachment the first week of March. The New Mexico State Democrat party convention rallied on March 18 for the ”impeachment of George Bush and his lawful removal from office.” The national Green Party called for impeachment on January 3. Op-ed writers at the St. Petersburg Times, Newsday, Yale Daily News, Barrons, Detroit Free Press, and the Boston Globe have called for impeachment. The San Francisco Bay Guardian (1/25/06) The Nation (1/30/06) and Harpers (3/06) published cover articles calling for impeachment. As of March 16, thirty-two US House of Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors to House Resolution 635, which would create a Select Committee to look into the grounds for recommending President Bush’s impeachment.

Polls show that nearly a majority of Americans favor impeachment. In October of 2005, Public Affairs Research found that 50% of Americans said that President Bush should be impeached if he lied about the war in Iraq. A Zogby International poll from early November 2005 found that 53% of Americans say, "If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment." A March 16, 2006 poll by American Research Group showed that 42% of Americans favored impeaching Bush.

Despite all this advocacy and sentiment for impeachment, corporate media have yet to cover this emerging mass movement. The Bangor Daily News simply reported on March 17 that former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark has set up the website Votetoimpeach.org and that other groups are using the internet to push impeachment. The Wall Street Journal, on March 16, editorialized about how it is just “the loony left” seeking impeachment, but perhaps some Democrats in Congress will join in feeding on the “bile of the censure/impeachment brigades.”

The corporate media are ignoring the broadening call for impeachment - wishing perhaps it will just go away. Television news and talk shows have mentioned impeachment over 100 times in the past 30 days, mostly however in the context of Senator Russ Feingold’s censure bill and the lack of broad Democrat support for censure or impeachment. Nothing on television news gives the impression that millions of Americans are calling for the impeachment of Bush and his cohorts. 

The Bush Administration lied about Iraq, illegally spied on US citizens, and continues war crimes in the Middle East. Despite corporate media’s inability to hear the demands for impeachment, the groundswell of outrage continues to expand.

 
Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored a media research organization. Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney by Dennis Loo and Peter Phillips is scheduled for release this summer by Seven Stories Press

Forum posts

  • From the article: "A Zogby International poll from early November 2005 found that 53% of Americans say, ’If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.’ A March 16, 2006 poll by American Research Group showed that 42% of Americans favored impeaching Bush."

    What the f—k do Americans not understand about their situation. 53% say "if" Bush lied, Congress "should CONSIDER" .... Not impeach, just consider it. And less than a month ago only 42% favored impeachment. We Americans are some of the most ignorant a—holes on the face of the earth. Is it any wonder we got our ass kicked in Vietnam and are getting it kicked again in Iraq. And you dumb mfers who want to say we’re bringing them democracy, you have no idea what is going on in the world.

    • The people shun your enraged ideological certitude as a basis of policy. Your narrow agenda of disestablishment of the United States Government and the erection of vindictive international People’s (Communist) Courts to try for political crimes all the people who have frustrated your cause over the last 75 years is no news to the People of the United States. You shouldn’t wonder that they reject your message, and you. They know a party of Strelnikov-wannabe’s when they see one.

      Lentulus

  • One Texas Senator in defending the illegal presidential wiretapping recently said, "If you’re dead you don’t have any rights." Apparently he does not agree with Patrick Henry’s "Give me liberty or give me death." If President Clinton had been accused of doing any of the things that President Bush has admitted doing, the Republican Congress would have had his head. The very portion of the public that is vociferously defending Bush now (often with potty mouth as seen in one of the posts here) would have been the first to go after Clinton. So I must assume that (a) the impeachment effort against Clinton was entirely political, and (b) the conservatives in the nation are not defenders of our liberties. The only way the right can exonerate itself at this point is by taking up the cause of impeaching Bush. My uncle, a career Marine and a long-term Republican who supported NIxon all the way through his Watergate mess, has just announced that he is now a political independent and has left the Republican party. If they can’t keep his loyalty, they are doomed.

    • I think you need to go back and take a refresher course in reading. You certainly did not understand my message.

      Sincerely,
      potty mouth

    • It might be that Americans don’t demand an impeachment of a man who clearly is losing everything at the cost of America and ruining the ecomony of the country, which is just what the terriorists are trying to achieve, is the complancy that runs rampent throughout and those that don’t want to admit a big mistake. Bush’s impeachment would yes, make his family look bad, but their are some pretty strong personalities in there that would take his impeachment as personally as if they too were being impeached, but say it makes the country look bad, as if it didn’t look bad enough already. Others figure by the time it went through, the next election would be taking place and let the system weed him out naturally. At the end of the day, Bush is turning America into our worst nightmare and I am afraid it is too late.