Take Nancy Pelosi off the table as Speaker of the House

By Joyce Lynn

Dec 31, 2008, 00:28


Democrats, it’s time to clean the House. Start at the top.

When the 111th Congress convenes in January, it is time for a change -- a change of the Speaker of the House. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) in her two years as speaker has enabled a pro-Bush, pro-corporate agenda almost as facilely and frequently as Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

In November 2006, voters put Democrats in the majority in Congress to end the Iraq occupation and hold Bush responsible for the war. But the among first things she did when she became speaker was take impeachment off the table, giving Bush a blank check to wage the Iraq war for two more years.

Showing disdain for those opposed the war, Pelosi snubbed peace demonstrators outside her San Francisco home, morphing into Bush who refused to meet Cindy Sheehan and peace protesters outside his Crawford, Texas, compound.

Under Pelosi’s leadership, Congress gave Bush a half-trillion dollars for the Iraq war Pelosi said she wanted to stop. More than 1,200 U.S. soldiers and thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children have died since Pelosi became speaker.

Pelosi has refused to sanction hearings to collect evidence about impeachable offenses, and she quashed other House members’ impeachment efforts. By last June, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) had compiled at least 35 articles of impeachment for G.W. Bush. The first 16 articles relate to the Iraq war: for secret propaganda; deception about 9/11; weapons of mass destruction, and illegal spending in an unauthorized and undeclared war.

Pelosi also enabled legislation legalizing warrantless wiretapping and granting immunity not only for telecommunications company executives, but also for Bush, Dick Cheney, and other administration officials. The law obliterated our Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure.

Continued...