Ah, how much piety was in the air with Republicans such as Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde, both of whom were marital philanderers, when they sought along with their similarly self-righteous party colleagues to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency.

The key question for these self-righteous Republicans was:  "Did Clinton lie?"  The corollary was that if President Bill Clinton lied on the subject of whether or not he had sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office then grounds for impeachment existed.  

It is doubtful that thoughts of the stains on Lewinsky's blue dress have left the "chaste conscience" of "moralist" Ann Coulter for a single waking minute since the Clinton-Lewinsky liaison occurred.  

To put the issue in perspective, the lie that Clinton ultimately acknowledged he told was in an affidavit in a civil legal case.  Virtually any domestic relations attorney or psychologist dealing with matrimonial affairs would concur that perhaps the single leading instance of lying occurs when spouses deny extra marital affairs, the type of conduct applicable in the case against Clinton for impeachment.

I confess.  I was unhappy when they said, "impeachment is off the table," but I dismissed it as a tactical dispute.  At least we knew there were "no more blank checks" and Congress would starve the beast by exercising the power of the purse.  When they capitulated, I was vexed.

When the AG told Congress he didn't recall any Constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus, I was stunned.   I didn't realize Art. I, Sec. 9 of the Constitution was a figment of my imagination.  At least that explains why no one uses it anymore.  

This week really surprised me, though.  I hear Congress just granted more unchecked powers to Gonzales.  I can't understand how that happened.  It's like no one recalls his testimony.  It was awhile before I figured out the problem: we haven't been supportive enough.

Instead of calling them Vichy Democrats who cower in front of glass-jawed bullies, we should be supporting them.  We've done it before.  We can do it again.  In 2006 we gave them a mandate.  You and I know the majority of America was behind them.  The problem was they didn't feel it.  That's our fault.  We need to show them we're behind them.

Working together, we can solve this ...

During these wild and wooly days where an unelected chief executive serves as a neoconservative dictator intent on achieving a global New World Order and has excessively low poll ratings with seemingly no end in sight, his incredibly inept Democratic Party opposition continues to refuse to confront him.

A classic example occurred when yesterday's (July 24) New York Times reported that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, concerned that George W. Bush is playing politics with key legislation he threatens to veto, announced their intention to seek a meeting with him to resolve the impasse.

The article brought immediately to mind a term Jerry Brown used when he was California's governor, "planetary realism."  To request such a meeting with Bush at this time to resolve a legislative impasse flies in the face of planetary realism.

The article brought to mind as well that so frequently repeated film footage from 1940 showing a thoroughly flummoxed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain standing in the balcony of his residence at 10 Downing Street holding proudly aloft a piece of paper.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that impeachment is off the table because people do not want gridlock!

Nancy Pelosi is dead wrong!  People voted in 2006 to end the Iraq War going on under a man who has confused the presidency with a dictatorship.

In a July 16, 2007 letter to the editors of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer James Maynard of Sammamish, Washington has said something that should have been said long ego.  

He begins his thought provoking, psychological-sounding letter quoting a Founding Father of the U.S.A. and its fourth president, James Madison, who said, "Those who are to conduct a war cannot, in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued or concluded."

Ruth Berge of Seattle wrote a powerful letter to the editors of Seattle Times that appeared in the June 25 edition.

Ms. Berge did not hesitate to lash out against both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Patty Murray of Berge's home state of Washington.  

Berge asserts that Pelosi and Murray have turned a blind eye to some of the worst lawbreakers in American history, all the while pretending that the U.S.A. has a good justice system.

Ruth Berge minces no words as she boldly declares:

Like so many opponents of a war launched on a series of lies, I have become increasingly enraged with the conduct of the so-called Democratic Party opposition to the neocon tyranny known as the Cheney-Bush Administration in order of real importance.

Once that the American people spoke loud and clear in the 2006 elections by ending Republican leadership in both houses of Congress polls clearly revealed that the cutting edge issue was the Iraq War and the desire to extricate America from it.  

Americans voted for Democratic candidates not because of any strong party preference, but based on a desire to end an unpopular foreign conflict with mounting death tolls and no end in sight.

Speaker Pelosi has crafted an interim funding bill for Iraq that would supposedly insist upon accountability by the Executive Branch, support our troops, and bring the war to a conclusion in the next few years. It is a wonderful piece of stagecraft, carefully constructed to give political cover for all of her fellow Democrats, and leave Bush solely to blame for our failures.

Thank goodness for one piece of good news today.  The Iranian government released the British sailors and certainly no thanks to George W. Bush, who possesses all the diplomatic skill of a bull in a china shop.

As British government functionaries worked quietly behind the scenes, shrewdly seeking not to raise temperatures, the focus was on getting all British naval personnel held by the government of Iran home safely.  

At that point Bush entered the scene, filling the air with harsh, vitriolic rhetoric, the kind of unneeded, ill-informed bluster that can destroy delicate diplomatic initiatives.  At that point the British government in diplomatic jargon told Bush to butt out and shut up.  He was told that his efforts were neither required nor wanted.

A debt of gratitude should go to those in the British government who promptly removed Bush's uncouth and unneeded presence from the scene.  The wisdom of that action bore results as the British sailors are leaving Iran without any political repercussions visible on the horizon.

Does the current Congress consider the Constitution a dead document?  Ronald Roberts of Redmond, Washington, in a compelling letter to the Seattle Times editors on March 12, posed this impeachment necessity bluntly:

"Our legislators at both the federal and state level are equally bound by Article 6 of the United States Constitution to support it.  To ignore the assault that has occurred is dereliction."

As for Democrats who have failed their constitution-bound duty to begin impeachment proceedings, we must censure Nancy Pelosi emphatically.  How dare Nancy decide, "Impeachment is off the table."

Apparently instead of demanding that impeachment investigations begin immediately, Nancy has demanded a larger airplane to supply for herself and those she deems worthy to be taken along for the ride, at taxpayer expense, of course.

Lisa Vorderbrueggen has an article in today's Contra Costa Times, titled, Bloggers take Tauscher to task. The article has a number of huge problems, let me list some of mine and I'm sure other bloggers will have their own complaints.

First off, I don't see how this story could be written without mentioning that the exact same thing happened to Congressman Jeffery Cohelan in the next district over. OK, maybe not the exact same thing because Cohelan went into his unsuccessful 1970 primary with strong labor support. But the complete lack of historical perspective does damage to the analysis.

But not as much damage as this:

Yes, Tauscher voted to allow President Bush to start the Iraq war. But so did every other Democrat in the nation except one.

That is a lie. A lie in the pages of the Contra Costa Times. In reality, Tauscher was one of only two Bay Area Democrats to support the unnecessary, unilateral, invasion of Iraq with the vast majority opposed. In all, only 81 Democrats voted the wrong way on the biggest issue of our time with 126 voting no, meaning 60% of house Democrats were opposed.

This failure to understand even the most basic dynamics and history means this isn't the type of article I would recommend people reading.

If last week was defined by Katie Merrill catapulting a primary campaign against Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, this was the week that Tauscher tried in vain to distance herself from Joe Lieberman.

The following is how the week developed, you can sign up to get this delivered by email at the Ellen Tauscher Weekly.

Some say the feud between Nancy Pelosi and Ellen Tauscher has always existed. Some say that it that it is a Hatfield-McCoy stories that goes back generations in east coast politics. But one thing is clear, it erupted in the press during the summer of 2001:

This is an unfortunate follow-up on this post.

The fallout from the deal Ellen Tauscher cut with George Bush has claimed the 300th Californian. This didn't have to happen, but Tauscher cut a deal to allow it. She needs to be held accountable for each death, because none were necessary.

None of them. But Tauscher thought she would use the seat she bought to try and prove that she knew better.

#300:

Spc. Nicholas P. Steinbacher, 22, of La Crescenta, Calif., died of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV in Baghdad, Iraq, on Dec. 10. Steinbacher was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

I am disgusted by Tauscher and I'm too pissed off to write what I really think. I don't mind swearing in blog posts, but I lack the words to describe how I fell about Ellen Tauscher.

The 110th congress has yet to convene but Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has already lowered the hammer, given the opposition their walking papers, and outlined the plan to pound through the Democrats '100 Hour' agenda.

Speaker Pelosi said House Republicans will "be given only one chance to amend or debate a plan to curb oil and gas subsidies and other Democratic priorities." Legislation "cutting subsidies to oil and gas producers is one of Democrats' top six priorities for their first 100 hours in power. Pelosi said Thursday that the oil and gas legislation along with bills cutting student loan interest rates and requiring the government to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare would not go through the normal legislative process."

And for those of you who might find outrage in Speaker Pelosi's decision to forego 'normal legislative process' I can only say that Republicans set the precedent for creative use of majority power to castrate the minority opposition. So if you don't like it, too damn bad. Now is not the time to roll over to the deposed dictators and share warm fuzzies.

The diary below was originally posted in my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Typically, I believe in setting ambitious progressive goals and pursuing them with patient deliberation. There is an ebb and flow to public perception, debate and popular will. The ideal approach is to build coalitions and let policy ideas percolate through the prism of debate. We don't have that luxury now.

Iraq continues to burn, the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan and America is perceived as a rudderless giant. Under the Bush regime America is weak and immoral. That is a recipe for calamity. Triangulation and splitting hairs is not an option. Our national security is under the command and control of a sixty-year old adolescent (Bush), a feculent viceroy (Dick Cheney), an inept bureaucrat (Condi Rice) and a scandalous Washington retread (Robert Gates on December 18th).