Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported as 60 the number of votes needed to sustain a filibuster. Sixty votes are needed to stop a filibuster. The incorrect information has been removed from this story.
| Page 2 of 2 < |
Tasting Victory, Liberals Instead Have a Food Fight
The lineup of speakers indeed could have been a Bill O'Reilly fantasy: Saddam Hussein's lawyer (Clark), Hugo Chavez's friend (Sheehan) and the man who denied Al Gore the presidency in Florida in 2000 (Ralph Nader).
Nader, as it happens, couldn't make it because of a death in the family. But Fox News was there -- and the other speakers did not disappoint.
  Antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan greets former attorney general Ramsey Clark at a forum on impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Sheehan is considering a Democratic primary challenge to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.). (By Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post) Washington SketchA national political reporter for the Post, Milbank writes Washington Sketch, an observational column about political theater in the White House, Congress and elsewhere in the capital. He covered the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns and President Bush's first term. Before coming to the Post as a Style political writer in 2000, he covered the Clinton White House for the New Republic and Congress for the Wall Street Journal. |
Sign Up for RSS FeedClark, on a stage decorated with portraits of Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King Jr., said the administration is "the greatest threat to peace, to human rights, to economic justice worldwide." The former attorney general proposed a 75 percent cut in the military budget and complained that Democrats are just as warmongering as Republicans.
Marcus Raskin, the longtime antiwar activist, compared the Pentagon's "shock and awe" to the Nazis' blitzkrieg. "What we have now is nationalist triumphalism," he said.
Swanson announced that he will be forming a committee to pressure the D.C. Council to "send charges of impeachment to the House of Representatives."
Sheehan, in a sweet voice, condemned the administration's agenda "to spread the cancer of empire."
The first questioner, getting into the spirit of the forum, declared of the administration: "These criminals and gangsters, thugs as I regard them, I believe engineered 9/11."
Many in the crowd applauded. But others were skeptical. "I've heard a lot about accountability" from the panel, said one questioner. "Seems to me the first opportunity we had for accountability was in the last election."
"Elections," moderator Zeese replied, "are not the determining factor."
