Cheney's Impeachment Literally Fell 'Off the Table'

By Paul Kane And Mary Ann Akers
Thursday, November 8, 2007

Maybe now we know what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) meant when she said impeachment was "off the table."

Lawmakers' voting cards on the issue were literally just that -- off the table -- during Tuesday's brouhaha when Republicans briefly hijacked control of the chamber with a procedural maneuver and thrust the Democrats perilously close to debating a resolution on impeaching Vice President Cheney.

Offered by long-shot presidential candidate Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), the unusual resolution would have resulted in the shortest impeachment debate ever -- one hour -- followed by a final vote on impeaching the unpopular vice president. Knowing how little Democratic leaders wanted to handle Kucinich's hot potato, Republicans began switching their votes late in the process, hoping to shame Pelosi and Co. into a debate that the GOP believed would expose the radical left in the chamber.

Republicans began siding with Kucinich against the tabling of his resolution, resulting in scores of GOP members lining up to switch their votes. With the House's electronic voting system shut down as the tally neared its final minutes, the only way for Republican lawmakers to change their position was to use old-fashioned voting cards, which, of course, slowed the proceedings further.

And then something happened purely by accident during the nearly two-hour disruption that helped gum up the works even more: A stack of red voting cards fell between a crack in two adjoining desks on the dais. (Red cards signify a switch to a "nay" vote; the green ones mean "yea.") Clerks used rulers, pencils and anything else they could find to fish the cards out so the vote could be concluded.

The House clerk's office didn't respond to requests for comment about the tie-up, but a Republican aide who was privy to the mishap said: "Accidents happen, but accidents in the middle of votes to debate impeachment don't happen every day. Unfortunately for the Democrats, it was that kind of day."

Impeachment: Dead or Alive?

While Republicans embarrassed Pelosi by siding with Kucinich -- once all those switched voting cards were fished out of the chamber's crevices -- Democrats successfully passed a motion to scuttle the hour-long debate and officially send the impeachment issue to the House Judiciary Committee. Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) have declared it dead on arrival there.

But Rep. Stephen I. Cohen (D-Tenn.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, predicts that the panel will hold hearings. "I get that impression," he said. "The issue is still alive."

Cohen is a co-sponsor of the Kucinich resolution, which has three impeachment articles against Cheney. All told, 14 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, including the chairman, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), initially voted with Kucinich, signaling some level of impeachment interest on the panel.

Once Cohen realized what Republicans were up to, he sided with the leadership and voted to send the issue to the committee. "You don't impeach anybody in a kangaroo court," Cohen said. "That in and of itself is an impeachable offense."

For now, the official word is that Cheney can sleep tight. No impeachment in sight.

A statement from the committee indicated that the panel is "very busy" with other issues, but it added that the "committee staff should continue to consider, as a preliminary matter, the many abuses of this Administration, including the Vice President."

Kucinich declined to say whether Conyers had given him an outright commitment, but he said: "I think Chairman Conyers has strong interest in holding hearings, and I'm hopeful that we will."

He said no one was more surprised by Tuesday's drama than he. "I was expecting that I would introduce the bill, and that it would be immediately tabled. I think that was a modest expectation."

GOP Has Hillary Clinton on Its Mind

It's not just President Bush who has already declared Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) the winner of the Democratic presidential nomination. GOP leaders in the Senate chimed in yesterday, saying that the Democratic nod is an all-but-done deal.

During a news conference commemorating the first anniversary of the Democratic takeover of Congress, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, "I think the '08 election is going to be about Senator Clinton and where she wants to take America. . . . So the landscape, next year, in my view, is going to be about this new Congress and its presidential nominee -- in all likelihood, a member of this Congress -- and where [Democrats] want to take America."

McConnell, who watched his home-state Republican governor tossed out by voters Tuesday, said the 2008 elections will not be like 2006, "when they had a referendum on the Iraq war."

Separately, Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) told On the Hill that he's convinced Clinton will win the nomination. "I assume she's gonna," he said, adding that he and his Republican colleagues are already thinking of how they'll craft next year's political strategy around an anti-Clinton theme. "Sure, we're beginning to think in those terms."

But Lott acknowledged his own party's image problem: President Bush. Asked who would be the bigger drag -- Democratic nominee Clinton on her party's congressional candidates or Bush on his -- Lott demurred. After pausing for several seconds, he smiled and managed to say: "I don't know. It'd just be pure speculation."

Scandal Watch

Memo to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.): Stay away from phones; they keep getting you in trouble.

Vitter, whose personal phone number famously turned up on the client list of the alleged D.C. Madam earlier this year, admitted a "sin" after the revelations but suffered no other sanction from the Senate ethics committee or law enforcement authorities. This week, Vitter admitted committing a different form of hanky-panky with phones, and he was hit with a $25,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission.

Vitter's 2004 campaign, according to the deal he worked out with the FEC, paid for 490,000 phone calls to Louisiana voters on the eve of his victory. However, the Vitter callers did not properly identify themselves to voters and did not clearly explain that the calls were paid for by the Vitter campaign.

A Veterans Day Employment Plan?

Wounded veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan may soon have jobs waiting for them on Capitol Hill.

To mark this weekend's Veterans Day holiday, Pelosi has directed the House's chief administrative officer, Daniel Beard, to create an employment program for wounded war vets. Pelosi says she hopes the program will make the House a "model for other federal, state and municipal agencies to employ these talented, patriotic Americans to whom we are all greatly indebted."

The program was Beard's idea. He is modeling it on the Wounded Warrior Regiment established by the Marine Corps.

"As I met with the Marine Corps, it struck me that we have vacancies and they have trained, skilled people who are more than qualified to fill many of these positions," Beard said. "Helping them build a new career at the House of Representatives honors this institution, and it honors them."