Rep. Conyers: Impeachment Is Not Off the Table

Today at the Progressive Media Summit I managed to catch a conversation between Rob Kall of OpedEdNews and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers on the potential impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. The video starts in the middle of a sentence, but other than that, it's pretty clear cut. It's an interesting dialogue in which Conyers goes back and forth on his own authority and ability to bring impeachment charges, his political arguments against it, and finally, his firm statement that Bush could do plenty to justify impeachment and that the option is not 'off the table'. You get to see a fascinating and very human interaction between a highly intelligent activist and a sitting Congressman with immense power who is vaguely irritated at having to answer questions, but also intensely interested in answering them.

The transcript is as follows:

John Conyers: Two impeachments rather than one. They've either got to be simultaneous or serie atum.

Rob Kall: Serie atum would be the way to do it. First Cheney, then Bush. History teaches us, let's start with Gonzales. We went to Gonzales, and he's gone. They went to Agnew, he left. Then they went to Nixon, and they started doing hearings on him. It never went to a vote in the Senate. And I don't think it ever would. All we need to do is get the hearings opened up where they can't say 'sorry, executive privilege, then you've got the tools, which is what Impeachment is, it's a tool.

John Conyers: You know who's been in more impeachment hearings than anybody in the House or Senate?

Rob Kall: You?

John Conyers: Right.

Rob Kall: And you wrote a book on impeaching Bush, too.

John Conyers: A couple, yes. Well there must be some compelling reason that I'm not doing it right now.

Rob Kall: Pelosi, Pelosi keeps coming to mind.

John Conyers: How could she stop, well, she could stop me because actually it goes through a special committee on the House, but, Pelosi can't stop me from anything, really.