SRF Heavy Industries

I’m sure anyone that cares has heard by now that Dennis Kucinich took up four and a half hours of the House of Representatives’  valuable late-night time last night, broadcast semi-live on C-SPAN, presenting thirty-five articles of impeachment against George W. Bush, along with verbally transcribing for the congressional record all of the supporting material.

You may recall more than a year ago he presented articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney, which were handed over to the Judiciary Committee and then never heard from again. But probably not, because it didn’t really find its way to the mainstream press.

SImilarly, the US press hasn’t really treated the attempt to start this new bout of impeachment proceedings as news. Like that “prison ship” stuff I mentioned last week. Or, as LJ-user circumambulate points out, like the Iraq Commission report that detailed the deliberate Bush Administration skewing of intelligence making the case for invading Iraq.

What <i>has</i> kinda made the press today is that Scott McClellan, former White House mouthpiece who bailed in 2006, is scheduled to testify to a congressional committee in just a couple weeks. See, recently he published a weakish tell-all book detailing how the White House lied to him, and through him, to the American People about the lead-up to the Iraq War, the Valerie Plame incident, and the screw up of the handling of Hurricane Katrina.

It took just about no time at all for Al Gore to rip McClellan a new one for saving it up and trying to make a quick buck by bringing it out in campaign season. Instead of, for instance, calling Bush and Cheney and Rove out while he was still in his position as press secretary. I think that’s a bit  unfair, seeing as he was also still in range of Secret Service sidearms then. Also, he’s been loyal to Bush since the Texas days. He was obviously uncomfortable enough to resign in 2006. Colin Powell walked out the same way when the smell got too bad for him back in 2004. McClellan was just a bit more used to it. And also, McClellan decided to put it all in writing. That can take some time, especially if you care to do a bit of research and fact checking. And seek a suitable publisher.

And steel yourself for testifying in congressional hearings. About some seriously unfinished business. Much of which has just recently been chanted, at length, into the House of Representatives’ half of the Congressional Record.

I’d love to think that something will come of either of these things, or that, due to the interaction either in Congress or in the press, something larger will happen than what most people expect.

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