Dennis Kucinich and impeaching Cheney

Dana Milbank attended Kucinich's announcement of his bringing impeachment charges against Vice President Cheney. With a presidential campaign going nowhere, Kucinich decided that the only way he could garner headlines was to wave around impeachment resolutions. He couldn't get one other congressman to go along with his resolutions.

"I do not stand alone," Dennis Kucinich said as he stood, alone, in front of a cluster of microphones yesterday evening.

The Ohio congressman, a Democratic presidential candidate, was holding a news conference outside the Capitol to announce that he had just filed articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney. But subsequent questioning quickly revealed that Kucinich had not yet persuaded any of his 434 colleagues to be a cosponsor, that he had not even discussed the matter with House Democratic leaders, and that he had not raised the subject with the Judiciary Committee. But Kucinich did have one thing: a copy of the Declaration of Independence. And he was not afraid to read it. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," the aspiring impeachment manager read at the start of his news conference. He continued all the way through the bit about the right of the people to abolish the government. "These words from the Declaration of Independence are instructive at this moment," he said. A reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer encouraged USS Kucinich to contact planet Earth. "But Nancy Pelosi says this is not going anywhere," she pointed out.

"Have you talked to her today?" Kucinich shot back.

"Yes, I did," she replied.

Kucinich had not expected that answer. "Then I would say I have not talked to her," he acknowledged.

It's rather surprising that he couldn't get even one other Democrat to go along - there must be quite a few who want to charge Cheney with all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors. Perhaps they just don't like being in the same news cycle with Kucinich.

I also don't understand why he's reading the Declaration of Independence. It is the Constitution which is relevant for an impeachment. Is Kucinich preaching the necessity of revolution after Cheney's supposed "Long train of abuses and usurpations?" If so, wouldn't waiting a couple of years be a better plan than to begin a revolution? Or does Kucinich just not understand what he's reading?