John Conyers Introduces Motion To Censure Bush
Censure motion introduced in House over Iraq, torture
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Censur...over_1220.html
Larisa Alexandrovna
12/20/2005
Ranking House Judiciary Democrat Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has introduced a motion to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney for providing misleading information to Congress in advance of the Iraq war, failing to respond to written questions and potential violations of international law, RAW STORY has learned.
The resolutions were quietly introduced Sunday evening along with a third resolution (HR 635) to create a Select Committee to investigate the administration’s intent to go to war prior to congressional authorization. The committee would also be charged with examining manipulation of pre-war intelligence, thwarting Congressional oversight and retaliatory attacks against critics. As part of this resolution, House Judiciary Democrats seek also to explore violations of international law as pertaining to detainee abuse and torture of prisoners of war.
RAW STORY acquired copies of the resolutions Tuesday. To view the resolution to create investigative body to determine if offenses are impeachable, click here; the resolution to censure President George W. Bush, click here; and the resolution to censure Vice President Dick Cheney, click here.
The Select Committee seeks to subpoena the President and other members of the administration in hopes of ascertaining if impeachable offenses have been committed. Sources close to the Judiciary Committee indicate they believe this is the only avenue left after having written repeated letters requesting answers on matters ranging from the Downing Street Memos to the outing of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. HR 635, which would create the select committee, could potentially recommend articles of impeachment against both the President and Vice President.
Republicans are not expected to support a Select Committee, nor are they expected to approve censure motions.
House Resolution 636 seeks to censure the President for failing to respond to repeated requests for information on pre-war intelligence, possible war crimes against detainees and violation of international law, and retaliatory action against critics of the administration. House Resolution 637 seeks censure the Vice President for the same alleged abuses of power and failure to respond to repeated requests for information and testimony.
A resolution of censure or a motion of censure is a formal congressional rebuke.
blast from the past on censures
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/..._President.htm
March 28, 1834
Senate Censures President
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/...l/32_00018.jpg
The Senate demanded that the president turn over a document. The president—in the second year of his second term—refused. In an unprecedented and never-repeated tactic, the Senate then censured the president on March 28, 1834.
Two years earlier, President Andrew Jackson (pictured) had vetoed an act to re-charter the Bank of the United States. That veto became a major issue in his 1832 reelection campaign, as he decisively defeated Senator Henry Clay. After the election, Jackson moved to withdraw federal deposits from that bank.
When the new Congress convened in December 1833, Clay's anti-administration coalition in the Senate held an eight-vote majority over Jackson's fellow Democrats. Clay then challenged Jackson on the bank issue with a Senate resolution seeking a paper the president had read to his cabinet. When Jackson refused, Clay introduced the censure resolution.
After a ten-week debate, the Senate voted 26 to 20 to censure the president for assuming power not conferred by the Constitution. Jackson responded with a lengthy protest denying the validity of the Senate's action. In another unprecedented move, the Senate responded by refusing to print the president's message in its journal.
For nearly three years, Missouri Democrat Thomas Hart Benton campaigned to expunge Jackson's censure resolution from the Senate Journal. By January 1837,having regained the majority, Senate Democrats voted to remove this stain from the record of an old and sick president just weeks from his retirement. With boisterous ceremony, the handwritten 1834 Journal was borne into the mobbed chamber and placed on the secretary's table. The secretary took up his pen, drew black lines around the censure text, and wrote "Expunged by the order of the Senate." The chamber erupted in Democratic jubilation and a messenger was dispatched to deliver the expunging pen to Jackson. Dressed in the deep black of a mourner, Henry Clay lamented: "The Senate is no longer a place for any decent man."
Portrait of Andrew Jackson
Reference Items:
Peterson, Merrill D. The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
