Repudiating Themselves
AllahPundit performs a much needed smackdown of Alcee Hastings and his disinformation campaign. Hastings is calling lots of people various names, but glossing over a number of salient facts So are his defenders.
Alas for poor Hastings, the boss has already completed her magical journey through time back to August 3, 1988, where she’s fiendishly rigged the House vote to make it look like every major politician in today’s Democratic universe assented to impeaching his ass.
She did a really thorough job, too:
One of the newcomers to the House was the future Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had been in office a little more than a year. She voted to impeach Hastings.
Rep. Steny Hoyer, the future Majority Leader, also voted to impeach. And so did the lawmakers who will soon chair powerful House committees. Rep. Conyers, now in line to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Charles Rangel, soon to chair the Ways and Means Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Barney Frank, in line to head the Financial Services Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Henry Waxman, next chair of the Government Reform Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. John Dingell, in line to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, voted to impeach…
So did other well-known Democratic lawmakers like Rep. John Lewis, Rep. (and later Sen.) Barbara Boxer, Rep. (and later Sen.) Charles Schumer, Rep. (and later Sen.) Richard Durbin, Rep. Ed Markey, Rep. Ron Dellums, Rep. Julian Dixon, and Rep. Richard Gephardt.
By emphasizing his acquittal in federal court and downplaying the subsequent impeachment proceedings, he’s essentially asking Pelosi and co. to rebuke themselves for having voted as they did and admit that their findings of fact at the time were wrong.
I've already had more than a few of the disinformation patrol swooping in to deposit their received talking points. The chorus goes: "he was never convicted, la la la". But it is the same old song and dance. Many of the people sitting in the Congress today, fellow Democrats, removed him from office. They obviously saw enough evidence to vote the way they did. So, is Pelosi going to repudiate her earlier actions and put Hastings in the chair? We'll see, I guess.
But it is instructive to look at who is supporting Hastings based on the "never convicted" meme. Many were the same people screaming the loudest about the Fox Network's plan to air an interview with another man who was never convicted. Interesting set of double standards.
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Moonbattery — November 23, 2006 @ 12:25 pm
By Arlo, November 23, 2006 @ 12:36 pm
Whew! O.J. and Alcee Hastings.
Former Senator Bob Graham wrote an LTE that he had voted against the Hastings impeachment because he’d been governor of FL at the time of the events in question and knew the people involved and didn’t believe the circumstantial case.
Myself, I don’t know what the truth is but that means something that Bob Graham didn’t buy the case against Hastings. There was also something about one of the FBI agents involved having later getting in trouble for lies.