Impeaching Dick Cheney - an Alien Notion

Dennis Kucinich apparently does not dispute an account in Shirley MacLaine's new book that he saw an unidentified flying object near her home in Washington State during the 1980's. "He saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent and observing him. It hovered for about 10 minutes or so and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind." I suspect that the full story has been withheld for reasons of credibility. I think Kucinich's experience was actually a Close Encounter of the Third Kind, and that when the spaceship sped away, Kucinich was on board. The reason that Kucinich could not comprehend the speed is related to the theory of relativity; in order to reach home base in a solar system near Alpha Centauri and return Kucinich to Earth in time to run for President, it was necessary to travel close to the speed of light. Alpha Centauri is about 4.365 light years away, so even if his new googly-eyed friends were humping it at .99(C), Dennis was going to be gone at least 9 Earth-years or so. Because of time dilation on board the triangular craft, which Dennis also could not comprehend, he didn't age much at all, and indeed the Ohio Congressman has a very youthful appearance even today. Returning to Earth at practically the same chronological age as the day he left Shirley's backyard, Dennis looked around for a wife youthful in Earth-years and evidently found her, tongue ring and all.

While he was gone, however, not everything was above board on board. At some point in transit to Alpha Centauri, the aliens, tired of lounging around in their Imperial Barcaloungers, their four eyes bleary from staring at the 1000 inch plasma TV on board, decided to have a little fun. They slipped Dennis a mickey of Versed/Fentanyl, and while he was in a state of hypnotic sedation (even today he seems not to have fully recovered), they opened the hatch behind one of his Spock ears and gained entry into the central processing unit of Kucinich's brain. They swapped out the CPU in favor of an Alpha Centauri upgrade.

With this fuller account revealed, it is easier to make sense of Kucinich's recent attempt to impeach Dick Cheney. Prior to the Close Encounter, I don't think Dennis would have tried this; after alien tinkering, goofy, weird behavior can probably break out at any time.

Kucinich's resolution contains 3 articles of impeachment. The first two concern the invasion of Iraq, Cheney's manipulation of intelligence to make false cases that Saddam had WMD and that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda. The third article refers to Cheney's bellicose posturing regarding Iran, which Kucinich argues amounts to an unconstitutional abrogation of treaty obligations not to engage in preemptive war against nations which have not threatened us.

That's it. That's the resolution. With all the material the Congress has to work with against Bush and Cheney, including the commission of actual felonies under federal statutory law (violations of the War Crimes Act, the FISA law and the Identities Protection Act, e.g. - by no means an exhaustive list), Kucinich chose three points which are arguably political controversies. And he aimed his case against the Vice President instead of Bush, supposedly on the theory that Cheney should be removed first so he does not succeed to the presidency after Bush's impeachment.

This is beyond stupid. Earth to Kucinich (we know you were away for a few years, and things have changed): impeachment is going to fail in both cases. There aren't enough Democrats in the Senate to convict. No one is going to be removed from office no matter how strong the case. The point of impeachment proceedings is to compel the production of evidence on the most serious abuses of the Bush Administration. To air it all out once and for all. Instead, Kucinich placed in motion a resolution so weak and insubstantial that the Democrats ran from it while the Republicans voted to schedule it for debate, resulting in another Keystone Kops moment for the "majority party" and destroying, probably forever, the idea of accountability through the impeachment process. Really, Dennis -- you need to call Intergalactic Tech Support.