On Monday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush. Today, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) dismissed the call for impeachment as the efforts of “left-wing bloggers“:

This is just another example of the Democratic leadership in the House indulging trivial and silly conspiracy theories from left-wing bloggers, rather than working with Republicans to deal with the real issues facing the American people.

But impeachment is more popular than Boehner would like to admit. A July 2007 poll found that 46 percent of voters in favor beginning impeachment proceedings against President Bush. Furthermore, a 2005 poll said 42 percent of voters say that “if it is found that President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should hold him accountable through impeachment.”

Never fear, though, John McCain is in no sense offering a third Bush term:

In an interview he gave to the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes in 2006 for Hayes’s biography, “Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President,” McCain said: “I will strongly assert to you that he has been of enormous help to this president of the United States.”

Going further, McCain even told Hayes in comments heretofore unpublished that he’d consider Cheney for an administration post.

Asked whether he’d be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: “I don’t know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths. But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah.”

McCain’s just a guy who wants to continue most of Bush’s policies and admires Bush’s key henchmen and wants to keep them serving in government office. But that doesn’t mean he represents more of the same. It’s just a different kind of change — hell yeah!

The Bush administration is currently trying to push Iraqis into accepting a long-term security agreement that would “perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely.” The U.S. demands include nearly 60 permanent bases in Iraq, immunity for foreign contractors, and control over air space.

Iraqi opposition to this bill is growing so intense that Iraqi parliament member Nadeem al-Jaberi recently testified to the House that 70 percent of Iraqis are in favor of the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Some more voices of opposition from prominent Iraqi officials:

“The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq.” — Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician on parliament’s foreign relations committee who is close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki

“We rejected the whole thing from the beginning. In my point of view, it would just be a new occupation with an Iraqi signature.” — Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a senior lawmaker from the Supreme Council

“What the U.S. wants is to take the current status quo and try to regulate it in a new agreement. … Signing the agreement would mean that the Iraqi government had given up its sovereignty by its own consent. And that will never happen.” — Haider al-Abadi, a parliament member from Maliki’s Dawa party

As Kevin Drum notes, these lawmakers are “not the faction that hates us, but the faction that supposedly likes us.” Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also recently urged Maliki to reject any U.S. agreement.

This is all very bad news…unless you’re a member of the Bush administration or one of its close allies. In a McCain campaign conference call today, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told reporters that this opposition was actually a sign of the Bush administration’s “success” in the war:

The second thing I’d say is the very fact that we’re at a point where the Iraqi leadership wants to negotiate this agreement is a sign of our success in Iraq, which is that Iraq now has a sovereign, independent, self-government.

Listen here (at approximately 11:45):

This talking point is quickly making the rounds. Today, President Bush also said this opposition shows that Iraq is a “vibrant democracy” because “people are debating.” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it was a “very positive thing” that Iraqis were “using politics and the press as a way to get their message out.”

No matter what happens in Iraq, it’s always good news to the Bush administration and the McCain campaign.

This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on how recent Supreme Court decisions have restricted protections of American workers and consumers. Fulfilling their role as the Grand Obstructionist Party, Senate conservatives deployed an obscure parliamentary tactic to halt the hearing, as committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) explained:

This morning an all too familiar pattern was underscored when a hearing on a topic our Republican colleagues did not like was cut short, without warning, by an anonymous Republican objection. … I share the sentiments Senator Whitehouse expressed before recessing the hearing — this behavior is a disgrace to the Senate, and it is especially shameful given that the victims who traveled a long way to tell their stories to the Committee did not get a full hearing.

Conservatives used the same technique yesterday to shut down a hearing on torture tactics used against detainees in U.S. custody.