Today on the Ed Schultz Show, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) discussed his effort to increase public pressure for the commencement of impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney. Wexler has launched a website — WexlerWantsHearings.com — to collect signatures in support of his call.
Wexler explained that he launched his website after traditional media outlets rejected an op-ed he had written with his colleagues Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI):
We laid out precisely why the House Judiciary Committee should open up hearings. … And we set out in an op-ed why we should do it, and none of the major newspapers in the country — the New York Times or the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the LA Times — they chose not to run it.
I thought it was a fairly significant statement by the mainstream media that when members of the House Judiciary Committee lay out a credible claim for why impeachment hearings should begin regarding the Vice President of the United States, and they refuse to run it, then we decided well we would start this website…and see what the feeling was in terms of mainstream America.
Listen to it:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/12/wexlerimpeach.320.40.flv]
Wexler said he has been “astonished” by the outpouring of support — over 100,000 have signed up in five days. He said he plans to write a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) in early January, asking him to begin start impeachment hearings.
“This is not the lunatic fringe — this is mainstream America,” Wexler said. These are “people that believe in the very patriotic vision, and they’re all very upset about what they see as the abuse of power by this administration and the failure of Congress to hold them accountable.”