On Thursday, Congressman Anthony Weiner told Bob Fertik of Democrats.com that he would sign onto Congressman Robert Wexler's letter to Chairman John Conyers urging the commencement of impeachment hearings for Dick Cheney. Wexler, together with Congress Members Luis Gutierrez and Tammy Baldwin, hopes to have a majority of Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sign the letter.

Of the four committee members named above, only Baldwin is among the six committee members and 25 total congress members backing Congressman Dennis Kucinich's resolution for the impeachment of Cheney. The other five Judiciary Committee members are Hank Johnson, Maxine Waters, Keith Ellison, Steve Cohen, and Sheila Jackson Lee. If these nine committee members sign the letter to Conyers that Wexler hopes to deliver early in January, another 12 Democrats, not counting Conyers, will still not have joined the position of 80 to 90 percent of Democratic voters.

Abandons Human Rights for Indonesia to Train Its Worst Military and Police

December 19, 2007 - Human rights advocates have learned that the U.S. is training members of Kopassus, the notorious Indonesian Special Forces unit with a long record of human rights violations. The similarly-brutal Brimob, the para-military mobile police brigade, is receiving training as well.

The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) and the West Papua Advocacy Team (WPAT) today strongly condemned U.S. training for the two units, saying that it undermines the little credibility the U.S. has left in promoting human rights and accountability in Indonesia. ETAN and WPAT urged Congress to intervene to prevent such training and called on the administration to publicly pledge not to provide further assistance to the two units.

"The Bush administration promised Congress that it would ‘carefully calibrate’ any security assistance to promote reform and human rights," said John M. Miller, National Coordinator of ETAN. "Getting in bed again with Kopassus and Brimob promotes the opposite. Clearly, the administration's moral gauges are in need of a major realignment."

I just heard on the progressive Seattle radio station (1090) that the on line petition that has been launched by Robert Wexler (D Fla who sits on the House Judiciary Committee) that supports hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Cheney, has gathered more than 100,000 signatures in just three days. The Judiciary committee has been sitting on this proposal for a LONG time and at least two members besides Wexler are in support of opening these hearings. Conyers is the chair of the committee and perhaps he needs a mass outpouring of support to get the hearings underway. Everyone can sign the petition by going to wexlerwantshearings.com and filling in the dots. Hearings would make public in a dramatic way the violations of the constitution that have happened in the present administration. I recommend that everyone join in this big email petition that might build a fire under congress people who have said that impeachment in order butrefuse to act on it now that it is a possibility.

Go to Wexler Wants Hearings and put your name down. What is the down side?