The AP reports:
Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized the anti-war movement, said Sunday that she plans to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unless Pelosi introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks.
Sheehan said she will run against the San Francisco Democrat in 2008 as an independent if Pelosi does not seek by July 23 to impeach Bush. That's when Sheehan and her supporters are to arrive in Washington after a 13-day caravan and walking tour starting next week from the group's war protest site near Bush's Crawford ranch.
"Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership," Sheehan told The Associated Press. "We hired them to bring an end to the war."
Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the congresswoman has said repeatedly that her focus is on ending the war in Iraq.
"She believes that the best way to support our troops in Iraq is to bring them home safely and soon," Daly said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "July will be a month of action in Congress to end the war, including a vote to redeploy our troops by next spring."
The White House declined to comment on Sheehan's plans.
Sheehan plans her official candidacy announcement Tuesday.
Sunday wrapped up what is expected to be her final weekend at the Crawford lot that she sold to California radio talk show host Bree Walker, who plans to keep it open to protesters.
Sheehan first came to Crawford in August 2005 during a Bush vacation, demanding to talk to him about the war that killed her son Casey in 2004.
Sheehan, who will turn 50 on Tuesday, said she believes Bush should be impeached because he misled the public about the reasons for going to war, violated the Geneva Convention by torturing detainees, and crossed the line by commuting the prison sentence of former vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
She said other grounds for impeachment are the domestic spying program and the "inadequate and tragic" response to Hurricane Katrina.
I live close enough to Pelosi's district now that moving there wouldn't be a great effort. But neither would staying where I am, writing her a fat check and volunteering to work for her instead. Not for me and millions of others who are disgusted by what professional politicians are doing, in our names, to this country and to others around the world.
Sheehan could become a very rich candidate, amassing a war chest of contributions and a volunteer base from around the country. A Sheehan congressional run has the power to launch other populist campaigns and galvanize Americans who are starving for change and new leadership to become active and challenge the status quo. To retire politicians like Patrick Leahy, who, earlier today on Meet The Press, said that calling Scooter Libby to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee was useless. "It would do no good to call Scooter Libby. His silence has been bought and paid for," he said, referring to Bush’s commutation, "and he would just take the fifth."
Maybe Libby would, maybe he wouldn't, but Leahy and Democrats have let Republicans spin every single situation without offering an alternative explanation for Americans, and it's something that the American people need to see and hear for themselves. Democrats on the committee need to frame questions to Libby that tell the story to the American people of what this administration has done and ask, "What are they hiding?"
For the last 6 years (longer if you count Al Gore's half-hearted effort to win against Bush in the Florida post-election debaucle), the Democrats in Congress have rolled over, played dead, and failed to put up any resistance to the Bush-Cheney-Republican blitzkrieg. Every anti-populist, pro-corporate, 'against the poor and middle class and for the richest .2%'-legislation has been steamrolled through Congress without the slightest resistance by Democrats. Between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act, the Bankruptcy Reform bill, Medicare Reform Act, Democrats have aided Republicans in signing away our civil rights and driving us into debt for generations. They have reminded me of Marcia Clarke and Christopher Darden, the prosecutors in the O.J. Simpson case, out of their depths and intimidated by "the Dream Team."
So this news (welcome and overdue) about Cindy Sheehan stepping up to challenge the most powerful Democrat in office today, the woman who "took impeachment off the table" in order to become Speaker of the House, is a shot across the bow of all Democrats in Congress.
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