Cheney’s Impeachment Fell Off the Table, Literally
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

WASHINGTON — Maybe now we know what the House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat of California, meant when she said impeachment was “off the table.” Lawmakers’ voting cards on the issue were literally just that — off the table — during Tuesday’s brouhaha when Republicans briefly hijacked control of the chamber with a procedural maneuver and thrust the Democrats perilously close to debating a resolution on impeaching Vice President Cheney.
Offered by a long-shot presidential candidate, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat of Ohio, the unusual resolution would have resulted in the shortest impeachment debate ever — one hour — followed by a final vote on impeaching the unpopular vice president. Knowing how little Democratic leaders wanted to handle Mr. Kucinich’s hot potato, Republicans began switching their votes late in the process, hoping to shame Ms. Pelosi and others into a debate that the GOP believed would expose the radical left in the chamber.
Republicans began siding with Mr. Kucinich against the tabling of his resolution, resulting in scores of GOP members lining up to switch their votes. With the House’s electronic voting system shut down as the tally neared its final minutes, the only way for Republican lawmakers to change their position was to use old-fashioned voting cards, which slowed the proceedings further.
And then something happened purely by accident during the nearly two-hour disruption that helped gum up the works even more: A stack of red voting cards fell between a crack in two adjoining desks on the dais. (Red cards signify a switch to a “nay” vote; the green ones mean “yea.”) Clerks used rulers, pencils, and anything else they could find to fish the cards out so the vote could be concluded.
The House clerk’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment about the tie-up, but a Republican aide who was privy to the mishap said: “Accidents happen, but accidents in the middle of votes to debate impeachment don’t happen every day. Unfortunately, for the Democrats, it was that kind of day.”
While Republicans embarrassed Ms. Pelosi by siding with Mr. Kucinich, Democrats successfully passed a motion to scuttle the hour-long debate and officially send the impeachment issue to the House Judiciary Committee. Ms. Pelosi and the House majority leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland, have declared it dead on arrival there.
But Rep. Stephen Cohen, a Democrat of Tennessee, a member of the Judiciary Committee, predicts the panel will hold hearings. “I get that impression,” he said. “The issue is still alive.”
Mr. Cohen is a co-sponsor of the Kucinich resolution, which has three impeachment articles against Mr. Cheney. All told, 14 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, including the chairman, Rep. John Conyers Jr., a Democrat of Michigan, initially voted with Mr. Kucinich, signaling some level of impeachment interest on the panel.
Once Mr. Cohen realized what Republicans were up to, he sided with the leadership and voted to send the issue to the committee. “You don’t impeach anybody in a kangaroo court,” Mr. Cohen said. “That in and of itself is an impeachable offense.”
For now, the official word is that Mr. Cheney can sleep tight. No impeachment in sight.
A statement from the committee indicated that the panel is “very busy” with other issues, but it added that the “committee staff should continue to consider, as a preliminary matter, the many abuses of this Administration, including the Vice President.”