So Dennis Kucinich offered a privileged resolution to impeach Dick Cheney. His motion entitled him to read his articles of impeachment into the record and on C-SPAN.

That gave the House leadership two days to figure out what to do, and when to schedule consideration of the motion. But they decided to act almost right away, by moving to table (kill) the resolution. In order to move to kill it, it had to be read by the clerk first. So the articles of impeachment got read into the record and on C-SPAN again.

Then Steny Hoyer, in his capacity as Majority Leader, moved to table the resolution. Everyone expected this to pass easily, as the Democratic leadership remains opposed to considering impeachment, and Republicans... well, they're Republicans.

So they held the vote on tabling the resolution, and the vote was held open past the 15 minutes allotted for it, which is not that unusual. Only it stayed open longer, and longer, and longer. And then Republicans got mischievous. They started switching their votes from yes to no, figuring on embarrassing Democrats by forcing them to debate impeaching Dick Cheney, right on national TV in front of everyone.

Republicans believe everything is good for Republicans.

But for some unknown reason, the House leadership kept this vote open longer and longer and longer. Over an hour, in fact. During which time, more and more Republican votes migrated into the no column, until in the end, the motion to table was defeated by a vote of 170-242.

Having lost the motion to table, Hoyer went to the next option: a motion to refer the resolution to the Judiciary Committee, where the leadership hopes it will die of neglect. There was a little procedural hiccup there for a moment, but Hoyer first moved to order the previous question -- a procedural device that ends debate. A yes vote on the previous question meant that Hoyer could then immediately move to refer the Kucinich resolution to committee.

At that point, the expected order was restored. The previous question was ordered, Hoyer moved to refer the bill to committee, and the 80+ Democrats who earlier insisted they didn't want Kucinich's bill to die on the Speaker's table instead voted to let it die on Chairman Conyers' table instead.

Got it?

So the bill goes to the Judiciary Committee. Where it will sit next to Kucinich's other resolution calling for the impeachment of Cheney, which was offered through regular channels back in April.

Of interest: If he wanted to, Kucinich could do this over and over and over again, as often as he wants to. Anyone who wanted to could. A motion to impeach is always highly privileged.

www.dailykos.com/story/2007/11/6/164257/349