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IMPEACHMENT
Move to Impeach Cheney Gains Support in Congress, by Tim King, Salem-News (January 2, 2008)
"SALEM, Ore. - A House Resolution to impeach U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, Dennis Kucinich’s H.R. 799, is gathering more support. The national impeachment continues to grow and generate increasing interest since being referred to the House Judiciary Committee last month, a Kucinich spokesperson said.
As a member of that committee, Representative Robert Wexler and two other committee members, Luis Gutierrez and Tammy Baldwin, have joined together in demanding that the legal action against Cheney moves forward.
Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida is just one elected official who says the charges are too serious to ignore.
“There is credible evidence that the Vice President abused the power of his office, and not only brought us into an unnecessary war but violated the civil liberties and privacy of American citizens. It is the constitutional duty of Congress to hold impeachment hearings”
He went on to say that he believes Vice President Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration have demonstrated a consistent pattern of abusing the law and misleading Congress and the American people.
“We see the consequences of these actions abroad in Iraq and at home through the violations of our civil liberties,” Wexler said.
Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, stated in August that published reports identify, “the Vice-President’s willful and repeated disregard for the rule of law, international treaties, environmental protections, and the common good.”
Wexler and Baldwin joined Congressman Luis Gutierrez in penning an Op-Ed that calls for committee hearings on a bill to impeach Dick Cheney on a variety of charges that include allegations of manipulating intelligence to boost the case for the war with Iraq, a very serious charge.
The Op-Ed that ran in the Philadelphia Enquirer December 27th (Impeach Cheney now- The allegations that he abused power are credible.) states, “The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution.”
“The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.”
....."
No Vice President Is Above the Law, by Elizabeth Holtzman, Huffington Post (December 19, 2007)
"For the first time since the Bush administration took office, three members of the House Judiciary Committee, Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), are calling for hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Richard Cheney.
Their position, while courageous, is not surprising. What is surprising is that it took this long for members of Congress to invoke impeachment, and that even now, they do so against enormous political resistance and cynical indifference from the media.
No serious student of the Constitution would question that sufficient grounds exist to impeach both President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The Constitution provides that an Executive who puts himself above the law and abuses the powers of his office may be impeached, a point confirmed in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, for abuses such as illegal wiretapping.
There is little serious debate about whether Bush administration actions — wiretapping without court approval (violating the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act), authorizing and facilitating mistreatment of detainees (violating U.S. treaties and criminal laws), starting the Iraq war on a basis of lies, exaggerations and misstatements (an abuse of power) — meet the Constitutional standard.
So why hasn’t a majority of Congress supported it? Twenty members co-sponsored Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s resolution calling for the impeachment of Cheney, but bucked their leadership to do so. Democratic leaders took impeachment “off the table,” apparently fearing it could hurt their chances in 2008.
Does the leadership defend the administration, contend that its actions are unimpeachable, or argue they don’t rise to the level of abuse for which Nixon was impeached? Remarkably, no. They publicly say there is no time, and that impeachment proceedings would distract the Congress from other work and divide the country.
These arguments are laughable compared to the imperative to uphold the constitution. And even on their own terms, they are specious. Let’s take them one at a time:
Insufficient Time
.....
Distracting Congress
.....
Dividing the Country
...."
Will McClellan Be John Dean to Bush’s Richard Nixon?, by John Nichols, The Nation (November 21, 2007)
"Scott McClellan’s admission that he unintentionally made false statements denying the involvement of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Bush-Cheney administration’s plot to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson, along with his revelation that Vice President Cheney and President Bush were among those who provided him with the misinformation, sets the former White House press secretary as John Dean to George Bush’s Richard Nixon.
It was Dean’s willingness to reveal the details of what described as “a cancer” on the Nixon presidency that served as a critical turning point in the struggle by a previous Congress to hold the 37th president to account.
Now, McClellan has offered what any honest observer must recognize as the stuff of a similarly significant breakthrough.
The only question is whether the current Congress is up to the task of holding the 43rd president to account.
What McClellan has revealed, in a section from an upcoming book on his tenure in the Bush-Cheney White House, is a stunning indictment of the president and the vice president. The former press secretary is confirming that Bush and Cheney not only knew that Rove, the administration’s political czar, and Libby, who served as Cheney’s top aide, were involved in the scheme to attack Wilson’s credibility — by outing the former ambassador’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency analyst — but that the president and vice president actively engaged in efforts to prevent the truth from coming out.
“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby,” writes McClellan in an excerpt from his book, What Happened, which is to be published next April by Public Affairs.
“There was one problem,” the long-time Bush aide continues. “It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration “were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.”
Much has been made about the fact that outing Plame as a CIA operative was a felony, since knowingly revealing the identity of an intelligence asset is illegal. And much will be made about the fact that McClellan’s statement links Bush and Cheney to the cover-up of illegal activities and the obstruction of justice, acts that are themselves felonies.
But it is important to recognize that a bigger issue is at stake. If the president and vice president knowingly participated in a scheme to attack a critic of their administration — Wilson had revealed that the White House had been informed that arguments Bush and Cheney used for attacking Iraq were ungrounded — they have committed a distinct sort of offense that the House Judiciary Committee has already determined to be grounds for impeachment.
....."
A ‘Paper Coup,’ and Blackwater Eyes Midtown Manhattan, by Naomi Wolf, Huffington Post (November 5, 2007)
"I have argued that in the closing stages of a `fascist shift’, events cascade. I am hearing about them, even across the globe. Here in Australia I hear from the nation’s best-know feminist activist, and former adviser to Paul Keating, Anne Summers, who was also at the time this took place Chair of the Board of Greenpeace International. Summers was detained by armed agents for FIVE HOURS each way in LAX on her way to and from the annual meeting of the board of Greenpeace International in Mexico, and her green card was taken away from her. `I want to call a lawyer’, she told TSA agents. `Ma’am, you do not have a right to call an attorney,’ they replied. `You have not entered the United States.’
Apparently a section of LAX just beyond the security line is asserted to be `not in the United States’ — though it is squarely inside the airport — so the laws of the US do not apply. (This assertion, by the way, should alarm any US citizen who is aware of how the White House argued that Guantanamo is not `in the United States’ - is a legal no-man’s land — so the laws of the US do not apply.) Toward the end of her second five-hour detention she asked, `Why am I being detained?’ `Lady, this is not detention,’ the TSA agent told her. `Detention is when I take you to the cells out back and lock you up.’
Last week in Boston, while attending Bioneers by the Bay, I heard that one of the speakers for our event, an environmentalist named Gunter Pauli, was going to miss the time of his scheduled speech; he had been physically taken OFF THE PLANE by TSA agents and had to take a much later flight. More chillingly, the camerawoman doing my interview said that another well-known environmental writer found that his girlfriend was effectively `disappeared’ for three days as she sought to enter the US from Canada. Lisa Fithian, an anti-globalization activist, was denied entry across the Canadian border in 2001 and was offered the choice of turning back or being arrested.
A friend emails me a story from USA Today about a 24-year-old college graduate who testified before Congress about her family of immigrants and the difficulties they face; shortly afterward, the entire family was arrested by immigration agents. Another online piece reports that Blackwater is setting up operations along the US/Mexico border and an insightful post on Daily Kos describes how the TSA list will revert from the airlines to the management of the Department of Homeland Security shortly and that by February we may well face the need to apply to the State for permission to travel. If this proposed regulation goes through, we will move from 1931 to about 1934–when the borders started to close– with the stroke of a pen. Jews in America have hardwired into their DNA a sense of the distinction between those who got out before the borders closed and those who waited a moment too long.
Why should Congress impeach and prosecute this instant, not waiting till February? Why should this impeachment and prosecution be solidly bipartisan? After February it is the leaders on both sides of the aisle — and the people writing these essays — who are at most risk of being turned back at the border. People who can’t leave in a police state are effectively silenced. And history shows that Republicans are at the exact same risk as Democrats of being violently silenced once liberties are lost. I am reading about IBM’s close, profitable involvement with Nazi Germany — much akin to Prescott Bush’s well-documented close and profitable involvement with Nazi Germany through German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen. Right up to the top of the solidly Nazi hierarchy of the IBM affiliate, corporate executives were terrified of taking a wrong step in the eyes of the Party: `There are concentration camps’, they would whisper to their US backers. The teenage son of one solid Nazi ally was taken hostage when he resisted Party orders. So alignment with the regime in a police state offers no ultimate protection.
Let us think like business consultants analyzing the decisions of a business that claims it is going to close its door in just a year. What kinds of decisions is it making? Here is a quiz, if you still doubt that we need to shift our thinking and recognize what appears to be ‘a paper coup.’:
- Is building a US Embassy in Baghdad the size of eighty football fields and at a cost of well more than half a BILLION dollars evidence of short- or long-term thinking?
- These walls would crumble if the next legitimate president independently ends the war. How about defending and expanding the basis for FISA violations at this late stage — after all, these folks will be gone in a year?
- How about the decision to fight so hard for a US attorney who will defend the view that the President is above the law?
- Why would that matter so much in an administration folding its tents?
- Why the rush to establish Guantanamo as a permanent part of the landscape and even seek money at one point to double its size — if the next President, a truly independent Republican or Democrat, might just close it down?
- Why the push to expand a war that makes no military or popular sense, rush through military tribunals that the next President might just disband, and, by the way, drum up a fresh new World War III?
- Do the neo-cons advising Giuliani look like a fresh page for an independent, transparent election or an ideological continuity of government in themselves?
- Do these look like the short-term tactics of a fading administration — or the institutional strategic bases for some kind of new long-term beginning?
- Why work so hard to make sure that the man who defended the infamous “enemy combatant” concept will be the new Attorney General?
Increasingly, reputable figures are starting to talk about `a coup.’ Jim Hightower notes in an important essay, “Is a Presidential Coup Under Way?,” that a coup is defined in the dictionary as a sudden forced change in the form of government. (He also spells out the basis for a rigorously modeled impeachment and criminal prosecution.) Daniel Ellsberg’s much-emailed speech on recent events notes that, in his view, a `coup’ has already taken place. Ron Rosenbaum speculates in an essay on Slate about the reasons the Bush administration is withholding even from members of Congress its plans for Continuity of Government in an emergency — noting that those worrying about a coup are no longer so marginal. Frank Rich notes the parallels between ourselves and the Good Germans. And Congress belatedly realizes as if waking from a drugged sleep that it might not be okay for the Attorney General to say the President need not obey the law. Congress may realize why Mukasey CAN’T say that `waterboarding is torture’ — the minute he does so he has laid the grounds for Bush, Cheney and any number of CIA and Blackwater interrogators to be tried and convicted for war crimes. They are so keenly aware that what they have been doing is criminal that laws such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 have been drafted specifically to protect them and the torturers and murderers they have directed from criminal prosecution. That is why insisting that Mukasey say that waterboarding is torture is, in spite of the alarming apparent defection of Feinstein and Schumer, an important tactic and even the perfect opening for the impeachment bid that Kucinich is bringing on November 6th to be followed by Congressional investigations into possible criminality.
This is the “Blackwater Tactical Weekly.” (Yes, Blackwater has its own weekly e-newsletter.) Look at “Islamist protest in N.Y. - ‘Mushroom cloud on way’” — it is reasonable to speculate that Blackwater is focusing on becoming more active domestically in managing domestic protests and rallies. (Regarding this particular rally, note the repetition of the White House `Mushroom Cloud’ sound-bite and other signs bearing current White House talking points, that are attributed to alleged Muslim protesters in New York City. The US has a long history of using agents provocateurs — people dressed as those they are targeting, who pose as conveying a more violent or threatening message than that of the real group itself or who commit acts of violence to stigmatize the group. The Cointelpro program of the 1970’s discredited many rallies in this way. An alleged or infiltrated violent, threatening Muslim rally would be the perfect defensible trigger for a Blackwater response.)
See also that Blackwater may be exploring the management of private flights in US airports because of a threat or `threat’ to private aircraft. (”Extremists may target private US planes: TSA.”) This entry point to the air travel system would seem defensible — after all Blackwater personnel do in fact guard airports around the world, for example in Bosnia. The danger is that a bleeding of Blackwater into US airport security in general would affect a coup in essence — quite quickly and serenely — even as a coup in fact need not be declared. It is a short step from managing private plane and private airport security to aiding the TSA — which is a branch of Homeland Security — and Homeland Security and Blackwater have already worked in alliance with one another in New Orleans. A TSA agent blogged about having signed up for Blackwater — at ten thousand a month, which is a lot more than TSA agents make now and a real incentive — but I have no evidence of reverse movement. The White House recently announced that the Watch List and No-Fly List together have 775,000 citizens and that they are adding 20,000 A MONTH. This trend on both sides, if not confronted, points to an easy slide to a paramilitarized domestic flight experience in the US and a routine aggressive searching of hundreds of thousands of citizens, the growth being exponential enough so that being aggressively searched could easily soon become a common experience at airports. Nothing at present prevents Blackwater agents from being deployed to help or replace the TSA domestically. Or from being deployed at the next New York City rally such as the one that is being featured on their website. And airports being the lifeline of freedom, if you are scared to fly or can be bullied, interrogated, tasered or worse when flying, you are no longer free. History shows that there is no easy retroactive movement toward a free society once travel is truly restricted.
The Mukasey hesitation on torture is our cue to call a halt to these crimes. (By the way, strapping victims to boards to prepare them for torture was common at Buchenwald.)
Congress must ask:
- What is torture?
- Has it happened?
- Who ordered it?
- How high up the chain of command does this go?
- And what does our system of laws say about such crimes and those who commit them?
If it takes hearings and possible prosecutions to restore the rule of law and maintain a free society, then it is past time for the hearings to begin."
At the Heart of Who We Are As a People, by John Frohnmayer, Oregonian (October 3, 2007)
"Suppose you hire a person to check groceries but, instead of doing so, he tells customers to put their items back on the shelves. Do you fire him? Of course you do.
Now suppose we hire a president whose constitutional job description is to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Instead, he issues more than a thousand signing statements saying, in effect, he’s not going to execute parts of the very laws he has signed. Do we fire him? Of course we do.
Impeachment is not a political issue. It’s a constitutional issue. The U.S. Constitution describes impeachment more fully and carefully than practically any other power delegated to Congress. Impeachment is mentioned six times in the Constitution as the remedy for any misbehavior of our high officials. Yes, President Clinton’s impeachment was a political circus, but impeachment of President Bush is necessary to maintain our government’s separation of powers, our checks and balances, our Constitution’s integrity.
While The Oregonian’s recent editorial (”The emptiness of impeachment,” Sept. 29) opined that impeachment would be “pointless,” my view is that it is essential because, after all, the Constitution is the “supreme law of the land.” What could be more important than preserving the rule of law? It is the bedrock of our democratic society.
....."
Remove Bush Over War Lies, by Jimmy Breslin, Newsday (August 30, 2007)
"....
I have here in front of me a large number of pages that I keep for their significance. They are from a United States Senate hearing and are titled, “In Re Impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.”
He was only the 42nd person in our nation to make the commitment to “faithfully execute” the Office of the President and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”
He was being impeached over lying about girls.
Bush the President is our 43rd. He lied to the nation to get us into a war in Iraq that is without end. Every young person who has died leaves drops of blood on Bush’s hands and those of everyone around him. He lied to the nation and daily he tries every greasy way to undermine the Constitution he is sworn to uphold. Thus making his oath false.
Clinton’s charges seem frivolous. But Bush appears to have committed high crimes and misdemeanors and must be thrown out of office in the disgrace that he is.
Bush, reminiscing the other day over something that further scatters the mind, compared the end of Vietnam with the Iraq war that thrills him so much because it makes him a wartime commander.
I don’t know why Vietnam is on his mind. He skipped the thing to have his teeth fixed in Texas. Showing such utter confusion causes questions of how much evil he carries in his mind and how much of stimulants.
...."
The War Criminal in the Living Room, by Paul Craig Roberts, antiwar.com (August 31, 2007)
"The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran.
US Navy aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran.
US Air Force jets and missile systems are deployed in bases in countries bordering or near to Iran.
US B-2 stealth bombers have been refitted to carry 30,000 pound "bunker buster" bombs.
The US government is financing terrorist and separatist groups within Iran.
US Special Forces teams are conducting terrorist operations inside Iran.
US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries.
Bush's war threats against Iran have intensified during the course of this year. The American people are being fed a repeat of the lies used to justify naked aggression against Iraq.
Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening "the security of nations everywhere" and of the Iraqi resistance for "a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power." Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration. The Pew Foundation's world polls show that despite all the American and Israeli propaganda against Iran, the US and Israel are regarded as no less threats to world stability than demonized Iran.
Bush has discarded habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justified torture and secret trials, damned critics as anti-American, and is responsible, according to Information Clearing House, for over one million deaths of Iraqi civilians, which puts Bush high on the list of mass murderers of all time. The vast majority of "kills" by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians.
.....
Bush has declared himself to be the "decider." The "decider" decides whether Americans have any rights under the Constitution and whether Iran has any rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As the "decider" has decided that Iran has no such rights, the "decider" decides whether to attack Iran. No one else has any say about it. The people's representatives are just so much chaff in the wind.
Whatever form of government Bush is operating under, it is far outside an accountable constitutional democratic government. Bush has transitioned America to caesarism, and even if Bush leaves office in January 2009, the powers he has accumulated in the executive will remain. Unless Bush and Cheney are impeached and convicted, there is no prospect of the US Congress and federal judiciary ever again being co-equal branches of government."
The Heart of Queens - Can Nancy Pelosi single-handedly take impeachment off the table?, by Bruce Fein, Slate (August 23, 2007)
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is proving to be the surprise O. Henry ending to last November’s elections. The American voters gave Democrats clear control of Congress, rebuked President George W. Bush, and voiced an unequivocal public craving to trade in customary narrow-minded politics for something more inspiring. Yet motivated by partisan concerns over the 2008 elections, the new speaker is following President Bush around like a sheep while he solidifies an imperial presidency and diminishes the Congress into irrelevancy. Just look at the latest ACLU advertisement targeting Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The only thing Pelosi has retained for the Congress is small-minded earmarks to attract political contributions.
If Pelosi persists in her imperious, mean-spirited, and myopic thinking in disregard of her oath to support and defend the Constitution, members of the House should replace her with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.
According to public opinion polling, the percentage of voters supporting the impeachments of both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are now approximately 45 and 54 percent, respectively. Most Americans instinctively feel the president is an untrustworthy steward of the Constitution’s checks and balances because, among other things, he flouts laws, prohibits White House aides from testifying before Congress, consistently defends an attorney general who is an inveterate liar, and detains citizens and noncitizens indefinitely as enemy combatants on his say-so alone. The prevailing barometer of acute public dissatisfaction with the White House surpasses the corresponding disaffection with President Richard M. Nixon when the Senate Watergate hearings began in May 1973. And Mr. Nixon had recently trounced Sen. George McGovern in the 1972 elections, winning 49 states.
.....
Speaker Pelosi is no constitutional expert. Neither is she an impeachment expert. She is no expert in discerning how President Bush and Vice President Cheney are slashing away at the sinews of Congress. Why should her voice be the final word on impeachment when it runs against the grain of the American people and the House of Representatives? Checks and balances and protections against government abuses are too important to be left to an imperious amateur with a Bush-like mental worldview. If House Democrats have any constitutional honor and dedication to the nation, they will force Speaker Pelosi out if she neglects to turn a new leaf with alacrity."
Why Cheney Really Is That Bad, by Scott Ritter, truthdig.com (August 22, 2007)
" Karl Rove, interchangeably known as "Boy Genius" or "Turd Blossom," has left the White House. The press conference announcing his decision to resign has been given front-page treatment by most major media outlets, but the fact of the matter is the buzz surrounding Rove's departure is much ado about nothing, especially in terms of coming to grips with the remaining 16 months of the worst presidency in the history of the United States.
Rove is a domestic political marauder, the personification of a conservative movement which lacks a moral compass and has a complete disregard for facts. The master of exploiting mainstream America's predilection for news-as-entertainment, under which the likes of Rupert Murdoch can manufacture headlines out of thin air, Rove helped turn "fair and balanced" into a national joke which everyone laughs at but few actually comprehend. Rove served as the maestro of a political-smear orchestra composed of such intellectually challenged muckrakers as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, manipulating the NASCAR/professional wrestling crowd's addiction to seedy gossip in an effort to maintain the all-important 51 percent majority needed to win elections.
....
Being the Brain of the most vapid, intellectually shallow president ever creates an apt epitaph for Rove's tenure at the White House. The Bush administration has never won accolades for its substance. Its best frontman, Colin Powell, self-destructed in front of the U.N. Security Council in February 2003. Powell's nemesis, Donald Rumsfeld, followed suit shortly thereafter, unable to coherently explain where Saddam Hussein had hidden all those WMD we went to war for, and ultimately telling the average foot soldier to pound sand when it came to the lack of adequate equipment needed to fight and survive in occupied Iraq. Bush's singular appeal has been the impression of steadfastness in the eye of the storm, even if the storm is for the most part self-created. For this we must look not to "Bush's Brain," but instead peer deep into the dark recesses of the White House, where we can glimpse the awful "soul" of the president-Dick Cheney.
The vice president is the single greatest threat to American and international security in the world today. Not Osama Bin Laden. Not the ghost of Saddam Hussein. Not Ahmadinejad or Kim Jung Il. Not al-Qaida, the Taliban, or Jose Padilla himself. Not even George W. Bush can lay claim to this title. It is Dick Cheney's alone. Operating in a never-never land of constitutional ambiguity which exists between the office of the president and the Congress of the United States, Cheney's office has made its impact felt on the policies of the United States of America as had no vice president's office before him. Granted unprecedented oversight over national security and foreign policy by executive order in early 2001, many months prior to the terror attacks of 9/11, Cheney has single-handedly steered America away from being a nation among nations (albeit superior), operating (roughly) in accordance with the rule of law, and toward its present manifestation as the new Rome, a decadent imperial power bent on global domination whatever the cost.
The absolute worst of the rot that has infected America because of the policies and actions of the Bush administration has originated from the office of the vice president. The nonsensical response to the terror attacks of 9/11, seeking a "global war" versus defending the rule of law at home and abroad, taking the lead in spreading the lies that got us involved in Iraq, legitimizing torture as a tool of American jurisprudence, advocating for warrantless wiretappings of U.S.-based communications (regardless of what the Fourth Amendment says against illegal search and seizure), and pushing for an expansion of America's global conflict into Iran-all can be traced back to the person of Cheney as the point of origin.
America today is very much engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the forces of evil. The enemy resides not abroad, however, but at home, vested in the highest offices of the land. Neither Osama Bin Laden nor Saddam Hussein threatened the life blood of the United States-the Constitution-to the extent that Cheney has. Not Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Ho Chi Minh. Not since the American Civil War has there been a constitutional crisis of the magnitude that exists today, threatening to rip the very fabric of American society apart at the seams, courtesy of Dick Cheney.
....
The Democrats need to stand for something. Cheney has provided the sort of political ammunition that would enable them to fight, and win, a constitutional battle over the heart of America, the kind of defining struggle which I believe the vast majority of Americans would rally around. Unless the Democrats start separating themselves from the policies of the Bush administration, and take an active role in outing and suppressing the true evil that is Dick Cheney, all they will achieve in the coming years is a change in the titular political orientation of America, without the kind of deep-seated break from the failures and crimes of the past six-plus years that have taken our nation, and the world, right up to the edge of chaos.
"Bush's Brain" may be gone, but his "Soul" lives on. It is high time all of America put Dick Cheney fully in the spotlight of collective accountability, purging our nation of this scourge which has harmed us in so many ways. If there is any case for impeachment to be made against any member of the Bush administration today, it can be made against a vice president who has shamed our nation, destroyed our moral standing and broken our laws."
Pelosi Needs To Put Impeachment On The Table, by Bruce Fein, San Francisco Chronicle (August 14, 2007)
"President Woodrow Wilson recanted his no-war pledge, President Franklin D. Roosevelt disowned his balanced budget promise and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should learn from those examples. She should reconsider her “impeachment [of President Bush] is off the table” pledge. As Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
The speaker’s reluctance is understandable. The president’s tenure expires on Jan. 20, 2009. An impeachment inquiry could embolden al Qaeda, the Taliban, Iraq’s insurgents and Iran’s nuclear-minded mullahs. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and a majority of Republicans in Congress would attempt to portray the exercise as naked partisanship. Their enthusiasm for impeaching President Bill Clinton over lying under oath about Monica Lewinsky would be no deterrent.
But countervailing constitutional concerns are more compelling. Bush has crippled checks and balances and protections against government abuses. If these claims and practices are not repudiated, the precedents will lie around like loaded weapons, ready for use by any White House incumbent to intimidate rivals or to destroy the rule of law.
...."
America Needs to Impeach, by Burt Cohen, Seacoast Online (August 7, 2007)
"....
Then there is the little item of the Constitution. The framers put impeachment there to protect us from royalty. Since his tenure with President Richard Nixon, Dick Cheney has insisted Congress has no right to participate in decisions relative to war. He argues for a unitary executive, which is quite different from a constitutional presidency. In other words, the Constitution be damned.
If Congress fails to act against this assault on our foundation, that is a very dangerous precedent this Congress ought not set.
The harm which has been done to our country? Torture has been institutionalized, habeas corpus eviscerated, and illegal spying made routine. Our Constitution has been trampled on. For the future of the country we love, Congress can not let them get away with it.
Conservative Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who served in the Reagan Justice Department, is an advocate of impeachment. He recently said on my radio show that Cheney “is seeking institutionally to cripple checks and balances and the authority of Congress and the judiciary … kidnapping people and throwing them in dungeons without any legal accountability are standards that are totally anathema to a democratic society devoted to the rule of law.”
He points out Cheney “has no understanding of or respect for Congress’s critical role in the governance of our nation.” Fein is outraged that Congress has not sought to “immediately sanction his excesses … We have a Congress that basically is an invertebrate.”
Should Congress fail to impeach, Fein worries that the Constitution “will disappear on the installment plan.”
...."
A Republic, If We Can Keep It., by Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers (July 24, 2007)
"Why not impeach?
The Congressional Democrats offered several excuses for keeping impeachment “off
the table.”
One familiar response (even by such estimable Senators as Russ Feingold and
Bernie Sanders), is that following a successful impeachment in the House, the
Senate would surely not convict.
Two replies come to mind: (1) Don’t be so sure of that. When the impeachment
proceedings against Richard Nixon began in the House Judiciary Committee, the
Republican Senators were solidly against conviction and removal. All that
changed when the evidence was brought forth and the public responded. (2) So
what if the Senate fails to convict? When the Republican Congress filed
impeachment charges against Clinton, they knew full well that it would never get
the necessary 67 votes for conviction in the Senate. It would suffice, they
assumed, to drag Clinton’s name and behavior through the mud. Of course, they
failed to correctly anticipate the public response. In the case of Bush and
Cheney, it will be quite enough to expose their treason and their numerous “high
crimes and misdemeanors.” The Senators who vote against conviction will then
have to justify those votes in the next election.
Another dodge is that impeachment would distract the House and the Senate and,
as Russ Feingold argues, “put important issues facing our country on the
back burner.”
But what “issues” are more important than restoring the Constitution and the
rule of law, and saving our republic from dictatorship?
.....
The final excuse for keeping impeachment “off the table,” is
“just be patient, the term of Bush/Cheney, Inc. will end in January, 2009. And
there are strong indications that the GOP will be crushed in the 2008 election,
and that a Democratic will occupy the White House. Then, our long national
nightmare will be over.”
The almost universal and unexamined assumption that an “ordinary” Presidential
election will take place in November, 2008, is extremely dangerous. We have
always had our quadrennial Presidential elections, so why not assume that the
next will take place in 2008? We must assume that it might not, because the
consequences of a Democratic victory in 2008 would exact an extraordinary cost
to the losers, and because they have put in place the means to cancel that
election.
What “cost”? Put simply, the loss of ill-gained fortunes, and still worse the
likely conviction and imprisonment of numerous neo-cons, Busheviks and corporate
fellow-travelers. To prevent which, either the Busheviks must remain in power
after 2009 (presumably by canceling the election), or the Bush/Cheney regime
must be succeeded by a GOP Administration and Congress that can reliably shut
down investigations and prosecutions. And to accomplish that, a mainstream
media blitz and widespread election fraud will be necessary.
What fortunes and what crimes?
......"
Representative Baldwin Joins Impeachment Call, by John Nichols, Capital Times (August 3, 2007)
"U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, wants to see the House impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. She also wants to investigate whether similar action should be taken against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
And she is not alone on either front.
The fifth-term congresswoman from south-central Wisconsin formally signed on this morning as a co-sponsor of House Resolution 333, the proposal by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, to begin impeachment proceedings against the vice president. Baldwin is the 16th member of the House to agree to co-sponsor the resolution, and she is the fourth member of the House Judiciary Committee to do so.
Baldwin also signed on to a resolution sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., calling on the Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Gonzales should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. She is the 20th co-sponsor of that measure.
Despite the rising levels of support for both resolutions in recent weeks, impeachment is not just around the corner. The House has 435 members, half of whom would have to vote for impeachment in order to formally sanction the vice president. Even to get to a point where a full House vote might be a live prospect, the Judiciary Committee would have to take up the matter.
...."
High Crimes and Misdemeanors, by Lou Dubose, American Spectator (August 2, 2007)
"....
As the thirty-third anniversary of Nixon’s August 9, 1974, resignation arrives, Holtzman’s book reads like an idea whose time has arrived. The justifications for impeaching George W. Bush, or at least beginning an impeachment inquiry, are evident. Some of them have become more apparent since the publication of Holtzman’s book (which was excerpted in these pages in the Nov. 15, 2006 issue). The Bush administration’s demonstrated contempt for the law, its disregard for the constitutional role of Congress, and the deceit involved in taking the country into war in Iraq make the case to at least begin the sort of inquiry the House undertook in 1974.
Impeachment implies great risk, but the nation is already in a constitutional crisis. The executive branch is openly defying the Congress-its constitutional co-equal-establishing precedents regarding the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. In his most recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to answer New York senator Charles Schumer’s question regarding who ordered Gonzales to go to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft three years ago to persuade the gravely ill Ashcroft to authorize an intelligence program that Ashcroft and his stand-in while he was ill had already refused to authorize.
.....
WOULD IMPEACHMENT WORK?-The precedents redefining the division of constitutional power will endure long after this administration is gone-unless the Congress does something drastic to reassert its inherent authority.
Holtzman, a former prosecutor and member of the House Judiciary Committee that started the process to impeach Richard Nixon, points to the correct mechanism, making her case in a 268-page argument to impeach President George W. Bush. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Congressman and long-shot presidential candidate, points to the correct subject, making his case in an 18-page resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.
Until now, I have disagreed with advocates of impeachment. Holtzman’s book does make a good case for it. But Washington Post reporter Peter Baker’s The Breach, a remarkable insider’s account of the impeachment of Bill Clinton, is a disturbing cautionary tale about using the ultimate measure the framers of the Constitution provided to keep the executive from assuming monarchical powers-particularly in a circumstance when it is unlikely that the required two-thirds of the Senate would vote to remove a member of the executive branch from office.
I have also been influenced by interviews I did with former Speaker of the House Jim Wright (D-TX) while working on a book about Vice President Cheney. Wright said he took impeachment off the table when he began the Iran-Contra hearings, even if the hearings seemed likely to discover a legal justification to impeach Ronald Reagan. “He had two years left in office,” Wright said. “I saw no reason to put the Congress and the country through a painful struggle over impeachment.”
Wright believed that the joint Congressional committee investigating Iran-Contra would get to the bottom of the crimes perpetrated by the administration and serve notice that the Congress was asserting important constitutional boundaries. He was, for the most part, correct, even if Cheney, the ranking minority House member on the committee, used the minority report to advance an argument for expanding the powers of the president. (Cheney still refers reporters to the minority report when defending the so-called unitary executive, his vision of a presidency with powers the framers of the Constitution never envisioned.)
As I write, Bush and Cheney have 543 days remaining in office. Yet Wright’s “impeachment off the table” since there are “only two years” argument doesn’t apply. Ronald Reagan presided over a rogue operation run out of the White House basement, which used money from illegal arms sales in Iran to pay for illegal arms (and terrorist acts) in Nicaragua. Reagan was responsible for the tragic loss of life, brutality and attacks on civilian populations. But the harm he could do was limited to four small Central American countries-Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras-in which there were no large deployments of American troops.
The harm Bush and Cheney can do in the seventeen months between today and January 2009 justifies beginning impeachment proceedings. And their conduct in office over the course of more than six years requires the House to act.
...."
Congress, Bush and The Real Constitutional Crisis, by Glenn W. Smith, commondreams.org (July 27, 2007)
"America is in the midst of an authentic constitutional crisis as the Bush Administration moves to reduce Congress to little more than an irrelevant focus group and achieve what no U.S. President has ever achieved: a true above-the-law presidency.
These are the stakes: Will the United States save what is left of its constitutional democracy by restoring checks and balances among the three branches of government?
When the U.S. Supreme Court appointed George W. Bush to the White House by calling off the Florida recount in 2000, many pundits applauded the action because it allegedly headed off a constitutional crisis. That was a phony rationalization that disguised what is now apparent: the real post-Florida 2000 constitutional crisis is the Bush Administration’s unprecedented, Constitution-destroying lust for power.
....
Even a temporary eviction from the White House beginning in 2009 would not deter the neoconservatives and their anti-democratic allies. A Democratic president will have her/his hands full cleaning up the Bush garbage. While a Democratic president would probably resist further steps along the above-the-law path, it’s unlikely a president will willingly give up any power that has accrued to the presidency during the Bush reign. So, the right wing reasons, we’ll just pick up in 2012 where we left off in 2008.
The federal courts, packed with conservative appointments, will also do what they can to establish permanent barriers between the American people and their government.
Congress has no choice but to destroy those barriers now. The crisis cannot be reduced to a messy or selfish partisan confrontation. Truth is, many Republicans are as interested as Democrats in saving our constitutional democracy. The further truth is, the stakes matter much, much more than any potential partisan consequences for either major party.
In the end, the battle for the future of America may make necessary the impeachment of a president who is very publicly moving to destroy our constitutional form of government. It may not seem the politically prudent thing to do. But this is a president who lied us into a war, who uses his pen to make laws (constitutionally reserved for Congress) through signing statements, who commutes the sentence of a convicted criminal to protect himself from scrutiny, who believes he has the right to declare anyone he wants an enemy combatant and then “disappear” that person the way we taught our tyrannical and thuggish client-state dictators to do during the Cold War. If these are not sufficient to justify a legal and constitutional challenge to the legitimacy of the Bush presidency, exactly what would a president have to do before we would impeach him?
...."
Talk of Impeachment Gets Louder, by Hubert G. Locke, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
(July 27, 2007)"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quick to quash any such idea after the Democratic sweep of Congress in last November’s election. And the full-page ads from such groups as Why We Can’t Wait, calling for the impeachment of the president, were dismissed as just more national noise from the Looney Left — hardly to be taken seriously in the raging maelstrom of last fall’s election politics.
But that was six months ago. Now, in midsummer and on the eve of a congressionally mandated assessment of the unending madness in Iraq, strange and ominous signs are beginning to appear in all sorts of odd and curious quarters, suggesting that this nation should not have to endure another 18 months of the George W. Bush administration and that, if we do, it well might be at the nation’s peril.
Much of the current dismay swirls around Vice President Dick Cheney, who is busily ignoring rules of government he doesn’t like and declaring his office to be beyond the purview of anyone’s scrutiny, while actively setting about to demolish any government agency that has the impertinence to suggest otherwise. Cheney’s advocacy of interrogation techniques for “enemy combatants” that many think tantamount to torture, of monitoring phone calls and e-mails without bothering about warrants, and of ignoring the niceties of the Geneva Conventions when dealing with terrorists has put him out of favor even with a growing number of conservatives. Some want to jettison him as a hopeless drag on the Republican Party’s electoral prospects next year; others are beginning to join the throng that is convinced Cheney is out of control and needs to be dispatched for the heath and safety of the republic itself.
.....
The media are also speaking these days of a looming constitutional crisis as committee chairs in the House and the Senate confront a White House refusal to provide requested documents regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department. The chairs of the two judiciary committees are seasoned, tough-minded Democrats who are not likely to take kindly to a flouting of their authority to look over the shoulder of the executive and his minions as they go about managing and manipulating the affairs of government. It’s hard to imagine either of them blinking if the White House tries to stare them down.
......'
Office Arrests: The Shame of John Conyers, by Dave Lindorff, commondreams.org (July 24, 2007)
"If Rosa Parks had lived two years longer, what happened today in the halls of Congress might have killed her. It certainly would have broken her heart.
Rep. John Conyers, venerable member of Congress, finally chair of the House Judiciary Committee, a man who worked with Parks in Alabama and then hired her on his staff after he won election to Congress in Detroit, today had 48 impeachment activists, including Gold Star Families for Peace founder Cindy Sh eehan, Iraq Veteran Against the War activist Lennox Yearwood and Intelligence Veterans for Sanity founder Ray McGovern, arrested for conducting a sit-in in his office in the Rayburn House Office Building.
The three, together with several hundred other impeachment activists who packed the fourth floor hallway outside Rep. Conyers’ office, had come to press Conyers to take action on impeachment, and specifically to start action on H.Res. 333, the bill submitted nearly three months ago by Rep. Dennis Kucinich calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.
After nearly an hour of talking with Conyers, a clearly angry Sheehan emerged together with Yearwood and McGovern, and announced to the waiting throng in the hall that Conyers had told them “impeachment isn’t going to happen because we don’t have the votes.” Sheehan said Conyers had insisted that the best thing was for Democrats to focus on “winning big in 2008.”
To a loud and angry chorus of boos and hisses, the three went back inside Conyers’ office suite, where they were joined by some 30 other supporters, and all were subsequently arrested, at Conyers’ request, by Capitol police, who cuffed them and walked them off for booking. Several of those who sat in refused to walk and were carried or dragged out of the Rayburn Office Building, as the activists in the hall chanted “Shame on Conyers! Shame on Conyers!” and “Arrest Bush, Not the People!”
...."
John Conyers Is No Martin Luther King, by Ray McGovern, Consortium News
(July 24, 2007)"....
We each have our favored crime for which President Bush and Vice President Cheney should be impeached. Many of us have several.
But the real challenge is to look AHEAD. What are Bush/Cheney likely to do in the coming months if the impeachment process does NOT begin?
One often hears, Oh, they will do what they want anyway, impeachment process or not. Not true.
If we the people and our representatives in Congress choose the course given us by our Founders and impeachment proceedings begin, important swaths of our body politic AND military will be less likely to follow illegal orders from the White House.
These important constituencies will become sensitized to the peril into which this administration has brought us and to the extra-constitutional orders they may be asked to carry out.
NEW ELEMENT: Even the Scaife-owned newspapers have begun to question Bush’s MENTAL STABILITY.
.......
Three years ago Justin Frank, M.D., a psychiatrist here in Washington, wrote a book “Bush on the Couch” in which he provided keen insights into the president’s mode of thinking-or not thinking.
Eager to use every tool at our disposal, VIPS recently asked Dr. Frank to update his observations, with a view to forecasting, to the extent possible, how Bush is likely to react to the building pressures of the coming weeks and months. We will issue, perhaps as early as this week, Dr. Frank’s latest analysis, fortified by our own input. But we already have his preliminary analysis; there is no other word for it: Scary.
In a quick note to us this morning [July 23], Dr. Frank noted we are “dealing with a potentially cornered man [who] could lash out, and it is possible that the best way would be to bomb Iran…. Whatever the root causes of Bush’s pathology, we have a dangerous man running things…grandiose and unchecked.”
Some snippets from the Memorandum that Dr. Frank is drafting for issuance under VIPS auspices:
“George W. Bush is without conscience…and destructive, willfully so. He has always likes to break things…most shocking is the way he is breaking our armed forces.
“He doesn’t care about others, is indifferent to their suffering…He is almost constitutionally missing the ability to sympathize or empathize…More indifferent to reality than out of touch with it, he makes up whatever story he wants.
“Ultimately, he is psychologically unstable…His goal is to destroy things [and he can do that] without experiencing anxiety or a sense of responsibility. An equally important goal is to protect himself from shame, from being wrong, from being found small and weak.”
...."
Old-line Republican Warns 'something's in the works' to trigger a police state, by Muriel Kane, rawstory.com (July 19, 2007)
"Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Order which allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.
He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts -- a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War -- by quoting the "strong words" which open Roberts' latest column: "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."
"I don't actually think they're very strong," said Roberts of his words. "I get a lot of flak that they're understated and the situation is worse than I say. ... When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."
...."
Bruce Fein on Impeachment on Thom Hartmann--Attention, Rep. Conyers [BONUS: SCARY EXEC ORDER!], dailykos (July 18, 2007)
"We know Bruce Fein has become one of the most passionate and articulate advocates for impeachment and that he has serious conservative bona fides.
This AM he was on Thom Hartmann, and I became convinced that Rep. Conyers should have him as one of the opening witnesses in the case for impeaching Cheney and Bush.
His answers to three sharp questions from Hartmann were fantastic- the questions were
My paraphrases of his answers below the fold, as well as highlights from the 45 minute dialogue including the scary exec order Bush signed yesterday
.....
Fein also cited his concern for the efforts of Cheney and Bush to go beyond what the despots of history did not do in effectively declaring every square foot of soil where Americans live a war zone in the war on terror, justifying military actions essentially universally.
...."
Impeach George Bush To Stop War Lies, Deaths, by Jimmy Breslin, Newsday
(July 23, 2007)".....
People, particularly these politicians, these frightened beggars in suits, seem petrified about impeachment. It could wreck the country. Ridiculous. I’ve been around this business twice and we’re all still here and no politician was even injured. Richard Nixon lied during a war and helped get some 58,500 Americans killed and many escaped by hanging onto helicopter skids. Nixon left peacefully. Mike Mansfield of Montana, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said on television that the Senate impeachment trial of Nixon would be televised and there would be no immunity. That meant Nixon would have to face the country under oath and if he lied he would go to prison. He knew he was finished as he heard this. Mansfield said no more. He got up and left. Barbara Walters, on the “Today” show, said, “He doesn’t say very much, does he?”
The second time the subject was Bill Clinton for illegal holding in the hallway.
This time, we have dead bodies involved. Consider what is accomplished by the simple power of the word impeachment. If you read these broken-down news writers or terrified politicians claiming that an impeachment would leave the nation in pieces, don’t give a moment to them.
It opens with the appointing of an investigator to report to the House on evidence that calls for impeachment. He could bring witnesses forward. That would be all you’d need. Here in the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon came John Dean. His history shows how far down the honesty and honor of this country has gone. Dean was the White House counsel. Richard Nixon, at his worst, never told him not to appear or to remain silent in front of the Congress. Dean went on and did his best to fill prisons. After that came Alexander Butterfield, a nobody. All he had to say was that the White House had a taping system that caught all the conversations in the White House. Any of them not on tape were erased by a participant.
The same is desperately needed now. Curious, following the words, an investigator - the mind here sees George Mitchell and Warren Rudman, and you name me better - can slap a hand on the slitherers and sneaks who have kept us in war for five years and who use failing generals to beg for more time and more lives of our young. A final word in September? Two years more, the generals and Bush people say.
Say impeachment and you’ll get your troops home.
....."
(July 17, 2007)
"Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush
and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war
with Iran.
Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of
"executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national
emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former
Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect
a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future.
Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not
bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from
Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with
false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.
Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the failure of its Middle
East wars, Republican senators jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern
Iraq's border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a majority of
Americans favoring the impeachment of Cheney and a near-majority favoring Bush's
impeachment. The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare
the American people and the Congress back in line with the militarist-police
state that Bush and Cheney have fostered.
...."
Transcript of Bill Moyers Journal - on impeachment (July 13, 2007)
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.
Impeachment...the word feared and loathed by every sitting president is back. It's in the air and on your computer screen, a growing clamor aimed at both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney.
This week's news only agitated the clamor. The president acknowledged that someone in his administration did leak the name of a CIA agent to the press, but he said let's move on — even as he refused to let his former White House counsel testify to Congress about political influence at the Justice Department.
So the talk in Washington was of executive arrogance. All the more so as the Democratic House voted to withdraw US troops from Iraq by next spring despite a threat of veto by President Bush. A public opinion poll from the American Research Group reports that more than four in ten Americans — 45 per cent-favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half -54 per cent — favor putting Vice President Cheney in the dock.
.....
BILL MOYERS: Bruce you wrote that article of impeachment against Bill Clinton. Why did you think he should be impeached?
BRUCE FEIN: I think he was setting a precedent that placed the president above the law. I did not believe that the initial perjury or misstatements-- that came perhaps in a moment of embarrassment stemming from the Paula Jones lawsuit was justified impeachment if he apologized. Even his second perjury before the grand jury when Ken Starr's staff was questioning him, as long as he expressed repentance, would not have set an example of saying every man, if you're president, is entitled to be a law unto himself. I think Bush's crimes are a little bit different. I think they're a little bit more worrisome than Clinton's. You don't have to have--
BILL MOYERS: More worrisome?
BRUCE FEIN: More worrisome than Clinton's-- because he is seeking more institutionally to cripple checks and balances and the authority of Congress and the judiciary to superintend his assertions of power. He has claimed the authority to tell Congress they don't have any right to know what he's doing with relation to spying on American citizens, using that information in any way that he wants in contradiction to a federal statute called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He's claimed authority to say he can kidnap people, throw them into dungeons abroad, dump them out into Siberia without any political or legal accountability. These are standards that are totally anathema to a democratic society devoted to the rule of law.
BILL MOYERS: You're talking about terrifying power but this is a terrifying time. People are afraid of those people abroad who want to kill us. Do you think, in any way, that justifies the claims that Bruce just said Bush has made?
JOHN NICHOLS: I think that the war on terror, as defined by our president, is perpetual war. And I think that he has acted precisely as Madison feared. He has taken powers unto himself that were never intended to be in the executive. And, frankly, that when an executive uses them, in the way that this president has, you actually undermine the process of uniting the country and really focusing the country on the issues that need to be dealt with. Let's be clear. If we had a president who was seeking to inspire us to take seriously the issues that are in play and to bring all the government together, he'd be consulting with Congress. He'd be working with Congress. And, frankly, Congress, through the system of checks and balances, would be preventing him from doing insane things like invading Iraq.
BRUCE FEIN: In the past, presidents like Abe Lincoln, who confronted a far dire emergency in the Civil War than today, sought congressional ratification approval of his emergency measures. He didn't seek to hide them from the people and from Congress and to prevent there to be accountability. And, of course, Congress did ratify what he had done. Secondly, sure, times can be terrifying. But that also should alert us to the fact that we can make mistakes. The executive can make mistakes.
Take World War II. We locked up 120,000 Japanese Americans, said they were all disloyal. Well, we got 120,000 mistakes. They lost their property. They lost their liberty for years and years because we made a huge mistake. And that can be true after 9/11 as well. No one wants other downgrade the fact that we have abominations out there and people want to kill us. But we should not inflate the danger and we should not cast aside what we are as a people. We can fight and defeat these individuals, these criminals, based upon our system of law and justice. It's not a-- we have a fighting constitution. It's always worked in the past. But it still remains the constitution of checks of balances.
...."
A Wake-Up Call, by Paul Craig Roberts, Creators Syndicate (July 19, 2007)
"This is a wake-up call that we are about to have another 9/11-WMD experience.
The wake-up call is unlikely to be effective, because the American attitude toward government changed fundamentally seventy-odd years ago. Prior to the 1930s, Americans were suspicious of government, but with the arrival of the Great Depression, Tojo, and Hitler, President Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced Americans that government existed to protect them from rapacious private interests and foreign threats. Today, Americans are more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to government than they are to family members, friends, and those who would warn them about the government’s protection.
Intelligent observers are puzzled that President Bush is persisting in a futile and unpopular war at the obvious expense of his party’s electoral chances in 2008.
In the July 18 Los Angeles Times (“Bush the Albatross”), Ronald Brownstein reminds us that Bush’s behavior is disastrous for his political party. Unpopular presidents “have consistently undercut their party in the next election.” Brownstein reports that “88% of voters who disapproved of the retiring president’s job performance voted against his party’s nominee in past elections. . . . On average, 80% of voters who disapproved of a president’s performance have voted against his party’s candidates even in House races since 1986.”
Brownstein notes that with Bush’s dismal approval rating, this implies a total wipeout of the Republicans in 2008.
A number of pundits have concluded that the reason the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush’s follies is that they expect Bush’s unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory next year.
There is a problem with this reasoning. It assumes that Cheney, Rove,and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts or are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his warmonger-police state fling. “After me, the deluge.”
Isn’t it more likely that Cheney and Rove have in mind events that will, once again, rally the people behind President Bush and the Republican Party that is fighting the “war on terror” that the Democrats “want to lose”?
Such events could take a number of forms. As even diehard Republican Patrick J. Buchanan observed on July 17, with three US aircraft carrier battle groups in congested waters off Iran, another Tonkin Gulf incident could easily be engineered to set us at war with Iran. If Bush’s intentions were merely to bomb a nuclear reactor, he would not need three carrier strike forces.
...."
Bush's Greatest Impeachable Crime, by David Lindorff, commondreams.org (April 13, 2007)
"When my co-author Barbara Olshansky and I wrote The Case for Impeachment during the waning months of 2005 and early 2006, it seemed clear to us that the biggest impeachable crimes of the Bush regime involved the illegal war against Iraq, and the trashing of the rights and civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution. Almost as an afterthought, we also included a proposed article of impeachment against the president for his insidious efforts to block any regulatory, Congressional or international action on confronting global warming.
Now that the first two UN reports on the causes and magnitude of the threats posed by global warming have come out–albeit in watered down form, thanks in part to the administration¹s continuing efforts to downplay the crisis–and now that independent scientific research is suggesting that the disaster facing life on earth, and human life and civilization in particular is of catastrophic proportions, it seems that perhaps we should turn things around.
At this point, arguably, Bush¹s greatest crime is not the Iraq War, terrible as that has been. Nor is it his revocation of habeas corpus or his authorization of torture. It is not the usurpation of the legislative power of the Congress. It is not the felonious violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or his obstruction of the investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
His biggest crime is a deliberate campaign of inaction and active obstruction in the face of a clear need for the United States to act decisively to stop or slow catastrophic climate change.
This president has not simply denied the reality of global warming. He has actively lied to the American people about the dangers ahead, and has had his administration, through intimidation and post-hoc editing by political hacks, block the publication of government scientific reports on global warming. He has defunded projects that would help document the growing crisis, for example cutting funding for satellites that would measure the effects of climate change on the surface of the planet. He has pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto Protocol–the first global effort to confront the problem and try to limit production of greenhouse gasses. He even went back on a 2000 campaign promise to limit carbon emissions from power plants, and instead has given virtual carte blanche to power companies to build the most carbon-spewing coal-powered generating stations possible, complete with gratuitous tax breaks. He has threatened countries with trade sanctions for trying to take actions that would combat global warming, and has even had the US government go to court against state governments, like California¹s and Vermont¹s, to try to block them from acting to reduce carbon emissions on their own, by for example setting mileage standards for vehicles sold in-state.
All of this has meant that for six critical years, when the U.S.–the source of 28 percent of the world¹s greenhouse gas emissions–could have been taking decisive action to start reducing the CO2 that the U.S. is spewing into the already carbon-soaked global atmosphere, America has done nothing. In fact, America¹s contribution of carbon emissions to the global atmosphere has been rising, not falling, as average miles per gallon figures for American autos have worsened, as more dirty power plants have gone on line, and as overall energy use in the US has gone up.
...."
The Case Against George W. Bush, by Elizabeth Holtzman, Foreign Policy (March 27, 2007)
"With prominent Republican Senators speaking out against a scandal-plagued White House, talk of impeachment has moved from the margins to the mainstream. That may seem politically far-fetched, but in fact, there is a strong case to be made.
Should he be impeached? The legal case is strong, and the political case is
getting stronger.
The latest Bush administration scandal—the firing of eight U.S. attorneys under
highly questionable circumstances—has Washington abuzz with talk of a new
Watergate. The question on everyone’s mind is: Could this be the president’s
Saturday night massacre—the obstruction of justice that triggers impeachment?
Unless there is a sea change in Congress, talk of impeachment is largely a hypothetical exercise. That does not mean there’s no legal case against the president. If a California prosecutor were fired to end an investigation of a Republican congressman, that might be a crime. If the others were fired for failing to prosecute Democrats without evidence, that would be a gross abuse of power. If President George W. Bush played any role, impeachment is a legal possibility.
We need not wait for the outcome of investigations of this scandal, however, to conclude that President Bush has so abused the powers of his office that he could be impeached and removed from office. There are already other substantial grounds.
...."
Impeachment, Like Spring, Is In the Air, by David Lindorff, commondreams.org (March 28, 2007)
"It’s time for impeachment to come out of the deep freeze.
For a year now, Democratic leaders like Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), Rep. Nancy Pelosi D-CA), Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and DNC head Howard Dean have been working to tamp down the pressures to hold the president accountable for his crimes and abuses of power by way of impeachment.
House Speaker Pelosi for her part made it clear after the Democrats won the House that she would tolerate no talk of impeachment, even reportedly threatening one-time impeachment advocate Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) with the denial of his cherished position as chair of the House Judiciary Committee if he pushed ahead with or accepted bills of impeachment from other House members.
House leaders and Democratic Party leaders also worked behind the scenes to kill off grassroots attempts to follow Thomas Jefferson’s alternative route to impeachment by getting state legislatures to pass bicameral impeachment resolutions. They strong-armed legislative leaders in the senates of both Washington State and New Mexico to block efforts to put such resolutions to a floor debate and vote in those two states, and have been working mightily to block a similar grassroots campaign in Vermont.
But the Democratic Party’s efforts to tamp down impeachment efforts are coming unraveled, courtesy of the ongoing criminality of the Bush administration, which seems hell-bent on aggrandizing as much executive power as it possibly can before the clock runs out on Bush¹s second term of office.
..."
James Madison - “Impeach Bush Over Purgegate!”, by Thom Hartmann, commondreams.org (March 27, 2007)
"According to James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” if a President were to order or allow the “wanton removal of meritorious officers” such as US attorneys, such an action “would subject the President to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.”
....
The Congressional Register from that day lays out Madison’s entire speech. Because it’s thorough and detailed, and offers a brilliant insight into the thinking of the most important of the Framers of our Constitution (Madison), I reproduce it in its entirety below. Because it’s rather long, however, I’ve also bolded and italicized those parts that get right to the nub of the matter so you can skim it first, and then go back and read the entire thing in context.
The essence of the debate is over whether Congress or the President would have the power to fire people employed below the level of a Cabinet officer in the George Washington and future administrations. The conclusion of the majority - and thus the way the law is today - is that Congress felt that the Senate’s approval of the hiring of federal officers was critical (a power the Patriot Act took away, and the Senate voted last week to restore), and that when it comes to firing them, the President has the power. However, if the President were to abuse that power to fire federal officials through the “wanton removal of meritorious officers,” he should be immediately impeached.
This was particularly relevant since, in 1789, there were no federal crimes that had yet been defined. So when the Constitution said that a President could be impeached for “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” there were none specified at the time. (The first federal crime was specified in 1790.) So Congress, at this point, was in the process of both creating new executive offices and of defining impeachable “crimes.” They were establishing precedents, and this was a grave matter. It would echo forward for centuries.
...."
Impeachment As an Act of Patriotism, by Richard W. Behan, commondreams.org (March 19, 2007)
"When
people who are honestly mistaken learn the truth, they will either cease being
mistaken, or cease being honest.
-- Anonymous
We the American people would not do what George Bush and Richard Cheney have done in Iraq, all of it in our name. We would not, for utterly fabricated reasons, invade and occupy a sovereign country without provocation, killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens, driving millions more from their homes as refugees, torturing prisoners, destroying the country’s economy and infrastructure, fomenting a vicious sectarian civil war, sacrificing 3,200 American lives, squandering half a trillion dollars, dangerously destabilizing the Middle East, blackening our country’s character, and defaming every American citizen.
We are not a devious, savage, and warlike people. With considerable merit we think of Americans as honest, decent, and law-abiding, generous, tolerant, and humane. And we are patriotic, devoted to our country and to its ideals of freedom, democracy, peace, justice, and honesty in government.
The huge disconnect between who we are and what our government is doing in Iraq is painfully apparent, and the gap is insuperable.
It is imperative, therefore, that we hold the President and Vice President accountable not only for breaking domestic and international laws, but for violating the ethical and institutional essence of America and the ideals of her people. To rescue our country’s elemental decency and to assure the security of its governing principles, it is our patriotic duty to impeach George Bush and Richard Cheney.
...."
Crime Blotter: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, by Paul Craig Roberts, Counterpunch (March 19, 2007)
"....
By spying on Americans without obtaining warrants, Bush committed felonies under FISA. Moreover, there is strong, indeed overwhelming, evidence that justice was obstructed when Bush and Gonzales blocked a 2006 Justice Department investigation into whether Gonzales acted properly as Attorney General in approving and overseeing the Bush administration's program of spying on US citizens. Also at issue is whether Gonzales acted properly in advising Bush to kill an investigation of Gonzales' professional actions with regard to the NSA spy program.
We are faced with the almost certain fact that the two highest law enforcement officials of the United States are criminals.
....
The known facts: After keeping the information from Congress and the public for one year, on Dec. 16, 2005, the New York Times reported that Bush was spying on Americans without complying with the FISA statute. In response to a request from members of Congress, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility launched an investigation into the Bush administration's decision to ignore FISA and to conduct domestic spying on American citizens without obtaining the warrants required by law. On January 20, 2006, Marshall Jarrett, the Justice Department official in charge of OPR, informed senior Justice Department officials of his investigation and its scope.
Gonzales informed President Bush about the OPR investigation, and Bush shut down the investigation by refusing security clearances to the Justice Department officials in OPR. In a response to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter on July 18, 2006, Gonzales disclosed that President Bush had halted the OPR investigation.
This is the first and only time in history that DOJ officials have been denied security clearances necessary to conduct an investigation
.....
A criminal political administration has no choice but to keep everyone on a short leash in order to keep its illegal acts under wraps. Americans have never experienced an administration so replete with crimes as the Bush Regime.
This criminal regime must now be brought to an end. Impeachments of Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales, followed by felony indictments and trials are imperative if the rule of law in the United States is to be preserved."
George McGovern to Cheney: Resign, by John Nichols, The Nation (March 10, 2007)
"George McGovern has a word for Vice President Dick Cheney: "Resign."
Responding to Tuesday's conviction of Cheney's former chief-of-staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and lying to the FBI -- after a trial that revealed Cheney's intimate involvement with a scheme to discredit a critic of the administration's war policies -- the former congressman, senator and presidential candidate said it was time for the vice president to go.
"What we have learned about how he has conducted himself leaves no doubt that he should be out of office," McGovern says of Cheney. "If he had any respect for the Constitution or the country, he would resign."
And if Cheney does not take the liberal Democrat's counsel?
"There is no question in my mind that Cheney has committed impeachable offenses. So has George Bush," argues McGovern. "Bush is much more impeachable than Richard Nixon was. That's been clear for some time. There does not seem to be much sentiment for impeachment in Congress now, but around the country people are fed up with this administration."
...."
The Next Mission: Removing a Tyrant, by John Nichols, The Nation (March 6, 2007)
".....
Impeachment is not a casual act of political retribution. It is not a game. It is an essential act of the republic, established and defined for the purpose of preventing presidents from governing as warrior kings.
We are not talking about stained blue dresses anymore.
We are talking about a war that has cost more than 3,000 lives and ruined tens of thousands more -- need we mention Walter Reed? -- a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, a war that is emptying our federal treasury at a rate of $200 million a day.
Impeachment, as intended by the founders who created a system of checks and balances in order to "chain the dogs of war," is a political act -- initiated, at its best, with the purpose of preventing a president from maintaining a course of action that affronts the Constitution, endangers the republic or damages democracy.
The war in Iraq does all of these things. And, yet, as the Bush-Cheney administration proposes to surge 21,500 more young Americans into the quagmire that is Iraq, and as the Congress debates non-binding resolutions that, by virtue of their very names, are guaranteed to be inconsequential, there are those who would dare suggest that impeachment initiatives might distract the House and Senate.
There is no more serious work than ending the war.
....."
The People vs Richard Cheney, by Wil S. Hylton, GQ (March, 2007)
"Resolved, that Richard B. Cheney, vice president of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that these articles of impeachment be submitted to the American people.
When the Founding Fathers crafted the U.S. Constitution, they wanted to be sure that the president, vice president, and other ranking officials could be evicted more easily than the British monarchy. To ensure that the process would be swift and certain, they made it simple: Only two conditions must be met. First, a majority of the House of Representatives must agree on a set of charges; then, two-thirds of the Senate must agree to convict. After that, there is no legal wrangling, no appeal to a higher authority, no reversal on technical grounds. There is not even a limit on what the charges may be. As the Constitution describes it, the cause may be "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors," but even these were left deliberately vague; as Gerald Ford once pointed out while still serving in the House of Representatives, the only real definition of an "impeachable offense" is "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."
To the credit of this nation, despite the relative ease of impeachment, only seventeen officials have sunk to such ignominious depths that the process has been invoked. The reasons for impeachment have ranged from the outrageous to the banal: from putting political enemies in jail (Judge James H. Peck, 1830) to cheating on taxes (Judge Harry E. Claiborne, 1986); from being rude to Congress ("unmindful of the harmony and courtesies which ought to exist and be maintained between the executive and legislative branches," President Andrew Johnson, 1868) to being a drunkard ("a man of loose morals and intemperate habits," Judge John Pickering, 1803). One president was even impeached for having the good taste to keep his sex life private (concealing "the nature and details of his relationship with a subordinate Government employee," President William Jefferson Clinton, 1998).
In the case of George W. Bush, there may be any number of reasons not to add an eighteenth name to the list. These range from the moderate (that two consecutive presidential impeachments would do more harm than good to the nation) to the provocative (that while Bush has been wrong about a staggering number of issues, he is too hapless to be held accountable for it) to the pragmatic (that even if Bush were impeached, we would still be stuck with Vice President Cheney). There is even, for those inclined to such things, an argument by design: that the president is the president, and therefore God designed it that way.
But none of these apply to Vice President Cheney, and not only because it was Cheney (and not God, or George W. Bush, or anybody else) who selected himself as vice president back in 2000. With Cheney, there are also no lingering questions about capacity, motive, or malice. Over the past six years, as the country has spiraled into military misadventure, fiscal madness, and environmental meltdown, the vice president has not merely been wrong about the issues; he has been duplicitous, deceitful, and deliberately destructive to the American democracy. These things can no longer be denied by rational minds:
That in the buildup to war in Iraq, the vice president, lacking confidence in the true casus belli, conspired to invent additional ones, misrepresenting the available intelligence, crafting new "intelligence," and then spreading these falsehoods to the public, perverting the democratic process that he is sworn to uphold.
That as the war devolved into occupation, the vice president again sabotaged the democratic system, developing back channels into the Coalition Provisional Authority, a body not under his purview, to remove some of the most effective staff and replace them with his own loyal supplicants - undercutting America's best effort at war in order to expand his own power.
That in his domestic capacity, the vice president has been equally reckless with the trust of his office, converting the vice presidency into a de facto prime ministership, conducting secret meetings with secret policy boards to determine national policy and then refusing to share the details of those meetings with the other branches of government.
Finally, that the vice president has repeatedly promoted the interests of a corporation, Halliburton, over the interests of the nation, causing untold harm to American economic, military, and public health.
For these and other offenses against the nation, Vice President Cheney, clearly, is guilty of crimes against the state.
...."
Cheney's the One, by Roy Ulrich, commondreams.org
(February 8, 2007)"The nation is abuzz with talk of Presidential impeachment. But House speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken the subject "off the table." And the reason she gives is compelling: the Democratic majority will be overplaying its hand, just as the Gingrich crowd did in 1998. The voters, the argument goes, expect less partisanship and more actual accomplishments from the newly-installed Democratic majority.
While this argument is persuasive with respect to President Bush, the same cannot be said of Vice President Cheney. First, as a purely political matter, we should not forget that Mr. Cheney's poll numbers are even lower than his putative boss. A scant 18% of Americans have a favorable view of the Vice President.
Obviously, Bush would remain President even if Cheney were removed from office. All that the President would lose is one of his two brains, the other one belonging to his top political aide. The President would still be able to carry out his normal duties until January of 2009 without having to worry about his own hide. Of course, he would have one additional duty: naming a replacement for the deposed Vice President. That person, in turn, would be subject to confirmation by both houses of Congress. Thus, the likelihood is we would end up with a less divisive figure as Veep than the current occupant of that office.
The case against Mr. Cheney is in some ways stronger than the case against Mr. Bush.
...."
Impeachment by the People, by Howard Zinn, The Progressive (February, 2007)
"Courage is in short supply in Washington, D.C. The realities of the Iraq War cry out for the overthrow of a government that is criminally responsible for death, mutilation, torture, humiliation, chaos. But all we hear in the nation's capital, which is the source of those catastrophes, is a whimper from the Democratic Party, muttering and nattering about "unity" and "bipartisanship," in a situation that calls for bold action to immediately reverse the present course.
These are the Democrats who were brought to power in November by an electorate fed up with the war, furious at the Bush Administration, and counting on the new majority in Congress to represent the voters. But if sanity is to be restored in our national policies, it can only come about by a great popular upheaval, pushing both Republicans and Democrats into compliance with the national will.
The Declaration of Independence, revered as a document but ignored as a guide to action, needs to be read from pulpits and podiums, on street corners and community radio stations throughout the nation. Its words, forgotten for over two centuries, need to become a call to action for the first time since it was read aloud to crowds in the early excited days of the American Revolution: "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government."
.....
Impeachment hearings all over the country could excite and energize the peace movement. They would make headlines, and could push reluctant members of Congress in both parties to do what the Constitution provides for and what the present circumstances demand: the impeachment and removal from office of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Simply raising the issue in hundreds of communities and Congressional districts would have a healthy effect, and would be a sign that democracy, despite all attempts to destroy it in this era of war, is still alive."
Beyond Oral Sex: The Bush Investigations, by David Swanson and Jonathan Schwarz, tomdispatch.com (February 1, 2007)
"The last time Congress was controlled by the party in opposition to the White House, we all learned more than we cared to know about the uses of cigars. This time the need for investigations is much more serious. The Democrats are talking fast and furious about doing them, but they're not talking about doing the right ones - and a month into their tenure, they've barely discovered where the bathrooms are.
As humorist Bob Harris enjoys saying about the Bush administration, "It's like a new Watergate every day with these people." Congress could probably spend three decades profitably examining the last six years of the Bush administration. Unfortunately, they'll have to do severe triage to select the areas of malfeasance where investigations will most benefit the country.
A recent ABC/Washington Post poll showed that the public (despite very little help from ABC News or the Washington Post) has it right. A majority picked the "should" option in response to both of these questions:
"Do you think Congress should or should not hold hearings on how the Bush administration handled pre-war intelligence, war planning, and related issues in the war in Iraq?"
"Do you think Congress should or should not hold hearings on how the Bush administration has handled surveillance, treatment of prisoners and related issues in the U.S. campaign against terrorism?"
....."
Bush Is Not Above the Law, by James Bamford, NY Times (January 31, 2007)
"Last August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought.
But under the Bush Justice Department, no F.B.I. agents were ever dispatched to padlock White House files or knock on doors and no federal prosecutors ever opened a case.
The ruling was the result of a suit, in which I am one of the plaintiffs, brought against the National Security Agency by the American Civil Liberties Union. It was a response to revelations by this newspaper in December 2005 that the agency had been monitoring the phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans for more than four years without first obtaining warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
In the past, even presidents were not above the law. When the F.B.I. turned up evidence during Watergate that Richard Nixon had obstructed justice by trying to cover up his involvement, a special prosecutor was named and a House committee recommended that the president be impeached.
And when an independent counsel found evidence that President Bill Clinton had committed perjury in the Monica Lewinsky case, the impeachment machinery again cranked into gear, with the spectacle of a Senate trial (which ended in acquittal).
Laws are broken, the federal government investigates, and the individuals involved — even if they’re presidents — are tried and, if found guilty, punished. That is the way it is supposed to work under our system of government. But not this time.
Last Aug. 17, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the United States District Court in Detroit issued her ruling in the A.C.L.U. case. The president, she wrote, had “undisputedly violated” not only the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, but also statutory law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Enacted by a bipartisan Congress in 1978, the FISA statute was a response to revelations that the National Security Agency had conducted warrantless eavesdropping on Americans. To deter future administrations from similar actions, the law made a violation a felony punishable by a $10,000 fine and five years in prison.
Yet despite this ruling, the Bush Justice Department never opened an F.B.I. investigation, no special prosecutor was named, and there was no talk of impeachment in the Republican-controlled Congress.
.....
To allow a president to break the law and commit a felony for more than five years without even a formal independent investigation would be the ultimate subversion of the Constitution and the rule of law. As Judge Taylor warned in her decision, “There are no hereditary kings in America."
Edging Impeachment Back onto the Table, by John Nichols, The Nation (January 26, 2007)
"The news from former vice presidential chief of staff "Scooter" Libby's trial on charges of obstructing a federal investigation -- particularly the revelation that Vice President Dick Cheney wrote a memo that effectively confirms his intimate involvement in strategizing about how to counter the inquiry into the Bush administration's politically-motivated outing of CIA operative Valarie Plame -- should slowly but surely edge the prospect of impeachment back onto the table from which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi removed it.
Cheney is expected to testify in the Libby trial and, if a federal jury rejects his testimony as less than credible, that would seem to create an appropriate opening for members of the House who take seriously their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution to entertain a discussion of impeaching the vice president.
....."
Impeachment: The Case in Favor, by Elizabeth Holtzman, The Nation (January 26, 2007)
"Approximately a year ago, I wrote in this magazine that President George W. Bush had committed high crimes and misdemeanors and should be impeached and removed from office. His impeachable offenses include using lies and deceptions to drive the country into war in Iraq, deliberately and repeatedly violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on wiretapping in the United States, and facilitating the mistreatment of US detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act of 1996.
Since then, the case against President Bush has, if anything, been strengthened by reports that he personally authorized CIA abuse of detainees. In addition, courts have rejected some of his extreme assertions of executive power. The Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees, and a federal judge ruled that the President could not legally ignore FISA. Even Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's recent announcement that the wiretapping program would from now on operate under FISA court supervision strongly suggests that Bush's prior claims that it could not were untrue.
....
Our country's Founders provided the power of impeachment to prevent the subversion of the Constitution. President Bush has subverted and defied the Constitution in many ways. His defiance and his subversion continue.
Failure to impeach Bush would condone his actions. It would allow him to assume he can simply continue to violate the laws on wiretapping and torture and violate other laws as well without fear of punishment. He could keep the Iraq War going or expand it even further than he just has on the basis of more lies, deceptions and exaggerations. Remember, as recently as October 26, Bush said, "Absolutely, we are winning" the war in Iraq--a blatant falsehood. Worse still, if Congress fails to act, Bush might be emboldened to believe he may start another war, perhaps against Iran, again on the basis of lies, deceptions and exaggerations.
There is no remedy short of impeachment to protect us from this President, whose ability to cause damage in the next two years is enormous. If we do not act against Bush, we send a terrible message of impunity to him and to future Presidents and mark a clear path to despotism and tyranny. Succeeding generations of Americans will never forgive us for lacking the nerve to protect our democracy."
Bush Must Go, by Paul Craig Roberts, Chronicles (January 16, 2007)
"When are the American people and their representatives in Congress and the military going to wake up and realize that the United States has an insane war criminal in the White House who is destroying all chances for peace in the world and establishing a police state at home?
Americans don’t have much time to realize this and to act before it is too late. Bush’s “surge” speech last Wednesday night makes it completely clear that his real purpose is to start wars with Iran and Syria before failure in Iraq brings an end to the neoconservative-Israeli plan to establish hegemony over the Middle East.
The “surge” gives Congress, the media and the foreign policy establishment something to debate and oppose, while Bush sets his plans in motion to orchestrate a war with Iran. Suddenly, we are hearing Bush regime propaganda that there are Iranian networks operating within Iraq that are working with the Iraqi insurgency and killing U.S. troops.
....
Nothing can stop the criminal Bush from instituting a wider war in the Middle East—one that could become a catastrophic world war—except an unequivocal statement from Congress that he will be impeached.
Bush has made the United States into a colony of Israel. The nation is incurring massive debt and loss of both life and reputation in order to silence Muslim opposition to Israel’s theft of Palestine and the Golan Heights. That is what the “war on terror” is about. "
(January 4, 2007)"One of the high points of the U.S. media was the investigation into the Watergate scandal. Now, 30 years later, with President Ford's death, the media are contributing to the cover-up they once exposed.
Most people get their news from television, yet there has hardly been any explanation of what the Watergate scandal was. This is of particular concern, given that roughly half the U.S. population was born after President Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974. Gerald Ford would pardon him a month later. Rather than explain Watergate, we hear the same chorus from all the networks, that the nation needed to move beyond Watergate, needed to "heal," and that the pardon, while controversial, was needed. The pundits agree that prosecuting Nixon would have led the country in a downward spiral.
But there is another scenario. Impeachment and/or prosecution could have shown Americans that no person is above the law, that all governments must be held accountable.
...."
The Crucible Of Impeachment: If Not Now, When?, by Robert Weitzel, commondreams.org (December 22, 2006)
"If Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota were unable to remain in office because of health reasons, his replacement would be appointed by the state’s Republican governor, effectively returning control of the Senate to the GOP and Dick Cheney.
Initially, the thought of losing the precious 51-49 margin in the Senate disturbed me. But when I remembered that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the new Democratic Speaker of the House, said that impeachment is “a waste of time” and “is off the table,” I thought, so what if the Dems do lose the Senate. It’s back-scratching politics as usual in Washington regardless.
How is it possible that a member of Congress can say it is “a waste of time” to impeach a president who has lied—under oath of office—to justify invading a nonbelligerent country, conspired to torture prisoners and to strip them of their constitutional rights, illegally spied on American citizens, violated international treaties against aggressive war and treatment of POW’s, and, quite possibly, is complicit in treason and war profiteering? Think Valerie Plame and Halliburton!
Rabbi Hillel asked of a different time and circumstance, “If not now, when?”
....."
The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War, by R.W. Behan, commondreams.org (December 3, 2006)
Defeating the Bill of Rights - Bush's Lone Victory, by Paul Craig Roberts, Counterpunch (November 22, 2006
"Americans Can't Handle Another Impeachment," is the Republican Propaganda. Don't Be Deceived., by Linda Milazzo, commondreams.org (November 26, 2006)
A Fraud Worse than Enron, by Elizabeth de la Vega, tomdispatch.com (November 28, 2006)
The Indictment - US v George W. Bush, et al, by Elizabeth de la Varga, tomdispatch.com (November 29, 2006)
Bush’s CIA Order Another Impeachable Offense, by Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive (November 21, 2006)
So now the CIA admits it: Bush himself signed an order directing the CIA to set up secret prisons around the world.
Two and a half years ago, the ACLU submitted an FOIA request to the CIA seeking seventy different records relating to the torture policies of the Bush Administration.
By authorizing the kidnapping, disappearing, and perhaps even the torturing of detainees, Bush was violating the Geneva Conventions and the Treaty Against Torture. Add that to his lies about the Iraq War, to his illegal spying on American citizens, and to his signing statements, and the case for at least bringing impeachment proceedings forward could not be stronger.
...."
The Democrats & Civil Liberties, by Paul Craig Roberts (November 14, 2006)
When is a Crime so Great it Shouldn’t be Acknowledged?, by Robert Shetterly, commondreams.org (November 10, 2006)
"....
Massive crimes have been committed. Our administration has ridden roughshod on our Constitution as though it were a hobbled and blind cow. What-might-have-been looks like a bomb crater. So irresponsible and massive are the crimes that the perpetrators have changed the laws to avoid being held accountable for crimes against humanity. So irresponsible that their failure to act to mitigate global warming endangers the very survival of human life on our planet. Hundreds of thousands of people are unnecessarily dead, many more hundreds of thousands maimed and wounded. The incredible debt undermines our economy and will plague our children. When is a crime so great that it shouldn’t be acknowledged? Or prosecuted? Do we pat Rummy & Dickie & Georgie & Connie on the butt and send them to the bench with a, “Nice game, kids. Let’s all be good sports and let someone else have a go at it”? Live and let live.
Behind all the outrageous events of this era --- Iraq, global warming, the debt, election fraud, war profiteering, failure to create alternative energies, species extinction --- is a culture of non-accountability, cronyism, and obscene profit. How will it stop? Raising the minimum wage by $1.50 over three years might not do it. Arrogance, deceit and blatant crime are responsible for these crises. Not poor execution. Accountability is the way out. There is no reason why we can’t pass fair, life-saving legislation at the same time. We can walk and chew gum. We have grown so accustomed to living in a world of euphemism and double speak, so accustomed to not calling reality by its name, that we think there is no reality except what we can get away with, the reality that sells the product or “develops the resource.” Not true. Nature won’t be fooled. And we only imperil ourselves and our cherished institutions if we don’t hold ourselves accountable. It’s not about partisan revenge, it’s about naming the crime. Some very bad people have broken our laws, dashed our hopes, mortgaged our futures, broken our hearts, and betrayed our country. They need to pay the piper. If we don’t hold them accountable, who will we allow to hold us accountable for making things right?
...."
Ten Reasons Congress Must Investigate Bush Administration Crimes (November 14, 2006)
"....
Establishing accountability will require a thorough investigation of the actions of the Bush administration and, if they have included crimes or abuses, ensuring that these are properly addressed by Congress and the courts. The purpose of such action is not to play “gotcha” based on hearsay and newspaper clippings. Investigation, exposure, and even prosecution or select committee proceedings, should they become necessary, are primarily means for reestablishing the rule of law. But such investigations may be blocked by the Democratic leadership unless American citizens and progressive Democrats in particular demand them. Here are ten reasons why they should:
1. The US faces a constitutional crisis that goes far beyond either partisan politics or isolated acts of wrongdoing.
...
2. The Democrats are in danger of walking into a death trap the Bush administration and the Republican leadership are setting for them.
...
3. Defending the Constitution by investigating breaches in the rule of law will allow Democrats to appeal to new bases of support among independents and others concerned about the rule of law.
...
4. Bush still holds most of the institutional cards on foreign policy, especially given his claims that the President can exercise authority without Congressional constraint
...
5. A Democratic Congress that fails to assert its prerogatives against the President will soon find itself losing the initiative in the face of the President’s capacity to frame issues
...
6. A majority of the American people and an overwhelming proportion of grassroots Democrats want the President impeached.
...
7. Exposing the truth about America’s actions in the world over the past years, and holding those responsible for it accountable, is the prerequisite to setting relations with the world on a new, more constructive basis.
...
8. The US government under the Bush administration has systematically and flagrantly violated national and international law.
...
9. Hearings and investigations are crucial means to establishing institutional and cultural barriers to future crimes.
...
10. Setting the public record straight about what has happened over the past six years is essential for reestablishing discourse based on reality that can be tested by evidence and argument, rather than on fantasy propagated by national leaders and amplified by their media sycophants.
...."
Calling Nancy Pelosi: The People's Case for Impeaching Bush, by Elizabeth Holtzman, Washington Spectator (November 14, 2006)
""Impeachment is an essential tool for preserving democracy. The framers of our Constitution, determined to provide protections against grave abuses of power by a president, created the impeachment process as a special procedure for citizens. Through their representatives, citizens would be able to remove a president run amok.
Our founders created a new form of government that was designed to preserve liberty by breaking up power among three co-equal branches of government and instituting a system of checks and balances. But they worried deeply about presidential misconduct. Left unchallenged, it could be "fatal to the Republic," said James Madison. The new democracy needed the ability to remove a president, if necessary.
Impeachment is the first step of a two-step process that can result in the removal of a president from office. The House of Representatives first decides whether to charge the president with impeachable offenses. If a majority of the House votes to impeach, articles of impeachment, which contain the charges, are forwarded to the Senate. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides over a trial in the Senate, and if two-thirds of the senators vote for conviction, the president is removed from office.
...
President George W. Bush has engaged in acts that violate his obligations as president on a range of issues. These impeachable offenses include:
 |
Deceiving Congress and
the people in taking the country to war in Iraq. |
|
|
Directing an illegal
domestic wiretapping program and other surveillance of Americans. |
|
|
Permitting and condoning
the use of torture or cruel treatment of detainees. |
|
|
Showing reckless
indifference to human life in the face of Hurricane Katrina, in inadequately
equipping U.S. soldiers, and in insufficiently planning for the occupation
of Iraq. |
|
|
Covering up his war deceptions with the leak of misleading classified information, an act that became entangled with the outing of a CIA agent, a possible crime. |
.....
President Bush has committed a great many grave and dangerous offenses, and subverted the Constitution. The evidence is clear and strong. Congress cannot shirk its responsibility to protect the nation from tyranny. This is what the founders of this country intended when they added presidential impeachment to the Constitution."