By Gina Holland

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees, saying in a strong rebuke that the trials were illegal under U.S. and international law.

Bush said there might still be a way to work with Congress to sanction military tribunals for detainees and the American people should know the ruling “won’t cause killers to be put out on the street.”

The court declared 5-3 that the trials for 10 foreign terror suspects violate U.S. military law and the Geneva conventions.

The ruling raises major questions about the legal status of the approximately 450 men still being held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba and exactly how, when and where the administration might pursue the charges against them.

It also seems likely to further fuel international criticism of the administration, including by many U.S. allies, for its handling of the terror war detainees at Guantanamo in Cuba, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and elsewhere.

Read More at ABC News

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By Peter Phillips

If a national movement calling for the impeachment of the president is rapidly emerging and the corporate media are not covering it, is there really a national movement for the impeachment of the president?

Read More at The Pasadena Weekly 

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By Farhad Manjoo

The success of the documentary “Loose Change” spotlights the thousands of online sleuths who believe the U.S. government was behind the terror attacks — to get gold, justify war, or serve Satan.

But these are days of amateur experts and self-made provocateurs, an era in which a young man with a laptop and a few far-out ideas can easily garner a huge audience in the self-referential online watering holes that dominate modern rhetoric. In the spring of 2005, (filmmaker Dylan) Avery released “Loose Change,” a feature-length documentary film that proposes that the terrorist attacks on America weren’t terrorist attacks at all, and were instead conceived, planned and executed by people at the highest levels of the government. Though it has not been distributed in theaters, Avery’s film — sold on DVD and available for free online — has emerged as the leading gateway drug for thousands, and possibly millions, of converts to the “9/11 truth movement,” the loose affiliation of skeptics who doubt the official story. The film has transformed Avery into one of world’s most influential proselytizers of the theory that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job.”

Read More at Salon.com

VIDEO: See “Loose Change: Second Edition” (Google Video)

Official Site for “Loose Change”

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By Jim Christie, Reuters

Berkeley plans to give voters a say on a measure calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the mayor of this famously liberal California city said on Wednesday.

A number of local governments across the United States have passed resolutions urging impeachment. But the Berkeley city council wants to be the first to put the issue directly to voters, Mayor Tom Bates said in an interview.

“This is basically giving the people a chance to talk, to join the debate,” Bates said. “The issues go way beyond impeaching the president. They go to safeguarding the Constitution.”

Read More at The Washington Post

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By NewsMax.com Staff

Al Gore charges that President George Bush has “broken the law� and implies that Congress should have initiated impeachment proceedings against Bush for unspecified crimes.

In a fund-raising e-mail sent out under the banner of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee with the subject line “Unprecedented,� Gore declares:

“The evidence now makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that George Bush has repeatedly and insistently broken the law and the corrupt Republican Congress has shirked its constitutional duty to hold him to account.”

While Gore omitted using the “i” word, the consititutional remedy for a president who breaks the law is the House’s impeachment process followed by a trial before the Senate.

Read More at NewsMax.com

Filed under: Blog, In the News, Facts: Lies and Deceptions, Constitutional Crisis, Facts: Breaking the Law
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By Jeff Greenfield, CNN Senior Analyst

Sen. Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, held hearings Tuesday on presidential signing statements.

No need to stop the presses, right?

Actually, this is a very big deal — it goes to the heart of how power should be shared between the president and Congress … and in fact it’s always been a very big deal.

Here’s the question: Can a president say when he signs a bill the Congress passed, “I’ll interpret the law as I see it”?

That’s what Bush did when he signed Sen. John McCain’s anti-torture legislation in December, asserting that ‘’The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president . . . as commander in chief.

That’s a polite way of saying, “If I don’t like the law the Congress passed, I’ll ignore it.”

Read More at CNN

…Really Unconstitutional!

By Dave Lindorff

Over the course of the past year, it has been discovered that President Bush, during his five years in office, has cancelled all or part of 750 laws of Congress, quietly and with the stroke of a pen. These so-called “signing statements” have been used to invalidate laws passed by Congress to do everything from require government reporting on the uses of the Patriot Act’s invasive provisions to banning torture and establishing a special investigator for corruption in Iraq.

The Senate Judiciary Committee headed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) is finally holding hearings into this issue, but don’t expect much from a that can’t even get worked up over the White House’s failure to send over key people to testify.

Tony Snow, the president’s smarmy flak, says all those “signing statements” are simply a way for Bush to “express reservations about the constitutionality” of those laws.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), one of the president’s yes-men in Congress, says, “The president is entitled to express his opinion. It’s the courts that determine what the law is. I don’t know why the issue of presidents issuing signing statements is controversial at all.”

Well John, here’s the reason: The Constitution.

Read More at CounterPunch

Filed under: Blog, In the News, Facts: Independent Conclusions, Constitutional Crisis
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By Susan Oehler

After the platform and the resolutions had been discussed and voted on, I asked to be recognized by the Chair, Jerry Meek. I had previously presented my resolution to the Vice-Chair, Delmas Parker, who is a friend of mine, so they had a copy of it at the podium. I presented this motion: “I move to suspend the rules to consider a resolution from the floor asking the NC legislature to file impeachment articles against George Bush.” This was voted on, and needed a 2/3rd majority to pass, which it did. Then I read the full resolution:

RESOLUTION ASKING NC LEGISLATORS TO FILE IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES

Whereas Section 603 of section LIII of Jefferson’s Rules of the US House rules for the 109th Congress permits the inception of impeachment proceedings by charges transmitted from the legislature of a state; and

Whereas George W. Bush, President of the United States, has so conducted himself and his administration as to cause the people of the State of North Carolina to doubt his integrity and to believe that his official actions as president are subject to corrupt influences; and

Whereas the North Carolina Democratic Party has passed a resolution calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush; and

Whereas the North Carolina State Executive Committee also voted for the impeachment of George W. Bush, Richard Cheney and Alberto Gonzales in January 2006; therefore,

Be it resolved that this North Carolina Democratic Party convention asks our Representatives in the State of North Carolina (the senate concurring) to petition the US House of Representatives to start investigations of George W. Bush and his administration to the end that George W. Bush may be impeached and removed from office, and in doing so to follow the example set by California Assemblyman Paul Koretz in his submission of impeachment resolutions; and

Be it further resolved that the Secretary of State for North Carolina give, and is hereby instructed to certify, to each Senator and Representative in the Congress of the United States, under the great seal of the State of North Carolina, a copy of this resolution and the prior impeachment resolution, and notification of its adoption by the Democratic Party of the State of North Carolina at their convention in June 2006.

Read More at PoliticalAffairs.net

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By John M. Crisp

In “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell warns us about the connection between bad ideas and the careless use of language, which he pictures as a self-perpetuating downward spiral: Bad ideas lead to sloppy language, which in turn makes it easier to have more bad ideas.

Our dilemma in Iraq hasn’t been helped by the language we’ve used to talk about it. Columnists, talk-show hosts and politicians could begin to remedy this by eliminating from their discourse the terms “cut and run” and “stay the course.” “Cut and run” crops up dozens of times daily on radio talk shows, and Karl Rove used it recently in New Hampshire. The “cut-and-runners” are cowards who wish to beat a hasty retreat from Iraq at the first sign of trouble. Of course, they’re mostly Democrats.

Read More at Scripps Howard News Service

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By Onnesha Roychoudhuri

Proving that there are “many ways to impeachment”:

Illinois, Vermont and California state legislatures have impeachment resolutions pending. The Democratic parties of Vermont, New Hampshire, Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, California and Hawaii have all passed resolutions. Then there are the 18 city and town councils that have passed resolutions, with seven more resolutions (including Concord) pending, to say nothing of the 27 local political groups and parties across the country that have adopted impeachment resolutions.

Read More at AlterNet

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By Dave Lindorff

Over this past week, I had a few experiences in the course of several book events for The Case for Impeachment which both illustrate the importance of this constitutionally important method of checking the actions of dangerous or criminal presidents, and the difficulty of doing so.

On Friday, I debated my Counterpunch editor, Jeff St. Clair, in a forum that was part of the International Socialist Organization conference at Columbia University in New York. Jeff crushed my argument in favor of impeachment at that forum with a brilliant monologue of one-liners that made John Stewart’s “Daily Show” seem like a Dick Cavett re-run. Declaring that Bush had in five years managed to destroy the U.S. military, U.S. imperialist strategy, the U.S. economy, and any remaining credibility that the New York Times might have once had, he asked the assembled radicals in the audience to “just imagine what else he could accomplish in just two more years in office!”

Read More at Counterpunch

Q&A: Rip Post asks Dave Lindorff 4 questions on impeachment

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By Kagro X

Back in March, I took a look at what little data there was that could test the conventional wisdom that discussion of impeachment was “bad” for Democrats. The data in question was the 2004 election results from Nevada, whose Democratic Party had included in its statewide platform a plank calling for impeachment.

The results, you may recall, were a net gain in seats in the state legislature, and increased Democratic performance in every Congressional District in the state.

Not rock solid proof that impeachment helps Dems at the polls, of course. But a solid data point in refuting the stab-in-the-dark guess — and that’s all it is — that impeachment hurts them.

Bottom line: the “I-word” was in the platform, the people voted, and Dems suffered not at all. And while you could argue that almost nobody pays attention to the platform, and thus the voters were largely unaware of that plank’s existence, that doesn’t save the argument. The claim was that any discussion of impeachment hurts Dems. Here, the best that can be said is that such a discussion didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

Read More at The Next Hurrah

Filed under: Blog, In the News, 2006 Election News, Impeachment Strategy
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By Melanie B. Smith

If the top executive of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society has his way, President Bush will find himself out of office.

“Impeach President Bush,” Jim Winkler said at an Ecumenical Advocacy Days rally in Washington in March.

Winkler was denouncing a fellow United Methodist. Bush, too, is a member of the denomination, as is Vice President Dick Cheney.

Winkler said impeachment is the right response to “an illegal war of aggression.”

Read More at the Decatur Daily

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Source: Center for Constitutional Rights

A new website has been launched by The Center for Constitutional Rights to help citizens organize an impeachment strategy in their state. This is an excellent resource for those of us looking to take action.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, America’s leading institution of constitutional scholarship, has developed a legal case for the impeachment of George W Bush. Now, in collaboration with Melville House Books and progressives across the U.S., they are sponsoring a “National Teach-In” to share their case, what’s at stake, and what impeachment means for every American.

On this site, you can find a teach-in in your neighborhood, town, or city. Or you can sign-up to host a teach-in and bring this important and non-partisan discussion of impeachment to your home, school, church, or community center.

For those interested in hosting a teach-in, an “Action Kit” is available. The kit includes the documentary short HOW TO IMPEACH A PRESIDENT, featuring Center for Constitutional Rights attorneys. Also included are a discussion guide, action strategies, and copies of the Center for Constitutional Rights’ handbook ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST GEORGE W. BUSH.

TAKE ACTION at www.articlesofimpeachment.net

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By Glenn Adams

AUGUSTA, Maine –Democratic State Convention delegates adopted a resolution Saturday calling for impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, but they opted not to include the measure in their party platform.

The strongly worded resolution says the president and vice president have “betrayed their oaths” in their prosecution of the war in Iraq, treatment and detainment of prisoners and use of illegal domestic surveillance.

It urges Congress to investigate the leaders’ actions, “carrying the legal process through to its conclusion in an act of impeachment.” It also calls on the Maine Legislature and the state’s congressional representatives to press for an investigation.

Read More at The Boston Globe

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As prospects grow for a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, and perhaps even the Senate, this November, the idea of impeachment is gaining attention. Yet even as polls show increasing numbers of Americans supporting the idea of removing Bush from office before the end of his term, Democratic Party leaders keep backing away.
This is not simply bad politics. It is cowardly, wrong and dangerous.

Read More at Free-Market News Network

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