(Source: OpEdNews.com)

Impeachment resources (incomplete):

• After Downing Street, http://www.afterdowningstreet.com Site owner David Swanson is an indefatigable writer/activist for impeachment, peace and holding politicians accountable. Provides hosting space for Fearn’s Impeach for Peace & Justice site, hosts numerous impeachment resources such as resolutions, letter templates, a petition and more.
• Center for Constitutional Rights http://www.articlesofimpeachment.net/ Articles of Impeachment and “How to Impeach a President” video trailer. 
• ImpeachBush.org, http://www.impeachbush.org Mission is to bring visibility to the impeachment movement, lists articles of impeachment against Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Gonzales; major petition drive, ads. 
• Impeach for Peace & Justice, http://www.ifpj.org (In English and Spanish) Provides tools and information. 
• Impeach For Peace http://www.impeachforpeace.org, is a national effort maintained by the Minnesota chapter of World Can’t Wait. Features the “Do It Yourself Impeachment Kit.”
• ImpeachPac, http://www.impeachpac.com Impeachment news and endorsements of pro-impeachment candidates, “A Citizen’s Guide to Impeachment,” (In English and Spanish), sample text for resolutions, sample letters, talking points, organizing tips.
• Progressive Democrats of America Impeachment Working Group http://www.pdamerica.org/impeach-wg.php
• World Can’t Wait, http://www.worldcantwait.org Mission is to remove Bush from office

More Ways to Take Action

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By Kathlyn Stone

Daniel Fearn is hoping you’ll hear about the “Blackout of National Shame” and start turning your lights off at home every Wednesday from 9 to 9:30 p.m. What’s that about?

The light’s out protest is the latest of many ideas Minneapolis resident Fearn has presented, hoping one will be the tipping point that ignites people to actively support impeachment. Fearn is aiming his message at anyone dissatisfied with the hard right turn the country has made under President George W. Bush.

Fearn, a former Marine sergeant, is an impassioned proponent of impeaching Bush, and one of a growing number of dedicated impeachment activists taking their work to the national stage. The impeachment coordinator for Veterans For Peace Chapter #27 in the Twin Cities, Fern is also hoping the national VFP leadership will adopt his “Impeach for Peace and Justice” campaign on a national scale. In the meantime, the campaign and others like it are generating intense interest around the country.

Like many progressives, Fearn is fed up with the war, the Patriot Act and domestic spying, torture, tax breaks for the wealthy, lobbyists’ influence over legislators, conservatives’ stranglehold on all branches of government, and with Bush’s consolidation of power. But instead of fighting on numerous fronts, Fearn believes the country can only change course through impeachment.

He grew up in a household headed by an “Eisenhower Republican,” says Fearn. “Eisenhower coined the term Military Industrial Complex, and warned us to watch out. At that time it was assumed people had the power.”

Fearn believes that people can take their power back through impeachment. “We have to save ourselves,” he wrote on the IFPJ web site. “Stop deluding yourself that there is any other solution to our Bush and Cheney problems besides impeachment. Impeachment is the only way.”

Read More at OpEdNews.com

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Source: Bill of Rights Defense Committe

The President’s warrantless wiretapping program violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition against wiretapping Americans without a warrant, which must be obtained by showing a judge there is a valid reason for the search. Yet, instead of holding the president accountable, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter has teamed up with the White House to draft S. 2453 (nicknamed the “Cheney-Specter bill”), which would legalize the illegal wiretapping program and any other current and future secret programs the administration wants to use to spy on Americans—without ever having to secure a single warrant.

If Specter’s Senate Judiciary Committee approves S. 2453 (as soon as this Thursday, July 20), it will head to the Senate for a floor vote. The bill would make the Fourth Amendment almost completely disappear. We must act now!

Read More at BORDC.com about why S. 2453 is bad for Americans.

Research This Bill at The Library of Congress

Read Full Text of Legislation

PLEASE CALL OR VISIT YOUR SENATORS TODAY! Use the tool in the right-hand column to lookup your Senators. Or go here. Or, send a fax here. But, phone calls and personal visits are the best. THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE IS EXPECTED TO PASS THIS BILL TOMORROW — THURSDAY JULY 27TH!!

It takes only a few minutes to participate and protect the Fourth Amendment. You make the difference! There are many tools on this site, find out what else you can do to help!

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By John Conyers, Jr.

I wanted to update you on the lawsuit I have filed against George W. Bush and members of his administration, referred to in legal parlance as Conyers v. Bush.

You are likely familiar with a number of steps I have taken to challenge the legality and constitutional grounds of the Administration’s actions. From the lead up to Iraq, to the Downing Street Minutes, to the outing of a CIA agent, to warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens, I have called loudly for the Bush White
House to explain itself.

Donate Now and Help Me Fight Back and Work Toward a New Democratic Majority.

I decided to file suit against the President in Federal Court in Michigan, along with 11 Senior Democratic Members of Congress. This suit was necessary because of a clear violation of the constitution. When the President signed the Deficit Reduction Act (which “reduced” the deficit by cutting taxes, health care benefits, and student loans), he signed into law a bill that had not passed the House and Senate. A different version of the bill passed each house of Congress with a multi-billion dollar difference in funding for life-saving medical equipment.

Anyone who ever watched Schoolhouse Rock knows this to be a problem.

Given the stakes involved I felt it was imperative to aggressively take this fight to the courts. The President’s lawyers tried to get the bill dismissed, but late last week I responded with legal filings that stand up for the rule of law and the Constitution and hope to bring the President, and our United States government, back under the rule of law.

I wanted to email you this news today to update you on our efforts and to thank you for your help and support. Thank you also for your continued dedication to a better democracy.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.

Contact Information
website: http://www.johnconyers.com/
Conyers for Congress
P.O. Box 17204
Alexandria, Virginia 17204
Phone: 313-438-2004

Paid For And Authorized By Conyers for Congress
Michael J. Remington, Treasurer
P.O. Box 17204
Alexandria, Virginia 22302

Filed under: Blog, In the News, politicsNews, Impeachment Strategy, Who to Support
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By Robert Pear

The (ABA, or American Bar Association) panel said the use of signing statements in this way was “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers.” From the dawn of the Republic, it said, presidents have generally understood that, in the words of George Washington, a president “must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto.”

If the president deems a bill unconstitutional, he can veto it, the panel said, but “signing statements should not be a substitute for a presidential veto.”

Read More at The New York Times

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(AP) Associated Press

PUTNEY, Vt. –Vermont’s lone representative in the U.S. House is discouraging supporters from seeking impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

Sanders, an independent, said activists’ time would be better spent trying to elect him to the U.S. Senate and Democratic state Sen. Peter Welch to the seat he now holds.

Read More at the Boston Globe

Oh Bernie Sanders … puh-lease! Our time is better spent electing you? Perhaps on the day you stop pandering to the two-party establishment and stand by the oath you took to uphold the laws of the Constitution. This is bigger than politics, or maybe we should say, your political career. In the end, the American people will hold those who have committed crimes responsible … with your help or not. Step aside (or we will put you aside) and let the people do the work. If Congress continually refuses to respond, bet that we will.

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By Ben Broeren

“The British called impeachment ‘the most powerful weapon in the political armory, short of civil war,’” said Buzz Davis, a member of Veterans for Peace. “But I do not want civil war.”

Davis, along with David Schwartz, a UW law professor and member of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Ben Manski, a fellow with the Liberty Tree Foundation, presented arguments for impeachment of President Bush to a crowd of nearly 120 people Wednesday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The event was part of a national network of teach-ins organized by the center.

“Impeachment is the most patriotic thing we can do,” said Manski. “It’s a debate over executive power versus popular power. We are struggling over the soul of a nation.”

In a video, the Center for Constitutional Rights proposed four articles of impeachment: warrantless surveillance and wiretaps, using torture and denying due process to detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, misleading Congress into the Iraq war, and violating the separation of powers.

Schwartz said impeachment would begin if the U.S. House of Representatives found the articles adequate reason to investigate the president.

Read More at The Capital Times

TAKE ACTION: This event is part of a larger organized effort: A National Teach-In. Action Kits are available to those who want to host a Teach-In.

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By Caroline Drees

“This seems like the perfect opportunity for the United States to bang the drum and say to people, ‘Look, you need to wake up and smell the coffee,’” said James Carafano, a security expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which is considered close to the administration.

“The people who are causing evil in the Middle East are Syria, Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas. These people are just as bad as al Qaeda and we’ve got to stand together and deal with this if we want peace in the Middle East,” he said.

Read More at The Star/Malaysia

Conflict Round Up:

Breaking News: 2 More Children Bombed in Nazareth

Up to 45% of War Casulties are Children

Today is the Deadliest Day Since Hostilities Began

70 Killed on Deadliest Day of the Conflict

US Slow to Evacuate Americans

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(Editor’s Note: Today, July 19, 2006, marks the first National Impeachment Day sponsored by the Center for Constitutional Rights to raise awareness about impeachment, offer citizens a strategy to impeachment and organize to stop the assault on the American people and her constitutions.)

By Dave Lindorff

Happy Impeachment Day!

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been playing a leading role in battling the Bush administration’s attacks on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and international law, has declared today to be Impeachment Day, with teach-ins scheduled around the country.

Seems like a great occasion to offer up 10 reasons for impeaching the president, as presented in Barbara Olshansky’s and my new book The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office.

The case for impeachment just grew much stronger, with the US Supreme Court’s powerful decision in Hamdan v Rumsfeld. In that decision, the justices didn’t simply say that the President was wrong and in violation of U.S. and the international law in arbitrarily claiming that the Guantanamo detainees were not subject to the Geneva Convention on Treatment of Prisoners of War. The five-justice majority, which included conservative Anthony Kennedy, declared the President’s bogus claim to have “special powers” as commander in chief in “time of war” to be just that–bogus.

What has been missed in almost all the mainstream media coverage of this important ruling is that this slap-down of Bush’s justification for his Guantanamo decision also undermines his justification for many other of his constitutional violations.

Read More at OpEdNews.com

TAKE ACTION: Join the fight at ArticlesOfImpeachment.net

See an excerpt from “How to Impeach a President” (3 mins.)

Filed under: Blog, Evidence, Evidence Overview, In the News, Take Action, Video, Impeachment Strategy, Who to Support
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By Shanna McCord

SANTA CRUZ — City residents unhappy with the way President George W. Bush is leading the country may have the opportunity to vote for his impeachment in November.

Such a vote, which a group of community activists is seeking to put on the Santa Cruz ballot Nov. 7, would do nothing to actually remove the president from office. Instead, supporters say it would be something more than an opinion poll that would send a message to Washington, D.C.

“He’s has broken so many laws, and he doesn’t seem to take the laws seriously,” said Sherry Conable, a member of Santa Cruz Peace Coalition, one of the local groups organizing the ballot initiative. “He’s spied on American people without authorization; he’s ignored the Geneva Conventions and the outting of Valerie Plame — all of these things are illegal.”

Conable and others are asking the City Council to put a measure on the November ballot that calls for Congress to begin an immediate investigation into alleged impeachable offenses by the president.

Similar measures are already slated for ballots in Berkeley and communities in Wisconsin and Vermont.

Read More at the Santa Cruz Sentinel

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Editorial, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Perhaps the most notorious example, cited by several speakers, was last year’s legislation that prohibited the White House and all its branches from using torture in interrogating detainees. Guided by the moral authority of Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured himself as a POW in North Vietnam, Congress resisted Vice President Dick Cheney’s cold-blooded advocacy of allowing the torture of prisoners.

In the face of this opposition, President Bush finally came around to the decent position. But no sooner had the applause faded than he signed the legislation with a statement that suggests he will do what he likes.

The president — any president — takes an oath to uphold the Constitution, and signing statements concerning legislation a president deems unconstitutional betray that obligation. This is despite the fact that a constitutionally approved remedy for suspect legislation is readily at hand — the presidential veto. The extraordinary thing about Mr. Bush is that he has never exercised the veto. Not once.

President Bush has made much of his desire for judges who will respect the law and the Constitution — and yet he doesn’t do it himself. Indeed, those future historians will have much to consider about these times, and part of that may be not only how Americans lost their sense of well-being after 9/11 but also how a president used those attacks to become more like an emperor.

Read More at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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By Paul Joseph Watson

Republican Congressman Ron Paul says President Bush has presided over a doctrine of violating the Constitution at every turn and that he should be impeached - but that likely Democratic efforts to do so will be in the interests of playing politics and not the health of the nation.

During an interview with Alex Jones on the GCN Radio network, Paul outlined the likely scenario as to how impeachment proceedings would unfold.

“I’d be surprised if they win both - I think they’re going to win one body and if they win the House right now they do not say they would have an impeachment but I think the way that place operates I think they probably will make every effort,” said Paul.

“If they happened to have a ten or fifteen vote margin that would be a political thing - it would be payback time.”

Paul said that Bush should be impeached not under the umbrella of partisan vengeance but for ceaselessly breaking the laws of the land.

Read More at Prison Planet

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By Ron Jacobs

If George Bush were to be impeached, would it make any difference? Whenever I receive emails or mass mailings that bring up the topic of Bush’s impeachment, that is the question I asked. So, it was with some curiosity that I began reading the book A Case for Impeachment, by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky (Thomas Dunne Books 2006). The process of impeachment has always interested me, at least when it comes to our nation’s presidents and, if any president deserved to face some kind of consequences for what he and his cronies have done to this country, George Bush is certainly first in line.

The complicity of the Congress and the courts proves that the attack on the Constitution is being waged from all three divisions of the US government. Impeaching Bush and Cheney would not end the assault, but it would strike a mighty blow. Like the Hydra of Herculean legend, the beast of despotism has but one essential head and, when that head is destroyed, the Hydra will be, too. The White House is that essential head.

Impeachment will not solve the many problems besetting this too-comfortable nation, but it can begin the cure. For those who consider this to be a worthy project, Lindorff and Olshansky’s book is a necessary read.

Read More at CounterPunch

BUY THIS BOOK!

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By Andy Rosen

WESTMINSTER, VT — Efforts to impeach President George W. Bush remain active in Windham County.A local man, Ben Mitchell, is circulating a petition in hopes of holding a town vote calling for Bush’s impeachment.

At the same time, organizers are planning a busy month, which includes a teach-in about impeachment in Brattleboro on July 19. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan will be in town to talk about impeachment on July 30.

Sheehan became a prominent critic of American policy in Iraq after her son, Casey Sheehan, was killed in fighting there. She gained national attention last August for an extended demonstration outside of the president’s Texas ranch.

Mitchell said he hopes to have residents of Westminster vote on a resolution similar to those which passed around the county at town meeting this March.

It calls on state and federal representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush because of his actions in leading the country to war in Iraq.

Bush, according to the resolution, misled the public about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the connection between Saddam Hussein’s government and al-Qaida. It also questions interrogation techniques used for terror suspects and the use of domestic surveillance.

He said he doesn’t think he’ll have a problem rounding up 130 signatures, enough to get the impeachment measure on a ballot, and believes voters will approve it.

He has about 30 signatures now, but said it’s only a matter of time.

Read More at the Brattleboro Reformer

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By Nanci G. Hutson

WASHINGTON, Conn. — As American citizens by choice, Rita and Paul Frenkel are adamant about protecting democratic ideals, particularly free speech, which encourages debate on the conduct of government and its leaders.

To that end, they are part of a group urging town leaders to schedule a special town meeting where residents can debate and vote on a resolution to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Not everyone, though, is eager to have the local municipality become embroiled in a political debate about national policy.

“A town meeting is not the format for this particular type of issue. I’m against it,'’ said Peg Addicks, noting the Gunn Memorial Library would be a more appropriate venue.

Addicks said she has her share of complaints about some of Bush’s decision making and his stand on the war, she does not agree they are impeachable offenses. Even if they were, Addicks said, Town Hall is not the proper forum to address such a debate.

On June 15, a group of people who have informally titled themselves We the People, submitted a petition asking the Board of Selectmen to schedule a special town meeting to address the impeachment resolution.

Read more at Newtimeslive.com

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By Carolyn Jones, San Francisco Chronicle

With resolutions and proclamations, left-leaning cities and counties across the United States have started a drumbeat calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Now Berkeley has taken it one step further.

With overwhelming support from Berkeley residents, the Berkeley City Council unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday night to be the first jurisdiction in the United States to let the public vote for the president’s impeachment. The measure will appear on the Nov. 7 ballot, at a cost of about $10,000.

The measure says the administration violated the Constitution with illegal domestic spying, justified the Iraq war with fraudulent claims and illegally tortured citizens. San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz and dozens of other cities have already passed council resolutions urging impeachment, but none has gone as far as Berkeley.

Voters will be asked to vote yes or no on a measure that will read, “Shall the City of Berkeley call upon the United States House of Representatives to initiate proceedings for the impeachment and removal from office of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney, call upon the California State Legislature to submit a Resolution in support of impeachment to the United States House of Representatives, and establish a Temporary Task Force on Impeachment?”

Read More at SFGate.com

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You won’t find this kind of coverage in the American Mainstream Media:

Largely missed in all the coverage of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case was the establishment by the court majority that all Bush administration claims to the contrary, the Geneva Convention rules regarding captured prisoners apply to the captives taken not only in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in the so-called War on Terror.

What has been largely missed is the clear point that the Supreme Court has thus now declared that for the past five years, Bush and his gang of war-mongers, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State and former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, former Attorney General Donald Rumsfeld and current Attorney General and former White House Chief Counsel Alberto Gonzales, and many others in the administration, have been guilty of violating the Third Convention on treatment of prisoners of war. They are also, therefore, in violation of federal law, which back in 1996 adopted that convention as part of the U.S. criminal code.

In other words, the whole top administration, from Commander in Chief George W. Bush on down, is guilty of war crimes. The punishment for committing war crimes ranges from a lengthy jail sentence to, in the event the crimes in question caused the death of any prisoners being held, to death.

Read More at uruknet.info

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