'?> mission:impeachable

CONSTITUTION ON FIRE

Mission Control wrote this late at night:

Senate Passes Detainee Bill

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — The Senate approved legislation this evening governing the interrogation and trials of terror suspects, establishing far-reaching new rules in the definition of who may be held and how they should be treated.

The vote, 65-to-34, came after more than 10 hours of often impassioned debate touching on the Constitution, the horrors of Sept. 11 and the nation’s role in the world, but it was also underscored by a measure of politics as Congress prepares to break for the final month of campaigning before closely fought midterm elections.

The legislation sets up rules for the military commissions that will allow the government to prosecute high-level terrorists including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It strips detainees of a habeas corpus right to challenge their detentions in court and broadly defines what kind of treatment of detainees is prosecutable as a war crime.

Read More at The New York Times

DOWNLOAD: Bill Number H.R.6166 for the 109th Congress

Bush Faces Wave of Challenges to Terror Law

The Bush administration yesterday faced a raft of legal challenges to a sweeping new regime for Guantánamo that would deny court oversight to detainees in the war on terror, and would bar prosecution of US personnel for war crimes.

Mr Bush is expected to move within days to sign into law proposals for the treatment and trial before military tribunals of the detainees. The legislation, approved by the senate on Thursday, is a victory for the White House over senate Republicans, who had resisted attempts to relax standards on the treatment of detainees, and depart from standard rules of evidence in their trials.

Read More at Guardian Unlimited, UK

FACT

Subsection 4(b) (26) of section 950v. of HR 6166 - Crimes triable by military commissions - includes the following definition.

“Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct.” (emphasis added)

Response from The Center for Constitutional Rights

“Under this legislation, our clients at Guantánamo and hundreds of others detained by the U.S. around the world may remain locked up for the rest of their lives without ever having a chance to prove their innocence. Congress will be forfeiting one of the founding principles of the democratic tradition, and one of the most basic checks on executive power.

Congress gives the president the power to lock up almost anyone he thinks is a terror threat.

Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman states in the L.A. Times, “The compromise legislation….authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.”

Read “The White House Warden” at the Los Angeles Times

More coverage:

Bush Given Authority To Sexually Torture American Children (Prison Planet)

Legal Residents’ Rights Curbed in Detainee Bill (Boston Globe)

Vermont Council OKs Impeachment Referendum

Mission Control wrote this in the late evening:

source: Times Argus

MONTPELIER, VT — Voters in the city will have a chance in November to voice their opinions on the legality of actions taken by President Bush and Vice President Cheney after the City Council agreed Wednesday to place a referendum on the ballot.

The referendum asks city residents to authorize the city to urge the state’s representative in Congress to call for investigations into Bush and Cheney and move for impeachment if any criminal wrongdoing is found.

Resident Craig Hill has been pushing the issue and said Wednesday that he has collected the 310 signatures necessary to place the question on the ballot.

City councilors approved the wording and the placement pending Hill’s submission of the completed signature sheets by the close of business today.

The referendum is the latest in a nationwide movement by cities, states and counties to call for impeachment. In March, five southern Vermont towns passed similar resolutions, calling on Rep. Bernie Sanders to push for impeachment.

State legislators have also expressed disapproval, and the Democratic State Committee voted in April to urge the U.S. Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

The Democratic Committees of eight Vermont counties have also called for impeachment.

Nevada City Rejects Impeachment

Mission Control wrote this mid-afternoon:

By Josh Singer

Nevada City City Council voted 3-2 Monday night to reject a resolution urging the impeachment of the nation’s president and vice president.

Local residents packed City Hall, many of them to express their support of the resolution, although opinions were mixed. One of the main issues of contention was whether presidential impeachment fell under the purview of city government.

Monday’s vote was among the first contentious ones in a council that saw two incumbents replaced by Barbara Coffman and Sheila Stein in the June election.

Similar resolutions have been passed in 22 other cities, such as Berkeley, Fairfield, Arcada and other parts of the nation, according to Americans for Constitutional Integrity, the group that brought the resolution before the council.

According to Robert Lobell of ACI, “Chronic and substantial incompetence is a legitimate basis for initiating an impeachment investigation.” He cited privatization of forests for logging and mining, depletion of the National Guard and a likely poor response from FEMA during a disaster as local reasons for impeachment.

Read More at The Union 

Impeachment Rally in North Carolina on 9/30

Mission Control wrote this mid-afternoon:

By Gregg Jocoy

Freedom Park in Charlotte, NC will buzz with speeches and music this Saturday starting at 1 PM. The goal of all the music and speeches is nothing less than the permanent removal of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Offering speakers from across the Carolinas and the nation, the rally will call for the impeachment of the President and Vice President based in part on the lies told the Congress and the American people by them in the lead up to the war on Iraq.

Musical acts cover the gamut from individual performers, like Michael Sharpe and Peter Moore to groups like Bellyfull and Hardcore Lounge. Sponsors of the event include the NC, Charlotte and York County (SC) chapters of the Green Party, local branches of Code Pink and NOW, and local activist groups like the Action Center for Justice and the Charlotte Coalition for Peace and Justice.

Read More at The American Chronicle

Continuing the Case for Impeachment

Mission Control wrote this mid-afternoon:

By Elizabeth Holtzman

I want to start with a point I made in my new book, The Impeachment of George W. Bush, about why the framers of the Constitution created the impeachment power.

They were afraid that despite the system of checks and balances, a president could subvert the constitution and threaten our democracy.In other words, the framers anticipated George W. Bush. They knew that sooner or later someone like him–someone who tramples on the rule of law–would appear on the scene. The framers told us what to do about such a president: Impeach him.

Read More at the Huffington Post

As If Bush Owned the World

Mission Control wrote this terribly early in the morning:

By Ron Fullwood

Bush and his warmongering supporters are dangerous for America. Anyone can pick fights, as Bush seems obsessed with doing. The question for America is, are we ready to fight more of Bush’s battles for him? The leaders of the world are lining up against him/us. Only blundering idiots would allow Bush to turn the world into his personal fight club. We’re the ones who are going to end up defending ourselves as we defend against his blundering interference in so many other nation’s affairs. His manufactured mandate supported less by the will of the American people than by his corrupt exercise of the awesome strength of our military and the sacrifices of those who do the fighting and the dying.

That’s why seeking impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney is such an imperative. The ideological battle that we should be waging is against the Bush regime’s hijacking of our country and the crashing of our democracy into the Iraqi desert. Now they want more bodies to fuel their occupations as they plot yet another assault on yet another sovereign nation. It’s clear that Bush won’t pull back from his military slap-fights with eyes closed unless he’s forced to by the American people through the action of our representatives. We have to demand that they step up and hold him accountable, or face removal and censure for their own complicity in the imperious charade.

Read More at OpEdNews.com

Reasons To Impeach Both of Them

Mission Control wrote this in the wee hours:

By Brent Battle

In Wednesday’s O’Colly, an OSU alumnus urged the American populace demand for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Greg Palast, internationally syndicated journalist, reports the 2000 and 2004 elections were manipulated in Bush’s favor. His research can be read at his Web site.

This administration’s controversial efforts are to fight terrorism, they claim.

The Boston Globe reported in April: “Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.” This 3,600-word article is available online also.

Two issues, the once-secret National Security Agency database and U.S. torture, outshine most others.

The New York Times reported in December the president created a “terrorist surveillance program,” and USA Today reported in May the database collecting information is the world’s largest of any kind.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act established a court to oversee all U.S. government wiretaps.

The wiretap program Bush enacted in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks uses “reasonable grounds,” not “probable cause” — the precedent set by the Fourth Amendment. The Bush administration argues it does not need Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s oversight.

Read more at the OSU Daily O’ Collegian 

Senate Bill Would Sanctify Bush

Mission Control wrote this in the early evening:

By Susan Jones

A bill now pending in the Senate would make the Bush administration’s enemy wiretapping program more practical and flexible, removing all doubt about its legality. But that worries some of Bush’s fiercest critics.

According to one anti-Bush group, the bill “would pardon President Bush for breaking the law by illegally wiretapping innocent Americans without warrants.”

MoveOn.org’s political action committee has accused Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) of caving in to pressure when he introduced a bill that “justifies everything the president did.”

The group quotes Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) as saying that Specter’s bill would “immunize officials who have violated federal law by authorizing such illegal activities.”

Read More at CNSNews.com

Pat Buchanan Says to Impeach Over Immigration

Mission Control wrote this in the late afternoon:

source: WorldNetDaily.com

Author Pat Buchanan says President Bush should be impeached for failing to stop the invasion of illegal aliens across the U.S. border with Mexico.

“I think he’s committed an impeachable offense in refusing to enforce the immigration laws and in failing to uphold the Constitution by defending the states against this invasion,” Buchanan told radio talk-show host Curt Smith this weekend on National Public Radio stations in upstate New York.

“When you have 6 million people apprehended on the border and several million got in on your watch – and you have the ability to stop it – I think you’re derelict in your duty,” he said. “And if the president says ‘I can’t do it,’ you need a new president who will do it.”

“This is not Ellis Island,” said Buchanan. “This is an invasion.”

Read More at WorldNetDaily.com

The People are King

Mission Control wrote this late at night:

By John Nichols, The Nation

On Sunday, September 17, I appeared on the National Mall in Washington as part of Camp Democracy’s day-long session on impeachment.

Camp Democracy organizer David Swanson’s timing was, as always, impeccable.

Though it is too little noted by the current guardians of the American experiment — and the media guardians of the American discourse — September 17 is Constitution Day. It was on September 17, 1787, that 39 of the founders signed the U.S. Constitution and took the first formal step on America’s journey as a nation of laws rather than men.,

It is possible, and indeed appropriate, to debate the intentions of the founders on a host of issues.

But there can be no debate about their determination that the document guarantee the most necessary of all democratic protections: the power of impeachment.

Read More at Yahoo News

Wisconsin Rapids May Consider Impeachment

Mission Control wrote this mid-afternoon:

source: Associated Press

The common council plans to vote Tuesday whether allow a nonbinding referendum asking local voters in November whether to impeach President Bush.

Bill Dolan of Wisconsin Rapids said he and Robert Hoch of Arpin collected 921 signatures to get a referendum put on the ballot.

“I thought it was a good cause and I think something has to be done, checked into, to get people aware of the things going on,” Dolan said Sunday.

The question would ask: “Resolved: The U.S. House of Representatives should start an impeachment against President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney now.”

The common council can vote Tuesday to accept or deny the resolution.

“People probably question why this question is on a ballot, but I guess, how else would you get on the ballot except through the local process?” Wisconsin Rapids City Clerk Vern Borth said.

The required number of signatures to get a direct legislative petition to a vote by a town board or city council is 15 percent of the number of votes cast for governor in the municipality during the last election. For Wisconsin Rapids, that number is 896.

Read More at the Duluth News Tribune

Local Coverage (WAOW News)

Lamont Opposes Impeachment

Mission Control wrote this in the wee hours:

An entrepreneurial-minded Ned Lamont stopped by the Christian Science Monitor breakfast in DC today; 30 reporters, including the Hartford Courant’s David Lightman and reps from two of the three broadcast networks, attended.

Lamont’s opening statement was technocratic. He started with “the numbers,” as he as a “business guy” is wont to do. 47M Americans have no health care; there are 63 lobbyists for each member of Congress; there were 6K earmarks on the transportation bill. He said he decided to run to change all that. Lamont: “If you’re a business person, you tend to be a little pragmatic if it’s not working.”

He said he wanted to spent “as little as possible” of his own money during the gen. election campaign, but acknowledged that he’d probably have to write himself a check. He declined to put a figure on his future self-funding. Lamont implied that he would ask DSCC chair Chuck Schumer for help with fundraising. The two meet today in person for the first time.

Read More at The National Journal Hotline

H. Res. 635 Update

Mission Control wrote this in the wee hours:

By Matthew Cardinale

(APN) ATLANTA – US Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ) became the 38th Member of the US Congress officially listed as a supporter of H. Res. 635, a bill which could lead to recommendations to impeach President Bush.

The bill, sponsored by US Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), would create a Select Committee to look into the grounds for impeaching President Bush over misleading the public on the need to go to war; retaliating against public officials who disagree with him; and encouraging torture.

US Rep. Rothman actually had indicated his support since March of 2006, but a clerical error led to his name not being listed until late last week, the Congressman’s Communications Director, Kimberly Allen, told Atlanta Progressive News. This would be a second time a clerical error has occurred related to this bill.

US Rep. Rothman recently pledged his support at a constituent panel on leaving Iraq, “If Not Now, When?”

“The only body that has the power to impeach the president is the House of Representatives. The effort, if I may be so bold, is to take back the House,” US Rep. Rothman said, according to The Bergen Record Newspaper of New Jersey.

“Rothman, building on one audience member’s suggested metaphor, likened the war, and its aim of finding weapons of mass destruction that were never recovered, to an unresolved car theft,” The Bergen Record said.

“Imagine if you will, if the police and prosecutor, they refuse to charge you with a crime,” Rothman said, according to The Bergen Record. “You did it, but they refuse to charge you. What do we do as a society? We replace the police and the prosecutor.”

“This November, you can get a new prosecutor and a new police force and charge with a crime and have a trial… We will hold all those hearings, including one in which we look at whether an impeachable offense occurred,” US Rep. Rothman said, according to The Bergen Record.

Read More at Political Affairs

Candidate Tip-Toeing Around Impeachment

Mission Control wrote this in the wee hours:

By Brendan Scott

Congressional candidate John Hall has shown little restraint in expressing his contempt for the Bush Administration on the campaign trail this year.

Explaining what he would do about it if elected to Congress, however, has proved more difficult for the longtime Democratic activist. In recent months, Hall has been gently tiptoeing around questions about whether he would move to impeach the president if he’s elected as a voice for the mid-Hudson in the U.S. House.

The topic last came up Wednesday — the day after Hall’s primary romp over three other Democrats — as he took part in an online chat with the progressive blog Firedoglake. In the conversation, the party’s new nominee was prodded by a participant to stake out a clear position on the topic, which has become a loyalty test for some Democrats.

“Clarifying your views on impeachment would go a long way to showing that you’re not one of the Lieberman/Harman/Shays/Kelly phony centrists,” the blogger noted, referring to several members of Congress.

Hall replied by professing support for a couple of notable impeachment advocates and saying the president should be investigated. But he stopped short of endorsing impeachment “before hearing evidence.”

Read More at RecordOnline.com 

Back in Business in Michigan

Mission Control wrote this in the wee hours:

source: The Ann Arbor News

ANN ARBOR: A local Web site that sells yard signs calling for President Bush’s impeachment is back up and running after a brief hiatus imposed when Washtenaw County officials learned the site was indirectly supported by county resources.

Read More 

Impeachment Lessons in Vermont

Mission Control wrote this in the wee hours:

By Evan Lehmann

A Newfane (VT) selectman will coach activists visiting the nation’s capital this weekend on how to impeach President Bush.Dan DeWalt, who made national headlines in March by introducing an impeachment resolution in a town meeting, will unveil hints to those wishing to do the same.

DeWalt’s coaching will occur on the National Mall — within sight of the congressional hearing rooms where articles of impeachment would be rendered.

“It’s just like a mentorship for people who want to do this,” said DeWalt, who was invited to participate in “Impeachment Sunday” by the event’s organizers. “I’ll mostly be curious just to see what kind of traffic we’ll be getting from normal people.”

Read More at the Brattleboro Reformer

Texan Works to Impeach Bush

Mission Control wrote this in the wee hours:

By Mike Belt

Goodnow did the same thing 33 years ago in an effort to get Congress to impeach President Nixon because of the Watergate scandal. Nixon ended up resigning instead of facing impeachment.

“I never thought I’d be doing this again,” said Goodnow, of Terlingua, Texas. “Bush makes Nixon look like a Boy Scout.”

Bush should be impeached because of “lies and deceptions” in taking the United States to war in Iraq, Goodnow said. He also says that the Bush administration is breaking the law with its domestic surveillance activities.

Read More at LJWorld.com 

Kennedy Says No Impeachment

Mission Control wrote this in the wee hours:

By Evan Lehmann

WASHINGTON — One of the president’s most tenacious critics, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, said President Bush should not face impeachment.

“I don’t think that’s called for now,” Kennedy said outside his Senate office.

The assessment followed several statements over the last week in which the Massachusetts Democrat has warned that Bush could face an escalating level of accountability after the November elections.

Citing an Intelligence Committee report released last week showing administration officials had incorrectly linked al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, Kennedy alluded to the future by saying America “needs a change in Congress to hold the administration accountable for our national security.”

After Bush spoke on network television on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Kennedy accused the president of exploiting the attack for political purposes. He added: “There will be time to debate this president’s policies in Iraq. Sept. 11 is not that time.”

Democrats have distanced themselves from the notion of impeachment, worrying that it could derail their chances of retaking control of the House, or less likely, the Senate.

Republicans, meanwhile, say impeachment threats are the ultimate measure of Democratic obstructionism and partisanship.

Read More at the Lowell Sun

Signs of Fear at the White House

Mission Control wrote this in the wee hours:

By Dave Lindorff

The Bush administration’s full-court press against the Constitution is on, with the president getting closer to Senate, and possibly full Congressional approval of his warrantless spying program by the National Security Agency, and with a lobbying campaign on to get his program for kangaroo courts and life-time detention without trial for terror “war” detainees approved by Congress.

It’s staggering to see this happening after a federal court just ruled that NSA spying without a show of probable cause is a violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment, and after the US Supreme Court just ruled that Bush was in violation of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of POWs for refusing to treat the detainees at Guantanamo in accordance with US and International Law.

One might think this to be a case of a powerful president just steamrolling the courts and the Congress, but I think it is not a sign of strength, but rather the desperate act of a man who sees impeachment in his future, and who is acting while he can to try to cover up a few of his crimes.

For while the list of this president’s crimes against the Constitution, the Republic and the People of the United States is long and ugly, the truth is that the two areas where he is the most vulnerable to impeachment are precisely the two that he is working so hard now to make go away: the warrantless NSA spying program and the abuse of the detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

This is because the president has already been found, in the first instance by a federal district court judge, and in the second by the full Supreme Court, to be a criminal (if you violate the law, you are by definition a criminal). It’s just that as president he cannot simply be indicted and put on trial. That’s why we have impeachment.

Read More at OpEdNews.com

Impeachment Day at Camp Democracy

Mission Control wrote this in the early evening:

WHO: Elizabeth Holtzman, Michael Avery, Ray McGovern, David Green, John Nichols, Marcus Raskin, Elizabeth De La Vega, Dave Lindorff, David Swanson, Jennifer Van Bergen, Geoff King, David Waldman, Dan DeWalt, Steve Cobble, Anthony St. Martin, Cindy Bogard, Mubarak Awad, Susan Crane, Frank Anderson.

WHAT: Panel discussions, workshops, book signings, concerts.

WHERE: Constitution Avenue and 14th Street NW, Washington, D.C.

WHEN: Sunday, Sept. 17

For a full schedule of events, go to: http://www.campdemocracy.org/schedule

Read Full Press Release

Talking Impeachment in Hawaii

Mission Control wrote this in the early evening:

By Richard Tillotson

WILL you vote to impeach George Bush?” This is an appropriate question to ask all Democratic and Republican candidates running for Ed Case’s seat in Congress. Case himself as well as Rep. Neil Abercrombie and Senators Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka also should have an answer ready. If elected, they may well have to cast a “yea” or “nay” on the issue of impeachment.

National polls show a majority of Americans now favor the Democrats. If Democrats take both houses of Congress in the November election — an outside chance but a real possibility nonetheless — Democrats will run the committees and wield subpoena power. Even if the Democrats take control only of the House, a motion to impeach Bush could well come forward. If it does, how should our representatives vote?

The constitutional description of an impeachable presidential offense is “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” What those “other” crimes and misdemeanors might be is for Congress to decide. Eight years ago, a Republican House voted that having a sexual relationship with a White House intern and lying about it was an impeachable offense. The Senate decided it wasn’t, but the House vote set the height of the bar. It seems ludicrously low compared to what is before us today.

Read More at The Honolulu Star Bulletin

Holtzman on Impeachment

Mission Control wrote this in the early evening:

By Blair Golson

(Congresswoman and Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth) Holtzman, who served in the U.S. House until 1981 and went on to become Brooklyn’s district attorney, co-authored a book this year titled “The Impeachment of George W. Bush,” which lays out a case that the president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors and should be removed from office.

Ms. Holtzman was also a key member of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 during the Nixon impeachment hearings – the same hearings in which Dean, initially a co-conspirator in the Watergate coverup, eventually came forward and cooperated with prosecutors to expose the wrongdoings of the White House.

The youngest woman ever to be elected to the U.S. Congress now practices law in New York City, and Truthdig managing editor Blair Golson interviewed her in advance of her Sept. 13 event with John Dean at UCLA’s Royce Hall. They discussed Bush’s use of signing statements; the congressional abuse of power that was Bill Clinton’s impeachment; and how it will feel to share a stage with the person who was effectively the Alberto Gonzales of his day.

Read More at TruthDig.com

EVENT: Holtzman and John Dean Speak at UCLA (Sept. 13th, Royce Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles)

Economist Calls for Impeachment

Mission Control wrote this in the early evening:

source: www.larouchepub.com

Lyndon LaRouche has called on all patriotic Americans to join him in pressing for the immediate impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. LaRouche issued the call in the immediate aftermath of three developments in recent days:

1. The release of two additional chapters from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on the pre-Iraq war intelligence failures, which Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) correctly identified as a stinging indictment of the President and Vice President for lying the Congress and the American people into a needless and disastrous Iraq war;

2. The airing on ABC-TV of the fraudulent mini-series, “The Path to 9/11,” on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, which were part of a White House-directed propaganda assault against the American and European populations, to soften them up for new wars in Southwest Asia; and,

3. Vice President Dick Cheney’s shameless lies, during an hour-long television interview Sept. 10, 2006 with Tim Russert on “Meet The Press.”

LaRouche declared, “The Administration has lied and lied and lied the United States into a senseless and disastrous war in Iraq. We see a pattern of habitual lying on the part of the President and Vice President. This constitutes more than sufficient grounds for impeachment. I consider,” LaRouche continued, “that the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney is imperative at this time. They have violated their oath of office, and have brought nearly irreparable harm to the United States. The new evidence presented last week by the Senate intelligence panel serves to underscore just how seriously they lied the U.S. into war.

Read More at LaRouchePub.com

Commemorating 9-11 by Impeaching the President

Mission Control wrote this in the early evening:

By David Lindorff

The commemorations of 9-11 are being polluted by participation of President Bush and other administration officials who for five years have shamelessly used the deaths of 3000 people as an excuse for an unremitting assault on the Constitution and for a brutal and illegal war on the innocent and long-suffering people of Iraq.

If we really want to commemorate that terrible day in 2001, we need to focus on the five-year crime spree against the Constitution and the American people that began almost immediately as the buildings fell, and that today has the American Republic teetering on the brink of a totalitarian future. Because it is clear that Bush and his advisors, far from acting to unite the country and protect it from attack, used that horrible tragedy half a decade ago as an excuse to terrorize Congress and the American public, and as an excuse to set the nation on a permanent war footing, so as to aggrandize unchecked power and to usurp the powers of the Congress and the Courts, thus converting the presidency into a dictatorship.

Read More at the Baltimore Chronicle

Bush “Salutes” Constitution

Mission Control wrote this in the late evening:

source: Capitol Hill Blue

The often illegal and un-Constitutional administration of President George W. Bush is not giving up on its program to use the National Security Agency to spy on Americans. The administration Friday asked a federal judge to delay enforcing her order for a halt to the NSA’s warrantless communications surveillance program.

The Justice Department argued that ending the intelligence-gathering program threatens “the gravest of harms to the government and to the American public” and leaves the country “more vulnerable to terrorist attack.”

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley of George Washington University says the government’s argument is a crock and says the court’s decision, if upheld on appeal, could provide grounds for impeachment of the President.

“This ruling is a bad situation that just got worse for the White House,” says Turley. “These crimes could constitute impeachable offenses.”

Turley says the ruling has “serious implications” for Bush and that the President has violated federal law at least 30 times.

Read More at Capitol Hill Blue

VIDEO: Watch Jonathan Turley Comment on MSNBC