Filed under: Blog, Evidence, In the News, Facts: Lies and Deceptions, Karl Rove, Facts: Breaking the Law, GOP, Iraq War Crimes, Cover Up, Oversight/Investigations, Neocon Madness
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by Mick Youther

I know the Democratic leaders in Congress have said that impeachment is “off the table”, but that is one campaign promise that should not be kept. Oversight of the Bush Administration is not enough.

How do you oversee a torture program? How do you oversee “extraordinary renditions” and secret prisons? How do you oversee the destruction of the U.S. Constitution? What is Congress going to do when Bush starts bombing Iran–watch closely?

You don’t oversee these kinds of things. You stop them. That is why the Founding Fathers wrote impeachment into our Constitution.

The power of impeachment was one of the first proposals presented to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The Founding Fathers felt it was important enough to mention it six times in the Constitution and once more in an amendment. They believed the new government needed a strong executive, but having just thrown off the rule of one King, they did not want another one–even an elected one.

Read More at OpEdNews.com

Filed under: Blog, Evidence, In the News, Facts: Lies and Deceptions, Facts: Independent Conclusions, Must Read, Impeachment Strategy, Constitutional Crisis, Facts: Breaking the Law, Founding Fathers
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by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane

While Iran was named a part of President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” in 2002, efforts to ignite a confrontation with Iran date back long before the post-9/11 war on terror. Presently, the Administration is trumpeting claims that Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than the CIA’s own analysis shows and positing Iranian influence in Iraq’s insurgency, but efforts to destabilize Iran have been conducted covertly for years, often using members of Congress or non-government actors in a way reminiscent of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

The motivations for an Iran strike were laid out as far back as 1992. In classified defense planning guidance – written for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney by then-Pentagon staffers I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, World Bank Chief Paul Wolfowitz, and ambassador-nominee to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad – Cheney’s aides called for the United States to assume the position of lone superpower and act preemptively to prevent the emergence of even regional competitors. The draft document was leaked to the New York Times and the Washington Post and caused an uproar among Democrats and many in George H. W. Bush’s Administration.

In September 2000, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) issued a report titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” which espoused similar positions to the 1992 draft and became the basis for the Bush-Cheney Administration’s foreign policy. Libby and Wolfowitz were among the participants in this new report; Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other prominent figures in the Bush administration were PNAC members.

Read More at The Raw Story

More Coverage:

Raw Story’s Iran Timetable

DOWNLOAD: Rebuilding America’s Defenses

Filed under: Blog, Evidence, In the News, Facts: Lies and Deceptions, Facts: Independent Conclusions, Must Read, Facts: Breaking the Law, Iraq War Crimes, Neocon Madness
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By Nathanael

Impeachment is only a political act with limited consequences that bear one’s ability to retain or hold elected office. The convicted Party (such as the President or Judge or Congressperson) of an Impeachment is still liable and subject to Indictment and prosecution for any criminal acts according to Law.

There is no language in the Constitution or the US Code that requires an impeachment proceeding to come before a criminal indictment or prosecution. Any Constitutional Scholar, retired Assistant US Attorney, Supreme Court Justice, Attorney General, Congressperson or any Court stating such prior constraint is in violation of the Constitution and the Law. No one is above the law, not even the President. The Constitution cannot be altered by statute, a legislative act, a bill passed by Congress and signed by the President or an Executive Order. A valid Article V procedure must be accomplished before the Constitution is lawfully modified.

(more…)

Filed under: Blog, Evidence, In the News, Facts: Lies and Deceptions, Facts: Independent Conclusions, Must Read, Impeachment Strategy, Constitutional Crisis, Facts: Breaking the Law, Research/Resources, Iraq War Crimes
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source: The Capital Times, Madison WI

Does it matter that Democrats took charge of the Senate this month?

President Bush seems to think so.

In a letter sent to Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales writes that “the president has determined not to reauthorize the Terrorist Surveillance Program when the current authorization expires.

“Any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” explains the attorney general’s letter.

The court was created by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with the specific intent that it would supervise electronic eavesdropping within the United States. But the Bush administration, which launched its spying program in 2001, had refused to obey the court’s authority.

When it was learned late in 2005 that Bush had repeatedly authorized the monitoring of the phone conversations and e-mails of Americans, the president and his lawyers claimed that the White House did not need to consult with the court before engaging in such surveillance.

With Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter, a somewhat critical but cautious player, was in charge of the Judiciary Committee, the administration showed no inclination to seek proper authorization.

But Specter lost his chairmanship when Democrats took charge of the Senate after the Nov. 7 elections.

With Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, a critic of warrantless wiretapping, now in charge of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and with Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, who proposed censuring the president for failing to obtain proper authorization for his surveillance program, now in charge of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, the White House has suddenly developed a newfound respect for the rule of law.

Filed under: Blog, Evidence, In the News, Constitutional Crisis, Facts: Breaking the Law, Opinion
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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)

Filed under: Blog, Evidence, In the News, Must Read, Constitutional Crisis, Facts: Breaking the Law
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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

Filed under: Blog, In the News, Constitutional Crisis, Facts: Breaking the Law
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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

Filed under: Blog, In the News, Constitutional Crisis, Facts: Breaking the Law
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By Ray McGovern

Yesterday’s ruling by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the US District Court in Detroit against warrantless eavesdropping did not beat around the bush, so to speak. Her strong words would, I imagine, have brought broad smiles to the faces of those who crafted the Constitution – despite the irony that, in that sad time of racial exclusion, they would not have thought to include Judge Taylor in “We, the people.”

The power and simplicity of her words brought immediately to mind another distinguished African-American woman and jurist who rose to the occasion a generation ago during the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon. A member of the House Judiciary Committee that approved articles of impeachment against a president she described as “swollen with power and grown tyrannical,” Congressman Barbara Jordan (D-Texas) addressed her colleagues:

“My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution…. The Constitution charges the president with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Read More at Antiwar.com

More Coverage:

A Win for Spying Opponents

Profile: Anna Diggs Taylor

Judge Finds Wiretap Actions Illegal (NYTimes)

Filed under: Blog, Evidence, In the News, Facts: Independent Conclusions, Constitutional Crisis, Facts: Breaking the Law
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By Byron York

There’s a word you won’t find in the text of Democratic Rep. John Conyers’s new “investigative report” on the Bush administration, “ The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance.” And the word is…impeachment. Yet the 350-page “Constitution in Crisis,” released last week, is, more than anything else, a detailed road map for the impeachment of George W. Bush, ready for use should Democrats win control of the House of Representatives this November. And Conyers, who would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee — the panel that would initiate any impeachment proceedings — is the man who could make it happen.

Read More at The National Review

Get Full Text of “Constitution in Crisis.”

Filed under: Blog, Evidence, Evidence Overview, In the News, Facts: Lies and Deceptions, Facts: Independent Conclusions, Must Read, Impeachment Strategy, Facts: Breaking the Law
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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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