By Sherwood Ross

If anyone knows anything about international law it’s Dr. Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and he’s more than a little ticked off at the moment at President Bush. Dr. Boyle’s credentials are little short of amazing.

He was the expert who drafted the U.S. domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 — approved unanimously by both Houses of Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.

Boyle has also served as legal counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, the Blackfoot Nation of Canada, and as Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations.

He has written eight books including “Destroying World Order”(Clarity Press) and “Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law.”

Now he’s written an article with a ring of urgency, saying the House of Representatives “must impeach President Bush for war, lying about war, and threatening more wars.”

The Bush Administration “demonstrates little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, international organizations, and human rights, let alone appreciation of the requirements for maintaining international peace and security,” Boyle asserts.

“What the world has watched instead is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international legal order by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs,” Boyle wrote in “The Long Term View: a Journal of Informed Opinion” published by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover.

Read More at OpEdNews.com

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By David Lindorff

For the second time in two months, a federal court has ruled that the president is in violation of the Constitution. This time it’s a federal court in Detroit that has ruled that President Bush has violated the Fourth Amendment against illegal search and seizure for his order to the National Security Agency to monitor the phone and Internet messages of Americans without bothering to obtain a court order based upon probable cause.

The first time, it was the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in late June that the president had violated the Constitution by asserting he had the power to ignore the Third Geneva Convention on Treatment of Prisoners of War–a treaty formally signed into law by the U.S. and made an integral part of the U.S. Criminal Code.
The important thing about these two rulings–and it is a point that the squeamish mainstream media have shied away from mentioning–is that they both are declaring the president to be a criminal. That is, he has been found in the first case to be in criminal violation of the Constitution, as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and in the second, he has been found to be in violation of U.S. and International Law.

Note that when someone has committed a felony–say a bank robbery or a case of assault and battery or of murder–and when a court has found that person to be guilty of the crime in question, that person is from that moment hence considered a criminal. The case may be appealed to a higher court, but in the meantime, judgment has been rendered, and a penalty assigned.

Read More at the Baltimore Chronicle

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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)

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By CHB Staff

Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University and a recognized expert on constitutional law, says the ruling Thursday by a federal judge in Detroit raises “serious implications for the Bush administration” and indicates that the President “could well have committed a federal crime at least 30 times.”

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

Read More at Capitol Hill Blue

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By Sarah Karush

DETROIT - A federal judge on Thursday struck down

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit is the first judge to rule on the legality of the National Security Agency’s program, which the White House says is a key tool for fighting terrorism that has already stopped attacks.

“Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution,” Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.

Read More at Yahoo! News (AP)

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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.”

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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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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 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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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 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

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The following is text from and ad placed in the New York Times about new revelations of Bush Administration conduct leading to possibly more impeachable offenses. (source: www.ImpeachBush.org)

The growing nation-wide effort to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is emblematic of a larger issue: what kind of country is the United States to become.

Yesterday’s news brought out two explosive pieces of information:

1) Lewis Libby, the indicted chief aide to Dick Cheney, has admitted under oath before a Federal Grand Jury that it was George W. Bush himself who authorized Libby to illegally “leak” classified information to New York Times reporter Judith Miller in July, 2003 in an effort to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson who had publicly stated that “there is nothing to the story” that Saddam Hussein’s government was trying to buy uranium for a nuclear weapons program. Wilson is the husband of Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA operative whose identity was revealed to the media as retaliation for Wilson’s contention that Bush’s assertions about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction were false. The “classified information” that Bush and Cheney authorized Libby to plant in the New York Times turned out to be entirely false.

2) Bush’s Attorney General admitted yesterday that Bush believes that he has the authority to personally authorize the secret wiretapping, without any court order, of any and all conversations and emails between Americans that occur exclusively within the borders of the United States. Earlier it was revealed that Bush set up a massive secret wiretapping operation monitoring a huge number of Americans, but he had asserted that it was only to listen in on conversations of people in the United States who were making international calls and emails.
The fact that Bush has not already had articles of impeachment filed in the House of Representatives is clear evidence that the people must act forcefully as the true guardians of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That is exactly what the ImpeachBush.org movement is doing. When impeachment looked remote, there were still tens of thousands of individuals who tirelessly worked to collect petitions, hold rallies, wrote and called members of Congress and donated so that we could place newspaper ads all across the country.
Today, impeachment is not remote at all. It reflects the majority sentiment. Recent polls show that by 52% to 43% majority the American people favor impeachment if it is proved that Bush lied about the reasons for going to war. A nearly similar majority support impeachment if the President broke Federal wiretapping laws by authorizing the secret wiretapping of Americans without a court order when there is no evidence or inquiry of criminal wrongdoing.
Yesterday’s revelations confirm again that this is a lawless administration. Impeachment is imperative. This is a challenge for every person in this country who has a commitment to the Constitution. The people must continue to act rather than wait for the politicians to lead.
Now that more than 700,000 people have voted for impeachment at http://www.impeachbush.org/ it is urgent that we do everything in our power to make the issue of Bush’s criminal conduct a major issue between now and the November Congressional elections. The newspaper ads are an excellent way to keep the issue of impeachment front and center. We have succeeded in placing more and more ads because of the donations of the people who are committed to this course.
We want to increase the visibility in the weeks ahead with even more newspaper ads. Please continue to show your support by making a generous donation on-line or by learning how you can send a check. This is a grassroots people’s movement. It is historic and it can succeed with your help. Click here to make your contribution.

-All of us at VoteToImpeach/ImpeachBush.org

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source: ImpeachBush.tv

Bush has misled this nation for too long. His aggressive foreign policies and corporate give-aways threaten the well-being of all Americans and of other people around the globe. Those who love America cannot allow the damage from a Bush Presidency to continue any further. His actions are blatantly illegal under International Law and our own Constitution. Now is the time, therefore, to impeach George Bush and high ranking officers in his cabinet.

Read More at ImpeachBush.tv 

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Matthew Rothschild has written an excellent article that argues for impeachment in The Progressive.

George W. Bush and his Administration have been so brazen in violating the law and asserting monarchical powers that we, as American citizens, must use the tool that the Constitution provides to reassert our rights, to reset the system of checks and balances, and to reestablish our democracy. That tool is impeachment.

Read the Full Article at The Progressive

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The Green Party of Nevada City, CA has called for impeachment of President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

“Americans now face a grave conflict. We can either support the policies of George Bush, or the Constitution - but not both. They are mutually exclusive, and we must choose wisely,” said Beth Moore Haines, Nevada County Green Party spokesperson.

Read More at The Coastal Post

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FEBRUARY 21, 2006 - In these highly-charged political times, it is the word that dare not speak its name:  impeachment. Democrats and other opponents of the President, as well as people in the media, are afraid to raise the topic for fear of being called too partisan or extreme.But the startling revelation of the President’s warrantless wiretapping campaign may be the straw that broke the camel’s back: In the halls of Congress and on the front pages of a growing number of mainstream periodicals, impeachment is being discussed more and more openly. And many leading constitutional scholars agree: there has never been so strong a case for impeachment since Richard Nixon.

Read More at Daily Kos

Buy the Book

TAKE ACTION: The Center for Constitutional Rights 

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The Bush Crimes Commission is an international commission of inquiry on crimes against humanity committed by the Bush Administration.

The following is a summary of the Bush Crimes Commission findings for each of the five indictments:

Wars of Aggression

The evidence is overwhelming that the Bush Administration authorized and is conducting a war of aggression against Iraq in violation of international law, including The Nuremberg Principles, Geneva Conventions of 1949, the United Nations Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In doing so, the Bush Administration has committed war crimes
and crimes against humanity.

Torture, Rendition, Illegal Detention and Murder Indictment

There was substantial evidence submitted through testimony and documents that the Bush Administration committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in conducting its “War Against Terror.” It did this by developing and implementing policies and practices that violated international law and international human rights to force information from detainees and to punish those whom it believes may be “enemy combatants.” It has engaged in a systematic process of denials and specious reconfigurations of international and domestic law to justify its actions.

Global Warming

The testimony of scientists and the scientific reports and other documents submitted during the inquiry support a conclusion that the Bush Administration has committed crimes against humanity by its environmental policies and practices. These policies and practices appear to support corporate interests while denying the overwhelming evidence that greenhouse gas emissions are irreversibly damaging the world environment and causing present day injury to people throughout the world.

Global Health including HIV/AIDS and Family Planning

The jurists are still receiving and reviewing voluminous documentation concerning this
indictment. The jurists, therefore, have not reached a preliminary determination on this
indictment and will publish its findings in its final report.

Hurricane Katrina

The evidence of the Bush Administration’s conscious and deliberate failings in preventing the foreseeable devastation, including death toll, caused by Hurricane Katrina, particularly in New Orleans, and its failure to respond efficiently and appropriately after the Hurricane was overwhelming. Its failures constitute crimes against humanity. The record is replete with evidence that the systemic historical racial and class based discrimination suffered by many of those who lost so much as a result of Hurricane Katrina was made worse as a result of the Bush Administration’s conduct.

Conclusion

These preliminary findings will be supplemented and expanded in the final verdict of the Commission.

Respectfully submitted,

Adjoa A. Aiyetoro, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; former Executive Director, National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL)
Dennis Brutus, former prisoner, Robben Island, South Africa, poet, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh
Abdeen Jabara, former President, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Ajamu Sankofa, Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility-NY
Ann Wright, former US diplomat and retired US Army Reserve Colonel

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