Rule of Law? What Rule of Law?

Big news. Last night, Rep. Dennis Kucinich presented articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. Thirty-five counts in all. Big, big news...

Except it's not. Flipping through the channels this morning, I saw nothing about this. As far as the mainstream media is concerned, it never happened. We watch crime after crime after crime revealed, but holding the criminal accountable is completely out of the question.

The Democratic leadership likewise looks the other way, declaring impeachment "off the table" for political reasons. Far from holding the administration accountable for their undeniable crimes, the media would rather pretend they don't exist and cover the horse race of the election, while congressional leadership pretends that hearings without consequences and empty expressions of outrage are punishment enough. The truth is, that's not punishment at all. Bush and the rest of the bloodsoaked neocon crew, with shreds of the Constitution still hanging from their fingers, are going to get a stern talking-to, believe you me Buster and no two ways about it. They won't avoid the wagging congressional finger, the Harry Reid letter of miffedness, the Nancy Pelosi statement of irk, but any actual lasting consequence for their actions is completely out of the question. At this point, it could be revealed that Bush and Cheney have Iraqi children for breakfast every morning and all that would happen would be that they receive a letter respectfully asking them to stop -- please, if they feel like it.

Although not criminal in any legal sense, one issue where the Bush administration's moral criminality is most apparent is on the 21st Century GI Bill. Bush and Cheney are constantly hiding behind soldiers and veterans, constantly telling us that disagreeing with their stupid and pointless war in Iraq is somehow abandoning the troops. Bush is the military, any criticism of Bush is magically transformed into "not supporting the troops."

Meanwhile, Bush does absolutely jack for soldiers in the field and even less for those who come home. Bush and Cheney can't be bothered with funerals -- in fact, for a while there, they'd rather pretend there were no casualties at all, barring any photos of returning caskets. For the Bush administration, war is like crime -- neither has any consequence at all. Soldiers are pawns in every situation; when war crimes are ordered, the soldiers who carried out the orders are convicted -- those giving the orders go on talking head shows to be asked polite questions. If they can't fight anymore, they're warehoused in moldy VA hospitals. If veterans make up a significant percentage of the homeless, then that's just too bad -- there's nothing anyone can do. If the Army is experiencing an epidemic of suicides, prepare a press release about all the stuff you're going to to do address the problem -- then prepare a nearly identical one for next year when the token measures you implemented did absolutely nothing to address the problem. Do as little as you can get away with -- and, with a weak-kneed opposition party leadership, that's a pretty much limitless category -- and demand everything of them. Sacrifice is, after all, a one way street, leading in the opposite direction of the White House. The administration proposes, but the soldier disposes. And all the lost and ruined lives the White House leaves in their wake are irrelevant. It's the cost of freedom and it's a cost that someone other than the neocons pay.

"The day will come when the mission he served has been completed and the fighting is over, and freedom and security have prevailed," President Bush said in giving a posthumous Medal of Honor to Private First Class Ross Andrew McGinnis. "America will never forget those who came forward to bear the battle. America will always honor the name of this brave soldier who gave all for his country, and was taken to rest at age 19."

Yeah, about that...

Army Times:

The father of the nation’s latest Medal of Honor recipient has publicly called for President Bush to endorse a veterans’ education benefits bill being negotiated in Congress.

“I feel there is someone out there more important than [my wife] Romayne and I, and that is the troops who are still active,” Tom McGinnis said as he thanked family and friends for their support. “It’s important that we show them our appreciation … so that they are reminded that they are appreciated and will be welcomed when they come home.”

[...]

Spc. Ross McGinnis used his body to smother a grenade that had been thrown into his Humvee while on patrol Dec. 4, 2006, in Adhamiyah. Ross McGinnis, 19, was killed in the blast, but his actions saved the lives of the other four soldiers in the truck.

"I could talk about it to my friends all I want,” McGinnis said. “What good is that going to do? If I didn’t do it when I was down there at the Pentagon or the White House, one of the two, when will I ever have the chance to make an impact? I did what I felt was right, whether it was right or not."

The provision "covers the full cost of tuition and fees at any four-year public college or university and provides a monthly living allowance and an annual payment to cover books and supplies." Bush has promised to veto it. Remember, we expect everything from the soldier and nothing from Bush. That's the way things work these days.

The good news is that the 21st Century GI Bill is extremely popular. About 80% of Americans say that veterans are getting a raw deal under the old GI BIll and about 90% think we should update it.

But the Bush administration is joined by John McCain in opposing the bill, saying it would provide an incentive for troops to leave the service and go to college. It's a stupid argument -- what incentive is there to enlist in the first place? What Bush and McCain seem to envision is a military where people enlist and nearly 100% make it their career. It's not an extremely realistic vision, but visions rarely are. You'll notice that Bush didn't make the military his career, but walking the walk and talking the talk are two different things.

Of course, it looks like a veto would be overridden. An override is an almost sure bet in the Senate and a good bet in the House. But Bush, who's established long ago that he's above the law, could conceivably ignore the override. He's used "signing statements" as an unconstitutional stealth veto, which allows him to interpret the law any way he wants to. Bush could sign the 21st Century GI BIll into law and add, "Yeah, but we don't have to do any of that."

And then what would happen?

The wagging congressional finger, the Harry Reid letter of miffedness, the Nancy Pelosi statement of irk. Break the law all you want, Mr. President, but don't expect to get away without a lecture you can go ahead and ignore. The President of the United States has become a lawless position, with no danger of ever paying any price for the office's crimes. Nancy and Harry have seen to that.

Until there's some sort of consequence for the crimes Bush has committed, he has no incentive to ever obey the law. Token resistance from the lawmaking body makes sure of that. Future executives will be able to point to the Bush administration and say there's no such thing as an impeachable offense -- that precedent will have been established by Pelosi and Reid.

So cheer on legislation that Bush doesn't want. Just don't expect him to obey those laws or to implement their requirements. There's no reason him to.

Well, other than the rule of law, which has been allowed to degenerate into a quaint and ancient pretense. The justice and oversight muscle, unused, has been allowed to atrophy.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Bush; Cheney; White House; neocon; veterans; war; Dennis Kucinich; law; crime; Constitution; impeachment; Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have established that there's no such thing as an impeachable offense

The Campaign for Change is Broader than You Think

During an election year, we tend to follow the horserace. This year, maybe more than any other, the people want change and there is no incumbent. You could argue that the race is anyone's to win or lose. There's some optimism, some pessimism, some healthy skepticism, and a near universal agreement that the future really couldn't be any worse than our present. At least, in the leadership category.

So, in our excitement and trepidation, we look toward 2009 and treat this year as merely the road we take to get there. But this road is twelve months long and we still have to travel it. On our way to 2009, we have to live in 2008.

It's easy in our interest with the future and our fixation on change to ignore the present and the reason for that fixation. The reason we've fixated on tomorrow is that we don't like today. And the King of this Status Quo is George W. Bush.

So, we're yanked back into the present, which we really shouldn't be ignoring anyway, with an op-ed in the Washington Post by George McGovern titled Why I Believe Bush Must Go (Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse).

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.

Today I have made a different choice.

McGovern couches his argument squarely in the occupation of Iraq and the lies that brought us here, but he doesn't put all his eggs in one basket. "Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses," he writes. "They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly 'high crimes and misdemeanors,' to use the constitutional standard."

In fact, when McGovern argues that Bush and Cheney have committed many impeachable offenses, he's absolutely right. When it comes to reasons to impeach this president and vice president, you don't have to look far for a smorgasborg of reasons. Three years ago, Peter Dizikes wrote a piece for Salon back in 2005 that listed "34 scandals from the first four years of George W. Bush's presidency -- every one of them worse than Whitewater." With the passage of time, you can add more.

It's actually a little instructive to read Dizikes' piece -- there are literally so many abuses that revisiting them reminds you of ones you've forgotten. There are so many, you can't keep them all in the same head. It's like a grocery list; you have to write it all down or you're sure to forget something. You'd think that many would be enough.

It's not. At least, not for this Congress. "Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment," McGovern says. "The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising."

In other words, if the Executive branch doesn't care about the Constitution, neither does the Legislative. On the left, there's little argument as to whether or not Bush has committed crimes. I've always argued that Bush's warrentless wiretapping is the best case, since it had been ruled illegal. Doing something that's illegal is generally and formally referred to as "committing a crime." Seems pretty clear to me.

It also seems pretty clear to me that investigating a crime -- and, perhaps, following up with an indictment -- isn't a optional course of action for government. If you know a crime has been committed, you're pretty much bound to do something about it -- no matter how high the office the lawbreaker holds.

Yet, the arguments against impeachment are entirely political. Legal arguments are totally absent, since there are none. Before the Democrats even came into power, WaPo reported, "[Democratic spokesman Brendan] Daly said Pelosi never considered impeachment a priority. Republicans 'are in such desperate shape,' he said, 'we don't want to give them anything to grab on to.' He said Conyers agrees with Pelosi's thinking."

So let me get this straight -- we couldn't impeach Bush in the Republican Congress because they were so strong and it wouldn't go anywhere. But now that the dems are in control, we can't impeach because the GOP is so weak?

I'm sorry, but is that supposed to make a damned bit of sense?

Besides, that's not a legal argument. It's a political argument that kicks justice aside in favor of expediency. Yes, impeachment is a political process, but it's also a duty. McGovern quotes Elizabeth Holtzman, who was a key player in the move to impeach Nixon. "[I]t wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws -- that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . " Holtzman wrote two years ago. "A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors."

When both the Executive and the Legislative branches ignore the Constitution, it might as well not exist. And when the Legislative ignores the abuses by the Executive, the Executive rules by fiat. What Bush says goes, like a King, and he rules by proclamation, not by legislation. Not only is Congress ignoring their duty, but they're complicit in Bush's crimes by allowing them. Sure, there are investigations, but when the only consequence likely to come as a result of them are the convictions of peons like Scooter Libby and the wagging congressional finger, there's no reason for Bush to care. Investigations without consequences are a pointless waste of time and political theater. It's like a Stalinist show trial in reverse where, instead of being found guilty beforehand, the accused is always found innocent. Or, at least, "innocent enough" to get away with it.

"I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century," McGovern writes. "This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin."

Sadly, he won't with today's leadership. Not only should we be watching that presidential horserace, but the congressional one, as well. If we can barely wait until Bush is gone, we should feel the same way about the leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. We need a new president, new speaker, and new majority leader. Not only does Bush suck, but all the leadership sucks.

And that should also be an issue in this campaign.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Bush; crime; scandal; Cheney; On the question of impeachment, someone explain the difference between a Republican and Democratic Congress -- because it's not immediately apparent to me

The Road to Impeachment

There are times when you have to think like a politician. And it says a lot about our system that these thoughts are generally unpleasant. In a world where a large percentage of political players are self-interested and more than a little corrupt, the "art of compromise" becomes the "art of compromise with real scum."

Today, the Congress will begin debating a FISA bill that includes immunity for telecommunications companies. When Bush asked these telcoms to participate in warrantless wiretapping, he was asking them to break the law. The fact that the White House is insisting on the immunity is contrary to their claims that the program was entirely legal. If the telcoms are golden, there's no reason for the immunity.

There's some question as to whether or not they'll get the cover. Sen. Russ Feingold writes:

Unfortunately, the bill we are going to be considering is the one reported out by the Senate Intelligence Committee in October, S. 2248. It did not have to be this way. Thirteen Senators joined me last week in asking the Majority Leader to instead bring up a bill that includes the changes approved by the Judiciary Committee last month. That bill, while not perfect by any means, was the product of an open process and heeded the advice of many experts and advocates to provide greater protection for the international communications of innocent Americans. And, unlike the Intelligence Committee bill, the Judiciary bill does not provide automatic, retroactive immunity for companies alleged to have cooperated with the administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

Whether the bill Feingold and company want to advance is the one that will go forward is an open question. And there's more than one reason to think it won't be -- because there's more than one reason why many want to give the telcoms immunity. While no one will say it, investigating the legality of the warrantless wiretap program would be much more difficult without the honest testimony of telcom execs. And those executives aren't very damned likely to be honest if that testimony amounts to the admission to a crime.

No one will say it openly for more than one reason -- it's a cynical plan and it would be stupid to reveal that hand if you were holding it. You can always grant immunity to individuals later, but it's not a 100% guarantee against prosecution and lawsuits. All that would mean would be that their own testimony couldn't be used as evidence. Giving them blanket immunity paves the way for them to speak openly.

I have no proof, of course, that anyone's thinking this way -- although it's clear that Feingold isn't one of them. But it's easy to look at the immunity and see a sell out, which it may not be for all voting in favor.

No matter which bill goes through -- with or without immunity -- the push for impeachment goes on. And the best case for impeachment may be warrantless wiretapping. Not only is the wiretapping illegal, but it's been proven illegal in court -- it is a clear crime. In pushing to open the hearings called for in Dennis Kucinich's impeachment resolution, Reps. Robert Wexler, Luis Gutierrez, and Tammy Baldwin write:

On November 7, the House of Representatives voted to send a resolution of impeachment of Vice President Cheney to the Judiciary Committee. As Members of the House Judiciary Committee, we strongly believe these important hearings should begin.

The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.

Those looking to open hearings on Cheney need leverage. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's wrongheaded opposition to impeachment seems immovable. Writes analyst John Nichols, "Though Conyers was a leader in suggesting during the last Congress that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney had committed impeachable offenses, he has been under pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to keep constitutional remedies for executive excesses 'off the table' in this Congress."

"There is no question that Conyers, who voted to keep open the impeachment debate on Nov. 7, has been looking for a way to explore the charges against Cheney," Nichols explains. Exploring FISA abuses may be a way to bring unavoidable charges not only in Cheney's impeachment, but in President Bush's.

That said, I'm with Feingold. I don't think telcoms -- or anyone else, for that matter -- should be excused for lawbreaking just because the White House asked them to commit the crime. The Oval Office is a powerful player, sure. But so is the boardroom of AT&T. The Bush administration might be able to strong-arm someone like you or me into lawbreaking, but the board of a major telcom?

I have grave doubts.

And, for myself, those doubts are enough to make me assume that any assistance they gave bushies in wiretapping was pretty much voluntary. If they did it, they did it because they thought it was a good idea. And they did it knowing it was illegal.

If giving telcoms immunity leads to impeachment, I won't complain about the impeachment. But I won't argue that the ends justified the means. If this is the avenue we take to impeachment, it won't be the avenue to justice. It'll be only partial justice. We'll be punishing one crime, while excusing another. The President and the Vice President are temporary powers -- the telcoms will still be around long after those two are gone.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; law; FISA; wiretaps; Bush; Cheney; Pelosi; Robert Wexler; Luis Gutierrez; Tammy Baldwin; Dennis Kucinich; John Conyers; Impeachment is a tool of justice, not justice in itself

Taking Impeachment Off the Table

Once again, I find myself all worked up over a political issue with no one to yell at. Like everyone else, I've got one House member. Unlike most, mine pretty much rocks. Not only did Rep. Tammy Baldwin vote to debate the impeachment of Dick Cheney, but she was a cosponsor of the resolution introduced by Dennis Kucinich yesterday.

I'll send her my support, but it'd be more entertaining and emotionally satisfying to fire off an email that contains the phrase "what the Hell is wrong with you?" to a holdout congress critter. Oh well, I guess I'll have to settle for good government.

The general feeling so far is that the Cheney impeachment will be buried in committee and never again see the light of day. It's hard to see what the majority's reasoning was here for their votes-- dem or GOP. It was the Republicans who voted to keep the resolution alive and the Democrats who finally decided to send it to committee for review before a floor debate. GOPers apparently feel that the resolution would hurt Democrats with voters. That's hard to figure. Maybe they're so close to it that they think the average voter knows all about Dick Cheney's various abuses and are fine with it.

But the fact is that the big story on any given day is almost never the newest abuse by the White House. Yesterday wasn't the day that a historic impeachment resolution for Cheney was brought to the House -- not in the mainstream media, anyway. For most outlets, yesterday was the Hollywood Writers' strike, day 2. Maybe Republicans have bought their own "liberal media" rhetoric and have forgotten how successful they've been at keeping most White House scandals to page three.

Bringing the debate to the floor would've brought the Republicans to the defense of Dick Freakin' Cheney, for chrissake. The man polls at 23% and worse, an American Research Group poll taken in July showed that 54% of Americans supported his impeachment.

The whole thing is bass-ackward. The GOP wanted to bring everything Cheney did out into the light of day, which couldn't possibly help them, while the dems gathered up their tutus and ran screaming from a debate that could only have strengthened their position. It's official -- the vast majority of people serving in the House of Representatives, of either party, are dumber than cold gravel.

The case against Cheney -- and Bush, for that matter -- is solid. In response to Kucinich's resolution, the National Lawyers Guild held their own vote on impeachment yesterday:

The National Lawyers Guild voted unanimously and enthusiastically for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney at its national convention in Washington, DC. The resolution lists more than a dozen high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush and Cheney administration and "calls upon the U.S. House of Representatives to immediately initiate impeachment proceedings, to investigate the charges, and if the investigation supports the charges, to vote to impeach George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney as provided in the Constitution of the United States of America."

NLG President Marjorie Cohn said, "The war of aggression, the secret prisons, the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, the use of evidence obtained by torture, and the surveillance of citizens without warrants, all initiated and carried out under the tenure of Bush and Cheney, are illegal under the U.S. Constitution and international law." There's your high crimes and misdemeanors. You can read the full NLG resolution here, in PDF.

Now that the resolution has been moved to the House Judiciary Committee, pretty much everyone thinks it's done. In an editorial praising Kucinich, the Cleveland Leader -- a paper in his district -- wrote, "The articles of Impeachment will move to the a committee where they will probably die a slow death. While Kucinich's resolution won't pass or be debated in the full House of Representatives, one imagines that he most likely picked up a lot of strong public support."

I'm not giving up hope so easily. In response to the news that the resolution was being moved to his committee, Rep. John Conyers office sent this statement to the Rachel Maddow Show:

The Committee has a very busy agenda -- over the next two weeks, we hope to pass a FISA bill, to vote on contempt of Congress citations, pass legislation on prisoner re-entry, court security and a variety of other very important items. We were surprised that the minority was so ready to move forward with consideration of a matter of such complexity as impeaching the Vice President. The Chairman will discuss today's vote with the Committee members but it would seem evident that the committee staff should continue to consider, as a preliminary matter, the many abuses of this Administration, including the Vice President.

Not as strongly supportive as you'd like, but it does acknowledge that Bush/Cheney are guilty of "abuses." In addition, Conyers has been supportive of the idea of impeachment -- in July saying he would bring the articles himself. Right now, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are sitting on him, but Congress is polling so low that Democratic House leadership can be written off as a complete disaster. Both Pelosi and Hoyer are overly cautious, incompetent boobs, too afraid of their own damned shadows to be good for anything. With enough public support -- meaning, a huge groundswell in support for Kucinich -- Conyers could completely disregard this self-neutered pair.

We need to tell our Reps that we want this resolution on the floor and that democracy and the Constitution not only need this debate, but require it. The case is solid, the cause is popular, and this Congress's legacy demands it. This Congress can't be allowed to be the one that established the precedent that there's no such thing as an impeachable offense.

I've got no one to yell at but, if you do, start yelling.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; crime; John Conyers; Tammy Baldwin; Bush; White House; Screw Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer -- impeach Dick Cheney

The Pelosi and Reid Stamp of Approval

Say what you like about Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, she's a woman of her word. After saying that "impeachment is off the table" -- before the dems had even taken the majority -- she seems to have made this the guiding principle of her party. The House Democrats, under Pelosi, are committed to investigating the living crap out of everything and anything, expressing their outrage over what they find, then doing absolutely jack about it.

Yay for checks and balances.

I always say that you can't shame the shameless, so a campaign of embarrassing the White House is a bootless effort. They don't care. You could catch President Bush engaging in white slavery, Dick Cheney sacrificing babies to whatever ancient Babylonian devil he owes his power to, and that exposure would not stop them from continuing. I'd like to say that they don't care because they don't have to worry about re-election, but the FISA wiretap scandal broke before the dems came into power -- the fact is that they don't care because they're shameless.

If you want the White House to stop committing crimes, you have to stop the White House from committing crimes. Seriously, they obviously don't care if something's legal or not. When caught wiretapping without warrants, Bush basically said, "Yeah, we're going to keep doing that." Exposed for all the world, Bush just didn't give a crap. Shamelessness is a defense in itself -- it's a moral and ethical nihilism that allows Bush to continue doing whatever he wants, no matter what anyone might think of it. Other opinions aren't wanted; the Bush White House suggestion box goes straight into the office shredder. They think this is what "strong leadership" means -- lawlessness, contempt for constitutional principles, and a middle finger in the air for anyone who criticizes them.

Taking impeachment off the table is the same as telling them, "Do whatever the hell you want." Taking impeachment off the table is consent.

Even when it was shown that the White House authorized torture, Pelosi considered it unimpeachable. Apparently, Nancy is committed to establishing that there's no such thing as an impeachable offense. She had a lot to say about torture; that " I think that protecting the American people being our top priority, we should do so in a way that is within the law," that "experts agree that you do not obtain reliable intelligence through using these tactics and you diminish our reputation in the world, which hurts the cooperation we need to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people."

What she didn't say is that torture is criminal, evil, and inexcusable. She didn't say that freakin' torture was an impeachable offense. As I said, she seems to believe that there's no such thing.

Meanwhile, the dems' leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, is no better. Political Cortext reports on a recent interview of Reid by Reno, NV radio host Christiane Brown.

Brown, when Reid scoffed at impeachment as a "foolish" idea, replied to Reid's dismissive statement that Bush had only one more year to serve as chief executive, saying that lives could be saved in an illegal Iraq War if Bush were removed from office.

When Reid irritably exclaimed that Cheney would assume the presidency upon the removal of Bush, Brown countered by informing him that the former Halliburton CEO could be removed as well by the same process.

To defend his and Pelosi's stance on allowing lawlessness, Reid brought up the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Of course, Brown answered that the comparison wasn't a very good one. The trial of Clinton was a "ridiculous" action, Brown countered, while an impeachment of Bush and Cheney would have real merit.

"Ridiculous is in the eye of the beholder," Reid said. There's your stupid-assed statement of the day.

Of course, all of this dodging of the impeachment question is about '08. Reid and Pelosi apparently believe that it would hurt them somehow in the next election. It's hard to see how. In an impeachment, the facts would be laid out and it's hard to see how anyone other than the most blindly partisan idiot would see that it added up to anything other than a career in crime. Newsflash Harry and Nancy, blind partisans would vote for a rabid baboon before they voted for a Democrat. They're freakin' nuts; you're in no danger of "losing" their votes.

In fact, there's a damned good argument that not impeaching is, in itself, a offense against the Constitution. Article II, Section 4 reads, "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Notice how it says, "Shall be removed." It doesn't say, "May be removed, at the discretion of opposition party leadership, after making political calculations regarding the next election cycle." When someone commits a crime, you pretty much have to put them through the legal system.

So, while Reid and Pelosi pretend that impeachment doesn't exist, crimes are being committed in our names. In Gitmo, someone's having a feeding tube jammed up their nose twice a day and is slowly losing their mind. In Europe and the middle east, people are being kidnapped to secret CIA prisons where they're tortured and held without even being charged with a crime. In Iraq, people are blowing the living crap out of each other while we press the Iraqi parliament to pass an "oil law" which would put the stamp of legality on our oil grab. None of these people give a good goddam about elections in '08. None of these people can wait that long. The only thing we can do to help them is to stop it. Stop it all.

And Pelosi and Reid won't. Because the only way to stop it is to stop the Bush White House. Investigations without consequence are like trials without sentencing. It's a pointless waste of time.

If you're going to let Bush do whatever the hell he wants, stop pretending you're doing something about it. Inaction is endorsement and anything short of impeachment is inaction. Clucking over the shamefulness of it all isn't going to do a damned thing.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; torture; human rights; civil rights; By refusing to impeach, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid put their stamp of approval on every crime Bush and Cheney commit

Will Congress Declare Itself Irrelevant?

In a damning piece in Salon, Sidney Blumenthal reports that Bush was told that Iraq had no WMD before the war, but blew off the info.

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

The intelligence came from Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister. According to Blumenthal, "the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war."

We know what happened then, Blair played along, despite the fact that he knew "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

One of Blumenthal's sources put it more bluntly, "Bush didn't give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."

Doesn't this show a frightening disregard for reality? Doesn't this show a terrible contempt, not only for the people he would send off to die, but for those he would set out to kill?

Look, this is the impeachment moment. Actually, let me revise that -- this should be the impeachment moment. And it would be, if we didn't have a legislature intent on being remembered as the Congress that established that there is no such thing as an impeachable offense. Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to insist that impeachment is "off the table." Here's an idea -- screw Nancy Pelosi.

I had a lot of hope that there would be change when the dems took over the House. The names have changed, but little else has. Congress has given Bush a free hand, while offering only token opposition. They had a chance to either force Bush to start acting like a freakin' adult or defund his own damned war -- a position that was impossible to lose -- and they caved. As I wrote at the time, "How bad does it have to get? Seriously, how stupid and hopeless and bloody does this whole mess have to get before dems use their damned majority to stop it? All along, I've been saying that it doesn't matter how often Bush vetoed funding, he'd have to sign eventually. The veto was irrelevant. He'd sign it or defund the war himself. There was no way Democrats could possibly lose this fight. And that's not a matter of opinion, those were literally the only options Bush would've had. It was as logically certain as it is that one plus one will always equal two."

Bush has to be impeached. The Constitution and the health of the republic demand it. If we let this Congress establish the principle that there is no such thing as an impeachable offense, we are seriously screwed as a nation. If Bush's "We're going to war and damn the facts" attitude isn't impeachable, if lying us by omission into war isn't impeachable, if throwing thousands of americans into a meatgrinder for no goddam good reason isn't impeachable, then nothing is.

It's often said, at least by those on the right, that government should be run like a business. If a corporation had acted this way, the company would be sued out of existence and it's CEO would be behind bars. This is gross negligence at best and manslaughter at the most realistic. There's your "High crimes and misdemeanors" right there.

Bush and that group of fools that always defend him have often said that everyone who voted to authorize the use of force had the same intelligence he did. This is a lie. Blumenthal again (emphasis mine):

In the congressional debate over the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, even those voting against it gave credence to the notion that Saddam possessed WMD. Even a leading opponent such as Sen. Bob Graham, then the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who had instigated the production of the NIE, declared in his floor speech on Oct. 12, 2002, "Saddam Hussein's regime has chemical and biological weapons and is trying to get nuclear capacity." Not a single senator contested otherwise. None of them had an inkling of the Sabri intelligence.

If this Congress does not impeach, they'll be saying to every future president, "Lie to us, please." They'll be begging to be used as chumps and to be seen as a pothole to be avoided. They'll be making a king of the president and making both houses as irrelevant as the Senate in imperial Rome.

If Congress doesn't impeach, they'll be declaring themselves useless as anything other than a training ground for future emperors and a legal pretense and justification for those emperors.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; If Congress doesn't impeach Bush for his lies, they'll be declaring itself irrelevant

A Bad Week Ahead for Bush

Scooter Libby's commutation is working out about as well for the White House as you might expect. For a president already no more popular than a swift kick in the head, an action with such predictable negative consequences can only be seen as an act of desperation.

The war's been going south -- along with public support for it -- for years now, the Bush administration has been the subject of scandal after scandal for nearly as long, Congress has changed dramatically, and Dick Cheney seems to have finally snapped. On top of all this, it looks like the White House is coming into a real bad week.

In a story titled Democrats have daggers drawn for Bush, Agence France-Presse reports:

With daggers drawn for a weakened White House, congressional Democrats return from a short recess this week plotting to further undermine President George W. Bush's waning political sway.

Even as Bush's signature immigration reform bill was strangled in the Senate last month, Democratic leaders were mapping out new misery for a president beset by rock-bottom poll ratings, the three bloodiest months for US troops in Iraq since the war began in 2003 and a fraying Republican support base.

Nearly half a dozen Republicans Senators recently broke ranks with Bush urging him to change course in Iraq.

Bush faces a battle of subpoenas related to the big attorney purge. The White House is claiming executive privilege and Congress doesn't seem to be buying it. Who would?

On other fronts, the Senate may pull in some big guns over Libby's commutation.

Raw Story:

During an interview broadcast Saturday on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and ranking Republican panel member Sen. Arlen Specter suggested that US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald may be called to testify about his prosecution of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

"Do you have a problem, Senator Leahy, with anything the president decided in terms of the legality of what he did?" Blitzer asked the Democratic senator regarding Bush's controversial decision to commute Libby's two-and-a-half year federal prison sentence.

Leahy responded, "The president has a constitutional right or has the constitutional power to commute sentences of anybody he wants. I wish he had shown more constitutional responsibility. Just as I was critical of some of the pardons by President Clinton, former President Bush or President Reagan, I've said they have the power to do it, but I didn't think they used good judgment."

The problem for the White House here is that Fitzgerald, as a witness, can testify to evidence he would've left out of his arguments in court. His personal conclusions as to the truthfulness of Libby's testimony and his opinions of who may be responsible for the leaking of Valerie Plame's name to the press are open game. There is no such thing as inadmissability in a Senate hearing.

I'm afraid that Agence France-Presse's estimation of the sharpness of dem's daggers may err on the honed side. We've seen dems cave in to Bush on the war funding fight -- a fight I'll say was impossible to lose until the day I die -- so we know that congressional Democrats' worst enemy is their fear of being seen as partisan. But, if the Valerie Plame case, the supreme lousiness of the Iraq war, the attorney purge, warrantless wiretapping, and Dick Cheney's assertion that he represents a previously unknown fourth branch of government are all partisan issues, then reality has a liberal bias. Democrats need to find their damned spines and fight the good fight for their country.

Everything seems to be coming to a head. It's entirely possible for all of this to run out of steam, but that will only happen if it's allowed to happen. Impeachment's in the air -- John Conyers came just short of threatening it on This Week with George Stephanopoulos yesterday. Polls show more than half would support impeaching Cheney and it's a statistical tie on Bush.

Here's my question; if nothing the President has done so far warrants impeachment, then what the hell does? How many crimes does this White House have to commit before impeachment can't be ignored? Forget misdemeanors, we've got high crimes -- and plenty of them.

As I said, though. This is going to require that Democrats evolve a backbone. The polls are good for it, but I'd argue that even if they weren't, impeachment would be long overdue. What's popular and what's just aren't always the same thing.

It's going to be a bad week for Bush, but it's been a bad handful of years for America.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Cheney; White House; scandal; crime; Senate; Democrat; If Bush isn't ripe for impeachment, then no president ever will be

George the Mad

There are a lot of ways to put this. Crazier than a cork anchor, squirrellier than a walnut grove, not firing on all cylinders, just one oar in the water. But, of course, the correct diagnostic term is 'nuttier than a cheese log.'

Dallas Morning News, via Think Progress:

But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."

How comforting. The president, it seems, is twisted as a corkscrew. And about as smart -- does he even know what 'destiny' means? Here's a hint, Mr. President: it's not something you can 'get out of.'

On the bright side, I've been right all along. It's more of a comfort to me than to you, but there ya go. Bush is planning on staying in Iraq until time stops. The bright side for you is that Bush is trying to outsmart his unknown successor and he's a guy who couldn't outsmart a beartrap. That'll go about as well as every other damned plan he's had so far. This is a man who could go skydiving and get lost on his way to the ground. He was once defeated in a fair fight by a pretzel.

And (thanks again to TP), this isn't the first time Bush has had a serious meltdown.

The Nelson Report:

[S]ome big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he's doing things would be OK... etc., etc. This is called a "bunker mentality" and it's not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

The good news here... Well, to tell the truth, there is no good news here. This is what congressional Democrats caved in to -- a madman's vision of a country at eternal war. Or, at least fifty years or so of war.

Reuters:

President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.

The United States has had thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea to guard against a North Korean invasion for 50 years.

Iraqis aren't going to go for that. Polls show they want us out first thing yesterday. After all, it's our presence that's screwing things up there -- all the nuts want us gone, too. If you actually wanted endless war, this would be the way to go about it. The violence is reactive.

Here at home, a Gallup poll recently asked people. "If you had 15 minutes with President Bush in the Oval Office what would you tell him to do about Iraq?" Not surprisingly, most said they "would urgently urge him to focus on getting out of Iraq, with the highest number (nearly 4 in 10) agreeing with the wish to simply 'pull the troops out/end it' and others backing other exit ideas." You know, in a freakin' democracy with a president who sees himself as a public servant, that'd be enough.

But Bush doesn't think this is a democracy. In fact, he's been awfully busy dismantling american democracy between lunatic rants behind closed doors. In Bush's America, people elect kings and the rule of law -- not to mention Congress -- is irrelevant. If Bush had paid attention during history class, he might echo Louis XIV and tell us, "I am the state!" not, "I am the president!"

There's so damned much we could impeach Bush for. I guess there's no provision for impeaching on the grounds that the executive is insane because there doesn't have to be. What crazy president wouldn't commit crimes? Hell, we've got crimes piling up around our ears. Bush spends as much time insisting that this Bushie or that isn't a criminal as he does with his Hitler in the bunker imitations.

If Bush has finally gone all Caligula on us, then what person in their right mind would argue that it wouldn't be a good idea to get rid of him?

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; history impeachment; crazy people; crime; Seriously, Bush is nuts...

You Call This Freedom?

The Nation writer and Capital Times associate editor John Nichols brings up a damned good question -- if the Bush administration fired federal prosecutors for not abusing their offices for political purposes, shouldn't we be more concerned about the attorneys they didn't fire than the ones they did?

What did these people do to keep their jobs?

The Capital Times:

The question of whether any of the 85 U.S. attorneys who were not fired by the Bush administration may have engaged in political prosecutions blew open Tuesday, when Wisconsin Russ Feingold and Russ Kohl joined other key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in demanding files pertaining to the botched prosecution of Georgia Thompson.

Committee Chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Feingold, Kohl and three other senators have asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for documents dealing with the case of the state employee who was tried in a case that played out during the course of the 2006 gubernatorial race in that state. Republicans used the prosecution as part of a television attack campaign aimed at defeating Democratic Gov. James Doyle.

U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic obtained an election-season conviction of Thompson on charges that she steered a state contract to a Doyle donor. But a federal appeals court last week overturned that conviction with a stinging decision that complained about a lack of evidence. One of the appeals court judges said Biskupic's case was "beyond thin."

In this case, the system worked despite the best efforts of Biskupic to pervert justice. But not before Thompson spent time in prison. Thompson's original conviction put a cloud over Jim Doyle's 2006 re-election effort. Doyle was marked as one of the most vulnerable democratic governors in that cycle and the only reason he won was because his opponent, former congressman Mark Green, refused to see that being a Bush clone wasn't exactly the best way to go. While Green tried to make hay with Doyle's supposed 'corruption,' Doyle only had to point to Green's voting record.

Biskupic was a prosecutor who'd apparently passed the Justice Department's political purity test. Is he typical?

That's what a few in congress would like to find out...

Oshkosh Northwestern:

U.S. Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl today joined other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in requesting U. S. Justice Department documents related to the prosecution of former state worker Georgia Thompson, whose bid-rigging conviction was overturned last week by a federal appeals court that ordered her immediately freed from prison.

Thompson was accused of favoring a company with ties to Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, and her conviction became an issue last year in his campaign for re-election when his opponents used it to slam him in television ads.

The farther this thing moves along, the more damning things look -- not only for Biskupic, but for the administration that appointed him. Although he wasn't among the fired prosecutors, it looks like he might've done just the right things to save his job. The Milwaukee Journal reports that Biskupic was on the firing list, but got a 'reprieve' -- presumably for being a good little partisan.

According to McCatchy Newspapers, "Congressional investigators looking into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys saw Biskupic's name on a list of attorneys targeted for removal when they were inspecting a department document not yet made public..."

The Bush administration lost the benefit of the doubt a long time ago. At this point, the best bet is always to assume the worst. There's really no reason to trust these people any farther than we can throw them -- collectively. And that means that it's pretty damned safe to assume that Biskupic started playing ball with Team Bush to save his job. In this case, 'playing ball' meant trumping up charges to put someone in prison for the crime of belonging to the wrong party.

And this is the Bush administration in a nutshell -- profoundly hypocritical. While telling us that they're bringing freedom to Iraq, they undermine freedom at home. They talk about democracy and liberty, but they have no use for it. If it's better for them that you be put in prison -- for whatever reason -- then into prison you go. Guilt or innocence of the crime you're charged with is irrelevant. What matters is that you're guilty of being a political inconvenience.

If you're reading this and you're one of the few who are still a Bush supporter, let me ask you -- is this what you had in mind? If you stand for freedom, then how do you define it when you can be arrested and jailed for working for a Democrat? Almost every day, we see ourselves losing just a little more freedom, the government becomes just a little more autocratic, the law becomes just a little more arbitrary, and justice becomes just a little less meaningful.

Freedom isn't lost in one fell swoop. It's lost piecemeal. You lose a little liberty here and bit of a right there. You're told you'll get these back when it's safe for you to have them again and they never come back. It's never safe.

And what people who aren't free are safer because of it? Who in the world has no rights and is safe because of it? The idea that we have to give up freedom for safety is a lie -- it doesn't do a damned thing to make us safer. People without rights are not safe people. Go find some North Korean guy and ask him. He'll tell you how 'safe' he is.

It's now pretty damned clear that Alberto Gonzales has no use for our system of government. It's a framewok to hang lies on and your rights are an impediment to work around. Much better if you don't have any.

And anyone who thinks Gonzales wasn't chosen because of this is either drunk or in a home for the mentally helpless. The AG is the AG because he's a ruthless SOB; a cutthroat politician first and a public servant and officer of the court second.

In case you've forgotten, we fought a revolution to get rid of this kind of crap. This monarchic power to put anyone in prison, to torture anyone, to throw someone in a hole someplace to be forgotten. And these abuses are as bad now as they were then.

Gonzales has to go. Justice would demand that the place he goes is to prison, but to just go is second best. And the people who chose Gonzales, those people who consider the Constitution 'just a goddamned piece of paper,' need to be right on his heels.

We won't be free again until they're out of office. Impeach the living hell out of this administration.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; impeachment; law; justice; Wisconsin; Bush and Alberto Gonzales used Steven Biskupic to attack the Constitution

Is Team Bush Collapsing?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is really feeling the heat. What I love about all of this is that it's not the attorney purge that's coming back to bite the administration in the ass, so much as it is the fact that they tried to hide the purge. In fact, had it not been for all the lying that went into the covering up the firings, this whole thing might've gone nowhere. As things are now, Gonzales is bailing on press conferences before anyone can ask him any questions.

Chicago Tribune (via Think Progress):

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dashed out of a Chicago news conference this afternoon in just two and a half minutes, ducking questions about how his office gave U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald a subpar rating.

Gonzales, who increasingly faces calls for his resignation, was here to promote a new ad campaign and had planned a 15-minute press availability. He left after taking just three questions over a firing scandal consuming his administration.

Before leaving, Gonzales said he wanted to "reassure the American people that nothing improper happened here."

You know what they say about heat and kitchens -- Gonzales couldn't take it, so he got the hell out. And this was fun:

Agence France-Presse:

The noose tightened Tuesday around beleaguered US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, after a top aide, fearing criminal prosecution, refused to testify in a scandal over the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors.

Questions about what role Gonzales might have played in the affair intensified, after senior aide Monica Goodling invoked her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid potential self-incrimination and declined to answer lawmakers' questions about the firings.

"The hostile and questionable environment in the present congressional proceedings is at best ambiguous," her lawyer John Dowd said in a statement.

"More accurately, the environment can be described as legally perilous."

Nice spin, but you don't plead the fifth if everything's above board. Goodling believes she's committed a crime and can't answer questions honestly without penalty. IMO, they ought to give her immunity. That alone would be enough to make the entire Bush administration crap their pants.

There's obviously something to hide here. If the fact that Goodling pleaded the fifth isn't smoke enough, there's the fact that the White House was using non-government email accounts to discuss the firings. That way, they wouldn't have to keep records of the emails. But, once again, the cover up comes back to bite them in the ass -- they probably won't be able to claim 'executive privilege' to keep the emails private.

The problem with lying is that once it starts to come apart, there's no saving the lie. In this case, there seems to be a lot of lies, all tied together, and as one falls, the rest follow. As this unfolds, it just gets worse. I doubt Gonzales will survive it. In fact, Bush may not.

The woman who wrote the articles of impeachment of President Nixon, Elizabeth Holtzman, argues that the legal case for impeachment of Bush is solid -- and serious.

Foreign Policy:

The latest Bush administration scandal—the firing of eight U.S. attorneys under highly questionable circumstances—has Washington abuzz with talk of a new Watergate. The question on everyone’s mind is: Could this be the president’s Saturday night massacre—the obstruction of justice that triggers impeachment?

Unless there is a sea change in Congress, talk of impeachment is largely a hypothetical exercise. That does not mean there’s no legal case against the president. If a California prosecutor were fired to end an investigation of a Republican congressman, that might be a crime. If the others were fired for failing to prosecute Democrats without evidence, that would be a gross abuse of power. If President George W. Bush played any role, impeachment is a legal possibility.

We need not wait for the outcome of investigations of this scandal, however, to conclude that President Bush has so abused the powers of his office that he could be impeached and removed from office. There are already other substantial grounds.

She argues that this isn't the only legal case for impeachment -- the warrantless wiretapping is stronger. And lying America into war is the strongest political case.

Make no mistake, impeachment is a political process. Those who wanted to remove Clinton from office found that he was too popular and the voters wouldn't stand for it. Bush is not popular. The attorney firings, one more scandal, one more crime, one more bunch of criminals exposed, might be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

It may turn out that the political case for impeachment is cumulative. That it takes Katrina and Iraq and Enron and wiretaps and Scooter Libby and all the crap I've lost track of -- and the lying to cover up the attorney purge. It may be that the best argument is the Bush administration's history of just plain sucking at the job. And the continuing proof that they're incapable of improvement.

I keep saying that Bush should be impeached and that I don't care what he's impeached for. This is what I mean. The crimes of the Bush administration are compounded by the incompetence. Being an incompetent boob isn't a high crime or misdemeanor, but incompetent boobs commit them. Especially if they have no real impulse to honesty.

The incompetent try to hide their incompetency and, predictably, do it incompetently. So we have Gonzales fleeing the interview and Karl Rove trying to figure out how to keep emails off the record. Everything these people do falls apart.

If this is it, the last straw that makes the Bush presidency fall apart, I won't complain.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; law; impeachment; Will Alberto Gonzales and the attorney purge be the final straw that brings the Bush admin. down? Let's hope so...