Gone Zo But Not Forgotten

Former A.G. A. G. Back In The Headlines

It's been a long time since we've heard about former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The little worm probably thought he wriggled off the various hooks he'd impaled himself on in service to his idol Führer President George W. Bush. Think again. From The Atlantic (via Crooks and Liars):

In March 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a now-famous late-night visit to the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking to get Ashcroft to sign a certification stating that the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was legal. According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit.

This incident is one of the worst examples of abuse of power in an administration rife with - indeed characterized by - abuse of power. We blogged about this dramatic story back in May of 2007 when the testimony of James Comey revealed the incident in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee. We lamented a day later that it had been virtually ignored by the Lamestream Media (abbreviated LaMe) - in stark defiance of the journalistic rule, "if it bleeds, it leads."

My opinion then, to which I still adhere, was that if the American public knew what went on in John Ashcroft's hospital room it would have led to Bush and Cheney's being lynched impeached. So I think one correction needs to be made to Murray Waas's otherwise excellent article about these new developments. The 'now-famous' visit to Ashcroft's hotel room is nothing of the sort. I would bet that it's only famous to the denizens of Greater Left BlogSylvania, because a) the LaMe have kept schtum about it, so 70% of the public have never heard the story and b) the complicit House and Senate chose not to make an issue of this political dynamite, that could well have put Bush, Cheney, and Gonzo in the dock defending against treason charges.

For a more thorough understanding of the issues surrounding this incident I urge you to read the entire Waas article and/or my own post from May of last year (links will open in new windows.) There are two new stories here, the first the revelation above, from Gonzo's own lips, that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit. That's big. There's been speculation about this, Gonzo testified that he was acting 'on the authority of the White House' but until now that left the possibility open that he was under Cheney's direction. (TPM Muckraker has archive YouTube footage of Gonzo's testimony that goes to this issue.) This new revelation, if true, puts Dubya's skinny neck right on the chopping block. The deliberate and underhanded effort to subvert the Constitution and the rule of law in a naked grab for power is undeniable.

I just have to insert a reminder here. When this hospital room incident happened, Gonzales was still White House Counsel, John Ashcroft was the titular Attorney General but was not actively carrying out the duties of that office, and James Comey was the acting Attorney General. It's important to know that to understand the level of impropriety of Gone-Zo's actions.

The second aspect of the story that's new is the information "that in another instance the President asked [Gonzales] to fabricate fictitious notes." Parts of that story appear in the Murray Waas article linked above. Waas has a separate article here about the fabricated notes aspect of the story. This one puts Gone-z0's neck on the block, and I have to comment that it is simply shocking to see how compliant AGAG is with the most outrageous requests from his president.

President Bush reauthorized the surveillance program on March 11, 2004, one day after the hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to sign a certification saying that the program was legal and could therefore continue.

In reauthorizing the surveillance program over the objections of his own Justice Department, President Bush later claimed to have relied on notes made by Gonzales about a meeting that had taken place the day before (March 10), in which Gonzales and Vice President Cheney had met with eight congressional leaders—also known as the “Gang of Eight”—who receive briefings about covert intelligence programs. According to Gonzales’s notes, the congressional leaders had said in the meeting that they wanted the surveillance program to continue despite the attorney general’s refusal to certify that it was legal.

But four of the congressional leaders present at the meeting say that’s not true; they never encouraged the White House to sidestep the objections of the attorney general and continue the program without his approval.

Investigators are skeptical of the notes because Gonzales did not write them until days after the meeting with the congressional leaders, and he wrote them after both Bush and Gonzales had together signed a reauthorization of the surveillance program.

Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time he met with the congressional leaders, has told investigators working for the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General that President Bush personally directed him to write the notes so that he could “memorialize” what the legislators had told him, according to a report made public by the Inspector General’s Office on September 2 and sources close to the investigation.

The timing of when Bush directed Gonzales to write the notes is important: investigators say the fact that they were written after both the meeting and the reauthorization of the program might indicate that they were written in order to provide an after-the-fact justification for the signing of the reauthorization—and that that timing might have given Gonzales a motive to lie in the notes.

For the sake of clarity and brevity I'll try to sketch this out in bullet-point form.

• The Bush/Cheney crime syndicate wanted desperately to be able to wiretap whomever they wanted to, whenever they wanted to, without oversight.
  
• They knew damn well that this was illegal, as the FISA statutes had made this particular insult on the Fourth Amendment a FELONY - specifically emphasizing that the President himself was not only not exempt from the law, but after Nixon's transgressions was the very target of the law
• The Department of Justice seems to have initially certified the surveillance program on good faith, but significantly had done so without the White House really having disclosed what it was they were signing off on.
• When the DoJ got details (probably not full details) of what Bush/Cheney were actually doing with the initial authorization, they declared the program to be illegal, and vehemently declared that the certification would not be renewed.
• By the time the initial certification was to expire, Attorney General John Ashcroft lay in Intensive Care in the hospital, was recovering from surgery and under heavy sedation.
• Alberto Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card were dispatched to Ashcroft's hospital room with a manila envelope containing the renewal of the DoJ certification that the surveillance program was legal.
• James Comey had already refused to sign this document. Ashcroft, Comey and other chief officials at DoJ as well as Robert Mueller, director of the FBI had all threatened to resign if the illegal wiretapping program continued.
• The President personally phoned ahead to advise Ashcroft's wife that Gonzales and Card were on their way. This led Ashcrofts Chief of Staff to call Comey and Mueller to advise them of what was about to go down.
• Comey sped to the scene to prevent Ashcroft from being pressured while he was in no condition to defy a two-on-one play to subvert justice. Mueller called the FBI agents assigned to guard Ashcroft and order that under no circumstances was Comey to be removed from the room.
• Ashcroft, to his credit, refused to be steamrolled, telling Gonzales and Card, "I'm not even the Attorney General right now, he (Comey) is." Thus the illegal attempt to obtain the illegal certification of an illegal program was thwarted.
• Phase Two begins. Having failed to subvert the Justice Department, the White House turned their efforts to the Legislative Branch. Gonzales and Dick Cheney met later the same day (Mar. 10, 2004.) with the so-called Gang of Eight.
  
• The next day President Bush re-authorized the surveillance program HIMSELF!! through an executive order - exerting a dictatorial power that he did NOT have under any interpretation of the Constitution of the United States of America.
  
• At some point AFTER this bogus 'reauthorization' Gonzales cobbles up notes giving a false account of the meeting with the Gang of Eight - an account wherein the Gang of Eight said they wanted the surveillance program to continue.
• The Congressmen who attended the meeting said that they did NOT express such desire.

In the shortest summation I can distill this to - the President of the United States committed fraud in order to usurp the powers of both the Judicial and Legislative branches, in order to commit a large number of serious felonies. More alarming, nobody tried to stop him in the face of these patent High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Glenn Greenwald discussed these related stories with Murray Waas in Friday's Salon Radio segment. If this isn't Shock and Awe directed against the very foundations of the country I don't know what would be.

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Geez Louise. Could it get any worse for the beleaguered Gonzales? It appears so. TPM Muckraker reports that the DoJ is going to release a report on Monday about the Prosecutors' Purge scandal. In that short report TPM recalls a predicition made by David Iglesias, who was one of the US Attorney's dismissed under questionable circumstances:

I expect them to conclude that there is sufficient evidence to show that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty committed perjury in their statements before Congressional committees and investigators.

Seems like Alberto's got a whole lot of 'splainin' to do.

TAGS: Alberto Gonzales, Illegal Wiretaps, Usurpation of Power
James Comey and the Curious Case of the Hospital Visit

A Confluence of Gormlessness

My most recent post just happens to contain the following sentence: "Let us all hope that they pay dearly for this latest confluence of utter gormlessness in the service of unremitting evil." Some time after I wrote the post it occurred to me that confluence and gormlessness were pretty rarely-used words. Anyway I wondered if I could find the post by Googling "confluence of utter gormlessness," and yes, there it was right at the top of a very short list (most of the other Google hits were from either a) - databases from online dictionaries or b) - something called All Junky Pages Intentionally Illogical and Inconsistent - I wonder what that's all about.)

If I had stopped there it would have been enough to demonstrate the depths to which I will go just to provide myself the briefest minor amusement, which would hardly have been worthy of a post on the lowliest of cat-blogging and baby-pictures narcissistic mommy blog. (no offense to any of our readers who happen to be narcissistic mommy bloggers)

No, what made this random googling bloggable was when I widened my search to just 'confluence gormlessness' - at which point I stumbled upon a great post about six months old from Pandagon that contains the words confluence and gormlessness (although both are in the comments) - the post harkens back to a post from D-Day - the D-Day post recalls the impeachment of Bill Clinton:

Jesse L. Jackson in 1998:

Let us not be confused. Today Republicans are impeaching Social Security, they are impeaching affirmative action, they are impeaching women’s right to choose, Medicare, Medicaid, Supreme Court justices who believe in equal protection under the law for all Americans.

D-Day, Dec 21, 2007:

Being the anniversary week, C-SPAN decided to air large portions of the House debate [on the Clinton impeachment].

I couldn't stop watching.

You actually can read the transcripts here, but believe me when I tell you that the phony sanctimony from the Republicans is striking. I've never heard so many renderings of history, deep intoning about the Constitution and reverance for the rule of law come out in such a stream of pabulum in my life. Set against the background of the current Administration, which has lied us into war, spied on American citizens, tortured and indefinitely detained suspects without trial in secret sites all over the world, subverted the will of the people through deliberate deception, and brought this country to its knees, all in full view of many of these same lawmakers, the experience of watching them speak is almost otherworldly.

What the Republicans were actually doing is throwing a hissy fit.

Amanda Marcotte, Dec 22, 2007:

...it began to really dawn on me that Republicans and their allies in the media are fundamentally opposed to the idea of democracy. It wasn’t just that the Republicans and the media were trying to oust a duly elected leader on trumped-up charges with the hope that the sexy parts would distract people from the fact that they were attempting a coup, though god knows that alone would be enough. It was also that the more the media and the Republicans persecuted Clinton, the more popular he got, and then the more frantic the persecution got. It really showed how conservatives and the mainstream media hate the workaday voter, and hate the very fact that we have any say at all. The more people liked Clinton, the more his enemies hated him, because he became this proxy for their very hatred of The People.

I suppose if the nation was better educated, we’d have seen it coming. Republicans and their Democratic allies have never met a pro-capitalist military coup they didn’t love, and while the attempted coup on President Clinton was not a military coup, it was still in the same spirit as the coups conducted worldwide.

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day screwing that's being handed out to the American people by the government and forget the long term year-to-year and decade-to decade screwing that's pretty much always been going on. So I welcome the result of my idle googling for the opportunity it presented to me to rescue a couple of excellent blog posts from the memory hole.

And in case you didn't get the message, this post makes a lot more sense if you read the posts at Pandagon and D-Day that I linked to. And what really comes out of it is how much the rules change when the Republicans control Congress instead of the Democrats, or when a Democratic president occupies the White House instead of a Republican. I understand that the system provides a very weak 'choice' between the lesser of two evils. Still, I continue to believe that even though the lesser of two evils is still evil, it is also still lesser. These two posts and the subject matter they explore are ample evidence of that.

UPDATE: Here's a video that illustrates my last point. Who would argue that Congressman Wasserman Schultz (D - Florida) is just as bad as a Republican? And get a load of the former Bush aide, Brad Blakeman. Speaking to my main point, how many Republicans were arguing just the opposite on Executive privilege during the Monica Lewinski affair? And what a fucking jakehole Blakeman is, constantly talking over Rep. Wasserman and the guy from HuffPo - a constant tactic Repukes use, and that the Lamestream media continues to allow them to get away with.

Congresswoman Wasserman on Karl Rove's Refusal To Appear

'nother update: This video with Congresswoman Linda Sanchez (D - CA) is even better. Great analysis from Jonathan Turley.

Sanchez: Rove Should be in jail

TAGS: Memory Hole, The Wider Picture, Republican Toerags, Historical Perspective

Impeachment A Lot to Me

Kucinich's Articles of impeachment have their own blog.

Here's a look at the 35 reasons Kucinich gives for tossing GWB out.

Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio
In the United States House of Representatives
Monday, June 9th, 2008
A Resolution

INDEX

Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq.

Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks

of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression.

Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.

Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States.

Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.

Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114.

Article VII
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.

Article VIII
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter.

Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor

Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes

Article XI
Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq

Article XII
Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation's Natural Resources

Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries

Article XIV
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency

Article XV
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq

Article XVI
Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors

Article XVII
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives

Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy

Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to "Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture

Article XX
Imprisoning Children

Article XXI
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government

Article XXII
Creating Secret Laws

Article XXIII
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act

Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment

Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens

Article XXVI
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements

Article XXVII
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply

Article XXVIII
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice

Article XXIX
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare

Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency

Article XXXII
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change

Article XXXIII
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.

Article XXXIV
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001

Article XXXV
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders

Only 35? I guess time is of the essence, since, you know, they're getting away. And by the way something, obviously this warrants the vaunted Icee Award. I am also nominating Kucinich for the lifetime achievement Icee Award to be awarded at a later date.

UPDATE: From McClatchy--"Hours after Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush, his campaign says his website 'was shut down by a series of suspicious and fast moving events.'"

TAGS: Dennis Kucinich, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Impeachment, Iraq OCCUPATION

The Tide Continues To Swell

The calls for impeachment are growing. Here's some excerpts of what George McGovern wrote today in the Washington Post:

How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?

It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an "imminent threat" to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks -- another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson's observation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

[...]

Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies -- especially the war in Iraq -- have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others.

Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Can you believe that Fred Hiatt actually let this one through? I am heartened by this.

By the way at the time of this posting, 181,472 people have signed Wexler's hearing petition.


TAGS: Impeachment, Activism

Taking impeachment off my table.

First, this. Remember, now, this is the guy who can't seem to remember his own name sometimes...

WASHINGTON (Los Angeles Times) - The Justice Department is
putting the final touches on regulations that could give Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales important new sway over death penalty cases in California and other states, including the power to shorten the time that death row inmates have to appeal convictions to federal courts.

The rules implement a little-noticed provision in last year's
reauthorization of the Patriot Act that gives the attorney general the power to decide whether individual states are providing adequate counsel for defendants in death penalty cases. The authority has been held by federal judges.

Under the rules now being prepared, if a state requested it and Gonzales agreed, prosecutors could use "fast track" procedures that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court.

The move to shorten the appeals process and effectively speed up executions comes at a time of growing national concern about the fairness of the death penalty, underscored by the use of DNA testing to establish the innocence of more than a dozen death row inmates in recent years.

Amid the public debate, the number of people executed in the U.S. has declined steadily since the mid-1990s [except in Texas - Me].

The rest is here. This further erosion of our due process rights should scare the absolute crap out of all of us, but I have yet to see this discussed anywhere in the media. I found the link to this article on The Huffington Post, which is good, but that's just another "left-wing blog," so the Bootlicking Corporate Media will probably ignore it. (Oops: I did hear it reported on NPR just now.) Let me know if I'm wrong.

You should know first that I oppose the death penalty. Unequivocally. In all cases. If we captured Osama bin Laden tomorrow (yeah, right, like that'd happen...), I'd be against executing him. I was against executing Tim McVeigh. I'm against executing the worst forms of humanity, including pedophiles. I was against executing the guy who shot one of my closest friends for the few bills he had in his wallet two weeks after we graduated from college years ago. I was against the death penalty before I became a Quaker, and I'm even more against it now that I am one. For one thing, new technology has allowed us to prove beyond any doubt that many of the folks on death row are not guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted, and that means we have surely executed innocent people in the past. That's just one of the many reasons I oppose capital punishment.

But that's not what this post is really about. Here comes the leap.

I've been trying to think of a good excuse to throw this idea out there, and this issue is as good as any. I've been reading and following (and contributing to) all kids of conversations lately about impeaching either George Bush or Dick Cheney or both. My chosen candidate, Dennis Kucinich, is the only Democratic presidential wannabe who has come out for impeaching Cheney. There are dozens of web sites and blogs devoted to the topic, and zillions more blog postings and comment threads. If you search Cafe Press using the words "impeach Bush," you will find 172,000 items bearing that phrase for sale there alone. Which means lots of folks are making money off the idea. Well, good for them, and it's an interesting exercise.

But, as it's not going to happen, I wonder why we waste so much time on it.

Speaker Pelosi, who so many liberals seem to think is just so effing wonderful, has taken impeachment "off the table" (one wonders what is on her table these days...), and she did so almost immediately after the change in leadership in Congress. And - I know this is progressive heresy right now - impeachment should be off the table. I actually agree with her on this one. There. I said it. What Congress should be doing is stopping stuff like this: new rules giving the Justice Department's Screw-Up-In-Chief the right to expedite the trip to the death chambers of this country. This is a certifiable outrage, only the latest in a long list of anti-Constitutional outrages. But what does the "Democratically controlled Congress" do? Well, last week, after they blasted Gonzo for his "lack of cooperation" with their inquiries, a whole bunch of those same "Democrats" helped pass a law that actually expands the Bush regime's ability to spy on its own citizens. That's the outrage. If we're seriously talking about impeaching somebody, it should be Gonzales. But this Congress won't even cite the guy for contempt of Congress or perjury. And you folks are seriously still thinking this crew will impeach Bush? Simply wishing - and selling tee shirts - will not make it so.

What Congress - and what we who call ourselves progressives - should be doing is working to end the war. That should be Job # 1. Bush and his junta will be out of office in sixteen months. As my favorite curmudgeonly columnist Alexander Cockburn writes in the latest edition of The Nation, let the regime face charges as war criminals after they leave office. Impeachment proceedings, even if they began on September 1, would simply force almost everything else in Washington to a screeching halt, and what good would it do? Some of us might feel better because the Repos would get a taste of what they did to Bill Clinton, but, so what? The war would still be there, and it can only get worse, in spite of the recent spin. Congress could and should have voted this past spring to defund the Bush/Cheney carnage machine, but they didn't. You still thought that, after writing Bush another check to pay for his war, that those same folks would turn around and impeach him? All of us should be out there (and here) every day doing whatever we can, in whatever way we can, to end the war. (What's funny is that when people do work to end the war, say, by protesting against it by picketing recruiting centers, supposed "liberals" actually mock those efforts. Don't believe me? Read the comments here.) The war is a giant toilet into which we are dumping our fine young people, our resources, our national soul. We should be demanding that Congress act to clean up the mess that still exists down in New Orleans. We should be working to bring universal health care (yes, a single-payer system, also "off the table," largely thanks to Sen. Clinton) to this country. We should be doing something to get our politicians to end the pandemic of gun violence that is killing more and more of our citizens, especially our youth. We should be forcing Congress to throw out the so-called "No Child Left Behind" legislation which is systematically undermining and dumbing down our system of public education. We should be supporting infrastructure reconstruction and coal mine safety and demanding that Congress do something now about those concerns. Right. Now. And that's just for starters.

The idea of impeachment can make us feel good and may work for getting us all ramped up as a convenient place to focus all of our rage and frustration with the Bush junta, and I do appreciate that. Few of you are more angry than I am right now. But the day-to-day outrages being foisted upon us, like the one mentioned above - many of them with the not-so-tacit approval of the so-called Democrats who "control" Congress - are what should be getting our attention. Being for impeachment is a handy way to let folks know we're against Bush. Okay. I get that. But no matter how much we might want it to happen, he's not leaving until January of 2009. Maybe it's about time we start spending more time talking about (and working for, and raising money for) what we're for, and making our elected politicians at every level hear that, and organizing for that. I just typed in the phrase "save our coal miners" at Cafe Press. My search returned "no matching designs." Wonder why.

TAGS: Death penalty, Capital punishment, Alberto Gonzalez, Justice Department

Fredo Going Down

I'm breaking my rule about 'blink and a link' posts to announce that Congressional Democrats plan to introduce a resolution requiring the Judiciary Committee to begin an impeachment investigation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Crooks and Liars has the story.

TAGS: Alberto Gonzales, Impeachment

Bush's Secretive Executive Orders Fuel Suspicion

Columnist and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts sees two possible short term political futures.

In one future, the Republican Party is destroyed electorally due to their support of an extremely unpopular president.

This outcome is evident to any observer, Democrat or Republican.

In the other future, a terrorist attack followed by the activation of several executive orders (like this creepy son of a bee right here) making Bush the only political power in America, gets the Republicans off the hook by rendering democracy irrelevant or even dismantled.

I don't think the government was behind 9/11. I don't think the government will attack us or intentionally allow an attack before the 2008 election.

But of the ten white men running for the Republican nomination, nine of them all seem to know something. Of the 49 of them in the Senate only a few even give lipservice to ending the war even when they know it may cost them even their safest seats.

Then we have Rick Santorum's recent comments and Michael Chertoff's gut.

Roberts writes:

Think about it. If another 9/11-type "security failure" were not in the works, why would Homeland Security czar Chertoff go to the trouble of convincing the Chicago Tribune that Americans have become complacent about terrorist threats and that he has "a gut feeling" that America will soon be hit hard?

Why would Republican warmonger Rick Santorum say on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that "between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public's (sic) going to have a very different view of this war."

Like every political cliffhanger, we won't know until we know. But if a dictatorship is only a couple of chess moves away, isn't the system badly in need of renewal?

UPDATE: Listen to Thom Hartmann interview Paul Craig Roberts.

TAGS: Paul Craig Roberts, Democracy, Election 2008, Executive Orders

Moyers Roundtable on Impeachment

Bill Moyers has of late served to remind America what real journalism looks like. In this latest effort from Bill Moyers Journal (Watch it on PBS) Bill sits down with The Nation's John Nichols and conservative constitutional attorney Bruce Fein from the American Freedom Agenda to discuss the crimes and abuse of power by George Bush and Dick Cheney and the need to impeach them both.

This is great stuff. Highlights of course include a comparison with Richard Nixon's abuses (Bush's are much worse) and an opinion that I have always held, that Nixon's impeachment and trial should have been continued to its conclusion despite his resignation. The tragic consequences of failing to do that were Iran/Contra and the crimes of the current regime. My favorite is this line, that echoes sentiments I have expressed myself,

"You are making a mistake that too many people make. You're seeing impeachment as a Constitutional crisis. Impeachment is the cure for a Constitutional crisis. Don't mistake the medicine with the disease"

-- John Nichols --

The way I put it, failure to impeach would indicate a crisis.

“When leaders are not held accountable for serious mistakes, they and their successors are more likely to repeat those mistakes.”

-- Al Gore in The Assault on Reason --

Moyers Roundtable on Impeachment

Take the PBS poll on Civil Liberties and National Security.

One final quote on the main theme of this post, the idea that the founders saw Impeachment as not just a remedy for governmental abuse, but an alternative to violent revolution.

"A Government that makes peaceful revolution impossible,
makes armed revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy --

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Thanks to the people at Crooks and Liars for putting this video up on YouTube. When I saw them post it in WMP/Quicktime format, I was hoping to be able to post the video myself. H/T to Len Hart (The Existentialist Cowboy) for bringing it to my attention.

TAGS: Impeach, Constitutional Crisis, Bill Moyers, YouTube

Privilege, Schmivilege

Constitutional Crisis Looming Over Prosecutors Case?

All of the top officials in the Department of Justice who were supposed to be responsible for the dismissals of seven US Attorneys have been brought before the Senate Judiciary committee.

All have been asked "who knew?", "Why were they fired?" and "who made up the list?"

All of them have responded, "not me", "I don't remember", and "ask somebody else please." Those who have responded thusly so far include:

• Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
• his (now former) Deputy AG J. Paul McNulty
• his chief of staff Kyle Sampson
• Mc'Nulty's chief of staff Michael Elston
• Monica Goodling, liaison between Gonzales and the White House.
  
• Michael Battle, Director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys

The mere depth of Goodling's involvement raises a number of red flags. Prior to her rise in the DoJ's executive branch, "Ms. Goodling worked alongside Tim Griffin as an opposition researcher for the Republican National Committee during the 2000 presidential campaign." (Wikipedia) There isn't a more partisan position in politics than opposition researcher, and Goodling is a legal featherweight who graduated from the 'fourth tier' Regent College. And yet, for some unexplained reason;

Goodling's authority over hiring [was] expanded significantly in March 2006, when Attorney General Gonzales signed an unpublished order delegating to Goodling and Kyle Sampson, Gonzales's then chief of staff, the power to appoint or dismiss all department political appointees besides United States attorneys (who are appointed by the President.)

But I digress. I just found some of those details about Goodling's career to be especially fascinating, and thought it important to point out that the authority Gonzales secretly vested in her was supposed to be in the office of Michael Battle. One other point of digression. Other than Gonzales, all the DoJ officials on the list above have resigned since the Purge Scandal investigation began. Although they may still be coming to work for all I know. All have exhibited a stunning collective amnesia worthy of the very worst soap opera plotlines, so they probably don't remember their own resignations.

The main point I was trying to get at, and I've made it before, is that there is a consistant denial that anyone at the DoJ was involved in the dismissals - leaving only one logical conclusion. The orders for the dismissals really didn't originate at DoJ, but in the White House. Further, that they were developed not out of any official government business, but from purely partisan Republican political maneuvering. The evidence for this conclusion is overwhelming. We have the testimony of fired US Attorney David Iglesias concerning the improper interference in his duties by Senator Pete Domenici and Congresswoman Heather Wilson. We have the parallel story from Seattle's US Attorney John McKay. We have the dismissal of Bud Cummings in Arkansas to make way for Goodling's old boss Tim Griffin. We have the fact of Griffin's criminal involvement in voter suppression through the drawing up of 'caging lists.' We have the obstruction of justice entailed in the parallel case of the missing emails.

Behind it all we have the 'untouchable' KKKarl Rove, whom all of the above jumped 'under the bus' to protect. This scandal is vastly dirtier, and reaches much further, than the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Milhouse Nixon.

Richard Nixon 'stonewalled' any investigations into his illegal White House excursions by invoking executive privilege. A privilege that the administration of George W. Bush now is invoking, both in the Prosecutors' case, and in the NSA wiretapping scandal. The thing is, executive privilege is NOWHERE MENTIONED IN THE CONSTITUTION. So where the heck did Nixon, and after him Reagan and GW Bush, get the idea?

Presidents have argued that executive privilege is a principle implied in the constitutionally mandated separation of powers. In order to do their job, presidents contend, they need candid advice from their aides — and aides simply won't be willing to give such advice if they know they might be called to testify, under oath, before a congressional committee or in some other forum.

Not surprisingly, there is one crucial word left out of this explanation that is required to have it make any sense. That word is CRIMINAL. The only suppression of the 'candid' advice of aides that requires them to be protected from scrutiny is in a case where what they are advising is illegal and unconstitutional. Or maybe just bonehead stupid. Think about it. If the advice you are giving is good advice, and legal, why would you want to hide it? In my mind, the idea that everything an aide tells the President will eventually become public knowledge would be much more likely to improve the quality of that advice. IOW, it's a bullshit argument.

Anyway, subpoenas have been issued by the Senate seeking documents and testimony from White House officials, and those subpoenas have been ignored. Some in regards to the Prosecutors' Purge scandal, some over the illegal NSA warrantless wiretapping program. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy has vowed he will take Bush to court. In fact, here's the letter Leahy and House Judiciary chairman John Conyers sent to White House Counsel Fred Fielding on Friday, demanding, "the White House 'immediately provide us with the specific bases for your claims regarding each document withheld via a privilege log...and a copy of any explicit determination by the President with respect to the assertion of privilege.' ".

TPM has the letter from Fielding asserting the privilege here. Think Progress has the best piece on the implications of the conflict. In fact, this piece contains one of the juiciest tidbits to come out of this whole affair, and should be read in its entirety.

Fielding attached a legal memorandum written by Solicitor General Paul Clement, laying out the legal basis for the executive privilege claim... In his letter, Clement reveals what investigators have suspected from the very beginning — that the White House was intimately involved in the attorney scandal. Upon examination of the White House documents, Clement writes:

Among other things, these communications discuss the wisdom of such a proposal, specific U.S. Attorneys who could be removed, potential replacement candidates, and possible responses to congressional and media inquiries about the dismissals.

The White House had “said that Mr. Bush’s aides approved the list of prosecutors only after it was compiled.” President Bush himself said that “the Justice Department made recommendations, which the White House accepted” regarding the removal of the attorneys.

If you don't have the time to follow the link to Think Progress, well SHAME ON YOU, but you at least MUST read this excerpt they cite from a Marcy Wheeler article on Clement's conflict of interest in this matter.

Paul Clement, as you’ll recall, is the guy currently in charge of any investigation into the US Attorney firings, since Alberto Gonzales recused himself some months ago...And now, he’s the guy who gets to tell the President that he doesn’t have to turn over what might amount to evidence of obstruction of justice in the Foggo and Wilkes case, among others.

This whole affair sets up what the media always refer to as a Constitutional Crisis, but I don't like that characterization. I think the crisis would be if the congress didn't confront the White House over illegal, even criminal activity.

Bush has been in contempt of Congress since his inauguration in January 2001. Nowhere has that been so prominent than in his assertion of 'unitary executive' powers as delineated (in a series of internal memoranda) by John Yoo, another one-time Department of Justice misfit. Let me make my feelings on the 'Yoo Doctrine' clear. If this theory were ever to be officially announced, that really would be a constitutional crisis, because it is nothing less than an outright declaration of a Bush dictatorship. The thing is, the administration has been acting from day one as if the Yoo doctrine were official.

Anyway, there now seems little possibility that Bu$hCo™ will be able to ignore these subpoenas for very long. Law professor Jonathan Turley lays out the bottom line on Countdown (Video available in yet another excellent article from Think Progress.) And here's what that bottom line entails for the White House.

As Columbia University law professor Michael Dorf points out, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Nixon that, “where the President asserts only a generalized need for confidentiality, [executive privilege] must yield to the interests of the government and defendants in a criminal prosecution.”

And from Turley:

[with respect to the NSA program] -- that was a clearly criminal act that the president called for — that under federal law, it’s a federal crime to do what the president has ordered hundreds of people do. Now, if we’re right, not only did he order that crime, it would in fact be an impeachable offense... They don’t want to recognize that this president may have ordered criminal offenses, but they now may be on the road to do that, because the way Congress can get around the executive privilege in court is to say we are investigating a potential crime.

And Raw Story has some transcript from a different portion of the Countdown piece. And a rather more complete video, in a larger window.

"This administration, I have to say, has a certain contempt for the law," said Turley. "They treat it like some of my criminal defendents used to treat it. ... They come up with any argument that might work. ... It's a sort of shocking development. ... But at the end of the day, they will lose, and they're making the situation worse."

At least for once, they're making the situation worse for themselves, not for everybody else. And I love that phrase, "at the end of the day, they will lose." It sounds like hopeful news for a change, even to my pessimistic ear.

For further reading, Station Agent has this post up at Ice Station, likening the confrontation to a gunfight in the western movie Tombstone.

TAGS: Prosecutors' Purge, NSA Wiretapping, Stonewalling, Constitutional Crisis

Steal ThisThese Talking Point(s)

I am getting sick and tired of the left caving in to the most facile and specious arguments. These are frustrating times for sure, with the recent capitulation by the DINO party over war funding, and the breaking of news story after news story that just doesn't get reported on any of the Corporate Owned Media outlets.

So, here are a couple of talking points, or slogans if you will, just in case you get in an argument with one of the 28%-ers that are still sufficiently misguided or delusional enough to still support Bu$hCo™, the criminal enterprise that is posing as legitimate government in America.

First up, concerning the Prosecutors' Purge scandal. Anyone with a functioning brain should be able to refute the weak and un-American talking points that the Republicans are relying on in this case. I'm sure you've heard them. The ever popular, "Clinton did it too." Well, he didn't really. He replaced all the prosecutors when he first got into office, but that is normal. What is not normal is replacing prosecutors in the middle of their terms, as the Bush administration has done. And what is certainly not normal is the interference in the performance of their duties while in office, as Sen. Pete Domenici (R. -epulsive) and Rep. Wilson (R. -eprehensible) of New Mexico did. That is criminal obstruction of justice, and they should be charged with those felonies. So the statements that this is 'business as usual', or that these vital law enforcement figures 'serve at the pleasure of the pResident' can neither stand on their own, nor can they be propped up by any number of talking heads on FOX and CNN. The Constitution very deliberately created the judiciary as a separate, independent, and co-equal branch of government. Tampering with that formula is a big deal. Huge.

Here's your talking point, that I have been spreading around the comment threads here and elsewhere. It's yours to repeat as necessary until the other side finally listens. Better yet, it will demonstrate that you are a better American than your opponent. This is a slight modification of something you may have seen in comments here or elsewhere. I thought it time to flesh it out a little.

It's not just the Democrats, but the people themselves, who have become complacent to the point of complicity. Among the grave offenses listed against King George in the Declaration of Independence are these,

• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
  
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

Doesn't that italicized bit sound a lot like the Prosecutors' Purge to you?
That and other Declaration offenses - of which the current King George is equally guilty - precipitated the American Revolution. But the Patriots who created this country had a courage seemingly lacking in this generation. Listen to the national anthem, especially the last line. How can it continue to be the Land of the Free unless it is also the Home of the Brave?

Looking again at the Declaration, I see that George Bush has committed other listed offenses. His whole administration seems to be focused on nothing so much as the repudiation of the Constitution of the United States of America. I could have expanded my talking point considerably. In particular,

1. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.
2. For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.
3. For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.
4. For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.
5. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.
6. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Now how is it that these offenses, worthy of a Revolutionary War in 1776 are not now worthy at least of impeachment? Is it not time NOW to resort to that most profound statement in the Declaration? "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.."

The Right of the People. Not the Democratic Party. THE PEOPLE - who are the Constitution's, and the country's last line of defense. The historical parallels to eighteenth century America demand that the people act, and act soon. Perhaps even more, the parallels to Germany in the 1930s demand it.

Feel free to spread these points around. It's not really stealing after all. Last I looked, the Declaration of Independence was still in the public domain.

TAGS: Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, American Revolution, Historical Parallels

Saturday Video

This Rocks!

TAGS: Impeach George Bush, Rock Video, NOFX, Wolves in Wolves' Clothing

Why This Scandal Matters

A New York Times Editorial

I'm taking the extraordinary step of reprinting this NYT editorial in its entirety for a couple of reasons. First, that it is SO important that people understand what the so-called Prosecutors Purge scandal is about. And second because currently this article requires registration to view, and as a matter of NYT policy it will eventually become 'Times Select' material and disappear behind a paywall. So a mere link to the article would be insufficient. (Emphasis added.) - SBT

As Monica Goodling, a key player in the United States attorney scandal, prepares to testify before Congress on Wednesday, the administration’s strategy is clear. It has offered up implausible excuses, hidden the most damaging evidence and feigned memory lapses, while hoping that the public’s attention moves on. This story should not end until Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is gone, and the serious damage that has been done to the Justice Department is repaired.

The Justice Department is no ordinary agency. Its 93 United States attorney offices, scattered across the country, prosecute federal crimes ranging from public corruption to terrorism. These prosecutors have enormous power: they can wiretap people’s homes, seize property and put people in jail for life. They can destroy businesses, and affect the outcomes of elections. It has always been understood that although they are appointed by a president, usually from his own party, once in office they must operate in a nonpartisan way, and be insulated from outside pressures.

This understanding has badly broken down. It is now clear that United States attorneys were pressured to act in the interests of the Republican Party, and lost their job if they failed to do so. The firing offenses of the nine prosecutors who were purged last year were that they would not indict Democrats, they investigated important Republicans, or they would not try to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups with baseless election fraud cases.

The degree of partisanship in the department is shocking. A study by two professors, Donald Shields of the University of Missouri at St. Louis and John Cragan of Illinois State University, found that the Bush Justice Department has investigated Democratic officeholders and office seekers about four times as often as Republican ones.

It is hard not to see the fingerprints of Karl Rove. A disproportionate number of the prosecutors pushed out, or considered for dismissal, were in swing states. The main reason for the purge — apart from hobbling a California investigation that has already put one Republican congressman in jail — appears to have been an attempt to tip states like Missouri and Washington to Republican candidates for House, Senate, governor and president.

Justice Department headquarters has become deeply partisan. Young operatives like Ms. Goodling were apparently allowed to hire and promote based on party membership. Political appointees cleared the way for laws designed to disenfranchise minority voters, and brought litigation to remove Democratic-leaning voters from the rolls.

The department’s integrity lies in tatters. As a result of the purge, Tim Griffin, a Republican operative and Karl Rove protégé, was installed as the top federal prosecutor in eastern Arkansas. Rachel Paulose, a 33-year-old Republican activist with thin prosecutorial experience, was assigned to Minnesota. If either indicted a prominent Democrat tomorrow, everyone would believe it was a political hit.

Congress has to save the Justice Department, something President Bush shows no interest in doing. It should pass a resolution of “no confidence” in Mr. Gonzales, and push for his removal. But it also needs to insist on new leadership that will restore the department’s traditions of professionalism and impartiality, and re-establish that in the United States, the legal system does not work to advance the interests of a political party.

Monica Goodling is testifying today about the prosecutors' purge. For best coverage, and live blogging, visit FireDogLake. Also, read THIS POST while there, the perfect complement to this NYT editorial.

TAGS: Prosecutors Purge, Scandal, New York Times, Editorial

Impeach Now

MSNBC Poll Shows Overwhelming Support

Come on Congressional Democrats, get the lead out. Listen up. Get off the stump, and go to work, fercryinoutloud!! We are tired of lame excuses. Sure, you say that the narrow majority in the Senate would preclude a conviction, but at least consider the political upside.

• You'd be wildly popular for showing some guts for a change.
• The Senate trial would bring the issues of malfeasance before the American public in a way the media could not ignore.
• Senators up for re-election in 2008 would be put on the spot. Could they vote to support an unpopular President after overwhelming evidence of criminal behavior had been presented in the news? I think not.

Those last two points are key to bringing normalcy back to politics in the United States. Without a healthy news media, you can forget about true democracy. As Abraham Lincoln pointed out, it is ESSENTIAL that the voter be given the true facts upon which to base his electoral decision. That hasn't been happening since Reagan gutted the Fairness Doctrine. A public trial of a sitting President and Vice President would be so important to the American public that even FOX "news" and ABC/Disney might consider reporting the facts for a change. If they don't, they can face the consequences of losing their broadcast licenses after the Democratic landslide in '08. And if you DO impeach, you can count on that landslide. Should they elect to lie or spin the news in Bu$hCo™'s favor, they could even face charges of involvement in a criminal conspiracy to subvert the process of democracy. And that's TREASON. (cue image of a blindfolded Rupert Murdoch being offered a cigarette)

Finally, there are many more GOP senators than Democrats in the 2008 cohort up for re-election. I think it's 21 and 12 respectively. (Update: It is. Click for a list.)That is a major opportunity to put a lock on the upper house that will last until 2014. To ignore such a golden opportunity hardly sends a signal to the public that you're in it to win it, now does it? Just the opposite in fact, it at least hints that you are complacent in;

• the erosion of democracy
• the rigging of elections
• the subversion of Justice
• the selling out of the middle class to corporate interests
• being led lied into an unjustified, wasteful war of aggression
• the WAR CRIMES this administration is guilty of
• the suspension of habeas corpus
• illegal wiretapping of citizens
• torture and murder of uncharged 'suspects'
• a wholesale culture of corruption that is basically 'government for sale'

There comes a point where complacency becomes complicity, and you are very near to that point, beyond it in the opinions of some. When Russ Feingold called for a motion of censure over the NSA wiretapping where were you? Most of you sat on your hands, and the issue died, along with the fourth amendment. A LOT of you supported the odious Military Commissions Act, the most blatant outrage against Constitutional principles since the Constitution was drawn up in 1787. And some of you supported the traitor Joe LIEberman against Ned Lamont, not only in the primary, but in the election itself, after the Republicans had endorsed him for Gawd's sake! I could go on. I could go on and on.

If you want to earn back our trust, you must impeach Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales.

YOU MUST IMPEACH!! Can't hear me?

YOU MUST IMPEACH!! Dammit,

YOU MUST IMPEACH!!

Update: You simply must visit the comments thread on this post, where I have taken this argument considerably further on second thought. You really should visit comments on this site anyway, sometimes that's where the best stuff is happening.

Cross-posted to Ice Station Tango.
TAGS: Impeach Bush, Impeach Cheney, Impeach Gonzales, Investigations

Looking Back in Anger

As the impeachment movement begins to gain traction, some key information about the origins of the Iraq War continue to dribble out.

For example, Senator Dick Durbin recently disclosed on the floor of the Senate that even though the intelligence committee that he is a member of had evidence which contradicted public administration claims about WMD in Iraq, he could do nothing because members of that committee are sworn to secrecy (h/t Crooks and Liars).



They should have broke that law.

The other revelation is about the deliberations conducted by the administration concerning the war. There were NO deliberations. This confirmation of the obvious comes from former CIA director George Tenet, who just published a big juicy book.

From The Independent:

The row over how President Bush went to war in Iraq has re-erupted with a charge by George Tenet, the former director of the CIA, that a coterie of top officials pushed America into the conflict with no real debate as to whether Saddam Hussein actually posed an imminent threat to the US.

Mr Tenet's angry indictment of his colleagues is the first of its kind from a top ranking member of Mr Bush's once-vaunted national security team, and was instantly rebutted by the White House.

(more)

I'm not exactly impressed by Tenet and Durbin's "revelations". These were things that many of us knew all along and these guys seem to be putting this stuff out there at a really convenient time.

Why isn't Durbin still sworn to secrecy? Because everyone knows that the administration was lying? So? If you can break secrecy to point out a lie, why do you have to wait for public opinon to catch up?

George Tenet would look a lot better without the profit motive of selling a book and without that big ass medal hanging from his neck.

This one:

Thanks guys for speaking out, next time, do it as soon as you know that the lunatics have taken over and are going to get hundreds of thousands of people killed.

Crossposted at IST.

TAGS: Dick Durbin, George Tenet, Iraq War, Intelligence