Impeach Obama for War Crimes and Betrayal of U.S. Bill of Rights

[LeftDemocrat]

counter-punch ads to the fray...  a magazine very hard to find in Oklahoma (try Steve's Sundry, on Harvard Ave., in Tulsa)

May 02, 2012

The Constitutional Crimes of Barack Obama
by DAVE LINDORFF

It is time to make it clear that the current president ... is a serial violator of his oath of office. He is, in truth, a war criminal easily the equal of his predecessor, George W. Bush, and perhaps even of Bush’s regent, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Let me count the ways:

* For starters, in vowing to “preserve, protect and defend the US Constitution of the United States,” President Obama, upon taking office, had a sacred obligation to prosecute the people who had gravely wounded that document prior to his assuming office. It was clear, as I wrote in my book The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), that Bush and Cheney had ordered and condoned and covered up torture of captives in their so-called “War” on Terror, as well as in the very real wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, committing grievous war crimes that are not only violations of international law, but of the US Criminal Code

They also were war criminals of the first degree for orchestrating, through lies to both the UN Security Council and the US Congress and the American people, about the alleged threat and imminence of any threat by Iraq to the US or its allies. President Obama, under the UN Charter and under US law, as the president, commander in chief and top law officer in the nation, was bound to investigate and prosecute those crimes. Instead, he ordered that there would be no prosecutions.

* A federal court also ruled that President Bush had committed a felony in using the National Security Agency and several complicit telecommunications companies to spy on massive numbers of Americans with no warrants. Again, instead of prosecuting the president once he replaced him, President Obama said there would be no prosecution...

* President Obama, on his own initiative, has moved beyond the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, launching illegal wars against Libya, Yemen and Pakistan, largely through the use of American military aircraft, cruise missiles and especially pilotless drones. In addition to being illegal acts of war against nations that pose no imminent threat to the US, these clear acts of war have caused vastly disproportionate civilian deaths — reportedly as many as 40 civilians, including many children, are being killed by drone strikes inside Pakistan for each of the supposed targeted “terrorists.” The disproportionality of such “collateral damage” is a heinous war crime...

* The president and his surrogates, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have committed one of the gravest of crimes in the world, a Crime Against Peace under the UN Charter (which as a signed and Senate-ratified treaty is the law of the land under our Constitution), by threatening a war of aggression against the nation of Iran. Under the Charter’s terms, it is the number one war crime to attack a nation that does not pose an imminent threat to the attacker, and a nearly equally grievous crime to threaten such a crime, as the president and his secretary of state have done on multiple occasions...

* President George W. Bush committed an impeachable crime when he had Jose Padilla, an American citizen born in New York, arrested, held without charge on a military base in South Carolina a for years and tortured mercilessly to the point of madness, before he was finally ordered released to a civilian prison where he faced trial in a civilian court. But President Obama has moved well beyond that travesty by issuing, in April 2010, and then acting on an Executive Order that he claims allows him, on his sole authority, to declare American citizens to be “terrorists” and to have them killed anywhere in the world. Under this clearly unconstitutional order, there is no trial, no judicial ruling. Just execution orders. At least two citizens have been killed in this way, including the wholly innocent young son of an American-born target, Anwar al-Awlaki, killed by a Predator drone in Yemen.

President Obama has also, short of killing them, signed an order authorizing the arrest and secret detention indefinitely of American citizens, again on his own authority, without trial or legal recourse.

* President Obama has violated the Posse Comitatus Act barring the use of federal troops on American soil, creating a domestic military command and using federal troops e.g. to break a strike at port facilities at Pacific coast ports by the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union.

* He has also continued to claim the right to rendition and to torture captives that he on his own authority declares to be terrorists. [etc]

I have no illusions that the current craven and spineless Congress, even with the House in the hands of Republicans, would seek to impeach this president. Indeed, many of the crimes listed above involve activities that the Republicans in Congress themselves actively support and are thus also guilty of, such as threatening Iran with war...

It is nonetheless important, I believe, to publicly announce this bill of particulars, so that it is clear that we continue in the United States to be led by a gang of thieves and sociopaths.

The election of 2008 proved yet again that voting in the US is simply for show, at least as long as the public continues to be suckered into accepting the fake limitation of choice to the two parties, which actually compete only for the right to the patronage and financial spoils that come with winning. The real politics must be in our communities and in the street.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/02/the-constitutional-crimes-of-barack-obama/

byline: Dave Lindorff is a founder of This Can’t Be Happening and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He lives in Philadelphia.

The author concludes: "Real Politics Must be in the Streets."

[LeftDemocrat]

Missed this, from more than a year ago, but obviously still worth posting (see other thread on Fein's arguments for impeachment).

April 06, 2011

GOP lawyer drafts Obama impeachment

A prominent libertarian constitutional lawyer and civil libertarian has drafted an article of impeachment against President Obama over his attack on Libya, throwing down a legal gauntlet that could be picked up by some Congressional Republicans

Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official in the Department of Justice and chairman of American Freedom Agenda writes in his 15-page argument of Obama's course that "Barack Hussein Obama has mocked the rule of law, endangered the very existence of the Republic and the liberties of the people, and perpetrated an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor."

Fein is a small-government conservative who worked on the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and also called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and his work doesn't represent the Republican Party line. But it comes as some Republicans on the Hill, led by Senator Rand Paul, object vociferously to Obama's decision to strike targets in Libya without Congressional authorization.

"If he can wipe out the war powers authorization, why can't he wipe out Congress's authority to spend?" asked Fein. " If we're going to be a government of laws, and not descend into empire, this is Caesar crossing the Rubicon."

Fein said a number of Congressional offices have expressed interest in his proposal.

"They actually need to defend constitutional prerogatives," said Fein. "There's definitely been interest on the Hill. There's at least two dozen who have been open to the idea that this is a serious constitutional crisis."

Fein's articles of impeachment discuss the run-up to the Libya conflict and conclude, "In all of this, President Barack Obama has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States."

The article of impeachment and three subsections :

ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

RESOLVED, That Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following article of impeachment to be exhibited to the Senate:

ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT EXHIBITED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN THE NAME OF ITSELF AND OF ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AGAINST BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT OF ITS IMPEACHMENT AGAINST HIM FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS IN USURPING THE EXCLUSIVE PREROGATIVE OF CONGRESS TO COMENCE WAR UNDER ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8, CLAUSE 11 OF THE CONSTITUTION.

ARTICLE I

In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has usurped the exclusive power of Congress to initiate war under Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the United States Constitution by unilaterally commencing war against the Republic of Libya on March 19, 2011, declaring that Congress is powerless to constrain his conduct of the war, and claiming authority in the future to commence war unilaterally to advance whatever he ordains is in the national interest. By so doing and declaring, Barack Hussein Obama has mocked the rule of law, endangered the very existence of the Republic and the liberties of the people, and perpetrated an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor as hereinafter elaborated.

I.
THE IMPEACHMENT POWER

1. Article II, Section IV of the United States Constitution provides: “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.”

2. According to James Madison’s Records of the Convention, 2:550; Madison, 8 Sept., Mr. George Mason objected to an initial proposal to confine impeachable offenses to treason or bribery:

Why is the provision restrained to Treason & Bribery only? Treason as defined in the Constitution will not reach many great and dangerous offences. Hastings is not guilty of Treason. Attempts to subvert the Constitution may not be Treason as above defined--As bills of attainder which have saved the British Constitution are forbidden, it is the more necessary to extend: the power of impeachments.

3. Delegates to the Federal Convention voted overwhelmingly to include “high crimes and misdemeanors” in Article II, Section IV of the United States Constitution specifically to ensure that “attempts to subvert the Constitution” would fall within the universe of impeachable offences. Id.

4. Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Federal Convention, characterized impeachable offenses in Federalist 65 as, “offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words, from the violation or abuse of some public trust. They are of a nature which with peculiar propriety may be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done to society itself.”

5. In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted three articles of impeachment against then President Richard M. Nixon for actions “subversive of constitutional government.”

6. Father of the Constitution, James Madison, observed that, “Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other…. War is the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.”

7. James Madison also instructed that “no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

8. The exclusive congressional power to commence war under Article I, section VIII, clause XI of the Constitution is the pillar of the Republic and the greatest constitutional guarantor of individual liberty, transparency, and government frugality.

II.
THE “DECLARE WAR” CLAUSE

9. Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI of the United States Constitution provides: “The Congress shall have the power … To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;”

10. Article II, Section II, Clause I of the United States Constitution provides: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

11. The authors of the United States Constitution manifestly intended Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI to fasten exclusive responsibility and authority on the Congress to decide whether to undertake offensive military action.

12. The authors of the United States Constitution believed that individual liberty and the Republic would be endangered by fighting too many wars, not too few.

13. The authors of the United States Constitution understood that to aggrandize power and to leave a historical legacy, the executive in all countries chronically inflates danger manifold to justify warfare.

14. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, in Federalist 4 noted:

[A]bsolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.

15. Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 69 that the president's Commander-in-Chief authority

…would be nominally the same with that of the King of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which by the constitution under consideration would appertain to the Legislature.

16. In a written exchange with Alexander Hamilton under the pseudonym Helvidius, James Madison wrote:

In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

17. James Madison also wrote as Helvidius to Alexander Hamilton:

Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded. They are barred from the latter functions by a great principle in free government, analogous to that which separates the sword from the purse, or the power of executing from the power of enacting laws.

18. On June 29, 1787, at the Federal Convention, James Madison explained that an executive crowned with war powers invites tyranny and the reduction of citizens to vassalage:

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

19. In a letter dated April 4, 1798, James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson:

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature. But the Doctrines lately advanced strike at the root of all these provisions, and will deposit the peace of the Country in that Department which the Constitution distrusts as most ready without cause to renounce it. For if the opinion of the President not the facts & proofs themselves are to sway the judgment of Congress, in declaring war, and if the President in the recess of Congress create a foreign mission, appoint the minister, & negociate a War Treaty, without the possibility of a check even from the Senate, untill the measures present alternatives overruling the freedom of its judgment; if again a Treaty when made obliges the Legislature to declare war contrary to its judgment, and in pursuance of the same doctrine, a law declaring war, imposes a like moral obligation, to grant the requisite supplies until it be formally repealed with the consent of the President & Senate, it is evident that the people are cheated out of the best ingredients in their Government, the safeguards of peace which is the greatest of their blessings.

20. During the Pennsylvania Convention to ratify the Constitution, James Wilson, a future Justice of the United States Supreme Court, observed:

This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must he made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our national interest can draw us into a war.

21. In 1793, President George Washington, who presided over the Federal Convention, wrote to South Carolina Governor William Moultrie in regards to a prospective counter-offensive against the American Indian Creek Nation: "The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress, therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure."

22. President Thomas Jefferson, who served as Secretary of State under President Washington, in a statement before Congress regarding Tripoli and the Barbary Pirates, deemed himself “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense." He amplified: "I communicate [to the Congress] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight."

23. In a message to Congress in December, 1805 regarding potential military action to resolve a border dispute with Spain, President Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that "Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force.” He requested Congressional authorization for offensive military action, even short of war, elaborating:

Formal war is not necessary—it is not probable it will follow; but the protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor of our country, require that force should be interposed to a certain degree. It will probably contribute to advance the object of peace.

But the course to be pursued will require the command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield or deny. To them I communicate every fact material for their information, and the documents necessary to enable them to judge for themselves. To their wisdom, then, I look for the course I am to pursue; and will pursue, with sincere zeal, that which they shall approve.

24. In his War Message to Congress on June 1, 1812, President James Madison reaffirmed that the shift in language from make to declare in Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI of the United States Constitution authorized at the Constitutional convention did not empower the Executive to involve the United States military in any action aside from defense against an overt attack. Although President Madison was convinced that Great Britain had undertaken acts of war against the United States, he nevertheless maintained that he could not respond with military force without congressional authorization. He proclaimed:

We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain, a state of war against the United States, and on the side of the United States a state of peace toward Great Britain.

Whether the United States shall continue passive under these progressive usurpations and these accumulating wrongs, or, opposing force to force in defense of their national rights, shall commit a just cause into the hands of the Almighty Disposer of Events, avoiding all connections which might entangle it in the contest or views of other powers, and preserving a constant readiness to concur in an honorable re-establishment of peace and friendship, is a solemn question which the Constitution wisely confides to the legislative department of the Government. In recommending it to their early deliberations I am happy in the assurance that the decision will be worthy the enlightened and patriotic councils of a virtuous, a free, and a powerful nation.

[LeftDemocrat]

...cont'd

25. In his Records of the Convention, 2:318; Madison, 17 Aug., James Madison wrote that the power “To declare war” had been vested in the Congress in lieu of the power “To make war” to leave to the Executive “the power to repel sudden attacks.”

26. Mr. Elbridge Gerry “never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war,” but still moved with Mr. Madison “to insert declare—in place of make” in Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI. Id.

27. Mr. George Mason was against “giving the power of war to the Executive, because not safely to be trusted with it; or to the Senate, because not so constructed as to be entitled to it. He was for clogging rather than facilitating war; but for facilitating peace.” Yet Mr. Mason “preferred declare to make.” Id.

28. Mr. Roger Sherman “thought [the proposal] stood very well. The Executive shd. be able to repel and not to commence war.” Id.

29. Delegates to the Federal Convention overwhelmingly approved the motion to insert “declare—in place of make,” to deny the Executive power to initiate military action, but to permit the Executive to repel sudden attacks unilaterally. Id.

30. Then Congressman Abraham Lincoln sermonized:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure…. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you "be silent; I see it, if you don't."

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

31. Crowning the President with unilateral authority to commence war under the banner of anticipatory self-defense, prevention of civilian slaughters, gender discrimination, subjugation of ethnic or religious minorities, or otherwise would empower the President to initiate war without limit, threatening the very existence of the Republic. Although a benevolent Chief Executive might resist abuse of an unlimited war power, the principle, if ever accepted by Congress, would lie around like a loaded weapon ready for use by any successor craving absolute power.

32. Thomas Paine justly and rightly declared in Common Sense that "in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."

33. Article 43 Paragraph 3 of the Charter of the United Nations provides that all resolutions or agreements of the United Nations Security Counsel “shall be subject to ratification by the signatory states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.”

34. Article 43 Paragraph 3 of Charter of the United Nations was included specifically to allay concerns that prevented the United States of America from ratifying the League of Nations Treaty in 1919.

35. That treaty risked crowning the President with the counter-constitutional authority to initiate warfare. On November 19, 1919, in Section II of his Reservations with Regard to Ratification of the Versailles Treaty, to preserve the balance of power established by the United States Constitution from executive usurpation, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge resolved as follows:

The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country or to interfere in controversies between nations -- whether members of the League or not -- under the provisions of Article 10, or to employ the military or naval forces of the United States under any article of the treaty for any purpose, unless in any particular case the Congress, which, under the Constitution, has the sole power to declare war or authorize the employment of the military or naval forces of the United States, shall by act or joint resolution so provide.

The rejection of Lodge’s reservations by President Woodrow Wilson and his Senate allies insured defeat of the treaty.

36. Section 2(c) of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 clarifies Presidential authority to undertake military action as follows:

The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

37. In United States v. Smith, 27 F. Cas. 1192 (1806), Supreme Court Justice William Paterson, a delegate to the Federal Convention from New Jersey, wrote on behalf of a federal circuit court:

There is a manifest distinction between our going to war with a nation at peace, and a war being made against us by an actual invasion, or a formal declaration. In the former case it is the exclusive province of Congress to change a state of peace into a state of war.

38. In Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258, 267 (1890), the Supreme Court of the United States held:

The treaty power, as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments, and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the government, or in that of one of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter, without its consent.

39. In his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 642-643 (1952), which rebuked President Harry Truman’s claim of unilateral war powers in the Korean War, Justice Robert Jackson elaborated:

Nothing in our Constitution is plainer than that declaration of a war is entrusted only to Congress. Of course, a state of war may in fact exist without a formal declaration. But no doctrine that the Court could promulgate would seem to me more sinister and alarming than that a President whose conduct of foreign affairs is so largely uncontrolled, and often even is unknown, can vastly enlarge his mastery over the internal affairs of the country by his own commitment of the Nation's armed forces to some foreign venture.

40. All treaties are subservient to the exclusive congressional power to commence war. In Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 18 (1957), the United States Supreme Court held:

There is nothing in [the Constitution’s text] which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result.

41. Unconstitutional usurpations by one branch of government of powers entrusted to a coequal branch are not rendered constitutional by repetition. The United States Supreme Court held unconstitutional hundreds of laws enacted by Congress over the course of five decades that included a legislative veto of executive actions in INS v. Chada, 462 U.S. 919 (1982).

42. In their dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia recognized the “Founders’ general distrust of military power lodged with the President, including the authority to commence war:

No fewer than 10 issues of the Federalist were devoted in whole or part to allaying fears of oppression from the proposed Constitution’s authorization of standing armies in peacetime. Many safeguards in the Constitution reflect these concerns. Congress's authority "[t]o raise and support Armies" was hedged with the proviso that "no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years." U.S. Const., Art. 1, §8, cl. 12. Except for the actual command of military forces, all authorization for their maintenance and all explicit authorization for their use is placed in the control of Congress under Article I, rather than the President under Article II. As Hamilton explained, the President's military authority would be "much inferior" to that of the British King… (Citing Federalist 69, Supra.)

43. On December 20, 2007, then Senator Hillary Clinton proclaimed: "The President has the solemn duty to defend our Nation. If the country is under truly imminent threat of attack, of course the President must take appropriate action to defend us. At the same time, the Constitution requires Congress to authorize war. I do not believe that the President can take military action — including any kind of strategic bombing — against Iran without congressional authorization."

44. Then Senator Joseph Biden stated in a speech at the Iowa City Public Library in 2007 regarding potential military action in Iran that unilateral action by the President would be an impeachable offense under the Constitution:

It is precisely because the consequences of war – intended or otherwise – can be so profound and complicated that our Founding Fathers vested in Congress, not the President, the power to initiate war, except to repel an imminent attack on the United States or its citizens.

They reasoned that requiring the President to come to Congress first would slow things down… allow for more careful decision making before sending Americans to fight and die… and ensure broader public support.

The Founding Fathers were, as in most things, profoundly right.

That’s why I want to be very clear: if the President takes us to war with Iran without Congressional approval, I will call for his impeachment.

I do not say this lightly or to be provocative. I am dead serious. I have chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. I still teach constitutional law. I’ve consulted with some of our leading constitutional scholars. The Constitution is clear. And so am I.

I’m saying this now to put the administration on notice and hopefully to deter the President from taking unilateral action in the last year of his administration.

If war is warranted with a nation of 70 million people, it warrants coming to Congress and the American people first.

45. In a speech on the Senate Floor in 1998, then Senator Joseph Biden maintained: “...the only logical conclusion is that the framers [of the United States Constitution] intended to grant to Congress the power to initiate all hostilities, even limited wars.”

46. On December 20, 2007, then Senator Barack Obama informed the Boston Globe, based upon his extensive knowledge of the United States Constitution: "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

III.
USURPATION OF THE WAR POWER OVER LIBYA

47. President Barack Obama’s military attacks against Libya constitute acts of war.

48. Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-4) had the following exchange with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates during a March 31, 2011 House Armed Services Committee Hearing on the legality of the present military operation in Libya:

Congressman Forbes: Mr. Secretary, if tomorrow a foreign nation intentionally, for whatever reason, launched a Tomahawk missile into New York City, would that be considered an act of war against the United States?

Secretary Gates: Probably so.

Congressman Forbes: Then I would assume the same laws would apply if we launched a Tomahawk missile at another nation—is that also true?

Secretary Gates: You’re getting into constitutional law here and I am no expert on it.

Congressman Forbes: Mr. Secretary, you’re the Secretary of Defense. You ought to be an expert on what’s an act of war or not. If it’s an act of war to launch a Tomahawk missile on New York City would it not also be an act of war to launch a Tomahawk missile by us at another nation?

Secretary Gates: Presumably.

49. Since the passage of United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 on March 19, 2011, the United States has detonated over 200 tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and 455 precision-guided bombs on Libyan soil.

50. Libya posed no actual or imminent threat to the United States when President Obama unleashed Operation Odyssey Dawn.

51. On March 27, 2011, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that Libya never posed an “actual or imminent threat to the United States.” He further stated that Libya has never constituted a “vital interest” to the United States.

52. United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 directs an indefinite United States military quagmire in Libya, authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians, which clearly contemplates removal by force of the murderous regime of Col. Muammar Qadhafi.

53. In a Letter From the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate sent March 21, 2011, President Barack Obama informed Members of Congress that “U.S. forces have targeted the Qadhafi regime's air defense systems, command and control structures, and other capabilities of Qadhafi's armed forces used to attack civilians and civilian populated areas. We will seek a rapid, but responsible, transition of operations to coalition, regional, or international organizations that are postured to continue activities as may be necessary to realize the objectives of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973.”

54. In his March 21, 2011 letter, President Barack Obama further informed Members of Congress that he opted to take unilateral military action “…in support of international efforts to protect civilians and prevent a humanitarian disaster.”

55. President Barack Obama has usurped congressional authority to decide on war or peace with Libya, and has declared he will persist in additional usurpations of the congressional power to commence war whenever he decrees it would advance his idea of the national interest. On March 28, 2011, he declared to Congress and the American people: “I have made it clear that I will never hesitate to use our military swiftly, decisively, and unilaterally when necessary to defend our people, our homeland, our allies, and our core interests” (emphasis added).

56. President Obama’s humanitarian justification for war in Libya establishes a threshold that would justify his initiation of warfare in scores of nations around the globe, including Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, China, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Russia.

57. In Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote on behalf of a majority of the United States Supreme Court:

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

58. President Barack Obama has signed an order, euphemistically named a “Presidential Finding,” authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, further entangling the United States in the Libyan conflict, despite earlier promises of restraint. Truth is invariably the first casualty of war.

59. In response to questions by Members of Congress during a classified briefing on March 30, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated that the President needs no Congressional authorization for his attack on the Libyan nation, and will ignore any Congressional attempt by resolution or otherwise to constrain or halt United States participation in the Libyan war.

60. On March 30, 2011, by persistent silence or otherwise, Secretary Clinton rebuffed congressional inquiries into President Obama’s view of the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution of 1973. She failed to cite a single judicial decision in support of President Obama’s recent actions, relying instead on the undisclosed legal opinions of White House attorneys.

61. President Barack Obama, in flagrant violation of his constitutional oath to execute his office as President of the United States and preserve and protect the United States Constitution, has usurped the exclusive authority of Congress to authorize the initiation of war, in that on March 19, 2011 President Obama initiated an offensive military attack against the Republic of Libya without congressional authorization. In so doing, President Obama has arrested the rule of law, and saluted a vandalizing of the Constitution that will occasion ruination of the Republic, the crippling of individual liberty, and a Leviathan government unless the President is impeached by the House of Representatives and removed from office by the Senate.

In all of this, President Barack Obama has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Posted by Ben Smith
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0411/GOP_lawyer_circulates_Obama_impeachment_articles.html?showall

Articles also posted here as a PDF file: http://www.politico.com/static/PPM186_articlesofimpeachment_040611.html

[LeftDemocrat]

Minor stay against Obama's presidential aggrandizement, attempting as he is doing to stifle domestic dissent against his imperial presidency:

Court Rejects Obama Arguments, Enjoins NDAA Detentions
Dissidents Have Reasonable Fear of Military Detention
by Jason Ditz, May 16, 2012

US District Judge Katherine Forrest has issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the enforcement of the portions of the National Defense Authorization Act 2012 (NDAA) that relate to open-ended military detention of “suspects,” rejecting the Obama Administration’s arguments that the eight plaintiffs in the case, including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, did not have standing to contest such detention practices.

Judge Forrest ruled that Chomsky, Ellsberg and the others had “reasonable” reason to believe that the NDAA could be used to have them captured and transferred into military custody by virtue of their antiwar stances and opposition to the administration’s policies. She also ruled that the NDAA’s standards were too vague and overly broad compared to the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force, which restricted such detentions purely to those directly involved in planning or carrying out 9/11.

Forrest went on to say that the NDAA likely violated both the First and Fifth Amendments, in that it prohibited certain types of freedom of association and denies captives any due process in US courts, and said that the law had already done concrete damage to the abilities of the plaintiffs to do their jobs.

The NDAA has been hugely controversial, and public backlash has convinced members of Congress to try to alter the  law.

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/05/16/court-rejects-obama-arguments-enjoins-against-ndaa-detentions/

When you think about the fact that Obama merely has to designate someone as a "suspect" in his secret killings done by drone, and the NDAA is truly chilling, applied to domestic politics, in the U.S.

Meanwhile, presidential candidate Ron Paul also delivered this address on the issue of Obama's power grab via the NDAA:

On Indefinite Detention: The Tyranny Continues
by Rep. Ron Paul,
May 22, 2012

The bad news from last week’s passage of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act is that Americans can still be arrested on U.S. soil and detained indefinitely without trial. Some of my colleagues would like us to believe that they fixed last year’s infamous Sections 1021 and 1022 of the NDAA, which codified into law the unconstitutional notion that some Americans are not subject to the protections of the Constitution. However, nothing in this year’s bill or amendments to the bill restored those constitutional rights.

Supporters of the one amendment that passed on this matter were hoping no one would notice that it did absolutely nothing. The amendment essentially stated that those entitled to habeas corpus protections are hereby granted habeas corpus protections. Thanks for nothing!

Actually, the amendment in question makes matters worse, as it states that anyone detained on U.S. soil has the right to file a writ of habeas corpus “within 30 days” of arrest. In fact, persons detained on U.S. soil already have the right to file a habeas petition immediately upon arrest!

I co-sponsored an amendment [.pdf] offered by Reps. Adam Smith and  Justin Amash that would have repealed the unconstitutional provisions of last year’s NDAA by eliminating Section 1022 on mandatory military detention and modifying Section 1021 to make it absolutely clear that no one can be apprehended on U.S. soil and held indefinitely without trial or be held subject to a military tribunal. Our language was clear: “No person detained, captured, or arrested in the United States, or a territory or possession of the United States, may be transferred to the custody of the Armed Forces for detention under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, this Act, or the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013.”

The term “person” is key in our amendment, as our Founders did not make a distinction between citizens and non-citizens when determining who was entitled to constitutional protections. As the father of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote, “It does not follow, because aliens are not parties to the Constitution, as citizens are parties to it, that whilst they actually conform to it, they have no right to its protection.”

We should not forget that our Article III court system is a strength, not a weakness. The right to face our accuser, the protections against hearsay evidence, the right to a jury trial — these are designed to protect the innocent and to determine and then punish guilt. And they have been quite successful thus far. Currently there are more than 300 individuals who have been tried and convicted of terrorism-related charges serving lengthy terms in U.S. federal prisons. Each of the six individuals tried in U.S. civilian courts for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center are serving hundreds of years in prison, for example.

Last week was discouraging and disappointing to those of us who value our Constitution. That the U.S. government asserts the legal authority to pick up Americans within the United States and hold them indefinitely and secretly without a trial should be incredibly disturbing to all of us. Americans should check how their representatives voted. Politicians should not be allowed to get away with undermining our liberties in this manner.

http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2012/05/21/on-indefinite-detention-the-tyranny-continues/

[LeftDemocrat]

The evidence is mounting that Obama may be guilty not only of waging unconstitutional war (an impeachable offense), but also war crimes, by the standards of international law.

The New York Times’ recent revelation that President Obama, operating off a government “kill list,” has been personally directing who should be targeted for death by military drones (unmanned aerial assault vehicles) merely pushes us that much closer to that precipitous drop-off to authoritarianism. Should we fail to recognize and rectify the danger in allowing a single individual to declare himself the exception to the rule of law and assume the role of judge, jury, and executioner, we will have no one else to blame when we plunge once and for all into the abyss that is tyranny.

Declaring Obama’s actions “without precedent in presidential history,” The New York Times describes a process whereby every few weeks, Obama and approximately a hundred members of his national security team gather for their “Terror Tuesday” meetings in which they handpick the next so-called national security “threat” to die by way of the American military/CIA drone program. Obama signs off personally on about a third of the drone strikes: all of the ones in Yemen and Somalia, and the risky ones in Pakistan. (By the time he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, Obama had given the go-ahead to more drone strikes than Bush did during his entire presidency. By the third year of his presidency, two times as many suspected terrorists had been approved for killing than had been put in Guantanamo Bay during George W. Bush’s presidency.)

These “Terror Tuesday” sessions run counter to every constitutional and moral principle that has guided America since its inception. It’s not only suspected terrorists whose death warrants are being personally signed by the president but innocent civilians geographically situated near a strike zone, as well, whether or not they have any ties to a suspected terrorist. As an anonymous government official on Obama’s drone campaign observed, “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.” Indeed, Obama’s first authorized drone attack in Yemen led to the deaths of 14 women and 21 children, and only one al-Qaeda affiliate. ... Indeed, in a decision he claims was “an easy one,” Obama has already killed two American citizens in this fashion: Anwar al-Awlaki, an American cleric living in Yemen who served as a propagandist for al-Qaeda, and his 16-year-old son.

Whatever one may say about the dubious merits of Obama’s kill list, there can be no doubt about the fact that he has managed to create a radical and chilling new power allowing the president to kill at will anyone, including American citizens, whom he deems a threat to the nation’s security. Entirely lacking in accountability and legal justification, Obama’s kill list takes to new heights Richard Nixon’s brazen claim that “if the president does it, it’s not illegal.”

No matter what is said to the contrary, the Constitution does not in any way provide for the president to engage in such acts, even under the auspices of his role as commander in chief.

When all is said and done, Obama’s kill lists and drone strikes, which have claimed the lives of countless innocent women and children, are doing little more than fomenting ill will against the United States. Whether he intends it or not, by his actions, Obama is sowing the seeds for future terrorist violence against America — blowback for our callous disregard for life. As Ibrahim Mothana, a Yemeni democracy activist, noted in an op-ed in The New York Times, “Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair.”

With every passing day, the casualties are mounting — not just the innocent women and children abroad blown to smithereens by American missiles, but our Constitution, our increasingly fragile republic, and our ability to trust that our government leaders will be accountable to abiding by the rule of law.

We find ourselves skating dangerously close to becoming a nation ruled not by laws but by men — and fallible, imperfect men, at that.

http://original.antiwar.com/jwhitehead/2012/06/18/has-the-president-become-a-law-unto-himself/

Meanwhile, Obama and his administration is hiding under rock, with respect to the U.S. government's obligations to uphold international law.

GENEVA (AP) — A U.N. human rights expert accused the U.S. government Wednesday of sidestepping his questions on its use of armed drones to carry out targeted killings overseas.

Christof Heyns, the U.N.'s independent investigator on extrajudicial killings, had asked the United States to lay out the legal basis and accountability procedures for the use of armed drones.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jOMOELC65VXRSxNcrBhRpTUuY1fw?docId=4e5796297090412189ffb0be716d0abf

We here at ImpeachOK1 would recommend Heyns not hold his breath.  Obama and his cronies will never supply a legal basis for drone strikes because they are illegitimate, desperate actions by an imperialist president corrupted absolutely by the power of his office.

[LeftDemocrat]

A constitutional scholar - psshaw!  This president should be impeached for violating the separation of powers.

Chris Hedges reports on the ongoing case to safeguard the Bill of Rights from this imperious president:

Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law by Obama on Dec. 31, 2011, obliterates some of our most important constitutional protections. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Those taken into custody by the military, which becomes under the NDAA a domestic law enforcement agency, can be denied due process and habeas corpus and held indefinitely in military facilities. Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies. The very name of the law itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within “the homeland” as well as those abroad.

“The essential thrust of the NDAA is to create a system of justice that violates the separation of powers,” Mayer told the court. “[The Obama administration has] taken detention out of the judicial branch and put it under the executive branch.”

In May, Judge Forrest issued a temporary injunction invalidating Section 1021 as a violation of the First and Fifth amendments. It was a courageous decision. Forrest will decide within a couple of weeks whether she will make the injunction permanent.

In last week’s proceeding, the judge, who appeared from her sharp questioning of government attorneys likely to nullify the section, cited the forced internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a precedent she did not want to follow. Forrest read to the courtroom a dissenting opinion by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson in Korematsu v. United States, a ruling that authorized the detention during the war of some 110,00 Japanese-Americans in government “relocation camps.”

“[E]ven if they were permissible military procedures, I deny that it follows that they are constitutional,” Jackson wrote in his 1944 dissent. “If, as the Court holds, it does follow, then we may as well say that any military order will be constitutional, and have done with it.”

Barack Obama’s administration has appealed Judge Forrest’s temporary injunction.

The administration’s added failure to restore habeas corpus, its use of the Espionage Act six times to silence government whistle-blowers, its support of the FISA Amendment Act—which permits warrantless wiretapping, monitoring and eavesdropping on U.S. citizens—and its ordering of the assassination of U.S. citizens under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, is a signal that for all his rhetoric, Obama, like his Republican rivals, is determined to remove every impediment to the unchecked power of the security and surveillance state.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/criminalizing_dissent_20120813/

[LeftDemocrat]

From the opposite end of the political spectrum, a similar argument, that Obama should be held accountable for the increasing encroachment on the powers reserved to Congress, by the terms of our Constitution:

Dictatorial War-making
 August 24, 2012

 When the Framers called the federal government into existence with the Constitution, they divided the war-making power into two separate powers, one to be exercised by the president and the other to be exercised by Congress. While the president would have the power to wage war, it would be Congress that would have the power to decide whether to go to war.

Thus, the law of the land — the law that the American people set forth in their Constitution — is that the president is precluded from waging war without a formal declaration of war from Congress.

People might not like that provision. They might even think it’s outdated. But the law is the law. If people want to amend the Constitution to vest full dictatorial war-making power in the president, the Constitution provides the process for doing so. To date, the constitutional power to declare war is still vested in the Congress.

Of course, everyone is fully aware that presidents uniformly ignore this constitutional provision.

Everyone is also aware of the fact that Congress lets it happen, when it could and should impeach the president for knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately violating the higher law of the Constitution, no doubt in part owing to the heavy influence of the military-industrial complex on members of Congress.

Everyone is equally aware that the judicial branch of the federal government has abrogated its constitutional duty to declare the president’s wars in violation of the Constitution, no doubt because federal judges know that the president and the military wouldn’t comply with their judgment anyway.

But it is incumbent on the American people to continue to remind the president that he is a lawbreaker when he sends our nation into war without the required declaration of war from Congress. It is important that the American people never acquiesce in the law-breaking and continue to object to it. Such dictatorial power has no place in a free society and under our form of constitutional government.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

[LeftDemocrat]

Ms. Maxwell may be partisan, but she's got a point here:

Why no one takes impeaching Obama seriously
Opinion
by Zerlina Maxwell | May 22, 2013 at 9:07 AM

The Republican party is playing with fire.  If House Republicans actually file articles of impeachment against the first African-American president, they can kiss the black vote goodbye, forever.

And the Hispanic vote, the Asian vote, and the South Asian vote.

The 2012 election illustrated that people of color generally, are turned off by the vicious attacks on President Obama, including the “birther” nonsense, and any move to remove him from office by way of impeachment will kill the Republican party in a way that their attempts to impeach President Clinton did not.

If the GOP is prepared to impeach the first black president, they should be prepared to watch Democrats solidify the emerging majority of black and brown voters against the Republican party for a generation.

http://thegrio.com/2013/05/22/why-no-one-takes-impeaching-obama-seriously/

Of course, the rule of law is far from Ms. Maxwell's considerations.  Is everything about electioneering in this country?  No principles left?

[LeftDemocrat]

"The president made his rejection of habeas corpus and his assumption of a godlike capacity for judgement explicit."

British columnist explains the seriousness of Obama's habit of "extra-judicial" execution.  First it was assassination by drone abroad, now its assassination within the U.S. by swat team.

Innocent Until Proved Dead
June 3, 2013

If assassinating suspects makes sense overseas, why not at home?

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 4th June 2013

http://www.monbiot.com/2013/06/03/innocent-until-proved-dead/

Um, for those of you without any clue, or for those of you who don't get the menace behind the title to Monbiot's piece, the phrase is supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law".

Monbiot is being satirical.  What he means is that Obama is destroying the rule of law, due process, and constitutional protections with his executive overreach and imperial presidency.