Conservative Bruce Fein argues for impeachment

[LeftDemocrat]

"Impeach Cheney First - Because Tulsans Believe in the Rule of Law"

Conservative Bruce Fein argues for impeachment, on the grounds that Bush-Cheney's misconduct is "more worrisome" than anything Bill Clinton ever did :
 http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/video_popups/pop_vid_impeachment1-2.html

Restoring the rule of law to our government is more important than any election, or any party affiliation.

"[A]n article of impeachment had been passed against President Richard Nixon for his refusal to comply with subpoenas, and [similarly] Bush and Cheney have refused to comply with subpoenas."
 ~David Swanson
 http://www.democrats.com/node/13808

--edit, 08 Aug--rebroadcast of the program planned for 10 Aug on TV--

    Talk of Impeachment Is in the Air
    Bill Moyers Journal
    t r u t h o u t | Programming Note
    Airdate: Friday, August 10, 2007 at 9 p.m. EDT on PBS.
    (Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/about/airdates.html.)

    Talk of impeachment is in the air. A recent opinion poll says that nearly half of Americans favor impeachment of the president and more than half believe Vice President Cheney should be impeached.
   In a conversation that generated a passionate response when first broadcast, Bill Moyers gets perspective from constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who wrote the first article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, and The Nation's John Nichols, author of "The Genius of Impeachment."

--of course, this program is also available on demand, anytime, 24/7 for video feed, if you have internet access--

[LeftDemocrat]

from Slate magazine, online


The Heart of Queens
Can Nancy Pelosi single-handedly take impeachment off the table?
By Bruce Fein
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2007, at 4:49 PM ET

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is proving to be the surprise O. Henry ending to last November's elections. The American voters gave Democrats clear control of Congress, rebuked President George W. Bush, and voiced an unequivocal public craving to trade in customary narrow-minded politics for something more inspiring. Yet motivated by partisan concerns over the 2008 elections, the new speaker is following President Bush around like a sheep while he solidifies an imperial presidency and diminishes the Congress into irrelevancy. Just look at the latest ACLU advertisement targeting Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The only thing Pelosi has retained for the Congress is small-minded earmarks to attract political contributions.

If Pelosi persists in her imperious, mean-spirited, and myopic thinking in disregard of her oath to support and defend the Constitution, members of the House should replace her with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

According to public opinion polling, the percentage of voters supporting the impeachments of both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are now approximately 45 and 54 percent, respectively. Most Americans instinctively feel the president is an untrustworthy steward of the Constitution's checks and balances because, among other things, he flouts laws, prohibits White House aides from testifying before Congress, consistently defends an attorney general who is an inveterate liar, and detains citizens and noncitizens indefinitely as enemy combatants on his say-so alone. The prevailing barometer of acute public dissatisfaction with the White House surpasses the corresponding disaffection with President Richard M. Nixon when the Senate Watergate hearings began in May 1973. And Mr. Nixon had recently trounced Sen. George McGovern in the 1972 elections, winning 49 states.

The prospect of an impeachment inquiry by the House judiciary committee would concentrate the minds of the president and vice president wonderfully on obeying rather than sabotaging the Constitution. But Speaker Pelosi has at least figuratively joined hands with the White House in opposition. Emulating the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, she has threatened the removal of Michigan Rep. John Conyers from his chairmanship of the House judiciary committee if an impeachment inquiry were even opened, according to reliable congressional chatter.

With more than four decades of service in the House, Chairman Conyers is a veteran of constitutional battles between the branches. The speaker, in contrast, is a novice on such matters. Unlike Conyers, she never experienced the Nixon impeachment travails that sobered and toughened the chairman against executive abuses and secrecy. If she had, she never would have emboldened President Bush and Vice President Cheney to intensify their assaults on congressional power by pronouncing that "impeachment is off the table."

Not surprisingly, after receiving that reassurance that there would be no consequences for their misconduct, the White House swiftly choked off the authority of Congress to expose executive lawlessness or maladministration by instructing current or former White House officials, including Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and Joshua Bolton, to refuse to appear for testimony. And despite the recent enactment of the Protect America Act of 2007—which amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 for the ninth time since 9/11 to suit the administration's fancy—President Bush continues to claim constitutional authority to ignore the law at will and in secret.

It would be one thing if the speaker had been able to articulate statesmanlike reasons to balk at impeaching the president or vice president for their multiple constitutional sins. Impeachment is, to be sure, fraught with prudential considerations. A president who confesses constitutional error or wrongdoing and pledges to turn a new leaf may be forgiven. The confession would derail a legal precedent that would lie around like a loaded weapon for successors in the White House to justify constitutional misbehavior.

Speaker Pelosi's argument against impeachment is not high-minded, however. It is the fortunes of the Democratic Party, not the fate of the Constitution and the strength of democracy, that animate her decision. She opines that Democrats would risk losing control of Congress and the occupancy of the White House in 2008 if impeachment efforts moved forward. Many Democrats dispute that opinion. They maintain that citizens voted for authentic change last November and will revolt if Democrats ape President Bush and maneuver for partisan advantage while the Constitution burns. If an impeachment inquiry is blocked by Pelosi, and the White House is left undisturbed in its constitutional usurpations and celebration of perpetual war, voters may turn against Democrats for their political spinelessness.

But even if the speaker's political and strategic impeachment worries were valid, the Constitution is beyond party. It has remained generally unscathed for more than two centuries only because our leaders have subordinated their parochial concerns when looking into a constitutional abyss. The speaker should not be permitted to frustrate the will of 434 co-equal members who collectively represent the entire nation and who are inspired by loftier motives when the Constitution and the relevance of Congress lie in the balance. Just as President Bush should not be a king, Speaker Pelosi should not be our queen. If she possessed a crumb of decency or respect for democracy, she would permit a "free" vote in the House to decide on an impeachment inquiry without any obligation to support her lead. It is certainly customary in parliamentary systems like Great Britain or Canada for party leaders to permit free votes on matters of conscience, like the death penalty or abortion. Deciding on whether to enforce the Constitution through impeachment is just as much a matter of moral scruple.

Speaker Pelosi is no constitutional expert. Neither is she an impeachment expert. She is no expert in discerning how President Bush and Vice President Cheney are slashing away at the sinews of Congress. Why should her voice be the final word on impeachment when it runs against the grain of the American people and the House of Representatives? Checks and balances and protections against government abuses are too important to be left to an imperious amateur with a Bush-like mental worldview. If House Democrats have any constitutional honor and dedication to the nation, they will force Speaker Pelosi out if she neglects to turn a new leaf with alacrity.

Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Bruce Fein & Associates and chairman of the American Freedom Agenda. He is author of the forthcoming book Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle Over the Constitution and Democracy.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2172547/

Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

[Thanks, Jack, for the heads up on this op/ed piece.]

[LeftDemocrat]

Doug Bandow on the war, check & balances, GOP seppuku:

excerpts from a longer article:

Many leading conservatives, such as Rich Lowry of National Review, now admit that carnage in Baghdad's streets overshadows, say, increased cell phone sales. In a remarkable article entitled "Time to Change Course," conservative journalist William Tucker acknowledged: "the horrible thing about Iraq right now is that if you read all liberal criticisms of the past four years, you realize it is basically right."

Whether disaster was inevitable will long be disputed by the neoconservative architects of the war, who have been shamelessly fleeing the administration wreckage as it sinks. They got the war that they desperately desired but now wail about the boob in the White House who botched everything. (For instance, Ken Adelman of "the invasion will be a cakewalk" fame, calls the Bushies "incompetent" and "deadly, dysfunctional." Eliot Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins, says they are "incredibly incompetent.")

Certainly a multitude of mistakes by the president and his appointees hastened Iraq's dissolution into sectarian war. However, the most fundamental flaw was to believe in global social engineering, that a few bright policy nerds sitting around Washington could simply and quickly remake an artificial nation rent by sectarian divisions and lacking any democratic tradition into a liberal, pro-western state. It was foolish, indeed criminal, arrogance.    ...

The harm is done and cannot be reversed. All we can do is learn from this experience – America should not promiscuously put its credibility on the line, and never do so for objectives that are not vital.

...

Equally if not more important, the nation needs a GOP whose legislators are willing to break with the administration. Historically the Republican Party has not been reflexively either pro-war or pro-executive supremacy. After all, war is the biggest "Big Government" program, and the greatest threat to individual liberty, low taxes, and economic freedom. The genius of the Constitution, routinely lauded by GOP propagandists, was separating powers and creating checks and balances.

The ongoing threat to Republican values is obvious today. There is little about the Bush administration or the Bush administration's war that represents traditional conservatism. If Republicans care about what they preach, and the country they seek to lead, they must confront a failing policy in Iraq.

GOP leaders also have a partisan interest in acting. With the Republican administration determined to commit the political equivalent of ritual seppuku, presidential contenders and Republican legislators need to separate themselves if they hope to survive in 2008.

http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=10307

byline:  Doug Bandow is a Washington-based political writer and policy analyst and Robert A. Taft Fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance. He served as a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and as a senior policy analyst in the 1980 Reagan for President campaign.

[LeftDemocrat]

Anthony Gregory on the threat of American imperialism to the U.S. Constitution-
excerpts from a book review

About 10 years ago, we libertarians were accustomed to hearing constitutionalist conservatives voicing our shared concern about the American Republic’s dissolution into a social democracy. ... What most conservatives and all too many libertarians failed to consider in all this condemnation of the welfare state could be summed up in a three-letter word: war.

The warfare state has always been the greatest single threat to American constitutional liberty. James Madison understood this when he proclaimed that war “comprises and develops the germ of every other” threat to freedom. Conscription, standing armies, consolidated power in the executive branch, crushing taxes, and mass death and injury accompany an expansive warfare state, and, along with all such germs of tyranny, we could expect a steady decline in the freedom of the individual and a perpetual growth of the central state. Perpetual war, Madison said, would mean the death of American liberty. Unfortunately, the U.S. empire has been at war nearly steadily for more than a century.

[T]he wartime despotism, the explosion of power in the hands of the executive branch, the subservience of Congress, the public’s apathy toward foreign atrocities or even their own civil liberties — such heinous developments that come along with empire surely impede any efforts to restore the American republic more than any welfare-state programs so reviled by the 1990s Right. Indeed, to have an empire and republic at the same time is a contradiction, and it is quite the irony that this basic truth seems altogether lost on most conservatives, who claim to understand the limits of human nature, the corruptibility of government power, the failures of bureaucracy, and the lessons learned from an all-to-recent history riddled with the bones and skulls of totalitarianism’s victims.

When it comes to actually being republicans and not utopian imperialists, prudential guardians of America’s most cherished traditions rather than revolutionaries who wish to overturn many of the Anglo-Saxon legal traditions that have been around for centuries, today’s conservatives and Republicans fail.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0706g.asp

"The Diagnosis of a Dying Republic, Part 1"
by Anthony Gregory, Posted September 19, 2007
a book review of
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 368 pages; $26.

Anthony Gregory is a research analyst at the Independent Institute, a policy adviser for the Future of Freedom Foundation, and a columnist at LewRockwell.com. Anthony's website is AnthonyGregory.com. Send him email.

This article originally appeared in the June 2007 edition of Freedom Daily.

[LeftDemocrat]

More conservatives againt Bush-Cheney power grab, or so-called 'unitary executive' (as in Nazi Fuhrer)

conservative American Freedom Agenda includes David Keene, Richard Viguerie, Bob Barr, and Bruce Fein

Although most of the public criticism of Bush's position has come from the left, the first organized effort to make presidential powers a 2008 campaign issue came from the right.
In unveiling the American Freedom Agenda in March, several  veterans of the conservative movement contended Bush was damaging the constitutional structure of checks and balances and laying the groundwork for abuses by future presidents.

"As fellow conservatives, we believe we have a greater responsibility than most to stand up to this particular administration and demand that it respect the checks and balances established by the founding fathers," said the campaign's chairman, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official under President Ronald Reagan.

Other organizers included David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Richard Viguerie, whose fundraising innovations helped launch the modern conservative movement; and Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia who was a leader in the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.

The pledge they circulated to candidates of both parties went beyond disavowals of torture and unauthorized wiretapping. It included a promise to dismantle Bush's military tribunals and halt "extraordinary renditions," in which foreign suspects are abducted by U.S. agents and flown to countries with histories of torturing prisoners.
The pledge also called for a curb on invoking state secrecy to fight information requests from Congress or dismiss lawsuits over government wrongdoing, renunciation of threats to prosecute journalists for espionage when they report classified information, and an end to the use of signing statements to disregard laws.
Fein said any candidate, Democrat or Republican, who won't make a detailed commitment to reverse Bush's policies is tacitly endorsing them. He said the more generally worded language of the liberal campaign pledge doesn't go far enough.

President Bush's drive to expand executive power over surveillance, detention, interrogation and the meaning of new laws has drawn largely ineffectual protests from Congress. But a group of liberals and a handful of prominent conservatives are pressing would-be successors to renounce those powers before they take office.
Both the liberal American Freedom Campaign and the conservative American Freedom Agenda have adopted platforms complaining of administration muscle-flexing on issues ranging from the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Justice Department's threats to prosecute reporters for espionage.

The conservative campaign has asked candidates of both parties to endorse its detailed 10-point platform. Only one, Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican with libertarian leanings, has signed it, although Edwards has posted the document on one of his campaign Web sites.
The competing pledge campaigns reflect a degree of bipartisan frustration with political leaders' silence about what their backers see as Bush's effort to tip the government's balance of powers.
Bush acted on his own, without consulting Congress or seeking court approval, when he ordered the National Security Agency to wiretap calls between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He unilaterally established military tribunals to try foreign captives, and his Justice Department rewrote legal rules governing torture to authorize the infliction of intense pain during interrogation.

"Groups on left, right ask candidates to reject Bush's wider powers"
Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, October 14, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/14/MN4ASL450.DTL
emphases in underline, bold and redline added

To read the conservative American Freedom Agenda's platform, go to:
http://www.americanfreedomagenda.org

[LeftDemocrat]

Impeach Cheney
The vice president has run utterly amok and must be stopped.
By Bruce Fein
Posted Wednesday, June 27, 2007, at 5:06 PM ET

Under Dick Cheney, the office of the vice president has been transformed from a tiny acorn into an unprecedented giant oak. In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president's insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney's multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify.

Take the vice president's preposterous theory that his office is outside the executive branch because it also exercises a legislative function. The same can be said of the president, who also exercises a legislative function in signing or vetoing bills passed by Congress. Under Cheney's bizarre reasoning, President Bush is not part of his own administration: The executive branch becomes acephalous. Today Cheney Chief of Staff David Addington refused to renounce that reasoning, instead laughably trying to diminish the importance of the legal question at issue.

The nation's first vice president, John Adams, bemoaned: "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and meet common fate." Vice President John Nance Garner, serving under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, lamented: "The vice presidency isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss." In modern times, vice presidents have generally been confined to attending state funerals or to distributing blankets after earthquakes.

Then President George W. Bush outsourced the lion's share of his presidency to Vice President Cheney, and Mr. Cheney has made the most of it. Since 9/11, he has proclaimed that all checks and balances and individual liberties are subservient to the president's commander in chief powers in confronting international terrorism. Let's review the record of his abuses and excesses:

The vice president asserted presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes. The Supreme Court rebuked Cheney in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Mr. Cheney claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the president's say-so alone, a frightening power indistinguishable from King Louis XVI's execrated lettres de cachet that occasioned the storming of the Bastille. The Supreme Court repudiated Cheney in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

The vice president initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists. This lawlessness has been answered in Germany and Italy with criminal charges against CIA operatives or agents. The legal precedent set by Cheney would justify a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kidnap American tourists in Paris and to dispatch them to dungeons in Belarus if they were suspected of Chechen sympathies.

The vice president has maintained that the entire world is a battlefield. Accordingly, he contends that military power may be unleashed to kill or capture any American citizen on American soil if suspected of association or affiliation with al-Qaida. Thus, Mr. Cheney could have ordered the military to kill Jose Padilla with rockets, artillery, or otherwise when he landed at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, because of Padilla's then-suspected ties to international terrorism.

Mr. Cheney has championed a presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.

He has advocated and authored signing statements that declare the president's intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law that he proclaims are unconstitutional, for example, a requirement to obtain a judicial warrant before opening mail or a prohibition on employing military force to fight narco-terrorists in Colombia. The signing statements are tantamount to absolute line-item vetoes that the Supreme Court invalidated in the 1998 case Clinton v. New York.

The vice president engineered the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. He concocted the alarming theory that the president may flout any law that inhibits the collection of foreign intelligence, including prohibitions on breaking and entering homes, torture, or assassinations. As a reflection of his power in this arena, today the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Cheney's office, as well as the White House, for documents that relate to the warrantless eavesdropping.

The vice president has orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications. He has summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force, and to frustrate the testimonies of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys.

Cheney scorns freedom of speech and of the press. He urges application of the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists who expose national security abuses, for example, secret prisons in Eastern Europe or the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. He retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, through Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration's evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq. Mr. Cheney is defending himself from a pending suit brought by Wilson and Plame on the grounds that he is entitled to the absolute immunity of the president established in 1982 by Nixon v. Fitzgerald. (Although this defense contradicts Cheney's claim that he is not part of the executive branch.)

The Constitution does not expressly forbid the president from abandoning his chief powers to the vice president. But President Bush's tacit delegation to Cheney and Cheney's eager acceptance tortures the Constitution's provision for an acting president. The presidency and vice presidency are discrete constitutional offices. The 12th Amendment provides for their separate elections. The sole constitutionally enumerated function of the vice president is to serve as president of the Senate without a vote except to break ties.

In contrast, Article II enumerates the powers and responsibilities of the president, including the obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. A special presidential oath is prescribed. Section 3 of the 25th Amendment provides a method for the president to yield his office to the vice president, when "he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." There is no other constitutional provision for transferring presidential powers to the vice president.

Yet without making a written transmittal to Congress, President Bush has ceded vast domains of his powers to Vice President Cheney by mutual understanding that circumvents the 25th Amendment. This constitutional provision assures that the public and Congress know who is exercising the powers of the presidency and who should be held responsible for successes or failures. The Bush-Cheney dispensation blurs political accountability by continually hiding the real decision-maker under presidential skirts. The Washington Post has thoroughly documented the vice president's dominance in a four-part series running this week. It is quite a read.

In the end, President Bush regularly is unable to explain or defend the policies of his own administration, and that is because the heavy intellectual labor has been performed in the office of the vice president. Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law.

http://slate.com/id/2169292
emphasis in red added

And Fein doesn't even mention the urgent threat that Cheney poses, in his war-mongering and his attempt to personally direct U.S. military policy, most lately, in his fanatical desire to attack Iran.  God save the country, from Cheney-Bush.

[LeftDemocrat]

Rumsfeld Flees France, Fearing Arrest

Rumsfeld Flees France, Fearing Arrest
Oct. 29, 2007 By IPS News
 
Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of "ordering and authorizing" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military's detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.
 
U.S. embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush's "war on terror" for six years.
 
Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.
 
According to activists in France, who greeted Rumsfeld, shouting "murderer" and "war criminal" at the breakfast meeting venue, U.S. embassy officials remained tight-lipped about the former defense secretary's whereabouts citing "security reasons".
 
Anti-torture protesters in France believe that the defense secretary fled over the open border to Germany, where a war crimes case against Rumsfeld was dismissed by a federal court. But activists point out that under the Schengen agreement that ended border checkpoints across a large part of the European Union, French law enforcement agents are allowed to cross the border into Germany in pursuit of a fleeing fugitive.
 
"Rumsfeld must be feeling how Saddam Hussein felt when U.S. forces were hunting him down," activist Tanguy Richard said. "He may never end up being hanged like his old friend, but he must learn that in the civilized world, war crime doesn't pay."
 
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and the French League for Human Rights (LDH) filed the complaint on Thursday after learning that Rumsfeld was scheduled to visit Paris.
 
Source:
http://www.alternet.org/story/66425/

Thanks, B., for bringing this to our attention.  It is also buried in the LeftLink newsfeed, on the forum, but I would've missed it there.

[LeftDemocrat]

Three U.S. Army captains who served in the Iraq war accuse generals, and civilian proconsuls, of dereliction of duty, punishable by law.  They also bemoan the lack of impeachment of a guilty President.

The Déjà Vu of No Accountability
by Jason Blindauer, Luis Carlos Montalvan and William Ruehl
Published on Friday, December 21, 2007 by The Baltimore Sun

In the wake of the Vietnam War, none of those responsible for the lies and mistakes that took us to Southeast Asia and kept us mired in that conflict for more than a decade was held accountable in any way. To us - three former U.S. Army captains who served in the Iraq war - it is clear that not enough American politicians or military leaders learned the most important lessons from that era.

As a result, we are repeating the mistakes of Vietnam in our own time.

How quickly we forget our recent past. President Richard Nixon’s resignation had little to do with his poor leadership in Vietnam. No general officers, including William C. Westmoreland, the commander in Vietnam, were ever held responsible. And tragically, no civilian leaders were held accountable either. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara was even “laterally arabesqued” to assume the presidency of the World Bank.

The Bush administration has followed the same script of unaccountability, even appointing Paul Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of the Iraq quagmire, to head the World Bank. Gen. George Casey, formerly in charge of all ground forces in Iraq and largely responsible for executing inept counterinsurgency warfare, was, like General Westmoreland after the 1968 Tet Offensive, promoted to Army chief of staff.

Consider this particularly disorienting irony: While touring the offices of a number of key leaders in the Pentagon in spring 2006, one of us noticed copies of H. R. McMaster’s acclaimed book, Dereliction of Duty, at eye level on the bookshelves of many ranking officials. That book thoroughly outlines how President Lyndon B. Johnson, Mr. McNamara and the generals deceived the American people and failed to discharge their sworn duties. Do those Pentagon officials have no clue? Can they not see how Mr. McMaster’s analysis of the Vietnam War damns their own incompetence and bungling?  ...

In the interests of pushing our nation forward and out of Iraq, Congress should move away from legislation that rhetorically attempts to tie war budgets to withdrawal efforts. Rather, our leaders must get serious about accountability. They should insist upon the review of several retired general officers as candidates for censure. A number of active-duty generals should also be court-martialed and ultimately stripped of their stars and forced to retire. Retired Gen. Ricardo Sanchez and active-duty Gen. Walter Wojdakowski top the list for these punitive measures for their failures in 2003 and 2004.

Last but not least, a congressional commission should investigate the improprieties and incompetence of several civilian leaders who served in Iraq, with L. Paul Bremer III and David R. Oliver topping the list. Mr. Bremer did next to nothing to ensure proper accountability of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars toward reconstruction. Similarly, as chief adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Finance, Mr. Oliver failed to implement any system of accounting and auditing for billions of Iraqi dinars - money that should have contributed to the development of the country rather than the insurgency.

Unless a republic holds its leaders accountable, it is doomed to be the instrument of negligence, private agendas and corruption. In ancient Rome, any citizen could accuse an official of misconduct and instigate a public trial. The common people were the most effective at using this tool, because the elites were too prone to shielding each other.

How is it with our U.S. House and Senate? Are they “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” or are they too much the agents of monied interests? Why have they failed to act decisively? Do our legislators think that not holding military and civilian leaders accountable for their failures will ensure our security in the 21st century?

Former U.S. Army captains Jason Blindauer, Luis Carlos Montalvan and William “Jamie” Ruehl served in Iraq from 2003 to 2006.


Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun

crossposted to: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/21/5942/

Sure, this jointly-authored manifesto falls short of calling for the direct impeachment of Bush-Cheney, although the parallel with Nixon is drawn.  Rather, if the U.S. generals and the Pentagon are going to continue to protect the warmongering Bush-Cheney duo, in the spirit of misplaced allegiance or by making automatic excuses for 'upper echelons', then the three captains authoring the above point out, it's only reasonable for these generals to take the fall. If Congress --fecklessly-- lacks the will to use impeachment against the President and Vice President for committing crimes against peace, committing the crime of a war of aggression, or committing war crimes in U.S.-occupied Iraq, then Congress should at least uphold the rule of law where it can, and go after the "king's ministers," so to speak.

In a related piece of news, captains are refusing to continue to serve, with increasing numbers opting out of military service under such leadership. 

    In the last four years, the exodus of junior officers from the Army has accelerated. In 2003, around 8 percent of junior officers with between four and nine years of experience left for other careers. Last year, the attrition rate leapt to 13 percent. "A five percent change could potentially be a serious problem," said James Hosek, an expert in military retention at the RAND Corporation. Over the long term, this rate of attrition would halve the number of officers who reach their tenth year in uniform and intend to take senior leadership roles.

    But the problem isn't one of numbers alone: the Army also appears to be losing its most gifted young officers. In 2005, internal Army memos started to warn of the "disproportionate loss of high-potential, high-performance junior leaders." West Point graduates are leaving at their highest rates since the 1970s (except for a few years in the early 1990s when the Army's goal was to reduce its size). Of the nearly 1,000 cadets from the class of 2002, 58 percent are no longer on active duty. ...

Colonel George Lockwood, the director of officer personnel management for the Army's Human Resources Command, wrote, "The Army is facing significant challenges in officer manning, now and in the immediate future." Lockwood was referring to an anticipated shortfall of about 3,000 captains and majors until at least 2013; he estimated that the Army already has only about half the senior captains that it needs. "Read the last line again, please," Lockwood wrote. "Our inventory of senior captains is only 51 percent of requirement." In response to this deficit, the Army is taking in twenty-two-year-olds as fast as it can. However, these recruits can't be expected to perform the jobs of officers who have six to eight years of experience. "New 2nd Lieutenants," Lockwood observed, "are no substitute for senior captains."

"The Army's Other Crisis"
    by Andrew Tilghman
    Washington Monthly
    December 2007 Issue
    Why the best and brightest young officers are leaving.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0712.tilghman.html
crossposted: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122007C.shtml

[LeftDemocrat]

    Lawyers Stepping Up
    By Katrina vanden Heuvel
    The Nation
    Friday 21 December 2007

    We are lawyers in the United States of America. As such, we have all taken an oath obligating us to defend the Constitution and the rule of law.... We believe the Bush administration has committed numerous offenses against the Constitution and may have violated federal laws.... Moreover, the administration has blatantly defied congressional subpoenas, obstructing constitutional oversight .... Thus, we call on House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy to launch hearings into the possibility that crimes have been committed by this administration in violation of the Constitution.... We call for the investigations to go where they must, including into the offices of the President and the Vice President. - American Lawyers Defending the Constitution

    Over one thousand lawyers - including former Governor Mario Cuomo and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein - have signed onto the above statement demanding wide-ranging investigative hearings into unconstitutional and potentially criminal activity by the Bush administration.

    In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and winner of the 2007 Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship, said: "The majority of lawyers in this country understand that the Bush administration has really gone off the page of constitutional rights and off the page of fundamental rights, and is willing to push the Congress to restore those rights." Ratner said he was "dismayed" that a Democratic majority has failed "to push on key illegalities... the torture program, and now the destruction of the tapes involving the torture program; the warrantless wiretapping, the denial of habeas corpus, the secret sites/rendition program, special trials, and of course what we now know is the firing of US Attorneys scandal.... The minimal that absolutely is needed to get us back on the page of law is to have serious investigative hearings that go up the chain of command and figure out who is responsible for what."

    Ratner noted that even with regard to the US attorney's investigations, where Congressional committees held Harriet Miers, Josh Bolten, and Karl Rove in contempt, leadership has failed to enforce these actions by bringing the resolutions to a vote. "Just announcing that investigations will be held and subpoenas will be issued is terribly insufficient unless Congress is willing to enforce the subpoenas by issuing contempt citations," Ratner said. "Congress has a constitutional duty to oversee the activities of the executive branch and our entire system of government is threatened when Congress simply folds before an obstinate executive. Issuing contempt citations against Bolten, Miers, and Rove should be Congress's first order of business in 2008."

    Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, discussed the administration's torture program violating three US-ratified treaties and the US torture statute; the illegal War in Iraq violating the US-ratified UN Charter as a war of aggression; and Attorney General Michael Mukasey's conflict of interest in overseeing investigations into the torture program and the destruction of the CIA interrogations tapes.

    Also speaking with reporters was Jesselyn Raddack, a former Justice Department ethics lawyer who served as an advisor during the interrogation of John Walker Lindh (the "American Taliban"). Raddack said, "My e-mails documented my advice against interrogating Lindh without a lawyer, and concluded that the FBI committed an ethics violation when it did so anyway. Both the CIA videotapes and my e-mails were destroyed, in part, because officials were concerned that they documented controversial interrogation methods that could put agency officials in legal jeopardy.... " Raddack pointed to the Department of Justice's investigations of Enron and Arthur Anderson for obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence, and the need for the same aggressive oversight and legal proceedings in these scandals.

    This is a vital effort by those charged with defending our constitution, as Ratner said, "This lawyers' letter and the growing number of signatures we'll have on it, and prominent people - it's a way of saying to Congress, 'You need some backbone. You need to have a serious investigation, wherever it might go, on these issues that really have taken the United States out of the mainstream of human rights.' It's absolutely critical... We've opened up the door to illegality.... Unless we have accountability on those illegalities, we're going to be facing a very bleak future in which fundamental rights will not really be obeyed."

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=262693

[LeftDemocrat]

 April 4, 2008
Reclaiming Conservatism
book review by Doug Bandow

As represented by the Bush administration, Republican congressional majority, and right-leaning punditocracy, conservatism means more federal spending, an expanded welfare state, federalization of local and state issues, warrantless surveillance, executive branch dominance, Wilsonian global intervention, and endless war.

Indeed, it is hard to find a conservative initiative today that seeks to limit government power and enhance individual liberty....

However, not all conservatives espouse the new imperial conservatism, which treats the Republican president as a monarch who must be obeyed, perhaps even worshipped. Vic Gold, a speech writer for former Senator and GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, last year penned a devastating critique of the Bush administration and its conservative acolytes. A number of traditionalists, including direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie and the late William F. Buckley, founder of National Review magazine, also have criticized administration policies.

Mickey Edwards, former conservative Republican congressman, now adds his voice. In Reclaiming Conservatism, he warns:

"On Capitol Hill, Congress acted as though its top priority was party unity, demonstrated in the form of an almost abject subservience to the head of a constitutionally separate branch of government. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, in the White House, the president, who called himself (and was called by others) a conservative, had become the very embodiment of everything conservatives had long feared and warned against. Operating almost unchecked by any other branch of government, he ordered wiretaps on citizens' phones, held prisoners without trial or charges, and refused to provide information to Congress even when federal law required him to do so. For nearly half a century, conservatives had worried that a leftist president, if given the opportunity, might do such things. Now those things were being done by a man who called himself a 'conservative,' and 'conservatives' cheered him on. Those who once had wanted only that the government leave them alone as much as possible, who once had warned of the dangers of Big Brother, had created the monster government they most feared."

Edwards' analysis, is, to paraphrase a common slogan, short and sour...  Conservatism has meant different things to different people at different times in different places. American conservatism originally was a variant of European liberalism. The conservative movement then was dedicated to conserving traditional liberties. No longer, alas.

"Neoconservatism clearly illustrates how much the ‘American,' or Constitution-based, conservatism of the Goldwater era has been supplanted." Even before plotting multiple wars, to the neoconservatives "concentrated power seemed a necessity for ensuring that their ideas were implemented."

Of course, the neoconservatives most needed that concentrated power to inaugurate war. Although today's Right promotes promiscuous war-making, it was not always so.

Many conservatives were cowed by Republican politicians who demanded absolute loyalty to the new regime, acting as a Greek Chorus for every expansion of government authority.

"It is difficult to know whether today's conservatives have consciously chosen to disregard the Constitution or whether questions of constitutionality simply don't intrude on their thinking, but this avid pursuit of unconstitutional goals is of a piece with the willing surrender of Congress's obligation to act as a check on presidential ambition. A Republican Congress, under conservative direction, virtually ceased any meaningful oversight over the executive branch even in the midst of a controversial and costly war."

But that's not all, he contends. The Republican congressional party emphasized acquiescence over debate when it came to administration proposals. Moreover, he writes, "The demise of deliberation has been buttressed by impatience with the constraints of the Constitution."

Edwards extends this critique to President Bush's conduct of foreign policy. Although conservatives were never pacifists, they usually were reluctant warriors. A powerful military was meant to limit war, not conduct social engineering around the globe.

As Edwards puts it:

"The Constitution was written by individuals intimately familiar with the propensity of European monarchs to send their subjects off to die on foreign battlefields. If the ‘walls' built into [the Constitution] have any overriding objective, it is to prevent the same thing from happening here. The United States might indeed choose to go to war, but that decision would be made not by a single political leader but by representatives of the people themselves. In a document that far exceeded the practices of most other contemporary societies in limiting central authority, there was no more striking departure from the norms of the day than deliberately withholding from the chief executive the power to declare war."

--
the above excerpted from: http://antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=12626

Why Edwards doesn't come right out and call the present-day Republican Party a fascist party, I don't know.

If conservatives are as feckless as Democrats in defending the Constitution, then why are either of them in power?  why do they have a duopoly? 

[LeftDemocrat]

This list detailing injuries committed by Bush-Cheney against the U.S. Constitution could also serve as a run-down of reasons why impeachment should occur without delay, for the sake of restoring the Rule of Law, rather than having to wait for a hazy election somewhere down the road, to fix this land magically by plebsicite.

Conservatives know about moral duty.  There is a moral duty to impeach today.  For the sake of the true republican values of America, not the usurping Repuglican ideological gamut of excuses.

End the war on terror as a legal paradigm, abolish military commissions, and restore FISA.
By Bruce Fein
Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2008,

To restore the constitutional equilibrium envisioned by the Founding Fathers, the next presidential inaugural should enumerate the following particulars.

• Put an end to the imperial presidency. President Bush has usurped what Gen. Washington and the Founding Fathers reprehended: unchecked power that sacrifices fundamental liberties to trust in the president. To paraphrase Lord Acton, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Just ask President Bush's kidnap-and-torture victims, including Khaled El-Masri, Abu Omar, or Maher Arar. The Constitution's marquee is checks and balances, a system predicated upon a suspicion of human nature. James Madison sermonized in "The Federalist No. 51":  "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

• End the "war on terror" as a legal paradigm. International terrorists are criminals, not warriors. The next president should see to it that terrorists will be captured, interrogated, prosecuted, and punished according to civilian law. The United States is not at war with international terrorism. The next president should ensure that we do not brandish the weapons of war in lieu of traditional law enforcement against international terrorists. If the conflict of the United States with international terrorism amounts to a war, then this nation is permanently at war—a condition the Founding Fathers insisted was irreconcilable with freedom.

• Abolish military commissions. Under the new president, military commissions should be promptly abolished. No citizen or noncitizen should be detained without charges as an unlawful enemy combatant. No detainee in the custody of the United States should ever again be denied an opportunity to challenge the factual or legal basis for his detention before an impartial judge in habeas corpus proceedings. The Classified Information Procedures Act of 1980 should be employed to prosecute terrorists without compromising national security. Ramzi Yousef, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Jose Padilla—among other accused terrorists—all have been successfully prosecuted under CIPA. Existing criminal conspiracy law should be employed to thwart terrorist plots in their pre-embryonic stages. Although we seem to have forgotten this fact of late, the criminal law is both forward- and backward-looking.

• Withdraw all U.S. troops from foreign countries. The Declaration of Independence explains that the purpose of government is to secure unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States was not created to build an empire, to aggrandize government, or to purge the planet of nondemocratic regimes. Accordingly, the next president should announce that we are withdrawing all U.S. troops from foreign countries and that, hereinafter, all the nation's military resources will be devoted to building missile, electronic, and other defenses against potential foreign attacks. The United States lacks the wisdom necessary to spin modern democratic gold from centuries of despotic flax by military force or otherwise. Iraq and Afghanistan are clear proof. Further, the United States has no moral responsibility for the destiny of persons outside its jurisdiction who pay no taxes to support the government and pledge no allegiance to the republic.

• Restore both oversight and transparency. No president is infallible. Executive-branch decisions or policies made without congressional vetting or oversight are prone to staggering mistakes—for example, the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam War, or post-Saddam Iraq. ... And secrecy, moreover, breeds lawlessness, maladministration, and abuses. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. The next president must restore the tools of judicial and congressional oversight that have been eroded if not obliterated in the past eight years.

• Cabin the scope of executive privilege. The next president must end the practice of invoking executive privilege to shield confidential presidential communications or advice from any examination by Congress absent an illicit legislative purpose, including exposure for the sake of political embarrassment. The next president should not defend the expansive claims of executive privilege of President Bush used to justify the nonappearances of former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten before the House judiciary committee in the investigation of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys. The next president should initiate criminal prosecutions of the two for contempt of the House of Representatives.

• Restore the role of warrants under FISA. The next president must immediately agree to go back to collecting foreign intelligence in conformity with the individualized warrant provisions of FISA. He or she should not seek an extension of the Protect America Act—which authorizes group warrants akin to general writs of assistance, which were anathema to the Founding Fathers and prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. We have yet to be provided any evidence that FISA handicaps the president's collection of foreign intelligence any more than do congressional restrictions on breaking and entering homes, opening mail, or torture. FISA functioned without complaint from any president for more than two decades before President Bush determined, in secret, to defy it in the aftermath of 9/11. And at this very moment, the president is operating under the old FISA law because the Protect America Act has not been extended with no proof of heightened danger to the nation. The next president should also convene a grand jury to determine whether the government participants, in flouting FISA, should be criminally prosecuted—including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. If the rule of law means anything, it means that occupants of the highest offices must turn square constitutional corners.

• Restore the state secrets privilege to ensure justice to victims of constitutional misconduct. This doctrine is a rule of evidence fashioned by the courts, not a constitutional requirement. The Bush administration has successfully invoked the state secrets privilege to deny a remedy for victims of its own constitutional wrongdoing, for example, the kidnapping, imprisonment, and maltreatment of Khaled El-Masri. When he sued the culpable unnamed CIA operatives, his case was dismissed because the identities of the constitutional scofflaws were a state secret, a ruling more Kafkaesque than Kafka. The new president should submit legislation that would require a default judgment in favor of victims of unconstitutional conduct if the state secrets privilege is invoked by the president to deny the plaintiffs a fair opportunity to prove their claims.

http://www.slate.com/id/2187811/

The fact that Bruce Fein (after having provided a wake-up call to conservatives nationwide last year) is now reduced to dreaming of the next presidential inaugural is pretty much a confession that he's given up on the present Congressional session acquiring any back-bone.  Despite the fact the list of grievances against this Administration for crimes against the U.S. Constitution is a long one, and he's all in favor of starting impeachment.  Pelosi be damned for the ambitious inexperienced snit that she is, obstructing Congressional inquiries.

The time now showing on the historical clock: 

It's the Roman Republic, one year before the imperial putsch.  Senators consign themselves to super-numerary status, while toadying up to the would-be co-Dictators.

Ah but we have a Judiciary branch:  I like the idea of a grand jury, to get the ball rolling.

[LeftDemocrat]

Fein provides more fine reasons for ending the war on terror.  Which has turned into an excuse for terrorizing others.  Even the soldiers back from Iraq-Afghanistan will tell you that America is terrorizing others, becoming the very evil it pretends to be fighting against.

Losing the Republic

By Bruce Fein
April 8, 2008

Under the banner of fighting international terrorism, Mr. Bush claims unchecked powers historically associated with despots: torture; kidnappings; secret imprisonments; indefinite detentions of suspected unlawful enemy combatants; violations of the Constitution and laws with impunity; and, the authority to employ the military at any time and place of his choosing. On the domestic front, Mr. Bush disputes the power of Congress to oversee the executive branch for lawlessness, abuses, or maladministration. He signs laws while asserting a right to disobey those provisions he pronounces to be unconstitutional.

These concerns are neither premature nor alarmist. James Madison, father of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, instructed: "We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties," and elaborated, "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis chorused in Olmstead v. United States (1928): "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."

Writing in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Edward Gibbon warned: "The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive." 

James Madison admonished: "The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question whether there is or is not cause for declaring war."

Founding Father and Supreme Court Justice James Wilson echoed: "It will not be in the power of a single man, or single body of men, to involve us in [war]."

With few exceptions, Congress, the media, and the public have slumbered as the Republic has been dismantled brick-by-brick. A restoration is possible, but only through an aroused and enlightened citizenry.

Even ardent defenders of Atlas-like presidential powers should be shaken by the recent release of an unclassified March 14, 2003 Memorandum authored by then Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Yoo. It is the Bush administration's gospel on the president's commander-in-chief authorities.

The memorandum presumes without argument that Sept. 11 placed the United States on a permanent war footing, a condition James Madison decried as irreconcilable with freedom. According to the document, the war with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups will end only when their threat "is completely ended." But no threat can be reduced to zero. And no one has suggested a war-ending benchmark.

The memorandum also presumes without argument that the entire world a battlefield where the president is empowered to employ military force to kill, capture or torture suspected international terrorists or their friends. Accordingly, Mr. Bush could order the armed forces to carry out military operations against a suspected ally of al Qaeda residing in a home in San Francisco. If innocent civilians were killed in an ensuing rocket attack, their deaths would be chalked up as collateral damage.

The Memorandum maintains that, "The decision to deploy military force in the defense of U.S. interests is expressly placed under presidential authority by the Vesting Clause ... and by the commander-in-chief clause."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080408/COMMENTARY02/324780580/1012/commentary

The German parliament of the Weimar Republic signed its own death warrant with the "Enabling Clause", in 1933, which enabled Hitler's dictatorship by undoing Parliamentary oversight of the executive authority.  Today, the U.S. Congress does nothing while the Executive Branch's lawyers usurp powers through a "Vesting Clause", despite a widespread grassroots movement behind Conyers and Wexler to start impeachment, and while principled men in Congress like Kucinich and Paul stand up for the American way.

Obviously Yoo should wind up behind bars as a traitor to the nation.  Or actually, should an International War Crimes Tribunal get ahold of him, he could wind up swinging, just like the Nazis that were condemned for abandoning all law and decency, many of whom were hanged at Nuremberg for their crimes, in 1945.

A note on Fein's rhetoric:  At first I was puzzled by the start of his essay (see full online version), I gather he is subtly reminding Conyers, a black man, of his national-historical role at this juncture, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Legislative Branch.  The country has upheld equality for the black man; it now depends on a black man to save it from the fascist element within, the same old oppressors who used to keep the black man down. 

Conyers?  Aren't you a scrappy politician from tough-minded Detroit?

[LeftDemocrat]

from the archives:

Seven Republican Members of House Judiciary Call for Impeachment out of Duty to the Constitution

GOP Reps. Lamar Smith, Sensenbrenner, Coble, Gallegly, Goodlatte, Chabot, and Cannon after much deliberation put the Constitution and rule of law before politics.

Rep. Lamar Smith stated, “As much as one might wish to avoid this process, we must resist the temptation to close our eyes and pass by. The president's actions must be evaluated for one simple reason: the truth counts.”

We should not underestimate the gravity of the case against the president. When he put his hand on the Bible and recited his oath of office, he swore to faithfully uphold the laws of the United States - not some laws, all laws.

As to the uniqueness of the office the president holds, he is a person in a position of immense authority and influence. He influences the lives of millions of Americans. When he took the oath of office, he swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

When someone is elected president, they receive the greatest gift possible from the American people, their trust. To violate that trust is to raise questions about fitness for office. My constituents often remind me that if anyone else in a position of authority - for example, a business executive, a military officer or a professional educator - had acted as the evidence indicates the president did, their career would be over. The rules under which President Nixon would have been tried for impeachment had he not resigned contain this statement: "The office of the president is such that it calls for a higher level of conduct than the average citizen in the United States."

This will not be an easy task. In fact, it is a difficult ordeal for all Americans, but we will get through it. We are a great nation and a strong people. Our country will endure because our Constitution works and has worked for over 200 years. As much as one might wish to avoid this process, we must resist the temptation to close our eyes and pass by. The president's actions must be evaluated for one simple reason: the truth counts.

As the process goes forward, some good lessons can be reaffirmed. No one is above the law, actions have consequences, always tell the truth. We the people should insist on these high ideals. That the president has fallen short of the standard doesn't mean we should lower it. If we keep excusing away the president's actions we as a nation will never climb upwards because there will be no firm rungs.



Hon. James Sensenbrenner (WI) Phone (202) 225-5101 . Fax (202) 255-3190

Being a poor example isn't grounds for impeachment; undermining the rule of law is.

When Americans come to Washington, they see the words "equal justice under law" carved in the facade of the Supreme Court building. Those words mean that the weak and the poor have an equal right to justice, as do the rich and the powerful.

The framers of the Constitution devised an elaborate system of checks and balances to ensure our liberty by making sure that no person, institution or branch of government became so powerful that a tyranny could be established in the United States of America. Impeachment is one of the checks the framers gave the Congress to prevent the executive or judicial branches from becoming corrupt or tyrannical.

I do so with no joy but without apologies, just as those on this committee who voted to impeach President Nixon, 24 years ago, did. Watergate and the Nixon impeachment reversed the results of an overwhelming election and were extremely divisive to our country, but America emerged from that national nightmare a much stronger country and will do so again after this sad part of our history is over. What is on trial here is the truth and the rule of law.



Hon. Howard Coble (NC) Phone (202) 225-3065 . Fax: (202) 225-8611

Much has been made about the absence of bipartisanship on this issue, and I want to reiterate my position on that. Do not point accusatory fingers at Republicans or Democrats because there is disagreement. Assuming we vote our consciences and exercise sound judgment, little else can be asked.

I take umbrage to charges that some are out to get the president... I take umbrage as well to those who claim that some approach this arduous task in a gleeful manner. I take no joy in discharging this duty before us, but it remains our duty nonetheless.

I can't see that this is going to shut down the government or tie it up, assuming it does advance to the Senate.



Hon. Elton Gallegly (CA) Phone (202) 225-5811 . Fax (202) 225-1100

This has been a very trying time. In a democracy, there are few more serious acts than to consider the possible impeachment of a president. I can tell you in true conscience it has caused me many sleepless nights.

I wanted to hear the evidence that would prove the charges were false. I believed that was the only fair way to proceed, and it was also my solemn constitutional duty and immense responsibility. I waited, I read, and I listened.

Mr. Chairman, I'm not a lawyer -- one of the few on this committee -- however, everyone that knows me knows I believe in the rule of law -- believe the rule of law is fundamental to our society. A society without laws is anarchy. Societies that ignore the laws are condemned to violence and chaos.

That bothers me. My district is considered among the safest communities in the nation. We have fine police officers, which certainly helps, but every officer from the chief to the beat officer will tell you a low crime rate begins with citizens who obey the law. Every citizen must obey the law, every law.

He violated the Constitution. To condone this would be to condemn our society to anarchy. Mr. Chairman, I cannot and will not condone such action.




Hon. Bob Goodlatte (VA) Phone (202) 225-5431 . Fax (202) 225-9681

Mr. Chairman, this is a somber occasion. I am here because it is my constitutional duty, as it is the constitutional duty of every member of this committee, to follow the truth wherever it may lead. Our Founding Fathers established this nation on a fundamental yet at the time untested idea that a nation should be governed not by the whims of any man but by the rule of law. Implicit in that idea is the principle that no one is above the law, including the chief executive

Since it is the rule of law that guides us, we must ask ourselves what happens to our nation if the rule of law is ignored, cheapened or violated, especially at the highest level of government. Consider the words of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who was particularly insightful on this point. "In a government of laws, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. If government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself."

Mr. Chairman, we must ask ourselves what our failure to uphold the rule of law will say to the nation, and most especially to our children, who must trust us to leave them a civilized nation where justice is respected.

If we truly respect the presidency, we cannot allow the president to be above the law. Millions of law-abiding Americans from all walks of life, including my constituents, put in an honest day's work, follow the rules and struggle to teach their children respect for the law and the importance of integrity. When a factory worker or a medical doctor or a retiree breaks the law, they do so with the knowledge that they are not above the law.

This same principle must also apply to the most powerful and privileged in our nation, including the president of the United States. To lose this principle devastates a legacy entrusted to us by our founding fathers and protected for us by generations of American families.

I have a constitutional duty to follow the truth wherever it leads. The truth in this case leads me to believe that the president knowingly engaged in a calculated pattern of lies, deceit and delay in order to mislead the American people…

The precious legacy entrusted to us by our founders and our constituents is a nation dedicated to the ideal of freedom and equality for all her people. This committee must decide whether we will maintain our commitment to the rule of law and pass this precious legacy to our children and grandchildren, or whether we will bow to the political pressure for the sake of convenience or expediency.



Hon. Steve Chabot (OH) Phone (202) 225-2216 .  (202) 225-3012

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, every member of our committee recognizes that this is likely the most important vote we will ever cast, and all of us would prefer that the president's actions had not led us down this fateful path. However, we have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and we must fully accept that responsibility.

Back in 1974, Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the judiciary committee during Watergate, said that she would vote to impeach President Nixon, in part, because -- and I quote -- "the presidential cover-up is continuing even through today."

The historic record, the law, and the Constitution tell us that the charges against the president do indeed rise to the level of impeachable offenses. They constitute serious violations of criminal law and fall squarely within our Founding Fathers' definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Mr. Chairman, impeaching the president is an extremely serious matter. Throughout these proceedings, I've tried to keep an open mind, giving the president every opportunity to refute the facts that have been laid before our committee, but now all of the evidence is in and a decision is at hand.

It has become apparent to me that impeachment is the only remedy that adequately addresses this president's illegal and unethical acts. Allowing the president's actions to go unpunished would gravely damage the Office of the President, our judicial system and our country.

I have not reached this decision lightly. I have done my share of soul searching, I have listened carefully to the views of my constituents, and I've reviewed the evidence in excruciating detail. And much of it wasn't particularly pleasant, I can assure you. And I've been guided by our Constitution.

When we cast our votes, we are not voting as Republicans or Democrats, we are voting as Americans. Our allegiance does not lie with any one president but with our country. Our charge is not handed down from any one political party but from the Constitution. Every member of this body is duty-bound to put politics aside, follow our conscience, and uphold our oath of office.




Hon. Chris Cannon (UT) Phone (202) 225-7751 . Fax (202) 225-5629

We are at a defining moment in our history. What we do here will set the standard for what is acceptable for this and future presidents.

I believe profoundly that the behavior of this president is unacceptable because I agree with John Jay, one of our Founding Fathers, who said, "When oaths cease to be sacred, our dearest and most valuable rights become insecure."

[Quoting President John F. Kennedy], "I think you gentlemen should recognize the responsibility of the president of the United States. His responsibility is different from what your responsibility may be. In this country, I carry out and execute the laws of the United States. I also have the obligation of implementing the orders of the courts of the United States. And I can assure you that who's ever president of the United States, he will do the same, because if he did not, he would begin to unwind this most extraordinary constitutional system of ours. So I believe strongly in fulfilling my oath in that regard." And that regard means if he didn't fulfill his oath, the system would begin to unwind. It's inexorable.

I submit that in the spirit of our Founding Fathers and John F. Kennedy, that our first duty is to provide for the security of the fundamental rights of Americans.

To properly perform that duty, we must vote to impeach the president. Thank you.

The statements above are excerpts from transcripts of the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment hearings. December 10-11, 1998. Each congressman is a current member of the House Judiciary Committee

by Cheryl Biren-Wright
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Seven-Republican-Members-o-by-Cheryl-Biren-Wrigh-080711-38.html
(emphasis added)

Thought you had jumped through the rabbit-hole for a second, didn't cha?

Reality check: No, the Republicans in 2008 won't be lifting a finger to defend the U.S. Constitution.

What this Tulsa World reader says, commenting on today's paper:

Republicans are the nearest manifestation of fascism this country has seen in generations--rule of, by, and for corporations, wrapped in the flag and stamped with a cross. It's just a pity our country is so susceptible to their propaganda.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/article.aspx?subjectID=62&articleID=20080718_7_A16_spanc18568

If the above TW reader is right, then there's nothing more un-American today than the Republican Party.   Civic-minded Americans could start to rectify this distortion by writing and/or calling the above 7 Republicans and shame them for failing to uphold their own respective oaths to the U.S. Constitution.   Conservatives, my eye.  Small 'R' republicans? Not hardly. They're all too busy brown-nosing the would-be King George or kow-towing to his Chief Minister Cheney.   We used to call them absolutists. Court sycophants.

Throw the bums out, come election time.



 

[LeftDemocrat]

In the last very late weeks of this session of Congress, more revelations about Cheney's dastardly role in taking this country to war unnecessarily have come out, in a book length treatment, detailing Cheney's lies to the Republicans in his own party.

I could only get the link to the pro-war Washington Times to work with some difficulty; the page wants to load some elaborate video player.  Caveat lector. http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/sep/23/impeachable-offenses/
Personally, I'm very surprised at the appearance of this article in what is normally a Bushevik daily newspaper.  Perhaps the writing is on the wall for this Presidency?  An eleventh-hour impeachment?

The article also appeared on David Swanson's pro-impeachment website, AfterDowningStreet.or (reproduced below) 

FEIN: Impeachable offenses?
By Bruce Fein, Washington Times

Have President Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney committed impeachable offenses for which the duumvirate should be convicted and removed from office by duping then-House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey into supporting legislation authorizing war against Iraq with twin lies -- that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had personal ties to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network; and that Saddam had miniaturized nuclear weapons, which could be unleashed by employing al Qaeda as a delivery system?

The facts - uncontradicted by either Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney - are chronicled in Barton Gellman's new book "Angler."

In late September 2002, Majority Leader Armey met the vice president in H-208 in the Capitol Building. Mr. Armey was no liberal or RINO (Republican In Name Only). He adamantly opposed taxes and earned a stellar 97 percent rating from the American Conservative Union during his long years in Congress. But Mr. Armey initially opposed an Iraqi war authorization because Saddam was no menace to the security of the United States. If Mr. Armey voted no, he would give political cover to any Democrat or Republican Doubting Thomas to vote likewise and probably foil an Iraqi war resolution.

Mr. Cheney's mission was to flip Mr. Armey. He succeeded by stooping to lies that bettered the instruction of President Clinton's perjury in Monicagate that occasioned Mr. Clinton's impeachment. According to Mr. Armey, Mr. Cheney sounded the tocsin that Iraq's "ability to miniaturize weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear," had been "substantially refined since the first Gulf war." They were "miniaturizing weapons, developing packages that could be moved even by ground personnel." Not a crumb of intelligence supported these falsehoods.

Without any supporting evidence, Mr. Cheney also maintained that al Qaeda was "working with Saddam Hussein and members of his family." He falsely added that "we now know [Iraq] ha* the ability to develop these [nuclear] weapons in a very portable fashion, and they have a delivery system in their relationship with organizations such as al Qaeda."

The vice president's lies convinced Mr. Armey to vote in favor of the Iraqi war resolution. Relying on the deceit, the majority leader explained his flip-flop on the floor of Congress: "If you're going to conduct a war on terrorism, then you must stop that person who is most likely and most able to arm the terrorists with those things that will frighten us most."

After discovering the truth, Mr. Armey lamented he could probably have prevented the Iraqi war debacle: "Had I known or believed then what I believe I know now, I would have publicly opposed the resolution right to the bitter end, and I believe I might have stopped it from happening, and I believe I would have done a better service to my country had I done so."

Indeed, the war in Iraq has diverted hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been better spent upgrading defenses at home; strengthened Iran, arch-enemy of the United States; caused vastly more American deaths and injuries than did the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; and made the United States less safe by creating new enemies in Iraq by flouting its sovereignty and killing innocent civilians in pursuing genuine insurgents or terrorists.

Under the law of impeachment, Mr. Bush is responsible for the misdeeds of his agents in the executive branch, including the vice president. James Madison, father of the Constitution, amplified in the House of Representatives that the president would be subject to impeachment, "if he suffers [his subordinates] to perpetrate with impunity high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States, or neglects to superintend their conduct, so as to check their excesses." Vice President Cheney, in contrast to other executive branch officials, does not serve at the pleasure of the president.

But in approaching Mr. Armey in support of Mr. Bush's legislative initiative authorizing war against Iraq, Mr. Cheney was acting as Mr. Bush's agent for whom the president was accountable.

Article II, section 4 of the Constitution declares the, "president [and] vice president ... shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of ... high crimes and misdemeanors." Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 65 that impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors are "political" offenses because "they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to society itself." James Iredell, later appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Washington, made explicit at the North Carolina ratification convention that presidential duplicity with Congress over war or comparable matters of great national moment would be an impeachable offense.

Although his statement specifically addressed lies to the Senate, its rationale applies equally to deceit of the House of Representatives to obtain an authorization for war: "The president must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate. ... If it should appear that he has not given them full information, but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true nature of things been disclosed to them - in this case, I ask whether, upon an impeachment for a misdemeanor upon such an account, the Senate would probably favor him."

Mr. Armey should be summoned to testify under oath before the House Judiciary Committee about his statements in "Angler" implicating Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney in lies to dupe the House of Representatives over war in Iraq. The president and vice president should be given an opportunity to respond under oath but subject to cross-examination.

If the totality of evidence corroborates Mr. Armey's recollection, shouldn't the House immediately vote to impeach Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and send their cases for trials in the Senate? Wouldn't that action honor the original intent of the Founding Fathers that the Bush administration professes to cherish?

• Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Bruce Fein & Associates Inc. and author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for our Constitution and Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan).

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/36217

Barton Gellman, author of the new book "Angler" with the allegations against Cheney, appeared recently on "The Daily Show" with John Stewart

[LeftDemocrat]

Book review found on antiwar.com, the libertarian outfit, reviewing Bruce Fein's new book,  Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008, 238 pp.

Book review written by Doug Bandow, a Washington-based political writer and policy analyst and Robert A. Taft Fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance. He served as a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and as a senior policy analyst in the 1980 Reagan for President campaign.

October 24, 2008
Constitutional Peril

In Constitutional Peril, Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration appointee, warns that the very future of constitutional governance is at stake. The problem is not a threatened attack from without, but the erosion of limits on government and safeguards for liberty from within.

Fein starts with a bang. He advocates impeaching the president or risk "a degeneration of the US Constitution into executive despotism." Strong language, but the powers claimed by the Bush administration have been extraordinary.

Indeed, the president contended that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), approved by Congress in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, also gave him essentially any power short of going to war.

According to this administration, explains Fein, "if a power can be classified as 'executive,' then neither the legislative nor judicial branch may regulate, oversee, or check the president's actions." It is, frankly, a preposterous argument, contradicting the intentions and actions of America's Founders. They drafted the Constitution to disperse power to ensure that it was always checked, bounded, and constrained. How, asks Fein, "is President Bush's unitary executive theory different from self-coronation?"

Even the war power, so closely associated with the president, is divided. Congress is to decide on whether there is a war for the president to manage. Congress establishes the military. Congress approves the rules of war. Congress provides the funding for war. In short, Congress is the dominant player even in this area. But not in the view of the Bush administration, and its legal acolytes within the conservative Greek Chorus.

Yet despite abuses so obvious and pervasive, Congress, under both Democratic and Republican control, has done little to restrain the executive branch. Rather, Fein notes, "Congress has augmented the Bush-Cheney embrace of despotic powers through the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the Protect America Act of 2007, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment of 2008, and the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2006."

This explains Fein's extreme pessimism. Congress has the constitutional authority to check the executive, but it lacks the political will. Even worse, the American people seem disinterested in protecting their liberties. Notes Fein: "the American people are more culpable than Congress over the nation's constitutional peril because they have declined to exercise their right to vote or their First Amendment right to petition Congress for a redress of grievances to demand corrective legislation or impeachment to end the Bush-Cheney transgressions."

An air of near desperation pervades Constitutional Peril. Fein details prior precedents of executive branch lawlessness. He parses the complicated controversy over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, originally approved by Congress to limit prior presidential misconduct but ignored by President Bush.

He spends a chapter on the critical topic of government secrecy, so important for the executive branch to hide illegal behavior. He notes: "President George W. Bush has reveled in secret government by invoking executive privilege or state secrets to frustrate congressional or private oversight of executive-branch actions – for example, the manipulation of US attorneys to skew law enforcement or secret spying programs that invade the privacy of Americans and, in the case of the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP), are flagrantly criminal."

He also discusses "extraordinary rendition," by which the US turns people over to allied states to be tortured, as well as military commissions, which have won few convictions despite being designed to ensure prosecution victories. The point is not that the government cannot defend America from people who mean the country ill, but that the steps taken must be consistent with American law and principles, and should be effective. Most foolish of all have been policies, such as torture, which have yielded little security gain while wrecking America's reputation abroad.

Fein's judgment of the Bush administration is harsh, but no other conclusion is possible. Who else – whether Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, or Richard Nixon – has come close in executive misconduct? Writes Fein:

"President Bush has kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured suspected terrorists abroad. He has created a climate of lawlessness in the executive branch, which emboldened CIA officials to destroy interrogation videotapes sought by the 9/11 Commission or Congress that probably provided ocular evidence of torture. He has signed bills passed by Congress while announcing his intent to disregard provisions that he maintains are unconstitutional – for example, a provision denying funds to establish permanent military bases in Iraq. He has asserted the power to break and enter homes, open mail, kidnap and torture to gather foreign intelligence without review by any other branch. He has tacitly declared that every square inch of the United States is a battlefield appropriate for military force and military law because al-Qaeda hopes to kill Americans anywhere, and terrorists can blend into civilian populations."

All the while the president's policies actually have made Americans less safe.

Ultimately, the American people can't rely on anyone but themselves to preserve their liberty. Writes Fein: "Everyone in a democracy is thus burdened with a moral duty to act as a sentinel for the liberty of everyone else. At present, the majority of citizens are neglecting their duty."

If not us, who? If not now, when? The time to act is short. Fein presents an emergency manifesto that should be heeded by all patriots and lovers of liberty.

http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=13670