Impeachment!

As I have been saying, here, for awhile, Impeachment for this administration is needed for the sake of the Constitution and the Nation. If we do not do something to control this government, who's to say what will happen in the future. This government has stomped on the Constitution long enough. Others have said and I do believe that if we do not do something now, this nation will live under fascism.

From Seattlepi.com:

Talk of impeachment gets louder
By HUBERT G. LOCKEP-I COLUMNIST

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quick to quash any such idea after the Democratic sweep of Congress in last November's election. And the full-page ads from such groups as Why We Can't Wait, calling for the impeachment of the president, were dismissed as just more national noise from the Looney Left -- hardly to be taken seriously in the raging maelstrom of last fall's election politics.

But that was six months ago. Now, in midsummer and on the eve of a congressionally mandated assessment of the unending madness in Iraq, strange and ominous signs are beginning to appear in all sorts of odd and curious quarters, suggesting that this nation should not have to endure another 18 months of the George W. Bush administration and that, if we do, it well might be at the nation's peril.

Much of the current dismay swirls around Vice President Dick Cheney, who is busily ignoring rules of government he doesn't like and declaring his office to be beyond the purview of anyone's scrutiny, while actively setting about to demolish any government agency that has the impertinence to suggest otherwise. Cheney's advocacy of interrogation techniques for "enemy combatants" that many think tantamount to torture, of monitoring phone calls and e-mails without bothering about warrants, and of ignoring the niceties of the Geneva Conventions when dealing with terrorists has put him out of favor even with a growing number of conservatives. Some want to jettison him as a hopeless drag on the Republican Party's electoral prospects next year; others are beginning to join the throng that is convinced Cheney is out of control and needs to be dispatched for the heath and safety of the republic itself.

According to a senior U.S. diplomat, Cheney "kind of runs by his own rules"; he should, therefore, be a prime target for indictment for having cynically broken a whole bucket of U.S. laws. He has become an arrogant symbol for all that is despicable about the current administration and a contemptible example of the danger of letting such a high office fall into the hands of an ideologue.

The media are also speaking these days of a looming constitutional crisis as committee chairs in the House and the Senate confront a White House refusal to provide requested documents regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department. The chairs of the two judiciary committees are seasoned, tough-minded Democrats who are not likely to take kindly to a flouting of their authority to look over the shoulder of the executive and his minions as they go about managing and manipulating the affairs of government. It's hard to imagine either of them blinking if the White House tries to stare them down.

The last time the nation heard talk of constitutional crises was in the tumultuous second term of the Nixon administration, when first a vice president and then the president himself bit the dust. That's why an op-ed piece in The New York Times last month takes on heightened significance as yet another warning rumble about the Bush White House and its future.

The op-ed was written by Egil Krogh, a Seattle attorney whose name figured prominently in the Nixon years when he was deputy assistant to the president. Krogh, by his own account, wrote the memo that recommended, in the name of "national security," the burglary in 1971 that ultimately led to the Watergate scandal. Krogh incurred a two- to six-year sentence and spent almost five months in prison for his efforts.

In the closing paragraph of his column, Krogh describes sending a memo to the White House staff, shortly after the inauguration of George W. Bush, reminding those who would serve the current president of the importance of personal integrity and of relying on "well-established legal precedents and not some hazy, loose notion of what such phrases as 'national security' and 'commander in chief' could be tortured into meaning." In his last sentence, he wonders "if they received my message."

Six months ago, the mayor of Salt Lake City -- a Democrat no less -- appeared before a committee of our state Senate to speak on behalf of a resolution asking Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush for "heinous human rights violations, breaches of trust, abuses of power injurious to the nation, war crimes and misleading Congress and the American people." Six months ago, hardly anyone took such talk seriously.

What a difference six months can make!

Hubert G. Locke, Seattle, is a retired professor and former dean of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

If we don't insist that congress starts impeachment proceedings soon, we will lose the country we know and love. Take a hard look at what has happened because the future of this nation is now in our hands!

Paul Craig Roberts calls for Bush impeachment

Do you remember Paul Craig Roberts? He is the father of Reaganomics and a Consrvative. Read what he writes:

From Counterpunch:

Impeach Now
Or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.

Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future.

Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.

Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the failure of its Middle East wars, Republican senators jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern Iraq's border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a majority of Americans favoring the impeachment of Cheney and a near-majority favoring Bush's impeachment. The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare the American people and the Congress back in line with the militarist-police state that Bush and Cheney have fostered.

William Norman Grigg recently wrote that the GOP is "praying for a terrorist strike" to save the party from electoral wipeout in 2008. Chertoff, Cheney, the neocon nazis, and Mossad would have no qualms about saving the bacon for the Republicans, who have enabled Bush to start two unjustified wars, with Iran waiting in the wings to be attacked in a third war.

The Bush administration has tried unsuccessfully to resurrect the terrorist fear factor by infiltrating some blowhard groups and encouraging them to talk about staging "terrorist" events. The talk, encouraged by federal agents, resulted in "terrorist" arrests hyped by the media, but even the captive media was unable to scare people with such transparent sting operations.

If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and to entrench the "unitary executive" at home, it will have to conduct some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people and make them accept Bush's declaration of "national emergency" and the return of the draft. Alternatively, the administration could simply allow any real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.

A series of staged or permitted attacks would be spun by the captive media as a vindication of the neoconsevatives' Islamophobic policy, the intention of which is to destroy all Middle Eastern governments that are not American puppet states. Success would give the US control over oil, but the main purpose is to eliminate any resistance to Israel's complete absorption of Palestine into Greater Israel.

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

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

Throughout its existence the US government has staged incidents that the government then used in behalf of purposes that it could not otherwise have pursued. According to a number of writers, false flag operations have been routinely used by the Israeli state. During the Czarist era in Russia, the secret police would set off bombs in order to arrest those the secret police regarded as troublesome. Hitler was a dramatic orchestrator of false flag operations. False flag operations are a commonplace tool of governments.

Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into two wars and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging "terrorist" attacks in order to remove opposition to its agenda?

Only a diehard minority believes in the honesty and integrity of the Bush-Cheney administration and in the truthfulness of the corporate media.

Hitler, who never achieved majority support in a German election, used the Reichstag fire to fan hysteria and push through the Enabling Act, which made him dictator. Determined tyrants never require majority support in order to overthrow constitutional orders.
The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown. Are coming "terrorist" events of which Chertoff warns and Santorum promises the means for overthrowing our constitutional democracy?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Moyers Journal

Tonight I watched Moyers Journal, with Bill Moyers, on PBS. The show was on impeachment. Moyers had two great guests, John Nichols of the Nation and Bruce Stein who is a constitutional lawyer and a conservative. Here's some information about the show from the PBS Web Site and also some information on the two guests:

Tough Talk on Impeachment

July 13, 2007

A public opinion poll from the American Research Group recently reported that more than four in ten Americans — 45% — favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half — 54% — favored impeachment for Vice President Cheney.

Unhappiness about the war in Iraq isn't the only cause of the unsettled feelings of the electorate. Recent events like President Bush's pardoning of Scooter Libby, the refusal of Vice President Cheney's office to surrender emails under subpoena to Congress and the President's prohibition of testimony of former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers in front of the House Judiciary Committee have caused unease over claims of "executive privilege." In addition, many of the White House anti-terror initiatives and procedures — from the status of "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo to warrantless wiretapping — have come under legal scrutiny in Congress and the courts.

Bill Moyers gets perspective on the role of impeachment in American political life 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.

"The founding fathers expected an executive who tried to overreach and expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative branch... They [Congress] have basically renounced — walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check." — Bruce Fein


"On January 20th, 2009, if George Bush and Dick Cheney are not appropriately held to account this Administration will hand off a toolbox with more powers than any President has ever had, more powers than the founders could have imagined. And that box may be handed to Hillary Clinton or it may be handed to Mitt Romney or Barack Obama or someone else. But whoever gets it, one of the things we know about power is that people don't give away the tools." — John Nichols

Bruce Fein
Bruce Fein is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on Constitutional law. Graduating from Harvard Law School in 1972, Fein became the assistant director of the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice. Shortly after that, Fein became the associate deputy attorney general under former President Ronald Reagan.
His political law career would take him to various outlets, including general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, followed by an appointment as research director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran. Mr. Fein has been an adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a resident scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a lecturer at the Bookings Institute, and an adjunct professor at George Washington University.

Fein has also penned a number of volumes on United States Constitution, Supreme Court, and international law, as well as assisted three dozen countries in constitutional revision, including Russia, Spain, South Africa, Iraq, Cyprus, and Mozambique.

Fein currently writes weekly columns for THE WASHINGTON TIMES and CAPITOL LEADER, and a bi-weekly column for the LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER devoted to legal and international affairs.

Recently, Fein has been in the national spotlight after his editorial in the online newsmagazine SLATE called for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, in which he outlines the various cases against the Vice President. Fein also testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee on June 27, 2007 about President Bush's use of "signing statement."

According to Fein, Cheney has:
* Asserted Presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes.

* Claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the President's say-so alone.

* Initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists.

* Championed a Presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.

*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.

* Orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications.

* Summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force.

* 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. (Read Fein's SLATE article)

John Nichols
John Nichols, author and political journalist has been writing the "Online Beat" for THE NATION magazine since 1999. Nichols also serves as Washington correspondent for THE NATION, as well as the associate editor of the CAPITAL TIMES, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin and a contributing writer for THE PROGRESSIVE and IN THESE TIMES.

Along with fellow author Robert McChesney, Nichols co-founded the media-reform group Free Press. Nichols has also authored several books, including JEWS FOR BUCHANAN, which analyzed the recount vote of 2000, and DICK: THE MAN WHO IS PRESIDENT, his best-selling biography of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Nichols most recent book, THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT, argues that impeachment is an essential instrument of America's democratic system. Nichols' argument also bases the power of impeachment in the hands of the people, rather than the congress. In his recent article, "In Praise of Impeachment," Nichols argues "While the Constitution handed Congress the power to officially check such despotism, Jefferson and his colleagues fully expected the American people to be the champions of the application of the rule of law to an errant executive."

The show should be up soon as a video podcast. If you have a chance, please watch it.

UPDATE: Here's the link to Watch Bill Moyers Journal.



Impeachment is now, I think, a necessity. The powers this admin has taken for the President and the Vice-President is, as Barbara Boxer said "This is as close as we’ve ever come to a dictatorship".

Here's more of what she said to Ed Schultz on his radio show:

BOXER: Yeah. I mean, you left out a bunch of things — spying on citizens without a warrant, going around FISA, on and on. Look, I have always said it should be on the table. Ed, I’ve always said it. I was on a book tour and I ran into John Dean of Watergate fame. He was on the book tour that I was on, for his book. And it was right after we discovered that the administration was spying on our people without a warrant. And he just said, he looked at me and basically just said, as far as he could see, unless there was some explanation for this, this was impeachable.

I’ve always said that you need to keep it on the table, and you need to look at these things, because now people are dying because of this administration. That’s the truth. And they won’t change course. They are ignoring the Congress. They keep signing these signing statements which mean that he’s decided not to enforce the law. This is as close as we’ve ever come to a dictatorship. When you have a situation where Congress is stepped on, that means the American people are stepped on. So I don’t think you can take anything off the table. Because in fact the Constitution doesn’t permit us to take these things off the table.

To give this much power to future presidents is like giving our country away. This administration swore to protect our constitution but instead they tore it up!

11. The number of Dems that have signed onto the Impeach Cheney Resolution

The newest signer of Dennis Kucinich's resolution is Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA).

From Raw Story:

Washington Democrat adds voice to Cheney impeachment drive
Michael Roston
Published: Friday June 29, 2007

A Democratic Congressman from Washington state became the latest Member of Congress to add his voice to the calls for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. The move came the same night that House Democrats failed to unite their party around a measure to cut the funding for the Office of the Vice President in response to Cheney's declaration that his office was not a part of the executive branch.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) declared in an address on the House floor Thursday night that he was in favor of impeaching the vice president.

"It is time for a new exit strategy, one that removes the Vice President of the United States from office, voluntarily, if he chooses, but by impeachment if he stonewalls," said the Seattle Democrat and Progressive Caucus member. "I have struggled mightily with this matter for a long time...Since the President permits the flagrant disregard of the Constitution, it is up to the Congress to act and defend the American people. With each new revelation, America has seen only glints of what has been done totally in secret."

McDermott said that he was adding his name to H.Res. 333, the Articles of Impeachment introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and already supported by nine additional Congress members. But he also made it clear that he was concerned with crimes beyond those called out in the Ohio Democrat's legislation.

"The Vice President holds himself accountable to no one," Rep. McDermott argued. "He ordered the Secret Service to destroy visitors logs, and we have learned in the Washington Post recently, that the Vice President circumvented every check and balance inside the White House to force through his own agenda, to spy on Americans through illegal wire traps, creating the gulag at Guantanamo, and subverting civil liberties and free speech at every turn."

Note: Text and video of McDermott's speech are available at the Congressman's website.

How Nancy pelosi responded to this:

In a conference call on Thursday afternoon, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made it clear that the decisions of Democrats like McDermott were not enough to change her mind on impeachment, which she continued to insist was off the table.

"It's a choice that has to be made," she said. "I made a decision...one year ago that impeachment was something we could not be successful with, and that would take up the time we needed to do some positive things to establish a record of our priorities and their shortcomings. The president isn't worth impeaching. If it were the beginning of his term, people might think of it differently, but he's at the end of his term...the last two years of his term, we just want to be rid of him."

I think it is time to write Rep. Pelosi and explain to her the reason we need to impeach him. She has her web site, the Gavel or you can address it in an email or letter by going to her personal site here.