Public Overwhelming Supports Accountability

Surprise, surprise!  The public actually supports the idea that no one should be above the law in this country, and if that means investigating the Bush Administration, so be it!

Close to two-thirds of those surveyed said there should be investigations into allegations that the Bush team used torture to interrogate terrorism suspects and its program of wiretapping U.S. citizens without getting warrants. Almost four in 10 favor criminal investigations and about a quarter want investigations without criminal charges. One-third said they want nothing to be done.

Even more people want action on alleged attempts by the Bush team to use the Justice Department for political purposes. Four in 10 favored a criminal probe, three in 10 an independent panel, and 25% neither.

Awesome.  This puts the Obama Administration in quite the pickle, since the country supports it, but the media will be absolutely aghast at the thought of prosecuting members of the former Administration.

The 9/11 Timeline

If it had been a Democrat that was President on 9/11, this would be all we'd hear about until impeachment:

• Jan 20, 2001: Bush Inaugurated
• Jan 25, 2001: Richard Clarke sends Condi Rice memo, warning about al Qaeda. Rice does nothing.
• August 6, 2001: Bush gets memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to strike in US." Bush responds by telling the briefer, "All right. You've covered your ass, now." Then does nothing.
• September 11, 2001: Bin Laden strikes in US.

(h/t Atrios)

Torture Verified

This is very illuminating. Greenwald always does an excellent job of making legal issues understandable and compelling:

According to the New York Times and Washington Post, both of which received an advanced copy, Mayer's book reports the following:

• "Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes."
• "A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were 'enemy combatants' subject to indefinite incarceration."
• "[A] top aide to Vice President Cheney shrugged off the report and squashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees' cases . . .

  'There will be no review,' the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. 'The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it.'"

• "[T]he [CIA] analyst estimated that a full third of the camp's detainees were there by mistake. When told of those findings, the top military commander at Guantanamo at the time, Major Gen. Michael Dunlavey, not only agreed with the assessment but suggested that an even higher percentage of detentions -- up to half -- were in error. Later, an academic study by Seton Hall University Law School concluded that 55 percent of detainees had never engaged in hostile acts against the United States, and only 8 percent had any association with al-Qaeda."
• [T]he International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were 'categorically' torture, which is illegal under both American and international law".
• "[T]he Red Cross document 'warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.'"

This is what a country becomes when it decides that it will not live under the rule of law, when it communicates to its political leaders that they are free to do whatever they want -- including breaking our laws -- and there will be no consequences. There are two choices and only two choices for every country -- live under the rule of law or live under the rule of men. We've collectively decided that our most powerful political leaders are not bound by our laws -- that when they break the law, there will be no consequences. We've thus become a country which lives under the proverbial "rule of men" -- that is literally true, with no hyperbole needed -- and Mayer's revelations are nothing more than the inevitable by-product of that choice.

That's why this ongoing, well-intentioned debate that Andrew Sullivan is having with himself and his readers over whether "torture is worse than illegal, warrantless eavesdropping" is so misplaced, and it's also why those who are dismissing as "an overblown distraction" the anger generated by last week's Congressional protection of surveillance lawbreakers are so deeply misguided. Things like "torture" and "illegal eavesdropping" can't be compared as though they're separate, competing policies. They are rooted in the same framework of lawlessness. The same rationale that justifies one is what justifies the other. Endorsing one is to endorse all of it.

In fact, none of the scandals of radicalism and criminality which we've learned about over the last seven years -- including the creation of this illegal torture regime -- can be viewed in isolation. They're all by-products of the country that we've become in the post-9/11 era, primarily as a result of our collective decision to exempt our Government leaders from the rule of law; to acquiesce to the manipulative claim that we can only be Safe if we allow our Leaders to be free from consequences when they commit crimes; and to demonize advocates of the rule of law as -- to use Larry Lessig's mindless, reactionary clichés -- shrill, Leftist "hysterics" who need to "get off [their] high horse(s)".

That is the mentality that has allowed the Bush administration to engage in this profound assault on our national character, to violate our laws at will. Our political and media elite have acquiesced to all of this when they weren't cheering it all on. Those who object to it, who argue that these abuses of political power are dangerous in the extreme and that we cannot tolerate deliberate government lawbreaking, are dismissed as shrill Leftist hysterics.

Read the whole thing. It's not too much longer.

NSA Program Ruled Illegal - Again!

Once again, a Bush-appointed judge has smacked down the utterly ridiculous legal theory that the inherent Article 2 Powers of the President gave President Bush the authority to violate federal criminal law.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California said Wednesday that the wiretapping law established by Congress was the “exclusive” means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans, and he rejected the government’s claim that the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped that law.

...

“Congress appears clearly to have intended to — and did — establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence activities to be conducted,” the judge wrote. “Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.”

There is no defense left for the Bush Administration. The AUMF didn't give them authority. The Article 2 Powers didn't give them the authority. Instead, they knowingly engaged in massive lawbreaking, arrogating unto themselves the power of the Legislature by breaking the law, and the power of the Judiciary by judging a target's validity themselves.

James Madison, easily one of the most conservative of the Founding Fathers, defined Tyranny thusly:

the combination of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial power in one man or
office.

In order to defend the Constitution and reaffirm the principles of limited government they say they hold dear, the Republicans must move forcefully to impeach George W. Bush. Hell, it might even save them some seats in Congress!

Boortz call notes - Habeas/Impeachment

Again, I got almost all of this on the air:

Neal started the call by saying the people mentioning Habeas bore him, so I led off with Churchill's quote:

Why Habeas is important: The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison
without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him
the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation
of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

(That made him feel foolish right from the beginning. How nice for me.)

My question is a thought experiment about a President Obama, and what a libertarian minded person should do about it. Assume Obama wins, and argues at some point that he has the right to detain any US citizen, indefinitely, without charge, and does so for what he says are Nat Security reasons. I've gotta problem with that, and I assume you do too, right?

Right, that's a constitutional crisis. Well, what should be done about it? ... is impeachment the remedy for that constitutional crisis? (of course, he wouldn't allow himself to commit when he knew I was going to turn it against Bush.)

Reference Al Marri when he wants specifics.

When he quibbles over US Resident/US Citizen rights: Supreme Court has always found that anyone in the US Territorial Jurisdiction has constitutional rights.

BUT I don't need that, since the judge in the case wasn't an idiot. He asked:

"What you assert is the power of the military to seize a person in the United States, including an American citizen, on suspicion of being an enemy combatant?" Judge William B. Traxler asked.

"Yes, your honor," Justice Department lawyer Gregory Garre replied.

Now that's not liberal fever swamp stuff, Neal! That's Bush's lawyers saying he has the powers of a King. Now I am a libertarian Democrat, and I don't want ANY president having that power! We have a few months Neal in which to fix this. YOU could do it Neal, if you made the full throated case. If you had Bruce Fein on, Reagan's Dept Attorney General, he'd convince you, and you could convince your millions. If the Republicans pushed for this, they might actually retain power!

Boortz Call Notes - Impeachment

I was able to get almost all of this on the air:

I had an idea over the weekend that's just a doozy, Uncle Neal. Not only will it defend our constitution from what George Will - my favorite conservative voice - called Monarchical Powers! The powers of a King! The most unAmerican thing you can imagine! Not only will it defend our constitution, but it presents the only path to victory I can see for the Republicans. That path is having the Republicans impeach President Bush.

Now Neal, I know what you're thinking, and I just urge you to give this some serious thought. This is a crossroads for our constitution. Love it and take advantage of your podium.

1. Mr. 25% is hated around the country - repudiation of him would help you IMMENSELY
2. You actually put principle above Party for once
3. Defend the Constitution
4. Hilary would hate it - Pelosi the first female president.

What to impeach for:

1. Lying to the people about the Iraq War - he said things that were contradicted by intelligence. CIA told him the sources were untrustworthy - Newsweek on June 11th
2. Commissioning felonies - FISA - admitted to this on the White House Lawn
3. Ignoring Habeas Corpus - an 800 year tradition -Al Marri - AP, May 24
4. Obstructing Justice - pardoning someone to keep them from talking - selective leaking of classified NIE -> Valerie Plame (proven covert Mar 16th, 2007)

George Will, always my favorite voice out there, called these powers Monarchical! The powers of a King!

Phase 2

Telling us something that you knew already if you were paying attention, we have finally have the Phase 2 Investigation into the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Phase 1 of the investigation was into the flaws in intelligence, whereas Phase 2 is the inquiry into how the public case for war was made by the Administration.

It is damning:

• Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
• Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
• Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
• Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
• The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
• The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

They swore to threats that were contradicted by available intelligence. That's called lying. The White House push back that this contradictory intelligence never made it to the president runs afoul of their often-cited theory of the Unitary Executive. If someone in the executive branch new it, then the Executive knew it, and they are accountable.

Bush Outed a CIA Agent?

Firedoglake, the go-to people on the Libby case, thinks one of Scott McClellan's recent revelations has effectively proven that George W. Bush authorized the outing of a CIA Agent. McClellan says that Bush told him that he had authorized the selective declassifying of the NIE, which was intimately tied to the effort to destroy Joe Wilson. Just to make it clear how bad McClellan's book is for the WhiteHouse, that fact isn't even amongst the ones being heralded as scandalous.

Think of how much sense this makes. We have evidence that George Bush ordered Libby to respond to Joe Wilson on June 9, 2003. We now have Bush's own confirmation that he authorized the leak Libby made to Judy Miller on July 8, 2003--which included the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity. We know on July 10, Condi told Stephen Hadley that Bush "was comfortable" with the response the White House was making towards Wilson. And we know that--when Cheney forced Scottie McC to exonerate Libby publicly that fall, he did so by reminding people that "The Pres[ident] [asked Libby] to stick his head in the meat-grinder." We know that Libby's lawyers tried desperately to prevent a full discussion of the NIE lies to be presented at trial. And we know that--after those NIE lies did not come out, for the most part (though one juror told me that NIE story was obviously false, even with the limited information they received)--the President commuted Libby's sentence on July 2, 2007.

They have the full details, including links to all the trial testimony that reveals the cited facts. There are no flights of fantasy driven by Bush-Derangement-Syndrome. Everything is documented.

Daddy's not going to be happy:

“I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”

Junior sure showed him, huh? Add it to the "not-taking-out-Saddam" rebellion and the tax-cut fundamentalism, and you've got quite the pattern of Junior trying not to be the same "failed President" his Daddy was, and failing even more epically in the attempt. Looks like Daddy wasn't such a failure after all, huh?

Habeas Corpus

Proof:

If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.

But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.

Al-Marri's capture six years ago might be the Bush administration's biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack.

To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president's wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a citizen and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely.

George Bush's America, ladies and gentlemen. A nation with a government possessing such powers cannot be described as Free. Time to call Boortz.

UPDATE: I've gotten some objections over the fact that Mr. Al-Marri is not an American citizen. But back as far as 1896 the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the clear language of the 14th Amendment:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Anyone within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States has constitutional rights. In fact, if you read the article, you find the following:

"What you assert is the power of the military to seize a person in the United States, including an American citizen, on suspicion of being an enemy combatant?" Judge William B. Traxler asked.

"Yes, your honor," Justice Department lawyer Gregory Garre replied.

The fact that "US Person = US Citizen" is canon in our legal system. So much so that even the crazy-assed Bush Administration doesn't try to argue the point. Case closed.

The Definition of Tyranny

George W. Bush's Presidency has largely been about overturning the conventions that have historically served our government well. One of the many confirmations of the radical nature of the Bush Administration is the fact that my case for impeachment of the President relies entirely on arguments and quotations from conservatives.

Here's another to bolster the case. Winston Churchill, who conservatives can't go more than a day without invoking, blasts the Bush Administration's tyranny from beyond the grave:

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

George W. Bush is "in the highest degree odious..." You gotta love Churchill.

Founding Fathers on Tyranny

James Madison, easily one of the most conservative of the Founding Fathers, defined Tyranny thusly:

the combination of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial power in one man or office.

This is a definition even talk radio hosts endorse, since to disagree is to repudiate the very foundations of America - that we are a land of checked power and of laws, not men. Well:

1. Bush is the Executive.
2. With the use of signing statements Bush legislates, and even more importantly, by asserting his right to break criminal law, casts himself above and immune to the duly enacted laws of the Legislature.
3. By suspending Habeas Corpus and imprisoning Americans indefinitely on his say-so alone, Bush is the Judiciary.

In America, do we allow our President to say he is above the Law? In America, do we allow our President to ignore the courts? In America, do we allow our President to act as Judge and imprison our fellow citizens?

I've been through elementary school, and I could have sworn the answer to these questions would be "no." But here we are, with a solid majority of the Republican Party believing textbook Tyranny is acceptable.

Impeachment is our only option, or all Presidents from Bush on will have these tyrannical powers, and America will cease to be the land of the free, for you can lose the Republic on the installment plan as surely as you can in a coup d'etat.

Impeachment Drumbeat

I was on the Neal Boortz show this morning at 9:45ish CST, and I presented the argument outlined below:

Joseph: If defending the Republic and the Rule of Law wasn't reason enough for you to support impeachment, I have a really good tactical reason for you. It may well be that the next President of the United States is Hilary Clinton.

Neal: I think you are probably right, sir.

Joseph: And if conservatives and Republicans don't like the idea of Hilary Clinton being able to eavesdrop on them, ignore law, and imprison them them without charge or trial indefinitely, then we need to band together and decisively repudiate George W. Bush now, through impeachment. Otherwise she will have the same powers, and I don't want that.

Neal: What would be the impeachable offense?

Joseph: The President ordered the commission of repeated felonies by creating the NSA program.

Neal: We don't know that program is illegal.

At this point we devolved in to crosstalk, since he couldn't allow a definitive refutation of his lie to be aired too soon after the telling - that would defeat the point, after all. For those in suspense, in ACLU vs NSA, on January 17, 2006, the NSA program was found unconstitutional.

This illustrates what I feel is the strongest attack on President Bush. The votes for impeachment need to come from Republicans, and scaring them with the thought of Hilary having textbook tyrannical powers might be the only thing that can push them out of their partisan stupor.