mp3 The Look Of Love mid
Posted on 01/03/2006 9:06:38 AM PST by SirLinksalot
The I-Word is Gaining Ground--UPDATED
In 1998, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, currently under indictment on corruption charges, proclaimed: "This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law...The other road is the path of least resistance" in which "we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us...[and] close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking...and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system." That arbiter of moral politics was incensed about the possibility of Bill Clinton escaping unpunished for his "crimes."
Fast forward to December 2005. Not one official in the entire Bush Administration has been fired or indicted, not to mention impeached, for the shedding of American blood in Iraq or for the shredding of our Constitution at home. As Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter put it--hours after the New York Times reported that Bush had authorized NSA wiretapping of US citizens without judicial warrants--this President has committed a real transgression that "goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power."
In the last months, several organizations, including AfterDowningStreet, Impeach Central and ImpeachPAC.org, have formed to urge Bush's impeachment. But until very recently, their views were virtually absent in the so-called "liberal" MSM, and could only be found on the Internet and in street protests.
But the times they are a' changin'. The I-word has moved from the marginal to the mainstream--although columnists like Charles "torture-is-fine-by-me" Krauthammer would like us to believe that "only the most brazen and reckless and partisan" could support the idea. In fact, as Michelle Goldberg reports in Salon, "in the past few days, impeachment "has become a topic of considered discussion among constitutional scholars and experts (including a few Republicans), former intelligence officers, and even a few politicians." Even a moderately liberal columnist like Newsweek's Alter sounds like The Nation, observing: "We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator."
As Editor & Publisher recently reported, the idea of impeaching Bush has entered the mainstream media's circulatory system--with each day producing more op-eds and articles on the subject. Joining the chorus on Christmas Eve, conservative business magazine Barron's published a lengthy editorial excoriating the president for committing a potentially impeachable offense. "If we don't discuss the program and lack of authority of it," wrote Barron's editorial page editor Thomas Donlan, "we are meeting the enemy--in the mirror."
Public opinion is also growing more comfortable with the idea of impeaching this president. A Zogby International poll conducted this summer found that 42 percent of Americans felt that impeaching Bush would be justified if it was shown that he had manipulated intelligence in going to war in Iraq. (John Zogby admitted that "it was much higher than I expected.") By November, the number of those who favored impeaching Bush stood at 53 percent--if it was in fact proven that Bush had lied about the basis for invading Iraq. (And these polls were taken before the revelations of Bush's domestic spying.)
For those interested in some of the most compelling charges against the president, I offer a brief summary:
* Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean argued in his aptly-named book Worse than Watergate that Bush's false statements about WMDs in Iraq--used to drum up support for an invasion--deceived the American people and Congress. This constituted "an impeachable offense," Dean told PBS' Bill Moyers in 2004. "I think the case is overwhelming that these people presented false information to the Congress and to the American people." Bush's actions were actually far worse than Watergate, Dean contends, because "no one died for Nixon's so-called Watergate abuses."
Lending credence to Dean's arguments, the Downing Street Memo revealed that Britain's MI-6 Director Richard Dearlove had told Tony Blair that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush Administration. John Bonifaz, a Boston-based attorney and constitutional law expert, said that Bush seemingly "concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated," and "must certainly be punished for giving false information to the Senate." Bush deceived "the American people as to the basis for taking the nation into war against Iraq," Bonifaz argued--an impeachable offense.
* Rep. John Conyers argued as well that the president committed impeachable offenses" because he and senior administration officials "countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq" at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere, including Guantanamo Bay and the now-notorious "black sites" around the world.
* The most compelling evidence of Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors is the revelation that he repeatedly authorized NSA spying on US citizens without obtaining the required warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. Constitutional experts, politicians and ex-intelligence experts agree that Bush "committed a federal crime by wiretapping Americans." Rep. John Lewis--"the first major House figure to suggest impeaching Bush," said the AP--argued that the president "deliberately, systematically violated the law" in authorizing the wiretapping. Lewis added: "He is not King, he is president."
Meanwhile, Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University School of Law--a specialist in surveillance law--told Knight Ridder that Bush's actions "violated federal law" and raised "serious constitutional questions of high crimes and misdemeanors." It is worth remembering that an abuse of power similar to Bush's NSA wiretapping decision was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974. [This comparison was brought home in the ACLU's powerful full page ad in the New York Times of December 22nd.]
And at the end of the year, John Dean weighed in on the parallels between the two Presidents. In his powerful article, George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon: Both Wiretapped Illegally, and Impeachably, Dean documents how these new revelations add weight to the case for impeaching Bush: "There can be no serious question that warrantless wiretapping, in violation of the law, is impeachable. After all, Nixon was charged in Article II of his bill of impeachment with illegal wiretapping for what he, too, claimed were national security reasons. ...Indeed, here, Bush may have outdone Nixon: Nixon's illegal surveillance was limited; Bush's, it is developing, may be extraordinarily broad in scope....Reports have suggested that NSA is 'data mining' literally millions of calls--and has been given access to the telecommunications companies to 'switching' stations through which foreign communications traffic flows. In sum, this is big-time. Big Brother electronic surveillance."
There are many reasons why it is crucial that the Democrats regain control of Congress in '06, but consider this one: If they do, there may be articles of impeachment introduced and the estimable John Conyers, who has led the fight to defend our constitution, would become Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Wouldn't that be a truly just response to the real high crimes and misdemeanors that this lawbreaking president has so clearly committed?
John Bonifaz | Democrat for Secretary of State
John Bonifaz is running for Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the upcoming 2006 election.
Point well-taken. Thanks for the info.
This is by far the best description of the article posted to date.
Bonifaz = Ambulance chasing lunatics...
John Bonifaz, founder and general counsel, formerly served as the staff attorney for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Responsive Politics, a leading research authority on the influence of private money in federal elections.
April 29, 2004
John Bonifaz, Author of "Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush" with a foreword by Rep. John Conyers Jr.
Mr. Bonifaz is also the founder and general counsel of the National Voting Rights Institute, a prominent legal center in the campaign finance reform field.
In February and March 2003, Mr. Bonifaz served as lead counsel for a coalition of US soldiers, parents of US soldiers, and Members of Congress (led by Representatives Conyers and Kucinich) in a federal lawsuit challenging the authority of President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld to launch a war against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war or equivalent action.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
One of the recipients, John Bonifaz, is a 33 year-old public interest lawyer in Boston. Bonifaz, who received a $250,000 fellowship, uses innovative litigation to re-examine campaign finance reform arguments typically debated on first amendment grounds.
"President Bill Clinton was ultimately censured over alleged charges of perjury and obstruction of justice," says Bonifaz. "But no one died as a result of the Monica Lewinsky
affair. President George W. Bush's offenses to the Constitution are far more serious and have resulted in the deaths of thousands. It is time for Congress to investigate whether the president's offenses constitute high crimes worthy of impeachment. To protect and uphold the Constitution, that
process should begin."
John C. Bonifaz, Member, Board of Directors, EQUAL JUSTICE SOCIETY
http://www.equaljusticesociety.org/Bonifaz.jpg
Mr. Bonifaz also maintains a private practice with his father, Cristobal Bonifaz, which specializes in international human rights and environmental law cases.
Mr. Bonifaz served as plaintiffs’ co-counsel in a federal court case brought by Amazonian Indians against Texaco (now Chevron-Texaco) for the widespread destruction caused by the company to the Ecuadorian Amazon during its twenty years of oil drilling in the region.
Mr. Bonifaz served as plaintiffs’ lead counsel in John Doe I v. President Bush, a constitutional challenge to President Bush’s authority to wage war against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war.
Mr. Bonifaz is a 1992 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. He has written and spoken extensively around the country on the anti-democratic nature of the private financing of public elections and on the federal court battle to hold Texaco accountable for its reckless oil drilling practices in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
David Poritz, a ninth-grader at Amherst Regional High School, has been assisting Amherst attorney Cristóbal Bonifaz in preparing a lawsuit against a subsidiary of Texaco. The suit claims the behemoth corporation left an environmental mess in Ecuador's Amazon region after drilling for oil there.
Bonifaz, a native of Ecuador, is lead lawyer in the lawsuit.
Margarita Bonifaz, Poritz's former teacher and Cristóbal Bonifaz's daughter, puts it this way: ''He's like my father ' very impassioned about the case, and the injustice of it.''
I wonder if Kristina Vandenhuval had to change her panty liner about 10 times while writing this trash.
I can agree with that. However, a federal court inexplicably said otherwise.
Under the circumstances, then, I cannot fault the House or the Judiciary Committee. They had to deal with what Clinton himself had put on their plate. It was the Senate that reduced the sad affair to farce.
In BizarroDemWorld having things gain ground go something like this: "Well, everyone in my Yoga group is in favor of Impeaching Bush! I still don't know how he got elected.....no one I know voted for him!!" Their grasp on reality is a bit shaky since they refuse to talk to anyone who disagrees with them!!
Yes .. going after the terrorists that want to murder my children is Hugh impeachable offense
Bring it on Katrina van Witch
Oh but the NSA is probably tapping the Democratic party and leftist media phones because those are who in the U.S. that Al Qaeda is calling by phone.
LOLOL!
Nice reminders.
I love the Donald! ;o)
John Conyers Chairing the Judiciary Committee is the most powerful reason for Republicans to get out the vote in November... for a million different reasons other than impeachment!
Not quite as interesting as a MSM newspaper website.....
They use much more space and lotsa words.....
And the content never clutters up your brain.....
Thanks for the ping!
Someone like Katrina will never fear terrorism unless they, personally, are on a highjacked plane and headed for the Capitol Building.
Impeachment is done in the House. Specter is a non-issue except to Republican bashers like yourself. How you can sit there and blame Republicans for the behavior of rats and the MSM, and not get laughed off this board is a mystery.
I love that analogy.
If the extremist dems are up-in-arms about wiretaps, it can only mean they are communicating with the terrorists and don't want anybody to find out about it.
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