Posted on 10/18/2006 8:50:02 AM PDT by Froufrou
For a variety of reasons, Democrats are criticizing the military tribunals bill that President Bush signed into law on Tuesday -- but it's the "stealth pardon" for "war crimes" allegedly committed by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that upsets one Democrat the most.
Former U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, a New York Democrat and a Bush impeachment advocate, issued a news release on Tuesday, saying that President Bush, by signing the military tribunals bill, "has created a "culture of impunity" for himself and others who allowed the "torture and abuse of detainees," such as that at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Holtzman complained that the new law sanctions the abuse of foreign detainees in defiance of the Geneva Conventions and suspends habeas corpus in defiance of the U.S. Constitution.
Democratic control of Congress "would make impeachment a serious reality," Holtzman blogged Tuesday on the Huffington Post.
According to Hotlzman, passage of the military tribunals bill provides another important reason for impeachment -- because it "guts" the War Crimes Act of 1996, a Clinton-era law that made it a federal crime to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions. (The Bush administration has complained that some provisions of the Geneva Conventions are vague, and he pressed Congress for clarification. See earlier story.)
Said Holtzman in a news release on Tuesday, "When a president violates the country's criminal laws and then gets a secret grant of immunity for those crimes, he makes a mockery of the rule of law. Then all lawlessness is permissible."
Holtzman said the "immunity" provision was slipped secretly into the bill, without hearings or debate. "Most members of Congress, most reporters and most Americans have no idea that this has happened," Holtzman said.
She accused President Bush of striking a "horrific blow" at democratic values and the U.S. constitutional system.
"Instead of pardoning himself with the complicity of Congress, the President should be making public what acts of prisoner abuse he authorized the CIA to undertake or what acts of theirs he ratified," Holtzman said.
The New York Democrat has been advocating Bush's impeachment for months, and she has co-written a new book "analyzing the illegal, unconstitutional and/or impeachable actions" of the Bush administration.
In a January 2006 article posted on the Nation website, Holzman cited the president's alleged "scorn" for international treaty obligations, "torture scandals," the war in Iraq, and the secret wiretapping program, intended to eavesdrop on terrorists who contact people in America.
"As a matter of constitutional law, these and other misdeeds constitute grounds for the impeachment of President Bush," Holzman wrote in January.
"While impeachment is a last resort, and must never be lightly undertaken (a principle ignored during the proceedings against President Bill Clinton), neither can Congress shirk its responsibility to use that tool to safeguard our democracy. No President can be permitted to commit high crimes and misdemeanors with impunity."
In the January article (the one posted on the Nation's website), Holman notes that she sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon.
"As a Democrat who opposed many of President Nixon's policies, I still found voting for his impeachment to be one of the most sobering and unpleasant tasks I ever had to undertake. None of the members of the committee took pleasure in voting for impeachment; after all, Democrat or Republican, Nixon was still our President."
As the midterm election draws closer and the drumbeat for impeachment grows louder, it appears that in the case of George W. Bush,some Democrats would take great pleasure in impeaching this particular president.
The Republican Party has warned that for Democrats, impeaching Bush is what the midterm election is really all about.
Bull. The GOP started out as a Third Party. The current lock out two Bigger Government Parties have on elections is an abomination.
Dang! That's ugly!
Just in time for Halloween and the election!
Serial post that!
The people who should be voting 3rd party are the lifetime democrats who can understand their party has been taken over by communists.
You'd think. Todays "liberal" no longer has ANY connection to "liberty" and is instead sprinting towards "socialism". Just as todays "consevatives" seem less interested in Goldwater's "conservation of Founding principles" and more interested in "preserving the bigger government status quo".
I disagree consdering that the rest of the country is going to see the democrats trying to hamstring this country's efforts. Impeaching the President without demonstrable cause is going to EXPLODE in the dems faces.
Holtzman was part of a cabal in the House who wanted to delay confirming Ford as VP in 1973, hoping that when Nixon was forced out Carl Albert, a Democrat, would be next in the line of succession. As if the American people would have allowed such a stunt to take place.
The democrats will have no choice but to try just to satisfy their base. If they don't the loony left will come after them with a vengeance. I think the rats are smart enough to take care of the ones that take them to the dance...Republicans on the hand ditch their date.
I beg your pardon but each photo is a true likeness of
each erhhh individual.. . .
I don't feel so well May I be excused?
One can only hope that U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, New York Democrat can learn first hand what real torture is all about - at the hands of real experts, the Militant Muslim Fascists.
Insane asylums must be giving weekend passes to their nuttiest. Elizabeth Holtzman, like many democrats, is certifiable.
Wake up. You're not going to turn the Libertarian or Constitution Party or whatever third party you support into the second major party in 3 weeks. Voting 3rd party helps the Democrats. Can you not see reason and sense?? Think for a minute. Do you think Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid want you to vote A) Republican or B) Third Party? Geez, that one's a no brainer.
Wake up. The third party thing is a major fantasy. You have to go back 2 centuries to come up with the last time a minor party became a major one to justify voting 3rd party?? LMAO. Those were different times and the political landscape of this country is now largely settled as opposed to during the 1800s when the Whigs became the GOP.
And if you consider that people see the best agenda and candidates come out of the two main parties, as flawed as both are, to be an "abomination" then I guess you think representative government and people making their own voting decisions to be an "abomination" since the voters are the ones who have made this a 2 party system. I think they recognize that most of the candidates in the 3rd parties are largely eccentrics and people who live in their mother's basements who offer nothing but utopian, non-realistic fantasies as their agendas.
Voting 3rd party now will not change a damned thing about America's politics OTHER THAN TO STRENGTHEN DEMOCRATS AND THUS AMERICA'S ENEMIES. I only pray you're in a state and district where your wasted voted on some 3rd party loser doesn't matter a bit. I have nothing more to say to you so save any reply. It won't be read.
There's the problem. I AM awake. And I'm not liking what I'm seeing from either of our two Majority parties. More government. More money out of MY pocket book. More socialism. And more of idiots like you trying to justify it. To just "suck it up and vote as we tell you to".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.