Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales Indicted!

Could it be, the moment many are waiting for is beginning. It is happening in Texas. Read the story here.

Is this a beginning?  When will Bush get his turn?

Let’s hope that the rule of law is returned and transparency in government begins.

Rep. Baldwin Introduces Bill to Undo and Prosecute Bush-Cheney

Prosecution Is on the Table in Congress:
Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin has just introduced the Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2008, which calls on the next President of the United States to

* Fully investigate Bush/Cheney administration officials 2019 alleged crimes and hold them accountable for any illegal acts.

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Sign to Impeach – Being Delivered to Pelosi this week

This is an important week.  We need everyone to add their name to the impeachment petition.

Go to Dennis Kucinich’s online petition to add your name by Wednesday, September 9th, 2008

Kucinich’s impeachment case against George Bush

From Elizabeth Holtzman on the Huffington Post:

Some will want to dismiss Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s introduction of articles of impeachment against President Bush as quixotic, but it’s not. Twenty House Republicans joined nearly all House Democrats in voting to send the articles to the Judiciary Committee. This comes on the heels of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 107-page report confirming, with the vote of two Republican Senators, that President Bush abused his office by deceiving Congress and the American people into the Iraq war. Although Kucinich’s articles included other impeachment grounds as well, deception about the war is arguably the most serious one.

We have long known that the reasons President Bush and his team gave for going to war in Iraq were false. Many have contended that the president deliberately misled the nation into war. Scott McClellan, for example, with his insider’s perspective, says in his new book that the president used exaggerations and misleading statements to win public and Congressional support for going to war in Iraq. Now we have important corroboration of such claims: the Senate Intelligence Report has made it official in a way that Congress will find hard to ignore.

The report describes a drum roll of groundless statements by the president, the vice president and other top officials. While it does not use the word “lie,” it offers plenty of evidence that we were “led to war based on false pretences,” to quote Committee chair Senator Rockefeller. The report shows there was no intelligence to back up the President’s contention that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were in cahoots, or his claim that Saddam would give WMD to terrorists, much less the Vice President’s fantasy that American soldiers would be welcomed as liberators.

Now that these are official findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the question is, what do we do about it? Just wring our hands? Simply hope for change in the November elections? Or does the Constitution now require something more of us?

The Constitution’s framers envisioned the possibility that presidents and their minions might seriously abuse the power of their office, and “subvert the constitution.” Their remedy was impeachment: the removal of the offending official to protect our democracy. They understood that Executives historically wanted to take countries into unnecessary wars, so they empowered Congress act as a real check on unwarranted presidential warmaking. Since lying to Congress obstructs that function, it is a grave abuse of power that “subverts the Constitution” and meets the standard for impeachment.

The House should commence an impeachment inquiry forthwith. In fact, in a sense, it is already beginning. Rep. Kucinich introduced the articles, the House has referred them to the Judiciary Committee and the Senate Intelligence Report goes a long way toward furnishing the investigative work Congress needs to do in the course of impeachment, at least as regards the run-up to the war (Congress should also look at other serious abuses of power, including President Bush’s refusal to obey duly enacted laws, as evidenced by hundreds of signing statements, his violations of the laws on wiretapping and mistreatment of detainees).

The next step is to start asking, what did the president actually know and when did he know it? Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill has stated that President Bush seemed determined to overthrow Saddam Hussein at the beginning of his administration, well before 9/11. There was also the British “Downing Street” memo written in the summer of 2002 stating that President Bush was going to “fix” the intelligence to fit the policy of overthrow. It’s now incumbent on Congress to take these matters up in impeachment hearings.

Yes, even at the end of their terms, President Bush and Vice President Cheney can still be impeached and removed from office. There might just be sufficient time to finish impeachment before they leave office, and technically they could be impeached even after that. This administration can still be held accountable for the consequences of the unnecessary Iraq War and other grave abuses. The American people still have a chance to witness the Constitution in action as it appropriately limits the powers of this president, preventing further abuses by him (such as bombing Iran without approval of Congress) or by his successors.

This would be an important lesson in democracy. We last learned it 34 years ago during the Nixon impeachment process, which reminded Americans how the Constitution works. But our collective memory of those far-off events may have faded, especially after the past eight years of President Bush asserting extreme claims for presidential power, coupled with the failure of Congress to respond forcefully. As a result, as a nation we may have a diminished level of constitutional literacy compared to 1974. It’s time to reinvigorate that literacy. We need to understand once again that acquiescing in this president seriously deceiving us into war means ignoring what the Constitution says, and jeopardizing our democracy.

MSNBC Impeachment Poll – See the results

Really we should impeach Dick Cheney first.

Live Vote

	Do you believe President Bush’s actions justify impeachment? * 696428 responses
	Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial. 89%
	No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching “high crimes and misdemeanors.” 4.2%
	No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching. 4.5%
	I don’t know. 2%
Not a scientific survey. Click to learn more. Results may not total 100% due to rounding.

What We Know About Iraq From the People Who Launched the War

Now that Scott McClellan – a member of the Bush inner circle dating back to Texas days – has come out of the closet, it becomes increasingly unimaginable how any of the true-believers can continue to truly believe. But they do.

One wonders what it would take to dissuade these folks from their faith-based politics and the belief that the war in Iraq was justified. Will they need Laura Bush to actually turn on her husband? What if George’s pastor came out and divulged that the president had broken down and confessed all, begging the lord’s forgiveness?

It’s unlikely even those would be sufficient. And anyhow, the White House would go into its standard defensive posture that it employs whenever this happens, describing the truth-teller as “sad”, lamenting his obvious psychological pathology without of course coming out and saying quite that, wondering aloud why he’s never spoken out before. Indeed, it’s a wonder that McClellan wasn’t better prepared for this completely scripted response to his revelations, especially as he had used it himself against Richard Clarke, Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame.

Anyhow, all the true believers watching Fox will continue to truly believe. As the mayhem of the Bush years dwindles into numbed, robotic destruction and the tragedy of once noble national aspirations not only ruined but now also forgotten, it becomes ever more painfully obvious why these folks cannot let go, no matter how compelling nor how broad the growing mountain of evidence.

They are simply frightened to death. Frightened of bad people, frightened of brown people, frightened of terrorist threats blown ridiculously out of proportion, frightened of existential meaningless, frightened of cosmic insignificance. And now, to that weighty pile, must be added this: They are so frightened of their own complicity in bringing death, disaster, destruction and ungodly sorrow to Iraq that they can now only resort to astonishing levels of self-delusion to maintain their sanity. At this point, I almost don’t blame them anymore. They were so lazy, so stupid, so callow, so mean-spirited, so prejudiced that they bought into a crime of epic (and epochal) proportions and can no longer imaginably bear taking responsibility for the damage they’ve produced. And yet, people continue to suffer and die. Every day spent still supporting the war out of fear or laziness or stupidity or any of the rest is another day’s additional responsibility, another oil tanker of blood poured on hands long ago soaked to the bone.

And that responsibility is grave indeed. We don’t know (because the White House doesn’t want us to know) how many Iraqis have perished for Mr. Bush’s Folly, but the best estimates are over one million. We know that almost five million have been turned into refugees. Combined, that is over one-fifth of this country’s population. We know that over 4,000 Americans have been sacrificed, with tens of thousands gravely wounded and uncounted more tens of thousands psychologically traumatized. We know that our country’s reputation has been shattered, and that we’ve spent our children’s future livelihoods to pay for it by borrowing from them, without even asking for the money. That is a very large load to bear, so now people are compounding their original sin with additional ones, because they are so frightened of what they’ve caused that they’d rather continue causing more of the same than confront their responsibility, even when a Scott McClellan comes along and sticks it in their face.

The truth is, though, we never needed McClellan’s revelations to begin with. Just a bit of simple logic, combined with even a small, half-filled pail of basic factual information would have rendered the war rationale absurd from the beginning, well before an invasion morphed into an occupation, which morphed then into a debacle. Saddam’s Iraq was no threat to anybody in 2003. I mean, how threatening can a guy be who has already lost control of two-thirds of his own airspace, while his citizens are dying of malnutrition by the hundreds of thousands from internationally-imposed sanctions? How scary can a country be, when it has neither attacked yours, nor threatened to? Whatever happened to the logic of deterrence, a mechanism that prevented an infinitely more powerful Soviet Union from attacking the US through forty years of cold war? Why was Saddam bad when he attacked his neighbors in Kuwait, but not when he did the same thing to Iran, with American support and encouragement? Why was he considered evil for using chemical weapons when we wanted to go to war against him, but not when he actually was doing it, during which time the very same people in the US government protected him from international rebuke? If we knew where the WMD were, why didn’t we just tell the inspectors where to look? Why was Iraq such a threat that the inspectors couldn’t be allowed to finish their work, which would have required only a month or two more time? If Saddam was already so threatening, wouldn’t invading his country be just the thing to trigger an attack by him, using his WMD? Weren’t we supposed to be fighting the people who did 9/11, not a country that had nothing whatever to do with that? Why was Iraq all of a sudden such an immediate and urgent threat in March of 2003, when it hadn’t been less than a year earlier? Why did nearly the whole rest of the world condemn this war of choice?

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Impeachment IS Possible

This is an interview with David Swanson and Cindy Piester presented by Ventura County’s Citizens for Impeachment Patriot Series. Filmed in Ventura on April 23, 2008.

Great information and perspective. Watch it here.

After viewing, consider, do we want to keep Elton Gallegly, our 24th District California House Representative in Congress after he has voted almost exclusively in favor of Bush/Cheney policies? Elton Gallegly sits in the House Judiciary Committee and has the power to vote for impeachment, and doesn’t. Torture is a war crime that is recognized internationally. Perhaps our officials will be held accountable for voting for it. Bush and Cheney may be accused by other countries when they travel. Hopefully so.

Remember that our children and grandchildren will have to pay off the debt amassed by this ruinous administration.

Listen, read carefully and vote wisely.

This blog supports Mary Pallant for Congress. The only 24th district candidate that openly supports impeachment. You’ll hear David Swanson’s support of Mary Pallant near the end of the video.

Rep Betty Hall’s Speech in New Hampshire

For me, impeachment has always been a scary idea. Over 30 years ago, in this legislature, we voted on a resolution to impeach Richard Nixon. (You see, we’ve done this before!) Representative Eugene Daniel, mayor of Franklin, gave an impassioned speech to impeach. It was powerful. There was a standing vote. Out of 400 people, only 22 stood up. I was not one of them. I have regretted that lack of courage ever since.

At our great rally on Monday night, which many of you attended, I learned something very startling – when Eugene Daniel gave that speech, his son was in prison, in protest of the Viet Nam war. That son, Eugene Daniel, Jr. is in the gallery today and I want to welcome him. (please stand up)  (Tom Hosmer and kevin Jones, who also went to prison for their beliefs is with him. Tom and Kevin, please stand up also.)

No matter what you think about that war, it takes courage to go to prison for your beliefs. Those young men had courage when I did not. [thank you Tom and Gene]

I want to also acknowledge Dr. Bob Bowman, Lt. Col. United States Air Force Retired.    Colonol Bowman flew 101 combat missions in Viet nam – he is here from Florida to support this Petition.

I learned something else at that rally – I’m not scared anymore. There is now support across the political spectrum for impeachment and for this Petition. Many, many people are standing up.

The Libertarian Party sent a statement endorsing HR24. Bruce Fein, deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, and founder of the Liberty Coalition, wrote in support of HR24. And here is what Mickey Edwards, a founder of the Heritage Foundation and former Chair of the American Conservative Union said yesterday in a NH Public Radio interview:

“If the question were posed “Do I believe the President has constituted impeachable offenses?” I would say yes. I would say he has, because, in fact, he has very specifically violated laws. The FISA act on warrants is one clear example, the American Bar association found by a large margin that his use of signing statements, you know, to disregard the law was unconstitutional. So, has he committed acts that I believe are violative of the constitution and therefore probably impeachable, yes I do. . .

Would you not agree that a President who deliberately violates the constitution is committing an impeachable offense?” [end of quote]

Edwards and Fein are conservatives who put conserving the Constitution ahead of party considerations.

And at our rally, we had a speech by Daniel Ellsberg, who risked life imprisonment to release the Pentagon Papers and hasten the resignation of Richard Nixon. There were also statements of support for HR24 by Howard Zinn, Ed Asner, Noam Chomsky, and Ramsay Clark.

As you can see, impeachment is NOT a partisan issue. The people backing this petition come from across the political spectrum, and are bound by one common tenet: we must conserve our Constitution.

As Colonol Bowman put it: “There is no longer Republican nor Democrat, conservative nor liberal, hawk nor dove. There are only Patriots demanding accountability…and exercising our Constitutional right to save our Republic”.

We have reached a tipping point. A point where impeachment comes out of the bottle and it cannot be put back in again.

We are at this point because we have seen a constant stream of lies and misrepresentations from our government. These lies have fooled our candidates, have fooled our Congressional leaders, have fooled us. The results have been disastrous.

And it has become clear that the Congress, for a multitude of reasons, is not going to get the truth we so desperately need. The truth about the war. The truth about the politicizing of our Justice Department. The truth about domestic surveillance. The truth about torture.

You might ask, why do we need the truth now? Are we just wasting our time, and the Congresses? Why can’t we just wait for the election and move on? There are a number of reasons. Here are a few:

1. How can we evaluate our Presidential candidates and elect a new government without knowing how we got into this dire situation. And how can our candidates propose ways to get us out of it? We and our candidates don’t know the details and extent of the domestic wiretapping by the NSA, we don’t know the extent of the torture, we don’t know the extent and details of the politicizing of the Justice Department. We need the truth on these issues NOW, before we vote in November.

Reason 2. Almost 10 months is a lot of time for further damage.  Admiral Fallon, Commander of the US Central Command, was recently forced to resign apparently because of his opposition to war with Iran. Impeachment investigations would provide a deterrant to such mischief. In fact, Daniel Ellsberg in his speech at the rally presented evidence that Nixon delayed further bombing of North Viet Nam because of  looming impeachment investigations.

Reason 3. We have only this chance to impeach. After the election, we will lose the special powers of legal discovery that apply in impeachment – in particular, the power to pierce the veil of Executive Privelege and the power to compel witnesses to appear and testify.

At present, the Congress is stymied and stuck. The new Democratic majority has failed to hold the President accountable or even to compel members of the Administration to testify. Congress has not been able to get the truth without impeachment. It is time for we the people to raise our voices.

How can we sweep this  under the rug any longer?

What more important thing can you think of than upholding your oath of office – to protect and defend the Constitution.

(All of you took that oath)

HR24 is a petition.

. It is not a law

. It does not compel impeachment,

. It does not have to prove its charges – that is not our job

And Congress is not precluded from excluding any of the charges we make, or including new charges.

It is simply a petition asking Congress to begin investigations. We are above all seeking the truth.

In the Declaration of Independence, our forefathers demanded the right of the people to redress their grievances with their government. When they won the Revolution, they wrote the Right To Petition into the Constitution.

HR 24 is such a petition. It is our right. Our Constitutional right.

We are asking that the Congress begin investigations using the powers that impeachment proceedings give them to overcome Executive Privilege.

The New Hampshire House can make history today.  The Manual of rules written by Thomas Jefferson for the United States Congress is still in force today. Section 603 of the Jefferson Manual states that Impeachment proceedings can begin  by petition of a state legislature. Congress, by its own rules, is compelled to consider our petition.

If we pass this petition today, we will take a delegation of NH legislators to Washington: we will be heard!

This petition is our right. And it is our duty. It is fitting that it is the people of NH who do this. We are the Live Free or Die State. We are a state of town meetings. We hold the honor of leading our country in voting in the first primary. And this is the people’s house.

And before the United States Constitution was written, our forefathers in our own state constitution called us to have courage in times like this.

Article 10 of the NH Bill of Rights is known as the “Right of Revolution”. It states: [quote]”Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men: therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of non resistance against arbitrary power and repression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good of all mankind.”

May Day! – Americans Strike Against Criminal Leadership!

May 1st is shaping up to be quite a day of resistance, with strikes by the ILWU, the Teamsters, Postal Workers, plus immigrant rights rallies, and peace and impeachment activities. It’s Mission Accomplished Day (5 Years!) It’s Downing Street Minutes Day (3 Years!) It’s May Day, the original Labor Day (122 Years!) If you care about the future

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Conyers Speaks on Impeachment if Iran Invaded

From David Swanson:

Conyers is circulating a letter among his colleageus for signatures, a letter addressed to Bush letting him know that an attack on Iran will result in impeachment hearings. LET’S ASK EVERY MEMBER OF CONGRESS TO SIGN ON! I know it seems bassackwards and we want impeachment before a new war, not after, but this is a way for us to show Conyers the support that will be there any time he moves forward.

He is open to the new argument that we have been making to him, namely that impeachment hearings for Cheney or Bush (on torture, signing statements, spying, war crimes, etc, etc) would hurt John McCain’s candidacy by forcing him to defend the crimes.

He is open to meeting with experts allied with us to hear their arguments for impeachment.

All of that is positive. Still, Conyers continues to believe that elections are more important than justice, that impeachment would be bad for the elections, and that impeachment hearings would be stonewalled by the White House. There are a couple of possible responses to the last point. One is that impeachment hearings, including taking up H Res 799 as instructed by the full House last November, and even marking it up to add new charges, overrule claims of “executive privilege.” Of course Bush and Cheney could claim otherwise, but there is an answer to that. When Nixon refused a subpoena, the House Judiciary Committee passed an article of impeachment against him for that refusal. Cheney and Bush have already refused subpoenas. There’s no need to wait.

New Hampshire State Representative Betty Hall Speaks Out On HR24 and Impeachment

 This is one tough cookie, State Representative Hall.  Show your support for her resolution HR24 by visiting her website and sending in your comments.  They will be voting within the next couple of weeks and hopefully be successful in sending this strong message to the US Congress to act.  Impeachment must be sought to send a clear message that Americans will not stand for a government that is not for and by the people.

Ralph Nader on the Iraq War and a way to face the truth

Worth the Sacrifice?

Bush Blisters the Truth on Iraq

By RALPH NADER

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Bush’s illegal war of aggression in Iraq, the Fabricator-in-Chief made a speech at the Pentagon, whose muzzled army chiefs had opposed his costly, ruinous adventure from the start for strategic, tactical and logistical reasons.

As benefits the dictatorial monarch of yesteryear, evicted by America’s first patriots, this modern-day King George blistered the truth, somersaulted the facts and declared that a “strategic victory” in Iraq is near. He called the war “a just and noble cause.” Sugarcoating the terrible, impoverished state of daily life in Iraq, he acknowledged “the high cost in lives and treasure,” but said the recent situation in Iraq made it all worthwhile. “Worth the sacrifice” is how he put it often in previous statements.

At the same time, his V.P. his Prince Regent, Dick Cheney was having this exchange with ABC’s Martha Raddatz:

Raddatz: “Two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting, and they’re looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.”

Cheney: “So?”

Raddatz: “So ­ you don’t care what the American people think?”

Cheney: “No,” who then inaccurately wrapped Abraham Lincoln’s stand during the Civil War around his relentless illegal warmongering in Iraq.

In an article called “Defining Victory Downward: No, the surge is not a success,” columnist Michael Kinsley exposed the fatuous standards of comparison used by Bush and took his readers to standards back in 2003. Kinsley observed how Bush spouts success against conflicts and conditions that never existed before March 2003. There were no Al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq, no large scale sectarian carnage. There were modicum rudimentary public facilities and necessities, notwithstanding severe Clinton-Bush propelled economic sanctions, under dictator Saddam Hussein, instead of a devastated, riven nation of 4 million refugees and violent street anarchy.

At the same time that the rancidly redundant fictionalizations of reality in Iraq by Bush and Cheney were once again receiving front page attention at the New York Times and the Washington Post, protests on the downtown streets of Washington, D.C. and in scores of cities and communities around the country received subdued short articles deep inside these newspapers. Both remarked on the smaller turnout of marchers compared to the large demonstrations in 2003.

This decline should not be surprising. Most people are trying to communicate their concerns, and their repeatedly accurate warnings about the impacts of this war of aggression to a wider audience. But the mainstream media, often hardly working on weekends, never gave these outpourings the attention they deserved (even though American public opinion was behind their call to end the war-occupation and said that the war was not worth the cost to America in lives and dollars).

Fortunately, along came a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, with a new detailed book titled “The Three Trillion Dollar War ,” (W.W. Norton) to inform the American people just how right they are about the long term cost of Bush’s messianic reckless pursuit launched on a platform of lies, distortions and cover-ups.

The twisted defiance of Bush, the cowardliness of the majority Democrats in Congress and the frustration and powerlessness felt by sensitive Americans who see no light at the end of the Iraq tunnel leaves little room for citizens to gain control of their runaway government.

There is a possible way to turn the tide in favor of ending this illusion of “victory” and the occupation that breeds its own opposition in Iraq.

Unlike before or during any other war in our nation’s history, hundreds of former high military, national security-intelligence and diplomatic officials have spoken, written, testified and some even marched against Bush’s tragic folly ­ before and after the March 2003 invasion.

These retired public servants include generals and anti-terrorism specialists who worked inside the Bush Administration. Taken as a whole, were they to aggregate their standing and influence before the American people by banding together as a group, their cumulative impact on Congress, on galvanizing and focusing public opinion during this election year could well turn this deteriorating situation around.

These patriotic Americans, with their experience in battles, conflicts and geopolitical tensions, coupled with their desire to wage peace for a change in Washington’s policies, could be the catalyst that spells the difference. Compared with Bush and Cheney, successful draft-dodgers during their Pro-Vietnam war past, they make for quite a credible contrast.

Will they mobilize themselves for the common good and provide the new dynamic needed?

Time will tell.