Tag: Impeachment

The ‘I’ Word

Jon Ponder

When Karl Rove and others in the GOP politbureau survey the grim landscape of their current prospects, they must see very few opportunities to turn their fortunes around:

If the Republicans can impeach a president because of a sex lie, there is no doubt President Bush deserves to be impeached on several counts.
  • A miraculous reversal of fortunes in the war of Iraq
  • A devastating new terror attack in the United States
  • A solid, indisputable reason to invade Iran
  • Democratic over-reaching on impeaching President Bush

If the Republicans can impeach a president because of a sex lie, there is no doubt President Bush deserves to be impeached on several counts, including gross negligence and incompetence in Iraq and during the Katrina aftermath, and illegally spying on Americans.

But you can be sure that up in the aerie reaches of Karl Rove’s rarified perspective, the Republicans are betting that if Democrats make impeaching the president a campaign issue this year, it will create a rally for Mr. Bush at his base that could staunch the bleeding in the polls.

I have my doubts that the Republicans and independents who have been re-thinking their support of President Bush lately will rally back to him under any circumstances short of a direct attack on the United States.

What would tip the balance toward impeachment is incontrovertible evidence, preferably on video, that Mr. Bush lied about something — anything. Until then, he will be able to slither out of any noose his enemies lay down, just as he always has.

Still, talk of impeachment has been seeping into the traditional media of late. Here is William Goodman, co-author of “Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush” discussing a recent debate on MSNBC led by Republican talk show host Joe Scarborough:

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Credit Where It’s Due: Bush Says Osama Helped Him Win in 2004

Trish

Loyal to the end: A new book says Bush credited Osama bin Laden for helping him win the 2004 election, but stops just short of saying Bush asked his old family pal to do it. CNN reports that Bush felt like the tape, released the Friday before Election Day Tuesday, was a little slice of serendipity for himself and his handlers.

“I thought it was going to help,” Bush said

Bush said there were “enormous amounts of discussion” inside his campaign about the 15-minute tape, which he called “an interesting entry by our enemy” into the presidential race.

Bush’s comments in the Washington newspaper were excerpts from the new book “Strategery” by Bill Sammon, a longtime White House correspondent.

“What does it mean? Is it going to help? Is it going to hurt?” Bush told Sammon of the bin Laden tapes…

“I thought it was going to help,” Bush said.

“I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.”

Not that anyone would attempt to manipulate the voters by tugging on those fear strings, or by issuing a deluge of elevated threat level warnings as the election approached about acts and people that never proved to have any substance.

Let’s Outsource the Secret Service to the UAE

Trish

Alert PR reader Vito D. had a really good question for the Deputy Defense Secretary. Gordon England said last week that those who question the port deal put our security at risk by giving people from Arab countries a complex. Vito asked:

Why not abolish the Secret Service and let U.A.E. guard the President? Now this would show our Arab allies that we trust them.

I agree. If there’s no problem with letting them hire the longshoremen in our ports, then while we’re at it, let’s put them where they could really do some good.

Pentagon Chief Says If You Speak Out About the Port Deal, You’re Threatening National Security

Trish

I’ve heard it all now. CNN:

…the second in command at the Pentagon…said Thursday that people who publicly oppose allowing a Middle Eastern company to take over management of some U.S. ports could be threatening national security.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told the Senate Armed Services Committee that blocking the deal could ostracize one of the United States’ few Arab allies.

“The terrorists want our nation to become distrustful,” England said. “They want us to become paranoid and isolationist, and my view is we cannot allow this to happen. It needs to be just the opposite.”

Because, you know, our government has been so open and fearless up to now. Their willingness to say absolutely anything — no matter how convoluted and incredible — just to get their own bread buttered, is stunning.

Poll: Majority Favors Impeaching Bush

Jon Ponder

Bonnie Erbe:

Those blasphemously “liberal” media outlets have once again deprived the American public of widespread coverage of nothing less than startling poll results. The non-partisan polling firm Zogby International last month found that by a margin of 52 percent to 43 percent, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush “if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge’s approval.”

Well, there’s no “if” about it anymore. The president approved warrantless wiretaps in 2002. Two years later, during a campaign appearance in Buffalo, N.Y. he volunteered he’d done nothing of the kind. That’s called breaking the law and lying about it.

Bush Spent $1.62 Billion to Make Us Love Him and He Still Only Has a 42 Percent Approval Rating

Trish

Wondering how much all those paid White House product placements cost us taxpayers? Would you believe $1.62 billion?

“The extent of the Bush administration’s propaganda effort is unprecedented and disturbing,” said U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif

Yes, fake news stories and secretly paid endorsements aren’t cheap, as we’re beginning to find out, thanks to the Government Accounting Office and our hero, David Walker, 54, U.S. comptroller general and one of the few people willing to challenge the Emperor Bush.

“The extent of the Bush administration’s propaganda effort is unprecedented and disturbing,” said U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. “The fact is that after all the spin, the American people are stuck with high prescription-drug prices, high gas prices and high college costs. This report raises serious questions about this administration’s priorities for the country and I would hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle would agree that changes need to be made to rein in the president’s propaganda machine.”

… The White House did not immediately return a call for comment.

Do they ever? Give them another 22 hours, and maybe they’ll come up with something.

The biggest government spenders were: the Department of Defense ($1.1 billion); Health and Human Services ($300 million); Department of the Treasury ($152 million); and the Department of Homeland Security ($24 million).

The spending was for everything from military recruitment advertising to prizes for various promotions. Democrats pointed to the $10,212 the Air Force spent for items bearing the Coca-Cola logo including portable radios, victory t-shirts, hats and coolers, as well as more that $35,000 for promotional materials for a golf program.

Meanwhile, Bush’s proposed budget includes selling park lands to pay for schools and cutting commodity food programs for seniors and placing them on food stamps instead.

List of Scooter Libby’s “Superiors” is Pretty Short

Trish

Columnist Cragg Hines notes the list of people who might have instructed Scooter Libby to tell members of the press that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent is pretty small.

Libby didn’t have that many “superiors.” Bush, Cheney and, at least organizationally, White House chief of staff Andrew Card.

As emerged in news reports, Libby told a grand jury that “superiors” told him to leak to reporters in June and July 2003 information about Iraq’s weapons capability. Let’s examine this megawatt info…

Libby didn’t have that many “superiors.” Bush, Cheney and, at least organizationally, White House chief of staff Andrew Card.

Or could there be some higher, metaphysical “superiors” being suggested, which would be interesting jurisprudentially if not strategically (unless there’s to be a sudden shift to an insanity plea)?

Hines adds that Bush keeps waffling on his response to the wrongdoing. My own personal theory is that Bush talked tough early on about firing people because he never thought he, Rove, and Cheney would be found out.

In the wake of his indictment, Libby resigned. But Bush’s deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, who remains under investigation by Fitzgerald, has been shown to have leaked. He’s still firmly ensconced in the White House.

That, in part at least, is because Bush last summer moved the goal posts for what it takes to get the heave-ho.

“If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration,” Bush said.

As I’ve noted before, that’s a lousy benchmark for someone who, as Bush did repeatedly in the 2000 campaign, swore he would uphold the “honor and dignity” of the White House.

Under Bush’s sliding standard of leaking as a firing offense, as long as Rove remains unindicted, he apparently can hang around.

Now we have Libby reaching for Cheney’s throat — at least as a pretrial tactic.

My problem is that I don’t believe that even if Bush fired Rove publicly that he would quit taking orders from him privately. Bush, who isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, needs Rove behind the scenes to think of…stuff. He’ll find a way to keep him on a payroll somewhere, and keep pulling the strings in the White House.

Playing Bush’s Get Out of Jail Free Card

Trish

Leonard Pitts can just quit writing now because I don’t think he will surpass this essay.

Remain true to the ideals that have guided us for 230 years or surrender them on the altar of expedience because we were too scared to live up to them

Karl Rove said in a speech last week that this year’s midterm election will be about security. So you know it will be about fear…

Hurricane Katrina has shown that the government could not effectively manage a catastrophe whose place and time it knew in advance…So yes, a national conversation about security could hardly be more timely. But it would be naive to think that’s what Rove meant.

…Experience tells us that with this crew, ”security” is just a code word for fear. So this election will hinge on making people think terrorists are going to get ’em if they don’t vote Republican.

A ruinous war fought under false pretenses? Sept. 11.

Indefinite detention of alleged terrorists? Sept. 11.

Torture? Sept. 11.

The right of the people to dissent? Sept. 11.

Spying on Americans in violation of federal law? Sept. 11.

A growing record of incompetence and lies? Sept. 11.

Fear is the president’s Get Out Of Jail Free card.

…what is at stake this year is not the fortunes of a party but the character of a nation. The choice is simple: remain true to the ideals that have guided us for 230 years or surrender them on the altar of expedience because we were too scared to live up to them.

Make no mistake: America is not for wimps. It takes guts to be an American, to believe in the rule of law, the freedom of dissent, the dignity of woman and man even when — especially when — it is more expedient not to. To be an American is to commit a daily act of faith.

Bush’s War On Terror Needs to End

Buck Banks

Unjust justifications: As George Bush ramps up his campaign to justify the National Security Agency’s illegal spying on Americans, the language he uses emphasizes terrorism and war. He says (repeatedly) that the United States is engaged in a “war on terror,” and that justifies any illegal activities the government wants to commit, and damn the Consititution and the Congress.

In Europe they also have terrorism, but they approach it not in the language of war, but as a crime, the purview of the police. We don’t hear the inflamed rhetoric of war from the British government, we just hear in the news that they have rounded up almost 50 people associated with the London tube bombings. The police investigate and arrest the criminals. They don’t trod on the civil rights of innocent citizens or send suspected terrorists to so-called dark sites in Romania. They lock them up in the Hammersmith Palais and let the British justice system take its course.

When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, then-President Bill Clinton did not declare war on terror. The FBI hunted down McVeigh and arrested him. He was tried, convicted and, in 2001, executed for killing 167 people and wounding hundreds more. No “rendition” was carried out. No illegal detention was employed. No fake charges were filed before a secret tribunal.

But come September 11, 2001, and George Bush declares war on terrorism and gets his carta blanca to do as he pleases and damn the Consititution and Congress. That ushers in the era of Gitmo, Korans down the toilet, water-boarding, renditions, secret torture chambers and Lyndie English’s special brand of sadism. It’s Bush’s Inquisition, complete with secret trials and confessions extracted through torture and intimidation. With Dick Cheney as his Torquemada, Bush has pursued his War of Terror with a vigor matched only by his zeal in giving tax breaks to the rich.

The War on Terror is about as effective as our vaunted War on Drugs. Employing the language of war on both of these imaginary fronts enables the government to ignore any civil rights or inconvenient laws that impede the search for terrorists or drug users/sellers. It enables the Defense Department to get involved in domestic police actions that violate the posse comitatus injunction against using the military to fight domestic crime.

George Bush is a criminal. He has broken the law — needlessly, it would appear. His hubris enables him to break the law and justify the act by invoking some nonexistent presidential powers. Bush is a criminal and should be impeached, and the War on Terror ended.

Law Prof: Unwarranted Surveillance Impeachable

Buck Banks

Ramping up the response: Legal experts, privacy advocates and Democratic lawmakers are calling for investigations into whether the Bush administration broke the law when it authorized a secret program to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without a court order.

According to GovExec.com, on Friday, seven Democrat representatives held an unofficial hearing to examine revelations that Bush ordered the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless wiretaps.

“I want to be absolutely clear, what the president ordered in this case was a crime,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University.

He added that he believes Bush’s order is an impeachable offense. “This type of violation should be a textbook example of an impeachment issue, because not only is it a federal crime but it violates the doctrine of separation of power,” he said.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said he sent a letter Friday to telephone and Internet providers, asking how and when they turned over customer content and records to the government.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday sent a 42-page letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., outlining the administration’s defense of the program.

“The NSA activities are supported by the president’s well-recognized inherent constitutional authority as commander in chief and sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs to conduct warrantless surveillance of enemy forces for intelligence purposes to detect and disrupt armed attacks on the United States,” Gonzales wrote.

He argued that Congress gave Bush the power to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance through the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was enacted one week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Critics of the program contend that Bush should have followed the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the issuance of a warrant by a secret court before electronic surveillance can be conducted.