John Conyers

Conyers Investigates New Impeachable Crimes

Bob Fertik — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:59:45 -0400

Investigative reporter Ron Suskind's book "The Way of the World" has exposed new impeachable crimes by the Bush Administration, and House Judiciary Chair John Conyers has launched an investigation.

Suskind's most important revelation is that Iraq's Intelligence Minister, Gen. Tahir Jalil Habbush al Takriti, became a U.S.-British spy two months before George Bush invaded Iraq. Habbush insisted Iraq had no WMD's or Al Qaeda ties, but Bush didn't want the truth because he was determined to invade Iraq.

Bush told his briefers, "why don’t you tell him to give us something we can use to make our case?"

This is the most direct proof yet that George Bush knew Iraq had no WMD's or Al Qaeda ties, yet deliberately lied about them to Congress and the American people. According to 60 Minutes, Bush received a similar report in 2002 from Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, who was also a U.S. spy.

Suskind also reveals that months after the invasion, when no WMD's or Al Qaeda ties were found, the White House ordered the CIA to forge a letter from Habbush to "prove" both. The CIA produced that forgery and gave it to neocon mouthpiece Con Coughlin of Conrad Black's U.K. Telegraph, who lied about the "letter" on Meet the Press with Tom Brokaw. (Brokaw, unlike Dan Rather, has never been held accountable for promoting a forged document.) By law, the CIA is specifically prohibited from creating propaganda to mislead Americans, so when the Bush Administration ordered the CIA to produce the Habbush forgery, they committed yet another impeachable crime.

On Thursday, John Conyers told Democracy Now that he is actively investigating Suskind's revelations and may call Habbush and others as witnesses.

Of course Conyers' biggest problem is convincing Speaker Nancy Pelosi that George Bush committed a single crime. Pelosi was asked about impeachment repeatedly this week during her book tour; even the NY Times called it her Why-Haven’t-You Impeached-the-President Tour. Yet Pelosi insists Congress has no evidence that Bush committed any crimes at all. One activist politely handed Pelosi a copy of Dennis Kucinich's 36 Articles of Impeachment, so we gave him a $1,000 reward. We will continue to offer awards up to $1,000 for citizen journalists who get Pelosi to give a substantive answer to our simple question: "Of the 36 detailed Articles of Impeachment introduced by Dennis Kucinich, do you consider any to be crimes?"

Congress will return on September 8 to work for 3 weeks before adjourning to campaign. With Suskind's new evidence Bush's crimes, Speaker Pelosi could call a lame-duck session in November to vote on Articles of Impeachment - exactly as Speaker Newt Gingrich did in 1998.

Tell Congress to impeach Bush for his Iraq Lies:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/142

Friday's House Judiciary Hearing on Impeachment: A Victory and a Challenge

dlindorff — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:34:40 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The dramatic hearing on presidential crimes and abuses of power
held on Friday by the House Judiciary Committee was both a staged
farce, and at the same time, a powerful demonstration of the power of a
grassroots movement in defense of the Constitution. It was at once both
testimony to the cowardice and self-inflicted impotence of Congress and
of the Democratic Party that technically controls that body, and to the
enormity of the damage that has been wrought to the nation’s democracy
by two aspiring tyrants in the White House.

As Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the committee, made clear
more than once during the six-hour session, this was “not an
impeachment hearing, however much many in the audience might wish it to
be” He might well have added that he himself was not the fierce
defender of the Constitution and of the authority of Congress that he
once was before gaining control of the Judiciary Committee, however
much his constituents, his wife, and Americans across the country might
wish him to be.

At the same time, while the hearing was strictly limited to the
most superficial airing of Bush administration crimes and misdemeanors,
the fact that the session—technically an argument in defense of 36
articles of impeachment filed in the House over the past several months
by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)--was nonetheless a major victory for the
impeachment movement. It happened because earlier in the month, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has sworn since taking control of the
House in November 2006, that impeachment would be “off the table”
during the 110th Congress, called a hasty meeting with Majority Leader
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Rep. Conyers, and Rep. Kucinich, and called
for such a limited hearing.

It was no coincidence that shortly before Pelosi’s backdown, peace
activist and Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan announced that her campaign
had collected well over the 10,000 signatures necessary to qualify for
listing on the ballot as an independent candidate for Congress against
Pelosi in the Speaker’s home district in San Francisco. Sheehan has
been an outspoken advocate of impeaching both Bush and Cheney. “Pelosi
is trying to throw a bone to her constituents by allowing a hearing on
impeachment,” said Sheehan, who came to Washington, DC to attend. “It’s
just like her finally stating publicly that Bush’s presidency is a
failure—something it has taken her two years to come to, but which
we’ve been saying for years.”

So determined were Pelosi and Conyers to limit the scope and
intensity of the hearing that they acceded to a call for Republicans on
the Judiciary Committee to adhere to Thomas Jefferson’s Rules of the
House, which prohibit any derogatory comments about the President,
which was interpreted by Chairman Conyers as meaning no one, including
witnesses or members of the committee, could suggest that Bush had lied
or deceived anyone. Since a number of Rep. Kucinich’s proposed articles
of impeachment specifically charge the president with lying to Congress
and the American People, this made for some comic moments, with witness
Bruce Fein, a former assistant attorney general under former President
Ronald Reagan, to say he would reference his listing of crimes to the
“resident” of the White House.

In the end, the rule imposing a gag on calling the president a
criminal fell by the wayside, with witness Vincent Bugliosi. A former
Los Angeles deputy district attorney, accusing Bush of being guilty of
the murder of over 4000 American soldiers and of hundreds of thousands
of innocent Iraqi civilians because he had “lied” the country into an
illegal and unnecessary war, and with committee member Shiela Jackson
Lee (D-TX) suggesting that the president may have committed treason in
invading Iraq, and that he appeared to be preparing to do it again with
an unprovoked invasion of Iran.

Conyers also acquiesced in a Republican effort to minimize public
monitoring and involvement in the hearing, allowing the minority party
to fill most of the available seats in the hearing room with office
staffers who showed little interest in the proceedings. Only a few
dozen of the hundreds of pro-impeachment activists who had come to the
Rayburn Office Building at 7 am in order to get seats in the Judiciary
Committee hearing room were allowed in, with the rest having to remain
in the hall or go to two remote “overflow” rooms to watch the
proceedings on a TV hookup. Conyers also went along with a call by
Republican members of the committee to have some of those who did make
it into the hearing ejected simply for wearing buttons on their shirts
calling for impeachment (the Republican members referred to these as
“signs”), though such small personal tokens are routinely allowed in
congressional hearing rooms.

It was clear that this was to be a tightly controlled and strictly limited hearing.

It was also clear that it was intended to go nowhere.

At one point, after hearing witnesses like Fein, Bugliosi, former
representative and Nixon impeachment committee member Elizabeth
Holtzman, former Salt Lake City mayor and impeachment activist Rocky
Anderson, former House Clinton impeachment manager Bob Barr, former
Watergate Committee counsel and current senior counsel of the Brennan
Center for Justice Frederick A.O. Schwartz, and Elliott Adams,
president of the board of Veterans for Peace, lay out the
administration’s crimes and abuses of power—which included charges of
usurping the legislative powers of Congress, violating international
treaties, war crimes, lying to Congress, an illegal war, felony
violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth
Amendment, defying Congressional subpoenas, obstruction of justice and
more, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chair of the Constitution
subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, appeared convinced that the
abuses were real and serious.

But Nadler, who for two years has been a major obstacle on the
Judiciary Committee to any efforts to move impeachment to a formal
hearing, said, “No president has been removed from office through
impeachment.” He asked the witnesses, “How would you approach
impeachment today so it would be a viable option?”

Former Rep. Holtzman responded, “The real remedy to a president who
believes he is above the law is impeachment. There is no running away
from that.” She said, “An impeachment inquiry, handled fairly, could
work. Maybe I’m a cockeyed optimist, but I believe it could work.”

The basic point, made by Holtzman, by Fein and by many others,
including this writer, is that worrying about the political opposition
to impeachment, both in the House, and in the Senate, not to mention
among the broader public, is completely wrongheaded. Even when
impeachment articles were first filed against Nixon, the public and the
bulk of the Congress were against the idea. It was during the hearings
that the tide turned, as evidence of malfeasance, criminality and abuse
of power became evident through hearing testimony. The same would
happen in the case of President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney. Most
Americans don’t even know that the president made up evidence to
justify the war against Iraq out of whole cloth. They don’t know what
the Geneva Conventions are with regard to torture. They don’t know why
Congress passed the FISA act, which Bush has been feloniously violating
to spy on them (it was passed because Nixon was using the National
Security Agency to spy on Americans without judicial warrants!). They
don’t know the Bush has been refusing to enact laws passed by the
Congress. Public hearings by an impeachment panel would make all these
high crimes and misdemeanors clear on national TV to all sentient
Americans. Moreover, as Holtzman pointed out, the president would not
be able to use the claim of “executive privilege” to withhold testimony
from aides in an impeachment inquiry, the way he has done when they
have been subpoenaed by other House and Senate committees. Impeachment
would be about violations of the very executive actions he would be
claiming privilege on. As well, an impeachment committee, unlike any
other committee of the Congress, is specifically sanctioned and
empowered in the Constitution, meaning that even strict
“constructionist” Federalists on the bench would have a hard time
backing presidential obstruction.

As Holtzman noted, “There is no executive privilege in impeachment,
because refusing to testify is itself an impeachable offense.”

Committee Republicans, aided by two law professors they had brought
in to testify, Stephen Presser of Northwestern University School of Law
and Jeremy Rabkin of George Mason University School of Law, tried to
argue that impeachment was only meant for crimes in which the official,
or the president, was seeking personal gain. This nonsense was knocked
down by most of the speakers, who quoted numerous founders who made it
clear that what high crimes referred to were actions—even taken with
the noblest of intentions—that undermined the Constitution or abused
the powers of the office. As Rep. Nadler said, “Impeachment has nothing
to do with intentions or with good faith. Impeachment has to do with
abuse of power which weakens the balance of power.”

In the end, the hearing petered out, taking no action of any
kind—exactly the result that Pelosi, Hoyer and Conyers cynically
intended.

Now it is up to the public and the impeachment movement to call
their bluff and take impeachment to the next level. Noting that even
Rep. Conyers ended the hearing by saying, “We are not done yet, and we
do not intend to go away until we achieve the accountability that
Congress is entitled to and that the American people deserve,” Rep.
Kucinich and five other co-sponsors of his articles of impeachment
(Robert Wexler, Tammy Baldwin, Keith Ellison, Maurice Hinchey, Sheila
Jackson-Lee, and Hank Johnson) are calling on all Americans to contact
their representatives (202-224-3121) and urge them to join in
co-sponsoring those articles and in calling for a formal impeachment
hearing.

They are also calling on everyone to contact their local and
national media, nearly all of whom have blacked out news of
impeachment. Incredibly, the New York Times, for example, has not even
reported on Friday’s hearing, even as a news “brief.” Those news
organizations, like the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer,
that did report on the hearings did so only in short, inside articles.
Though the hearing was aired in full on C-Span (and is still available for download), many Americans don’t even know it happened.

Time is short, but even at this late date, it would be a simple
matter to impeach the president on some issues. As several of Friday’s
witnesses pointed out, President Bush has essentially dared Congress to
act, admitting that he openly violated the FISA law—a felony, and
openly admitting that he has refused to enact laws passed by the
Congress, claiming a power—unitary executive authority—not even
mentioned in the Constitution. He has openly admitted to having known
about, and approved, “enhanced interrogation techniques” devised by his
subordinates—techniques like waterboarding which clearly violate the
Geneva Conventions and US law. No hearings would be required to
establish these high crimes and misdemeanors. They could simply be
voted on by an Impeachment Committee and sent to the full House for a
vote.

Even if there were no time for a Senate trial, the simple act of
impeaching the president for one or more abuses of power would serve
notice on future presidents that future such abuses would not be
tolerated. Failure to do so, and allowing this administration to leave
office unimpeached, would send the opposite message: that Congress is
no longer a co-equal branch of government, but is merely a consultative
body, at best, and that a president is in effect a dictator.

That Pelosi buckled and permitted a hearing on impeachable crimes
by the Bush/Cheney administration is a major victory for the
impeachment movement, but it must not be the end of the line.
Impeachment activists need to now redouble their efforts to make
Congress do its Constitutional duty, and initiate a formal impeachment
proceeding.

As former Republican representative Bob Barr, now the Libertarian
candidate for president, told Friday’s hearing, “We had a nuclear clock
during the Cold War. In the ‘90s we had a debt clock. Now we have a
Constitution Clock.”

That clock is getting close to midnight, and it is ticking.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and
columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s
Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Support the Kucinich Impeachment Hearing on Friday

Bob Fertik — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:15:29 -0400

Tell your Representatives to support impeachment by cosponsoring H. Res. 1345:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/142

Rep. Dennis Kucinich has led the fight for impeachment since April 2007, when he defied Speaker Pelosi and courageously introduced 3 Articles of Impeachment (H.Res. 333/799) against Vice President Cheney. On June 10, Kucinich defied Speaker Pelosi again and introduced 35 Articles of Impeachment (H.Res. 1258) against President Bush.

When Pelosi refused to allow hearings on any of the 38 Articles of Impeachment, Kucinich returned to the floor of Congress to introduce one more Article of Impeachment against President Bush (H.Res. 1345).

Thanks to massive pressure from Democrats.com and our pro-impeachment allies, Speaker Pelosi finally allowed Chairman Conyers to hold a hearing this Friday. Kucinich will finally get a few minutes to argue for impeachment, along with Rep. Robert Wexler, former Rep. Liz Holtzman, and former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson. Kucinich made a video to thank us for our efforts.

H.Res. 1345 focuses on Bush's ultimate crime - invading Iraq on the basis of lies. The evidence is overwhelming that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Karl Rove, Andy Card, and other top officials deliberately manufactured those lies to "sell" an invasion whose real purpose was to gain control of Iraq's oil and establish military bases in the heart of the Middle East.

This was the agenda of the Project for a New American Century that Bush adopted after stealing the 2000 election. And it's the reason Bush and John McCain are determined to stay in Iraq forever, even though Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki supports Barack Obama's plan to remove all our troops by 2010.

When Kucinich testifies on Friday, he will naturally face hostile questions from rightwing Republicans who impeached President Clinton. But Kucinich will also face hostile questions from key Democrats who oppose impeachment.

Some of these Democrats supported the invasion of Iraq: Howard Berman (CA28), Rick Boucher (VA09), Adam Schiff (CA29), Brad Sherman (CA27), and Anthony Weiner (NY09).

But most of these Democrats oppose impeachment because they are cowering in fear of a counterattack from the White House and FOX News: John Conyers (MI14), Artur Davis (AL07), Bill Delahunt (MA10), Zoe Lofgren (CA16), Jerry Nadler (NY08), Linda Sanchez (CA39), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL20), Bobby Scott (VA03), Betty Sutton (OH13), and Mel Watt (NC12).

Only a few Judiciary Democrats understand that the Founding Fathers gave Congress the power of impeachment as the only way to stop a President from defying the Constitution and becoming a dictator, as Bush has done: Robert Wexler (FL19), Tammy Baldwin (WI02), Steve Cohen (TN09), Keith Ellison (MN05), Luis Gutierrez (IL04), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX18), Hank Johnson (GA04), and Maxine Waters (CA35).

If anti-impeachment Democrats get their way, Friday's 2-hour hearing will be the only "impeachment" hearing for this entire Congress - and then Bush will try to pardon himself and everyone else before leaving office next January, just as his father pardoned six Iran-contra criminals.

So it is crucial for all of us - now over 500,000! - to tell our Representatives today to support impeachment by cosponsoring Kucinich's H. Res. 1345:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/142

And if you can do more, please make free calls to every Judiciary Democrat who opposes impeachment through CauseCaller:
http://www.causecaller.com/causes.php?c=House_Judiciary_Democrats_Impeachment
Simply enter your phone number and click the "Start Calling" button. (Click "Call me back if I accidentally hang up" in case you hang up by mistake.) In a few seconds, your phone will "magically" ring and CauseCaller will say the name of the first Representative on the list. Listen carefully for the name of each Member so you can repeat the name to the receptionist - or just say "The Representative." Don't hang up between calls - let the receptionists hang up and CauseCaller will dial the next Representative.

Note: If CauseCaller isn't working, you can call/fax this list manually:

last	first	statedist	phone-dc	fax-dc
Berman	Howard	CA28	202-225-4695	202-225-3196
Boucher	Rick	VA09	202-225-3861	202-225-0442
Conyers	John	MI14	202-225-5126	202-225-0072
Davis	Artur	AL07	202-225-2665	202-226-9567
Delahunt	William	MA10	202-225-3111	202-225-5658
Lofgren	Zoe	CA16	202-225-3072	202-225-3336
Nadler	Jerrold	NY08	202-225-5635	202-225-6923
Sanchez	Linda	CA39	202-225-6676	202-226-1012
Schiff	Adam	CA29	202-225-4176	202-225-5828
Scott	Bobby	VA03	202-225-8351	202-225-8354
Sherman	Brad	CA27	202-225-5911	202-225-5879
Sutton	Betty	OH13	202-225-3401	202-225-2266
Wasserman Schultz	Debbie	FL20	202-225-7931	202-226-2052
Watt	Melvin	NC12	202-225-1510	202-225-1512
Weiner	Anthony	NY09	202-225-6616	202-226-7253

If you want to do even more, call your favorite radio or TV talk shows and tell them how important Friday's hearings will be, and how strongly you support impeachment for whichever reasons are most important to you. Prepare your thoughts in advance so you sound informed and determined.

And if you're near Washington DC, join Veterans for Peace to lobby Congress on Thursday and hold a pro-impeachment rally on Friday:
http://www.democrats.com/node/17211

Lots more details and actions here:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34943

Thanks for all you do!

Update 1: The evidence of Bush's war crimes and other impeachable offenses grows daily. Investigative reporter Jane Mayer's new book The Dark Side provides more evidence that Bush authorized torture. The British Parliament accused Bush of torture.

Yet Attorney General Mukasey told Congress he won't prosecute anyone who followed Bush's illegal torture orders. Even worse, Bush's rightwing supporters have begun a propaganda campaign for blanket pardons of everyone in the Bush administration!

House Sends Impeachment to John Conyers

Bob Fertik — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:47:06 -0400

By a bipartisan vote of 251-166, the full House of Representatives sent Dennis Kucinich's 35 Articles of Impeachment to the Judiciary Committee.

That means Chairman John Conyers now has the power to decide whether to hold impeachment hearings - or not.

Incredibly, 24 Republicans voted with 227 Democrats; the 166 no votes came exclusively from Republicans.

So what will Conyers do? After the Downing Street Memo was published on May 1, 2005, Democrats.com worked closely with Conyers to hold the famous basement hearings featuring Cindy Sheehan, Ray McGovern, and John Bonifaz. In August 2006, Conyers published all of the evidence of Bush's crimes in The Constitution in Crisis. Many of us believed he would begin impeachment proceedings if Democrats won the House, which they did that November.

But in the spring of 2006, Nancy Pelosi declared impeachment "off the table." And when Democrats took control and Conyers was sworn in as Judiciary Chairman, he fell firmly into line behind the Speaker. (Conyers insists Pelosi did not threaten to deny him the Chairmanship.)

Since 2005, Conyers has received millions of impeachment petitions. Hundreds if not thousands of activists have spoken to him personally. But he remains adamantly opposed to hearings, for one simple reason: he fears it will hurt the Democratic candidate for President (now Barack Obama) in November.

Of course there isn't one scintilla of evidence to support Conyers' fear. It is based entirely on the 1998 election, when Newt Gingrich turned the Starr Report (published online on September 9) into a campaign issue but lost a small number of seats by overplaying the issue in TV ads. Despite those small losses, Republicans held the majority and voted to impeach Clinton six weeks after the election, on December 19. And two years later, despite a massively unpopular impeachment, Republican George Bush got close enough to Al Gore to steal the election. And one reason it was close was that Democrats believed impeachment made Clinton too "toxic" to campaign even in Arkansas, which would have put Gore over the top in the Electoral College even without Florida.

And there is no comparison between impeaching Clinton for consensual sex and impeaching Bush for 35 High Crimes, including a disastrous war of aggression based on lies. And the difference is reflected in polls - only 26% of Americans wanted to impeach Clinton in 1998, while 43% of Americans wanted to impeach Bush in our last poll on July 8, 2007. (The Corporate Media adamantly refuses to ask about impeachment in their own polls. You can email all the pollsters here.)

So the election fear that has paralyzed Conyers and the Democrats isn't just baseless, it's idiotic. Bush's polls are now lower than Richard Nixon's ever were. The American people are sick of Bush and can't wait to get rid of him.

Here at Democrats.com, we will continue to do everything we can to persuade Conyers and every other House Democrat to support impeachment. To be effective, we need your support - emails, calls, and especially local organizing.

Now that Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment are before the House Judiciary Committee, the battle is just beginning. And Kucinich feels exactly the same way:

"Leadership wants to bury it, but this is one resolution that will be coming back from the dead," Kucinich told Capitol Briefing. "Thirty days from now, if there is no action, I will be bringing the resolution up again, and I won't be the only one reading it."

Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) has not commented on whether he plans to hold hearings, and Kucinich said he would meet with Conyers this week to present him with documentation for his charges against Bush. But if there is no further action, Kucinich said, "We'll come back and many of us will be reading this [on the House floor], and we'll come back with 60 articles, not 35."

Amen!!!

Conyers Must Subpoena Ashcroft and Yoo Under Threat of Impeachment

Bob Fertik — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:27:16 -0400

Our friends at the American Freedom Campaign think it's long past time for Conyers to subpoena Ashcroft and Yoo over torture - and if they refuse to appear, begin impeachment hearings. We couldn't agree more.

American Freedom Campaign Urges Chairman Conyers to Subpoena John Ashcroft and John Yoo

Call for action follows FBI Director Mueller’s testimony that Justice Department prevented investigation of CIA torture

Contact: Steve Fox, American Freedom Campaign, 202-822-5200

WASHINGTON – Today, the American Freedom Campaign (AFC) is calling on House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers to issue subpoenas to former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former Justice Department official John Yoo, compelling them to testify about their role in facilitating torture by agents of the United States. AFC supporters are sending thousands of emails to Chairman Conyers echoing this request.

[Note: On April 22, ABC News reported that John Yoo has declined an invitation to testify before the Judiciary Committee at a hearing scheduled for May 6. Ironically, Yoo’s lawyers said that Yoo was told by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that he was not “authorized” to testify. This is the same office in which Yoo worked when he wrote that CIA agents were authorized to torture.]

Over the past few weeks, the extent to which the Bush administration was systematically involved in torture has become clear. The evidence is now overwhelming that the administration, with the Department of Justice playing a leading role, conspired to violate domestic law and international treaty obligations. In shocking testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on April 23, FBI director Robert Mueller described in stark terms the state of the law in the Bush administration. Despite acknowledging that the interrogation techniques of the CIA were so egregious that in 2002 he ordered his own agents not to participate, he testified that he did not have a legal basis to investigate the apparently illegal torture. This is he reason he provided before the committee:

“There has to be a legal basis for us to investigate, and generally that legal basis is given to us by the Department of Justice. Any interpretation of law is given to us by the Department of Justice, generally the OLC,” Mueller testified.

So in 2002, the head of the FBI believed the CIA was conducting illegal activity, based on his understanding of the law. This illegal activity, as we have learned recently, was coordinated by a group of top officials in the White House, including Attorney General John Ashcroft. At the same time, Ashcroft’s own Office of Legal Counsel produced an “opinion” – later repudiated – saying torture is legal. This opinion prevented the FBI – another agency within the Department of Justice – from investigating the clearly illegal behavior.

“When we talk about having a government of laws and not of men, this is exactly the kind of activity such a government is designed to prevent,” declared Steve Fox, campaign director of the American Freedom Campaign. “In order to ensure that no future administration ever repeats this behavior, we must explore fully the process that resulted in the Department of Justice blocking the FBI from investigating clear violations of the law. Every possible action must be taken by Congress. If subpoenas do not result in full and open testimony, the only option left will be impeachment hearings.”

The American Freedom Campaign is an online and offline effort to build grassroots support to restore checks and balances and reverse abuses of power by the executive branch. The Campaign was founded in July 2007 by MoveOn.org co-founder Wes Boyd, scientist and social entrepreneur William Haseltine, Fenton Communications CEO David Fenton, and Naomi Wolf, author of "The End of America." In less than nine months, AFC has built an online membership of more than 40,000 supporters around the country.

For more information, visit the American Freedom Campaign Web site – http://www.americanfreedomcampaign.org

Victory on Wiretapping!

Bob Fertik — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 09:15:46 -0400

Thanks to your emails (over 58,000!) and calls, House Democrats once again stood up to Bush!

House Democrats stood up to endless televised rants by Bush, lying TV ads against key freshmen, and bullshit news articles and editorials throughout the Corporate Media.

Instead, Democrats carefully wrote a bill that will let telecom giants try to defend themselves against lawsuits by giving judges the power to review White House secrets.

Of course the battle isn't over. The House bill goes back to the Senate, where Jello Jay Rockefeller will once again try to gut the bill, and then to a conference committee full of BushDemocrats. But if House Democrats remain resolute and united - and we in the Netroots keep up the pressure - we can win this battle.

The key to victory in the House was genuine teamwork by Democrats!

The bill was co-sponsored by House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers and House Intelligence chair Sylvester Reyes, who presented a united front - unlike the Senate, where Intelligence chair Jay Rockefeller sabotaged Judiciary chair Pat Leahy. And the complex legislative process was carefully managed by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Also, as mcjoan writes,

Particularly deserving of thanks, though, are those Freshman Dems who would not be intimidated by everything being thrown at them by the Republicans--the robocalls to their constituents saying they were with the terrorists, the deceitful and inflammatory Defense of Democracy's crazy television ads. Particularly of note are Mike Arcuri who managed the Rule on this vote, and Nancy Boyda, Carol Shea-Porter and others who stood on the floor during these debates and strongly stood up for our civil liberties. You can show your support for them here.

21 BushDemocrats tried to sabotage the effort, but Jane and Christy at FireDogLake launched a counterattack by raising money for ads against them. In the end, all but 6 BushDemocrats (Dan Boren-OK, Chris Carney-PA, Jim Cooper-TN, Tim Holden-PA, Nick Lampson-TX, and Heath Shuler-NC) tucked their tails between their legs and voted with the real Democrats. A key vote was Leonard Boswell (IA), whose deathbed conversion was motivated by primary challenger Ed Fallon.

Glenn Greenwald is right on target as always:

"It's hard not to believe that there's not at least some significant sea change reflected by this. They have seen that they can defy the President even on matters of Terrorism, and the sky doesn't fall in on them. Quite the opposite: an outspoken opponent of telecom amnesty, warrantless eavesdropping and the Iraq War was just elected to the House from Denny Hastert's bright red district, and before that, Donna Edwards ousted long-time incumbent Al Wynn by accusing him of being excessively complicit with the Bush agenda.

Spitzer Bust Provides a Warning Regarding NSA Spying

dlindorff — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:15:53 -0400

I have no sympathy for New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the hot-shot prosecutor of call-girl operations who was hoist on his own petard, as it were. I mean, what a jerk! And aside from the hypocrisy, what a fine message he was sending to his three teenage daughters about the role of women.

Having said that, Spitzer's bust should give pause to those in Congress who are ready to hand President Bush a free pass to continue his six-year campaign of warrantless spying on Americans.

We now know from yesterday's Wall Street Journal article that the spying Bush has been doing through the National Security Agency since early 2001 has included vast computer sweeps of not just internet and phone activity, but also bank and credit card transactions. These are sweeps of ordinary everyday people, with computers looking for odd transactions, or for codewords, or for transactions involving specific targeted organizations or addresses.

What nailed Spitzer, we now learn, was a series of bank transactions he had with the bank account of the Emperor's Club VIP callgirl operation.

Now reportedly, this particular investigation was being conducted by the IRS, which allegedly was investigating the Emperor's Club. Once the IRS discovered it had caught the New York governor in its web, it forwarded the case to the US Attorney General's Office, where it was pursued by the FBI, apparently on the instructions of AG Michael Mukasey. The investigation moved from monitoring the bank to monitoring phones, and Spitzer was captured talking to the Emperor's Club dispatcher. Bingo. Promising Democratic political career ruined.

Now the monitoring of the Emperor's Club was reportedly done with a court-ordered warrant. That's fine.

But this case shows us how people can get caught up by this kind of investigation really quickly.

Now imagine that instead of a call-girl operation, this had been a mosque or an international charity organization, and suppose you were someone who had made a call to ask about making donations to help the victims of the last earthquake in Indonesia? If that mosque, or charity, happened to be on the list of outfits being monitored by the NSA's computers, your call might well have been picked up. Then the focus would shift to your phone and your internet server, and conceivably every communication you made would be watched.

This is the America we now live in. According to the Wall Street Journal, after a wave of national outrage forced the Bush administration to shut down its Total Information Awareness project at the Pentagon, Bush and Cheney simply moved their scheme to subject all telecommunications and bank transactions to computer monitoring over to the NSA.

Since none of this spying activity is subject to court supervision and warrant requirements, we are left having to trust the personnel at the NSA, the so-called Justice Department, and the president and his administration, not to abuse it.

Right. And think of the temptations!

Want to know what the House leadership strategy is regarding renewal of the NSA wiretap authorization? Want to know whether the Congress is serious about imposing a time limit on troops in Iraq? Just start monitoring their emails and phones.

Want to make sure Democratic members of Congress go along with a war on Iran? Just monitor their phones and emails and catch them in conversations that are suitable for a little blackmail.

Is this kind of thing happening? Well, I keep marvelling at the cowardly behavior of leading members of Congress like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Chair John Conyers. Maybe something is being held over their heads.

We know that the prosecution and conviction of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was an administration hit on a popular Democratic official. Siegelman is now in jail. Ditto Wisconsin state employee Georgia Thompson. These blatant political prosecutions certainly weigh on the minds of all Democratic elected officials.

Who, after all, is safe in this kind of environment, where the Bill of Rights has been set aside?

Spitzer, who no doubt made use of phone taps himself in his day, and who was ruthless as New York's attorney general in bringing down many of his own targets, may well deserve what he is getting. But the way he was ensnared, via the secret monitoring of a bank's activity, and via phone taps, should put us all on guard.

With that kind of power, unchecked in the hands of an intensely political administration, it's almost a certainty that it is being used and used inappropriately for political ends.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Crime of the Century: Time for Congress to Stand Up

dlindorff — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:38:48 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

Who’s minding the store in Washington?

While President George W. Bush was standing before the members of Congress on January 28 laying out his plans, such as they are, for the final year of his second term in the White House, he was also seriously and perhaps fatally undermining the authority of Congress with a new signing statement, attached to the latest National Defense Authorization Act, in which he declared that he would simply violate or fail to comply with four provisions.

Let me say that again. The president states in writing that he is not going to obey and will not be bound by four parts of a law duly passed by the Congress.

Just so you know that we’re not talking about the naming of a bridge or a new ship, the four provisions of the act which the president is going to ignore are:

* the establishment of a commission to investigate contractor fraud in Afghanistan and Iraq
* the protection or whistleblowers who report contractor fraud from harassment or official retribution
* a requirement that US intelligence agencies respond to Congressional requests for documents
* a ban on funding for any permanent military bases in Iraq, and on any actions that would seek to give the US control over Iraq’s oil resources or oil money.

Now first of all, let’s see what the constitution has to say. Article I, the first actual statement about how our government works, which comes right after the preamble about “We the People,” states unambiguously:

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

It goes on to state that:

“Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections, to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration by two thirds of that House shall agree to apss the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law…If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it.”

Note that there is no asterisk or footnote saying anything about the president having the power to simply ignore those legislative powers or to violate them at will. If he does not veto the entire bill—and in this case he did not, he signed it—it becomes the Law of the Land.

Article I also defines the powers of the Congress expansively, stating that it has the power to lay and collect taxes, to regulate commerce, to coin money, to declare war, ro call forth the militia, and

“to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

Article II goes on to define the powers of the president. It states:

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

It goes on to explicitly define and limit the president’s powers, specifically to being “commander in chief” of the armed forces (not of the country or of the government!), to the granting of reprieves and pardons (except in the case of impeachments), to making treaties (subject to Senate approval) and appointing officers to the cabinet and the courts (all subject to Senate approval).

That is it. There are no other presidential powers in the Constitution. Certainly there is no power granted to disobey or ignore Acts of Congress or to violate the law.

And yet here we have the president, at the start of his last year in office, announcing that he will not obey a law duly passed by the Congress that requires his administration to establish a commission to investigate the rampant corruption among private contractors operating in Afghanistan and Iraq, that he will not obey a law barring him from punishing whistleblowers who disclose such corruption, that he will not obey an order that his intelligence services must respond to requests from Congress for information (about such issues as torture of captives, or spying on American citizens, or destroying documents), and that he will not obey an order banning the establishment and construction of permanent military bases in Iraq, and banning attempts to gain US control over Iraqi oil.

Logically one would expect members of Congress in both parties to be up in arms over this illegal and clearly unconstitutional defiance—the more so because both houses of Congress are in the hands of the Democratic Party.

But we have heard not a peep from the “people’s representatives” at this brazen abuse of power.

The reason: Congress is afraid of impeachment.

It is so afraid to confront this usurper president that, incredibly, its members, Republican and Democrat alike, seem happy to surrender not only their own power, but the power of the institution of Congress, to avoid doing what the Constitution calls upon them to do: to impeach a criminal in the White House who has abused his powers of office, who has violated his oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, and who has broken the law multiple times.

This is an appalling abrogation of responsibility on the part of our elected representatives in Washington, who also took oaths of office committing themselves to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.

How can these hundreds of cowards and traitors in the Capitol, with straight faces, hold hand to heart and pledge allegiance, as they do at the start of every day in Congress? How can they with straight faces go before their constituents and pose as honorable men and women?

The Constitution is clear. It states that:

“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Please observe that the word is shall, not may.

Now although the evidence is overwhelming, one can nonetheless debate whether the president broke the law when he went to war in Iraq or whether he knowingly lied about the reasons for that war. One can debate whether he broke the law by personally authorizing torture of captives. One can even debate whether he broke the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. These are matters that require hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. But there is no need to hold hearings to decide whether the president has abused his power by declaring his intention to ignore laws passed by the Congress. This is an objective fact. A High Crime has been committed and openly confessed to by the President of the United States. Congress has only to vote on it as an impeachable act to restore its Constitutional authority, and to restore the damaged Constitution.

There is no question here of “diverting” Congress from its important duties. This need not be time-consuming business. Moreover, defending its authority from a usurper is surely the most important thing Congress can do. Neither is there any question of this being “divisive.” Every member of Congress should want to protect the Constitutional authority of the legislative branch from this fatal encroachment which, if unchallenged, renders Congress nothing but a talk shop no better than the local diner. Nor can there be any question about whether the votes are there or not, either to vote for an Article of Impeachment, or even to convict in the Senate. What member of Congress, of either party, would vote to approve and to sanction in perpetuity this or any president’s right to ignore the Constitution and willfully violate laws passed by the Congress—particularly given the likelihood that the next president could be a Democrat?

Here then, is an issue that Congress cannot ignore. Here is an issue that renders ludicrous House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s assertion that “impeachment is off the table.” Here is an issue that should inflame every American citizen. Here is an issue that should be put to every candidate for office, including those running for the office of president:

Is President Bush, and is every future president, a dictator, who personally determines what laws are to be obeyed and what laws are to be ignored? Or is the president bound, like the rest of us, by the rule of law and the Constitution?

The choice is now squarely before us all.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net where you may also order a signed hardcover copy of the impeachment book at an author's discount.

We Did It! 50,000 Signatures Calling for Immediate Cheney Impeachment Hearings Collected in 1 Day!

dlindorff — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 09:46:52 -0500

It's not being reported in the corporate media, which also refused to publish an opinion piece penned by six-term Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). But a whopping 50,000 people responded in just one day to Rep. Wexler's call for people to sign his on-line petition supporting an immediate start to hearings on Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Cheney Impeachment bill (H Res 799)

As of Sunday morning, 54,000 people had signed the petition at WexlerWantsHearings.com calling for action now. And names are being added at a rate of one every one or two seconds!

Wexler has said he wanted at least 50,000 signatures. But why stop there? If people get behind this, and if the impeachment movement spreads the word, he could easily get closer to 500,000 signatures over the next few days.

And if each of us were to send out a call to sign to ten of our friends, then we'd have half a million signatures, which would be hard for Conyers and the Democratic leadership, Speaker Nancy Pelosi included, to ignore.

So let's do it!

Go to WexlerWantsHearings.com and sign the petition!

Kucinich's impeachment bill was filed on April 24 and has been ignored now for almost eight shameful months. On Nov. 7, a bipartisan majority of 218 members of the House voted to send it from the floor of the House back to the Judiciary Committee for action. Now it's sat there for over four weeks.

We need to tell Congress, and particularly the Democrats who are stalling on this important defense of the Constitution and of democracy itself that time's up. We the American People want action. We want impeachment hearings!
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

3 House Judiciary Members Call for Impeachment of Cheney NOW

dlindorff — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:52:24 -0500

Faced with an obstructionist leadership in the House, and a mainstream media that have forsaken their role as a Fourth Estate monitor of government abuse, three Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee are calling on the public to demand that the Congress initiate impeachment hearings immediately against Vice President Dick Cheney.

Speaking at a telephone press conference Friday organized by Democrats.com, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) said that following a bi-partisan vote Nov. 7 by the full House to send Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s Cheney impeachment bill (H Res 799, formerly H Res 333)opinion article penned by himself and two Judiciary Committee colleagues, Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), which was sent to a number of leading newspapers, including the Miami Herald, the Washington Post and the New York Times, was rejected for publication—an astonishing act of censorship for a document authored by three members of congress on an issue of such significance as impeachment of the vice president.

In that article, Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin write:

The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.

Now that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan has indicated that the Vice President and his staff purposefully gave him false information about the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert agent to report to the American people, it is even more important for Congress to investigate what may have been an intentional obstruction of justice. Congress should call Mr. McClellan to testify about what he described as being asked to “unknowingly [pass] along false information.” In addition, recent revelations have shown that the Administration including Vice President Cheney may have again manipulated and exaggerated evidence about weapons of mass destruction -- this time about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Asked why he thought leading publications had refused to publish the op-ed piece calling for an immediate start to impeachment hearings, Wexler says, “I think the mainstream media, at least thus far, have bought the notion that impeachment hearings are outside the bounds of what Congress ought to be doing.”

He adds that there may be a fear, on the part of corporate media executives and editors, and on the part of Democratic Party congressional leaders, of having been “complicit” in many of the administration’s constitutional crimes. “There may be some significant conflicts of interest,” he says, that could make them feel uncomfortable about the idea of impeachment hearings.

To push back against this unseemly resistance Rep. Wexler and his two House colleagues have decided to go public with their message. Wexler has set up a website, called WexlerWantsHearings. He is urging Americans from across the country to go to the sign and sign on to his call for an immediate start to hearings. “I want to be able to go to my colleagues in the house and say I have 55,000 people calling for hearings,” he says.

People should also be contacting their local and national media outlets—and especially the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald—demanding that they report openly and honestly on the growing impeachment movement, and that they publish the Wexler, Gutierrez Baldwin op-ed.

While he does not say where he thinks House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) stands at this point on the subject of starting hearings on the long-stalled Kucinich impeachment bill, which has languished in a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee for over half a year, Rep. Wexler said he has spoken with Conyers about the matter. “I have a lot of confidence in John,” he says.

Wexler’s, Gutierrez’s and Baldwin’s new push on impeachment comes just as Kucinich, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has announced that he is preparing to file a major bill of impeachment against President Bush. Kucinich is reportedly working on a sweeping 50-page impeachment bill containing over 20 counts of high crimes and misdemeanors against the president.

Asked about this, and whether it would alter his push for early hearings on Cheney’s impeachable crimes, Wexler says no. While pointedly agreeing that the president is likely guilty of the same abuses of power that are being alleged against Cheney, “and probably others in addition,” he says it makes sense to focus first on the vice president. “Strategically, I think we are on stronger ground pursuing the vice president.”
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006, and available now in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net