Jerrold Nadler

Nadler: It's Not Too Late to Impeach

Bob Fertik — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:25:26 -0400

September 17, 2008

Dear Congressman Nadler,

We are sure this will come as no surprise, but your inexplicable refusal to uphold your oath of office or wield the power entrusted to you as a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the chair of the its Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties subcommittee to bring about impeachment hearings has gravely disappointed thousands of your constituents.

You did not challenge Nancy Pelosi when she took impeachment off the table. You did not call upon John Conyers to initiate hearings, and you did not stand with your courageous colleagues who put principle before Party by calling for impeachment hearings.

The thousands of names accompanying this letter are the names of those who signed the online petition at www.AskNadler2Impeach.org and who have been working tirelessly to convince you to call for impeachment hearings. Over the past year and a half, we have called your office, written letters to you, met with you and your staff, created the online petition at www.AskNadler2Impeach.org, organized a Town Hall meeting with constitutional scholars to address the issue of impeachment, and produced a DVD of that town hall meeting which we hand delivered to each member of the House Judiciary Committee. So far all of our efforts to convince you of the need for impeachment hearings have fallen on deaf ears.

Before the 110th Congress adjourns, you still have an opportunity to redeem yourself in the eyes of history by demanding that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney be held accountable for the impeachable offenses they have committed.

The hour is getting late, Representative Nadler. Call for impeachment hearings as if our constitutional rights depended upon it.

Yours truly,

For www.AskNadler2Impeach.Org

(Original letter lists the names of 2,355 signers of the online petition at www.asknadler2impeach.org )

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

Primary Challenge Scares Nadler into Considering Impeachment

Bob Fertik — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:08:13 -0400

At Friday's impeachment hearing, Rep. Jerrold Nadler took impeachment a lot more seriously than he has until now. And there's a good reason - he escaped a primary challenge by the skin of his teeth.

Because of New York's strict ballot access laws, Nadler's pro-impeachment constituents had to organize a massive petition-gathering effort. Unfortunately candidate Adam Sullivan was tripped up by those strict laws, but Nadler seems to have gotten the message!

Sullivan Ends Primary Bid Against Nadler, Vows to Fight on Over Impeachment

Adam Sullivan announced Tuesday that he will no longer actively seek to unseat Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-8) in the September Democratic primary, but he will continue his fight to persuade Nadler and the Congress to initiate impeachment hearings against the Bush Administration.

In a press conference held outside the U.S. Post Office in Manhattan, Sullivan explained that he did not mention to his campaign staff that he had changed his enrollment from unaffiliated to Democrat at the start of the campaign, incorrectly assuming that his change of enrollment would be current at the time his petitions were filed. Members of his campaign assumed that he was a properly enrolled Democrat. According to New York state election law, Sullivan would have had to have changed his enrollment by October 12, 2007 to run in this year’s primary. “I regret if I have let down my supporters but given the rules I cannot in good faith continue this campaign through to the primary,” Sullivan said.

At the same time, Sullivan vowed to fight on over the issue that prompted him to run—impeachment. Of Nadler, he said, “His outright contempt for the process of impeachment makes him unfit to serve as Chairman of the [House Judiciary Committee] Subcommittee on the Constitution. His abandonment of the Constitution in its hour of greatest need—when he has sworn an Oath of Office eight times to protect and defend it, when he could use his Chairmanship to draw his district’s and perhaps the nation’s attention to impeachment proceedings . . . makes Representative Nadler complicit in our nation’s current suffering and the assaults on our freedoms.”

As for next steps, Sullivan stated “I will continue to seek other avenues, other ways to press my congressman on this issue. I will continue to support those in government who are truly progressive, who are committed to preserving the living Constitution, and who truly represent their constituents. With this in mind, I and others are making arrangements to travel to the nation’s capital on Friday, where we will assemble to show our support for Congressman Kucinich as he and others testify before the full House Judiciary Committee on the matter of the illegal war in Iraq and other related abuses of Executive Power.”

Read Adam Sullivan's July 22 Statement to the Press

Read a Chronology of Nadler's Constituents Urging Him to Initiate Impeachment Hearings

Congratulations to everyone who helped Adam Sullivan and keep up the great work!

Nadler Cites Bush's Impeachable Offenses and War Crimes but Rejects Impeachment

Bob Fertik — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:03:11 -0400

On C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) declared George Bush guilty of "impeachable offenses" and "some people" in his Administration with "war crimes."

Nevertheless, Nadler insisted Bush should not be impeached because it would "distort the presidential campaign." Watch it:

Here's the transcript:

I think as a matter of justice that if we had a just system and it weren't overly political, the President probably would be impeached. I think he has committed impeachable offenses.

But first of all, it's not up to me as to whether we should impeach the President, it's up to the House as a whole and up to the leadership of the House to allow such a proceeding to be brought.

As a practical matter at this point in the game with 6 months left in the Administration, it would never happen, and it's probably not the best idea to start a full impeachment hearing at this point which would simply take all the attention away from and distort the presidential campaign.

In my view, if we're going to restore the United States as a nation of laws, if we're going to see some of these hideous and illegal practices... stop, the most important thing right now is to elect Barack Obama as President so we can get a decent honest man in office again and an Administration that begins to obey the law.

And then I would hope to see prosecutions - criminal prosecutions - of some people in the Bush Administration who have clearly committed war crimes because I think it's very important that people be held accountable so these crimes do not set precedents for the...

Nadler's position is politically, morally, and legally bankrupt. The 2008 "presidential campaign" began shortly after the 2004 election, and became a full-fledged media obsession immediately after the 2006 election. According to Nadler's logic, a President could never be impeached - even if he is a war criminal - because there is always a Presidential election underway.

As chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, Nadler has direct jurisdiction over Bush's impeachable offenses and war crimes. His failure to enforce the Constitution is a complete betrayal of his oath of office, which requires him to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

Fortunately Nadler is being held accountable for betraying his oath of office by Adam Sullivan, a passionate impeachment supporter who is challenging Nadler in a Democratic primary on September 9. Adam writes,

When my congressman tells me that he will not co-sponsor an impeachment resolution against a reckless and criminal vice president, I submit to you that he has broken faith with the people he is meant to serve, and violated his sworn oath to the Constitution. He has chosen to adhere to the wishes of his party leaders in the name of some short-sighted political “wisdom.”

I will never break an oath to protect the Constitution, no matter the perceived cost to a political agenda. The cost to our country, our republic, and to each individual citizen is too great to bear. We are citizens of the United States of America. We deserve better.

If you believe Bush should be impeached, please volunteer or contribute to Adam Sullivan's campaign.

Update 1: When talking to impeachment activists, Nadler sings a different tune:

Nadler told us the concern was that the attack dog Republicans (not all) would characterize this as "retribution for the Clinton impeachment. And the media would go along with it."

Sue4theBillofRights is spot-on in response:

Is that all life is? To tremble in fear at what attacks the other party might make on you? You are better than that, Congressman. We know you are.

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.

Jerold Nadler Whistles Past the Impeachment Graveyard

Bob Fertik — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:09:29 -0500

Tonight a smart and determined group of impeachment activists gathered in front of the Yale Club of New York City to urge Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) to hold impeachment hearings. Nadler was scheduled to speak at the annual dinner for Citizen Action of New York, one of New York's leading progressive organizations, which does outstanding work on education, health care, and other important issues.

Nadler chairs the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, so Dennis Kucinich's H.Res. 333 (recently revised as H.Res. 799) is before his committee, which makes him a key player on impeachment.

I stood with the impeachment activists for a while before the event began, and the response from passers-by was mostly positive, although midtown Manhattan is not a place to encourage honking!

I bought a ticket to the dinner inside hoping to speak with Nadler on behalf of the activists outside. While Nadler arrived near the end, I did get to spend a few minutes discussing impeachment with him, although we kept getting interrupted by other guests.

I have lobbied Nadler on impeachment several times, so I did not take him by surprise and he greeted me with a friendly smile, and we covered much of the same ground. "When are you going to schedule hearings on impeachment?" I began, aiming right for the bottom line. "As a subcommittee chairman I can't make that decision, it's up to Chairman Conyers," he replied.

"Besides it's a bad idea," he said. "Why?" I asked. "It would suck all the oxygen out of Congress, and we wouldn't get anything else done." I suppressed the obvious snarky answer that they weren't getting anything else done anyway, and took a different tack: "But it's just one subcommittee, how can that suck all the oxygen out of Congress?" "You know how the media would jump on it," he replied. I wanted to say, "Yes and that's good because the American people would support the impeachment effort," but someone else pulled him aside.

A few minutes later I caught him again. "What would we hold hearings on?" he asked. "Valerie Plame!" I replied. "So we'd call 4 witnesses for our side, and they'd call 1 for their side, and that would be that." "No, then you drill down on the evidence and build the case," I replied. "You have the whole court record to work with!" And someone else grabbed him.

I waited and gave it one more try. "Impeachment can never work, it wasn't designed for a two-party system, that's why we've never removed a President" he said. "So then we should tear up the Constitution?" I asked. "No we need a new Special Prosecutor law that would focus on truly impeachable offenses like abuse of power." "But we just got rid of the Special Prosecutor law because of Ken Starr," I said. "We can write a better law," he said. Yeah sure in 5 or 10 years, I thought to myself as someone else grabbed him.

We touched on a few other points along the way, like how the Democrats let the neocons get away with their Iran-Contra crimes in the late 80's, which allowed them to come back to power with Bush in 2000. But there was no argument I could offer that would make a dent. "You're not going to change my mind," he said nicely because we're almost becoming friends.

So there it stands, just as it did before. Nadler recognizes all of the crimes the Bush Administration is committing, but can't (because of Conyers) and won't (because of the two-party system and the rightwing-controlled media) hold impeachment hearings to stop them.

So what are we to do, those millions of us who care about the Constitution and the quiet rise of Fascism? Keep calling, keep writing, keep leafleting, keeping protesting, and keep lobbying until we somehow get the idea across to our Representatives that we are in a state of emergency that ordinary hearings and legislation cannot fix. "The Founding Fathers put impeachment in the Constitution just for Presidential abuses like these," Nadler said at one point. He understands the problem, as do all the other Democrats - they just need millions of Americans to demand that they act.