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35 Articles of Impeachment Introduced Against Bush
vsync64 writes "Last night, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) spent 4 hours reading into the Congressional Record 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. Interestingly, those articles (63-page PDF via Coral CDN) include not just complaints about signing statements and the war in Iraq, but also charges that the President "Sp[ied] on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment,' 'Direct[ed] Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens,' and 'Tamper[ed] with Free and Fair Elections.' These are issues near and dear to the hearts of many here, so it's worth discussing. What little mainstream media coverage there is tends to be brief (USA Today, CBS News, UPI, AP, Reuters)." The (Democratic) House leadership has said that the idea of impeachment is "off the table." The Judiciary Committee has not acted on articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney introduced by Kucinich a year ago.
than Kucinich ever could. Many historians consider Bush to be one of the worst presidents in US history. And the funny thing is that Bush still believes that history will prove him RIGHT.....
Plus, the Democrats are looking to rout the Republicans in November at least in the Senate and House(President is still a bit up in the air), doing something showboating like this can only benefit the Republicans.
Monstar L
Some points are intruiging for me, such as: Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter As the UN is not particularly an US insitution, can you charge the US president for impeachment for not following the UN charter ?
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Well, I agree with your point there.
...just a thought.
Now there needs just needs to be a Constitutional Amendment which requires the ENTIRE US TAX CODE to be read into the Congressional Record every single year for it to be legally binding! Of course, that would either require CSPAN to get another satellite or for the tax code to be shortened into the flat tax...
Then again, I was under the impression that "earmarks" were not required to be read into the record either? Whoops... confusing the Congressional Record's purpose with that of Official Congressional Business as Usual...
What? What was its purpose again?
It would've taken a year to read the USA PATRIOT Act aloud.
Actually, that would've been a good thing -- the people hearing it would've actually known behind a doubt what they were stealing from us all.
While I applaud Dennis Kucinich for introducing his articles of impeachment in the House, I also realize that there's zero chance that the House will do anything but sit on them. The current Congress is filled with chickenshit liars and cowards. These are mostly the same spineless toadies who voted for Bush's fascist Patriot Act and his bogus Iraq War. There's no way they're going to impeach him. If they did, they'd only be implicating themselves. After all, they colluded with Bush to make it all happen. They rubber stamped his belligerence at almost every turn, most Democrats included. And to the ones who said they didn't know that Bush was lying to them when they voted for the Iraq war, I say BULLSHIT. The rest of us knew. The rest of us sat in disbelief in front on our TVs every night while the Big Lie was played out for us. A few of us protested against the inevitable nightmare. The Congress and the corporate media ignored us. And only now, when it's popular and risk-free to do so, do they cry foul.
If we were to allow Congressman Kucinich ten minutes of airtime for every legally questionable act by the Bush administration, he would still have many hours of airtime left today. Or how about we do it one to one? One minute of airtime for every minute used up in White House press briefings by their fake journalist?
Four hours is a drop in the bucket. My only regret is that Dubya didn't have to stand in a stress position and listen to all of it and then recite it back.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Actually, I think we might have made it to a point that we NEED a civil war to have any hope of improving our government.
.....for doing this now (and it is, nevertheless, a good one) is that there will be a neat and tidy permanent summation of the misdeeds Herr Bush is accused of in the Congressional Record. It will at least provide a handy "Cliff's Notes" overview for future historians -- a starting point for research. Obviously, there will be no actual action taken. Even more obviously, Bush would be long out of office before the process could possibly end anyway. It may be a naively quixotic quest on Kucinich's part, or just a means for him to get attention (and I discount either theory -- Kucinich may be a bit of an eccentric, but I believe him to be an honorable man). No, I think his only motivation is to make sure it's all "on the record" in an official and permanent manner.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Lincoln's suspending of habeus corpus was actually not that widespread, nor were most of his other questionable activities, none of which even began to reach the scale of Bush's ones. As for FDR, well, first of all, we really did have a world war going on and secondly, yeah, no sh*t, and look at how much trouble his actions have gotten us into since. The "Military-Industrial Complex" that Bush is so tied to grew directly out of FDR's policies and his obsession with secrecy (not to mention the influence of Hoover) played a huge role in Truman getting suckered by the security establishment into creating so much of the core institutions that are so central to our current national security state. If FDR had lived a few years longer he probably would have faced impeachment hearings. He certainly had enough enemies. Gawd knows Churchill was out on his butt as soon as anybody was in a position to do so.
If you want to try that line of patter, might I suggest that you start with the Alien and Anti-Sedition Acts and Wilson's various illegal actions against folks like Eugene Debs.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
The attempts to address Rove and Cheney are over a year old, but they have been ignored by our failed Big Media "press". I would like to see the charges upped to treason for War Profiteering. Creating false pretenses for a war for the purposes of profit should qualify as levying war against the United States, a treasonable offense.
We are all just people.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Nonsense. The Legislative Branch should not be responding to emergencies. That's the Executive Branch's job.
The quintissential case is a Pearl Harbor style scenario, where America is under attack and we need a declaration of war. I'd argue that, in this day and age, we could have a provision stating that the President is free to deploy the troops for up to 90 days, but, following that grace period, he must get a declaration of war from Congress (not a resolution, or an authorization, but a formal declaration of war), otherwise he has to bring the troops home. This would allow ample time for the president to respond to short term emergencies, while still leaving leeway for the US to respond credibly to unprovoked attacks.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Bush didn't withdraw from anything. Clinton signed the treaty but never even tried to get it ratified (because no one in the U.S. is going to hand over U.S. troops to be tried by a foreign power.)
Just like Kyoto (never signed by Clinton, never ratified) for some reason people have a hard time understanding how the treaty system works.
I'm not defending an accusation of a crime. I'm rebutting the claim that Bush has killed more innocent people than any mass murderer. Stalin has killed more innocent people.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The problem is that Bush is only guilty of incompetence the real ringleader is Cheney who keeps telling him what to do and what to sign or not sign.
Bush does not own Haliburton stock, but Cheney does, guess which one of them got rich over Iraq? It was Cheney, so you have more evidence against Cheney than Bush.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I know you're being funny, but I kind of like the idea of a parsable legal coding language. Employ a decent supercomputer to recompile the lot every time something gets changed and notify us of contradictions, divide-by-zero errors and broken dependencies.
Bush will probably have to stay within US boarders lest he get picked up.
If any Bush administration official is charged with war crimes, I will personally put up $1000 as part of a bounty for "extraordinary rendition" of said official to the Hague. Who's with me?
"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security." Dwight Eisenhower
Nice to see everyone can agree on this... but where the hell were all of you five years ago? Hell, even four years ago. The guy's not suddenly more of a douche now. Seems like most of the crazy bullshit was pulled off during his first term - Iraq, spying, torture, Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind, Enron, etc etc etc. And only NOW he's worthy of impeachment? For what, high gas prices?
In 2004, half of America voted for a guy who did nothing right and everything wrong. They chose to continue down the path of complete fucked-upedness. I say, you wanted it, you got it, bitches. The Republicans, the Limbaugh fans, the Christian wackos, they all had everything they ever wanted - blind control of Congress, the Supreme Court, an executive who felt he was above the law and could do whatever he felt like - yeah, how that'd work out for ya? Me, I won't forget all the bullshit and vitriol those people put us through, and how everything they believed in ended up in failure and ruins. But where are all these people now? Give them a little impeachment filing that goes nowhere, and that's it? These people were chock-full of evil. C'mon, what ever happened to being tarred and feathered?
Oh, sorry, I'll just go put on my flag lapel pin... carry on, nothing to see here...
I don't think a foreign country would risk putting a former president in front of a war crime tribunal, even if its as unpopular a president as Bush.
In many parts of the EU any citizen can ask the police to arrest him if he was no longer president and dared to step foot here. You might want to read about General Pinochet's arrest warrant (issued by a Spanish judge and only very narrowly avoided), and this WP page on universal jurisdiction.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
So, why is it a bad thing? It means that the US gets to use up the domestic supply of other nations, preserving its own for a time of real need. Sounds great from an economic and security perspective. Would you rather we used up our own supply on petty uses? The we would really be at risk in the future, when oil becomes expensive and other nations can hold an economic gun to our heads.
Umm...heard of Supply and Demand? More Supply, cost drops. They've had that one figured out for quite a while.Nope, not always. Especially not in this case. Demand for oil is massive. A small increase in supply is going to have negligible (or none at all) effect on prices at the pump. And why would they sell it at a reduced price to American motorists, when there are plenty of other buyers who would pay the market rate? It doesn't make any sense, economically, unless you are advocating some socialist means of distribution with controlled pricing.
And that's not even considering the costs of refining and distribution to the retail market. Domestic drilling just isn't going to have any effect on prices at the pump. Unless you are talking about some sort of charity case or government subsidy. And why should the government offer such a subsidy? I consume very little gasoline, I spend a lot more on computers, technology and food. Should the government subsidize my computer purchases because I feel they are too expensive?
... and then they built the supercollider.
You are contradicting yourself and the evidence. I'll answer but this is the last time.
First, the supposed threat to an undercover agent would be exposure. By definition, that means exposure to someone other than their own association. You seem to have missed that point. Second, it is impossible for any entity to find every person someone has interacted with over the course of 15 years in free societies. It's very clear you don't have any legal or intel experience. Statement of fact.
It's not possible for the general public to know if President Bush "lied" when he said he'd fire anyone involved in revealing a covert agent. First, you'd need inside knowledge to ascertain at what point the administration knew Valerie's actual status. Second, since she wasn't covert, nobody could reveal her as being covert. You refuse to admit the claims have prerequisited which were not met. It is just as valid to say President Bush did indeed fire everyone involved in leaking Valerie Plame's name as a covert operataive. She did not have the legal status of being covert. That's all there is to it.
You're trying to build a straw man again. By definition, anything the President chooses to release is unclassified. That's all there is to it. You are more than welcome to study the laws.
True, the UN Security Council could issue a piece of paper condemning Saddam but that's all it can do, in and of itself. The UN Security Council is really nothing more than a group of Ambassadors to the UN. Their agreements become the responsibility of the memebre nations. The United States is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and carries the responsibility to enforce the Security Council resolutions. The UN Security Council has no military forces of its own. The conditions of the cease fire did not cease to pertain simply because a subsequent unanimous decision was not reached. The UN Security Council has reached unanimous vote to take military action twice; the Korean War and the first Gulf War. Neither war had been ended. Fact.
Uh...can't "blow a cover" which doesn't exist. See previous message, comments above, basic logic and law.
Joe Wilson was not privy to all intel. He was an unemployed ex-Civil Service worker with no security clearance. In fact, yellowcake from Niger was found in Iraq and there were commercial records of the transactions. Even if it were not, the mere act of pursuing negotiations with Niger for Uranium violated the cease fire. That's all there is to it. 10 years of violating the cease fire agreement of an active war created the obligation and authority to respond militarily. That's the law.
No, it was Jack's column which revealed Valerie's name. Wilson's "article" was so full of lies the Congressional investiagtion threw it out. If it had been an actual trial and he made such claims, he would be guilty of perjury. Jack couldn't reveal Armitage told him Valerie's name until after the falrse trial without creating legal risk to himself. The press will promoteo whatever it chooses to promote. They built a strawman because that's what they wanted.
No, the forged document was widely acknowledge to be forged. That wasn't the only evidence. President Bush stated that the British intel believed Saddam was pursuing Uranium purchase. That statement of fact was followed by Joe Wilson's strawman "article" which has been totally debunked. (Again, Congressional Record to read the investigation testimony and evidence.)
You don't have access to intel information of the sort which would be required to state, with any surety, wether or not nuke materials were found. All you have is free market information.
You're wasting time chasing a poorly-constructed conspiracy theory.
This is a country of laws, It's the usA, not the usSR. So, the question remains, did Bush and Cheney use Armitage as their patsy, or did they seize on the opertunity of an Armitage slip to try to use the situation to push their case for war? Either way is impeachable.
Second, it is impossible for any entity to find every person someone has interacted with over the course of 15 years in free societies.
Some spies who knew Valerie Plame were able to avoid exposure. This is probably true of every blown cover in the history of the world, so it doesn't really win Bush any points.
By definition, that means exposure to someone other than their own association. What does this mean?
It's not possible for the general public to know if President Bush "lied" when he said he'd fire anyone involved in revealing a covert agent. First, you'd need inside knowledge to ascertain at what point the administration knew Valerie's actual status. Second, since she wasn't covert, nobody could reveal her as being covert. You refuse to admit the claims have prerequisited which were not met. It is just as valid to say President Bush did indeed fire everyone involved in leaking Valerie Plame's name as a covert operataive. She did not have the legal status of being covert. That's all there is to it.
First point we now know that Armitage, Libby, and Rove were behind the leak and attempted earlier leaks, by their own admission. Second, she was covert and under an unofficial cover which means that merely revealing her as CIA blew her cover. Her cover, BTW, doesn't become useless just because she wasn't in the field. Anyone with intel experience would know. You're also putting words into the Whitehouse's mouth. They pledged to fire "anyone involved in it." There wasn't always your careful parsing about "covert agents".
No, the forged document was widely acknowledge to be forged. That wasn't the only evidence. President Bush stated that the British intel believed Saddam was pursuing Uranium purchase. That statement of fact was followed by Joe Wilson's strawman "article" which has been totally debunked. (Again, Congressional Record to read the investigation testimony and evidence.)
"British Intel" is not evidence, a point which becomes crystal clear when you research the source of their belief, which was the same poorly forged documents, and which lead to Bush's tortured phrasing, since they didn't have any evidence that could convince American Intel.
You don't have access to intel information of the sort which would be required to state, with any surety, wether or not nuke materials were found. All you have is free market information.
This is nothing more than deluded authoritarianism. Consider that they paraded around every piece of crap "evidence" that they could find, then try to convince anyone that they withheld the good stuff.
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