http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff08192006.htmlFor the second time in two months, a federal court has ruled that the president is in violation of the Constitution. This time it's a federal court in Detroit that has ruled that President Bush has violated the Fourth Amendment against illegal search and seizure for his order to the National Security Agency to monitor the phone and Internet messages of Americans without bothering to obtain a court order based upon probable cause.
The first time, it was the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in late June that the president had violated the Constitution by asserting he had the power to ignore the Third Geneva Convention on Treatment of Prisoners of War-a treaty formally signed into law by the U.S. and made an integral part of the U.S. Criminal Code.
The important thing about these two rulings--and it is a point that the squeamish mainstream media have shied away from mentioning--is that they both are declaring the president to be a criminal. That is, he has been found in the first case to be in criminal violation of the Constitution, as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and in the second, he has been found to be in violation of U.S. and International Law.
Note that when someone has committed a felony--say a bank robbery or a case of assault and battery or of murder--and when a court has found that person to be guilty of the crime in question, that person is from that moment hence considered a criminal. The case may be appealed to a higher court, but in the meantime, judgment has been rendered, and a penalty assigned.
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The courts have spoken: this president is a criminal on multiple counts. Now the process moves to our elected representatives in Washington. No member of Congress who is unwilling to hold Bush and his accomplices to account and initiate impeachment proceedings against him for his crimes and violations of the Constitution should be returned to office in November.
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right on!