IMPEACH-"Nothing In The Constitution Allows The President To Commit Felonies" Chalmers Johnson

[kpete]

Evil Empire

Is Imperial Liquidation Possible for America?
By Chalmers Johnson

05/17/07


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George W. Bush has, of course, flagrantly violated his oath of office, which requires him "to protect and defend the constitution," and the opposition party has been remarkably reluctant to hold him to account. Among the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that, under other political circumstances, would surely constitute the Constitutional grounds for impeachment are these: the President and his top officials pressured the Central Intelligence Agency to put together a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear weapons that both the administration and the Agency knew to be patently dishonest. They then used this false NIE to justify an American war of aggression. After launching an invasion of Iraq, the administration unilaterally reinterpreted international and domestic law to permit the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at other secret locations around the world.

Nothing in the Constitution, least of all the commander-in-chief clause, allows the president to commit felonies. Nonetheless, within days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush had signed a secret executive order authorizing a new policy of "extraordinary rendition," in which the CIA is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects anywhere on Earth and transfer them to prisons in countries like Egypt, Syria, or Uzbekistan, where torture is a normal practice, or to secret CIA prisons outside the United States where Agency operatives themselves do the torturing.

On the home front, despite the post-9/11 congressional authorization of new surveillance powers to the administration, its officials chose to ignore these and, on its own initiative, undertook extensive spying on American citizens without obtaining the necessary judicial warrants and without reporting to Congress on this program. These actions are prima-facie violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (and subsequent revisions) and of Amendment IV of the Constitution.

These alone constitute more than adequate grounds for impeachment, while hardly scratching the surface. And yet, on the eve of the national elections of November 2006, then House Minority Leader, now Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), pledged on the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that "impeachment is off the table." She called it "a waste of time." And six months after the Democratic Party took control of both houses of Congress, the prison at Guantánamo Bay was still open and conducting drumhead courts martial of the prisoners held there; the CIA was still using "enhanced interrogation techniques" on prisoners in foreign jails; illegal intrusions into the privacy of American citizens continued unabated; and, more than fifty years after the CIA was founded, it continues to operate under, at best, the most perfunctory congressional oversight.

much more at:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17708.htm

[bonito]

1. We have to become the media

From the link



"All of the institutions we thought would protect us -- particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress -- they have failed… So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn't. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that's the most glaring…. What can be done to fix the situation? You'd have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives." Seymour Hersh

[Toots]

2. The American people are not being well represented by the new Congress.

I suspect the Corporations are though....

[loudsue]

4. I agree.

And I'm really having my eyes opened about how totally corrupt our system of government has become. Maybe it has always been this way. They covered up the conspiracy to assassinate the Kennedys & MLK.

But the corporations in the largest industries are totally in control now. We've become a fascist dictatorship, for all practical purposes.

:kick:

[L. Coyote]

5. More like a fascist, corporate state with an elite class of multi-millionaires

If a CEO getting paid $143 Million gets caught bilking USG of over a BILLION $$$, they fine him $1 million. Check this story out:

30 U.S. attorneys investigate BILKING BILLIONS, Medicare, Medicaid, Military’s Healthcare
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x877011

HCA's "fraud investigation involved 30 U.S. attorneys' offices, 22 FBI field offices, inspectors general from the Health and Human Service Department and the Office of Personnel Management, Defense Department investigators and state fraud units"

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MEANWHILE: Cost of America's War in Iraq $425 BILLION and going up. Where do those Bucks STOP???

[Senator]

3. K&R