Impeachment

The following resolution is coming before the California Democratic Party Executive Board meeting on January 27-28.

RESOLUTION TO IMPEACH BUSH AND INVESTIGATE CHENEY, ET AL.

WHEREAS, (1) the Downing Street Memos show that President George W.Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, CondoleezzaRice, and various others began planning and executing the illegal waragainst and occupation of Iraq months before seeking Congressional and UNapproval; (2) in furtherance of this planning, (a) intelligence wasshaped to fit these plans, (b) illegal bombing runs were made againstIraq and various other potentially illegal operations and actions weretaken with the express intent to provoke Saddam Hussein to take militaryaction and decline to cooperate with the UN and other internationalentities, and (c) false statements to the American people were made byBush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and others with the apparent intent todeceive Congress and the American public in order to allow the BushAdminstration to carry out its plan for an unnecessary war; (3) as adirect result of the above actions, the U.S. and U.K. began an unapprovedwar of aggression against Iraq, killing thousands of American and Iraqimilitary forces, wounding tens of thousands more, and killing or woundingpotentially hundreds of thousands of civilians, women, children and otherinnocents; (4) that the U.S. has invested hundreds of billions of dollarsin this potentially illegal war, to the detriment of the national debt,all citizens of the U.S. and all government programs for which this moneymight otherwise have been appropriated, and to the benefit solely of themilitary contractors and supplier corporations who have been shown to beovercharging and otherwise cheating the people and the government of theU.S, and (5) these actions on the part of the Bush Administration fit thedefinition of high crimes and misdemeanors, and

Here it is!

By MANUEL MENDOZA / The Dallas Morning News

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – This was the year it was fashionable to avoid making political statements backstage. That is, unless you were the journalist posing the loaded question.

Former Vice President Says Legislators From Both Parties Did Not Do Enough To Stop Secret Activities
By TEDDY DAVIS, ABC News

Jan. 16, 2006 — - In an impassioned speech about President Bush's warrantless domestic wiretapping program, former Vice President Al Gore said in Washington, DC, on Monday that "the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently."

By Chris Bowers

Help pay for some badly needed polling on issues the media has blacked out!

By DOUG THOMPSON, Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
http://www.capitolhillblue.com

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, the sometimes-maverick Republican who has been a thorn in more than one GOP President’s side, brought out the word that’s been whispered in the Congressional cloakrooms and behind closed doors by other members of his party for several weeks now.

Print and distribute! Mail to your Congress Member and Senators!

By Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who has shunned public forums on the war for the past year, finally held a town hall meeting in San Francisco on January 14. Despite her public criticism of the war and her recent support of Cong. John Murtha’s call to bring the troops home, Pelosi has not used her position as Minority leader to lead her party to adopt an anti-war stance. She has also refused to support other anti-war measures, such as Cong. Barbara Lee’s bill to prohibit permanent bases in Iraq and Cong. Jim McGovern’s bill to stop funding for new deployment.

GO HERE TO VIEW.

Go here to download:
http://www.theimpeachproject.com

Request a DVD:
mrhelper@charter.net

By DICK RUPPEL | http://www.lacrossetribune.com

If we’re lucky, 25 years from now historians will categorize the first years of the 21st century as just another low point in American history.

Yes, they’ll say, the Bush administration ignored the real problems facing the United States, divided the country against itself, attacked civil liberties, increased the number and suffering of the poor, fought an unnecessary war, diminished American stature and saddled the next generation with crippling debt.

By Paul Rogat Loeb

In the wake of the Alito hearings, mainline pundits are calling his nomination a done deal. Alito didn’t spew obscenities or green bile. He didn’t admit that he’d reverse Roe v. Wade or vow to proclaim George Bush Lord Emperor. Rehearsed and coached by committee member Lindsay Graham (and by some of the same lawyers who justified Bush’s NSA wiretaps), he instead spoke deferentially and humbly about respecting legal precedent and separation of powers, while Republican committee members made him out to be a mix of Solomon and Mother Teresa. Much like Clarence Thomas during his hearings, Alito dodged the tough questions with evasions and platitudes, suffered convenient memory lapses on areas he couldn’t dodge, and justified controversial past stands by saying he was just trying to be a team player. We know little more about him than before--except about his capacity to dissemble.

BY HUGH (BUCK) DAVIS and ROBERT A. SEDLER, Detroit Free Press

Downplayed in the furor over the revelations that President George W. Bush's National Security Agency is intercepting the telephone and e-mail communications of U.S. citizens is the fact that the Supreme Court has long held that warrantless wiretapping of American citizens in the name of national security violates the Fourth Amendment. The court made that ruling in a 1972 case originating in Michigan. It's popularly known as the Keith case, after highly respected Detroit federal Judge Damon J. Keith, who rendered the initial decision deeming such wiretapping unconstitutional.

For Release: January 16, 2006

New Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12.

On ABC's This Week, when asked about the remedy for illegal NSA wiretapping of U.S. citizens, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), head of the Senate Judiciary Committee set to hold hearings on the matter, answered: "...Impeachment is the remedy. After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution..."
VIDEO:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002282.htm

By Stephen Pitt

C-SPAN, tomorrow Monday, January 16, 2006 – Noon, Eastern time

12:00 PM EST -- 1:00 (est.) LIVE
Speech
Civil Liberties
American Constitution Society
Albert Gore Jr., United States
The beginning and end of this live program may be earlier or later than the scheduled times.

Contact: Christian Pecaut 415-573-5655, workoutwellforall@gmail.com

PALO ALTO - The impeachment of Pres. George Bush will be among other "Truth, Peace and Justice" topics discussed here at a Martin Luther King Jr. rally and celebration Sunday, Jan. 15, 2006, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Lytton Plaza, in Downtown Palo Alto (University & Emerson).

By DAVE LINDORFF, www.counterpunch.org

Many readers have responded to my last article about the media blackout of Rep. John Conyers' (D-Mich.) introduction of two bills to censure George Bush and Dick Cheney, and a third bill that would create a Select Committee to investigate impeachable crimes by the administration, saying I should let people know who the other seven members of Congress are who have agreed to co-sponsor the call.

INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES - WASHINGTON, D.C.
Contact: Joia Jefferson Nuri - Cell 240-603-7905 joia@ips-dc.org

Defining The Issues Series: Should President Bush Face Censure?
Wednesday, January 18, 2006, 12:30pm-1:30pm

Why the Democrats should impeach Bush/Cheney today
By Jerry Mazza, Online Journal Contributing Writer

Yes, Martha, I understand that US Representative John Conyers (D-NY) has filed an “impeachment resolution

By MARC McDONALD
LINK TO ARTICLE

By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive
http://progressive.org/mag_wx011206

Last Saturday, I went to a town hall meeting on the Iraq War and impeachment in Madison, Wisconsin. This one was sponsored by Veterans for Peace. More than 150 other events around the country on January 7 were co-sponsored by Progressive Democrats of America and afterdowningstreet.org.

By ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN, The Nation
[from the January 30, 2006 issue]

Finally, it has started. People have begun to speak of impeaching President George W. Bush--not in hushed whispers but openly, in newspapers, on the Internet, in ordinary conversations and even in Congress. As a former member of Congress who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon, I believe they are right to do so. READ MORE.

Here's a letter from the Department of "Defense" in response to a Freedom of Information Request from Congressman John Conyers and many other Congress Members. It includes this line:

By Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D.
January 11, 2006

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
- Benjamin Franklin's motto in the

By David Swanson, www.blackcommentator.com

Can you imagine having an opportunity to address the United Nations Security Council about a matter of great global importance, with all the world's media watching, and using it to… well, to make shit up – to lie with a straight face, and with a CIA director propped up behind you, I mean to spew one world-class, for-the-record-books stream of bull, to utter nary a breath without a couple of whoppers in it, and to look like you really mean it all? What gall. What an insult to the entire world that would be.

You may be searching for actions you can take to alter the course of our government and to begin the impeachment of Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush. Here is your opportunity to take an active part in that effort.

Moving forwared
By Carol Wolman, http://www.opednews.com

There were 18 people present, 3x as many as at any previous meeting. Most of the people had been to at least one previous meeting. The discussion was lively, and the mood much more upbeat and optimistic than at earlier meetings. This was noted, and attributed to the revelation about Bush's warrantless wiretapping, which has everyone up in arms.

By David Swanson

A long list of peace organizations put together over 150 town hall forums last Saturday on the topic of getting out of Iraq. Reports, and audio and video, from dozens of these events have been posted at www.afterdowningstreet.org. What I gather from reviewing the reports, and from the two events I attended, is that the most popular topic was not the horrors of war or any legislation to end it, but the demand to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

From Pennsylvania State Senator Jim Ferlo

Dear Congressman John Conyers,

I am a proud supporter and most appreciative of your leadership effort to proceed with legislation that would both censure President Bush and Vice-President Cheney and initiate formal proceedings to ascertain the appropriateness of formal impeachment actions by the House of Representatives. I fully endorse House Resolutions 635, 636, and 637.