Impeachment

By Dave Lindorff

Most Americans are blissfully in the dark about it, but across the Atlantic in the UK, a commission reluctantly established by Prime Minister Gordon Brown under pressure from anti-war activists in Britain is beginning hearings into the actions and statements of British leaders that led to the country’s joining the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Even before testimony began in hearings that started yesterday, news began to leak out from documents obtained by the commission that the government of former PM Tony Blair had lied to Parliament and the public about the country’s involvement in war planning.

Britain’s Telegraph newspaper over the weekend published documents from British military leaders, including a memo from British special forces head Maj. Gen. Graeme Lamb, saying that he had been instructed to begin “working the war up since early 2002.”

Here's his story.

By David Swanson

Around the United States, peace groups are engaged in effective campaigns against proposed new military installations, local funding of weapons companies, and the routine destruction of the environment and of workers' health by such companies. Activists are building better media outlets, educating young people, educating old people, keeping military testing and recruiting out of schools, and discouraging the Army from building real-weapon video arcades in shopping malls. But when it comes to stopping our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, our citizens are less clear how to go about it.

By David Swanson

There is strong evidence that John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, and most of the rest of us are in love with torture-lawyer Jay Bybee. I'm not talking about sexual love and wouldn't, because people's lives are lost to such bread-and-circuses journalism every day. I'm talking deep personal devotion.

Let's examine the evidence.

1. As head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jay Bybee committed felonies in exchange for being nominated to a life-time seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Bybee violated the Anti-Torture Statute and the War Crimes Statute by facilitating torture through secret memos purporting to legalize specific criminal acts. Bybee also played a leading role in a conspiracy to violate the UN Charter, the US Constitution, and the War Powers Act by signing a secret memo purporting to give presidents the unrestricted power to launch aggressive wars.

By Dave Lindorff

The way I see it, President Obama has a couple of months to turn his failing administration around.

The war in Afghanistan is going south, and within a couple of weeks, his General William Westmoreland, Gen. Stanley McCrystal, will be coming to him asking for more troops. Things are getting hairier in Iraq too.

His signature health care initiative is foundering, with Republicans working in lockstep to see to it that it fails.

Pressure is mounting for an honest probe into the criminality of the prior administration in its authorization and promotion of torture against captives--most of them innocent--in the Bush/Cheney "war" on terror.

The stock market, which by climbing back 50% from its collapse and the bottom it hit on March 9, gave the president a breather, is showing signs of exhaustion, and is likely to start sinking again, as investors realize that there is no end in sight for the recession in the real economy.

By David Swanson

Hurricane Katrina is not as sexy as torture, but has killed more people and ruined more lives, and -- like many non-natural disasters in recent years -- has a chief culprit who has now settled in at 10141 Daria Place, Dallas, Texas, where he clears very little brush and where -- to my knowledge -- not a single politician or journalist or author has sought his wisdom on the affairs of the past seven months. George W. Bush, who should face nonviolent protest every minute of his life while he remains at liberty, knowingly abandoned an American city and nearby towns to a predictable and predicted natural disaster four years ago this week, and for years refused to repair the damage.

By Dave Lindorff

You see, here's the thing. When you hear about the sick, twisted things that America's torturers have been doing, courtesy of President George W. Bush and Vice President Darth Cheney, you have to remember that the US military and the CIA were not really all that reliable when it came to picking up the real terrorists. In fact, their batting average was pretty lousy.

The OPR Report recommends prosecutions for torture / murder. There goes Holder's excuse for delay in appointing a prosecutor. There goes Conyers' excuse for delay in impeaching Jay Bybee. TAKE ACTION NOW.

Pelosi Is an Expert at 'Drowning Out Opposing Views'
by Jodie Evans | Common Dreams

Disruption of the health care town hall meetings has triggered some rich debate about free speech in the U.S. In these discussions, CODEPINK has been referenced several times as the group that has most often tested the boundaries of free speech. Over the years, we've been chided and insulted by the media, Members of Congress, former Press Secretaries, and even President Bush himself. However, when Nancy Pelosi weighed in recently on the town hall "mobs," saying that "drowning out opposing views is un-American," I was compelled to respond.

While the frequent mentions of CODEPINK in these discussions do not surprise me, it saddens me that there are so few groups from the past decade to reference when talking about pushing the edge of healthy debate. Congress has been failing the people in so many ways for so long that there should have been be a non-stop primal scream from the people to wake the our representatives up from their corporate-funded stupor.

But who would have heard them? For far too long, the American people have been cut off from and out of the political process without any real avenues of letting their voices be heard. So when Speaker Pelosi -- no stranger to drowning out opposing views -- talks about "drowning out opposing views is un-American," the statement is steeped in irony.

"Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union," by David Swanson is due in stores September 1st, but the publisher has it now and you can get it straight from Seven Stories Press.

The Cheney-Like Secrecy of the Obama White House
By John Nichols | The Nation

Those of us who proposed the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney for violating his oath of office and engaging in a Nixon-on-steroids spree of high crimes and misdemeanors began to recognize the abusive nature of the previous administration when Cheney refused to release details of the industry insiders with whom he met to craft energy policies.

The refusal of the Bush-Cheney administration to permit public review of White House visitor logs detailing who was meeting with the vice president's energy task force during the very first weeks of their tenure was a deliberate decision made to cloak dirty dealing by officials who were determined to serve corporate rather than public interests.

It also provided an early indicator that darker and dirtier deeds would eventually be done by Cheney and his compatriots. And they were. Read more.

By Dave Lindorff

Bill Clinton was the worst thing to happen to the Democratic Party and to progressives since that racist warmonger Woodrow Wilson won the presidency and dragged the US into the utterly pointless and incredibly bloody First World War.

Clinton, by posing as a progressive, confused and undermined, and ultimately betrayed the liberal/progressive wing of the party, shattering what was left of the New Deal coalition and leaving the American left adrift and riven by the conflict between those who thought the Democratic Party was the only viable vehicle for progressive reform and those who thought it was hopelessly in the grip of corporate interests.

Barack Obama offers the hope of bringing that era of debilitating confusion to an end.

By David Swanson

Drafted in preparation for panel discussion at Veterans for Peace national convention August 7, 2009, on topic of "Holding the Architects of Illegal Wars and War Crimes Accountable."

Seven years to the day after the Downing Street Minutes meeting at which top British officials famously discussed U.S. President George W. Bush's intent to launch a war against Iraq whether or not any means could be found to legalize it, on July 23rd, the United Nations hosted a discussion of ways in which wars of aggression are given pseudo-legal cover. Included were remarks by Jean Bricmont and Noam Chomsky. It is not hard to imagine how different such discussions would be were the architects of the Iraq War ever held accountable for it in any way.

By David Swanson

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation into the misdeeds of former president George W. Bush and former vice president Richard B. Cheney.

Holder, in turn, has now called on Conyers to open impeachment proceedings against former head of the Office of Legal Council Jay Bybee, now a judge in the Ninth Circuit.

Conyers, in response, has demanded that Holder open a complete investigation of 14 different areas of criminal enterprise and appoint an independent counsel, offering a list of eight possible candidates.

Holder, in reply, has insisted that Conyers reissue all of the subpoenas his committee has failed to enforce over the past two and a half years and use the Capitol Police to enforce them at once.

In response, Conyers' office has issued a new report on the need to weed out corruption and undo politically motivated prosecutions by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Was even this nice acceptable sex impeachment too much for the House to allow itself to have done?

By Dave Lindorff

Let me say from the outset that I have the greatest sympathy for 23-year-old Bowe R. Bergdahl, the US soldier in Afghanistan who was captured and is being held by Taliban forces, and for his family, who must be going through a living hell worrying about what is going to happen to him.

But I’m willing to bet you that all of them are wishing, right now, that the US had not decided back in 2001 to begin a campaign of torture and murder against the Taliban fighters that it was capturing in Afghanistan, and against others that it has rounded up in the so-called War on Terror.

By Cynthia Papermaster and Susan Harman

It's a problem that Jay Bybee is a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. How can he serve as a judge when he seriously violated the laws against inhumane treatment of detainees and gave legal approval to interrogation techniques that amount to torture. We agree with Patrick Leahy, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that if Bybee's a decent human being, he'll resign. We agree with MoveOn and People for the American Way, who've submitted 140,000 petition signatures to John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, asking him to impeach Bybee. And we agree with the New York Times, which called for his impeachment twice in April.

As part of the June 25 national Torture Accountability Day, Cynthia wrote and filed a formal judicial misconduct complaint against him. The Court Executive let her know that Bybee has a copy of her complaint.

Court protesters get escorted out
By Dan Abendschein, Pasadena Star News

PASADENA - Three protesters Monday shouted at a federal judge they accuse of signing off on "torture memos" and were quickly escorted out of court by security officers.

"You authorized the torture of human beings," Dianne Wright of Los Angeles yelled at Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Jay Bybee, a former Bush administration lawyer who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel.

Bybee now serves on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has a courtroom in Pasadena.

The protestors, two from the Bay Area and one from Los Angeles, waited until the end of a hearing to call Bybee a torturer and demand his impeachment.

Wright, along with Susan Harman of Oakland and Cynthia Papermaster of Berkeley, were immediately escorted out by court security. They were not arrested.

Chairman John Conyers is on the House floor right now
http://c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN_rm.aspx
arguing that judges who abuse their power must be impeached. But the judge he has in mind is not Jay Bybee.

Which will get a federal judge impeached?

Worker fired for anti-Bush letter settles suit | News Tribune

A man who claims he lost his job with a vendor for the Missouri Department of Corrections because of an anti-Bush letter has settled his federal lawsuit with the state for $150,000.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reported on its Web site Friday that Tim Kniest said the settlement equals three years of back pay. Read more.

The Judiciary Committee should have dragged this out for a few years just to give plausibility to the length of time they always told us an impeachment would take. And it was supposed to feel a little more traumatic too.

By David Swanson

A judge gropes and harasses his female employees, lies about it to investigators, is tried and convicted, and is on his way to prison. The U.S. House of Representatives springs into action, activating something none of us even knew existed during the entire eight-year hell of Cheney-Bush: the House Judiciary Committee Task Force on Judicial Impeachment. And what did Judge Groper do on Wednesday? He chose not to show up, as requested by Congress, for his own impeachment hearing.

Over on the Senate side of Capitol Hill, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee recently asked a federal judge not yet convicted of authoring memos to facilitate torture if he wouldn't mind coming in to talk, and Jay Bybee replied "Um, let me think about it . . . no. You go ahead without me," or something roughly to that effect.

Convicted federal judge says he will resign next year
Juan A. Lozano, Associated Press | Dallas Morning News

A convicted federal judge told President Barack Obama in a letter Tuesday that he would resign from the bench in June 2010, nearly a year after he begins serving prison time for lying about the sexual abuse of two assistants.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent would draw a full salary of $174,000 a year and benefits until the resignation takes effect, said his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin. Kent decided on the delay so his wife could retain her medical benefits, DeGuerin said. He said Kent's wife has serious medical problems.

The resignation was submitted a week after denial of Kent's request to retire on disability due to depression – which would have meant full salary for the rest of his life. By resigning, he gets nothing after next year.

DeGuerin said Kent, 59, is resigning to avoid the "spectacle" of an impeachment process by Congress.

The lawyer also said it would probably take a year for the impeachment process to be completed in Congress and, "with him resigning, it's not necessary."

The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on the matter today. Read more.

Thanks to Bob Schacht and Progressive Democrats of Hawaii:

Resolution 09-01: SUPPORTING THE IMPEACHMENT AND REMOVAL OF JAY S. BYBEE FROM THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

Whereas, four memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel between August 1, 2002 and May 30, 2005 were released on April 16, 2009 by the United States Department of Justice relating to prisoner interrogation during President George W. Bush's administration which outline how the Bush administration conducted torture; and

Whereas, the memos were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country's most basic values; and

Whereas, the Obama administration has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners, in violation of international law and the Constitution; and

From PDA:

Judge Jay Bybee, one of the torture memo authors, is sitting this week in the Las Vegas 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Bush rewarded him for "legalizing" torture by giving him a lifetime appointment on this court. Can you go and protest his presence.

Court starts at 9:00 every day starting tomorrow through Thursday (he's not sitting on Friday), at Lloyd D. George United States Courthouse, 333 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Courtroom 7C, Las Vegas.

If you need to know more about Bybee, ask me.

Here are some signs to print off and bring -

http://pdamerica.org/pdacms/sites/default/files/Torture%20Judge(2).pdf

http://pdamerica.org/pdacms/sites/default/files/Bybee%20flyer_0.pdf

http://pdamerica.org/pdacms/sites/default/files/Bybee%20Poster%203(2)_0.pdf

We demonstrated last Thursday in almost all the 9th Circuit locations around the West, and will again on 6/25. Let's organize a BIG one in Vegas!

Here's his statement:

If there’s another terrorist attack, it will be because the mess the Bush administration ignored in Pakistan and Afghanistan spun beyond anyone’s control well before Americans could throw the bums out.

Of course it could also be because of the mess the Bush and Obama administrations created there and in Iraq and elsewhere. My point is not to agree with Rich but to notice that he thinks we somehow threw Bush and Cheney out and that he wishes we'd done so sooner. This is a common sentiment among columnists now that it's too late.