The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Why should Americans impeach America's first mixed-race President? Obama should be impeached to protect our nation from a precipitous slide into economic ruin and societal decay. Lacking a constitutional mechanism for voters to remove a President who is providing disastrous leadership, impeachment is our only alternative for avoiding further grievous harm. Like a charlatan physician feeding laetrile to a cancer patient, Obama and his minions have misdiagnosed, mistreated, and mismanaged our economy from his first day in office. Here are some particulars:
1. Protecting the plutocracy. In the Obama administration, the holders of concentrated private wealth come first. Their interests, generally represented in proportion to their political contributions, are defended at all costs. Obama has effectively been bribed to protect the wealthy, and the payoff will come in his future media deals and speaking fees.
2. Rewarding incompetence and reinforcing failure. The economic management team put in place by Obama is led by "experts" whose theories of deregulation and minimal interference with the marketplace resulted in the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. They not only failed to forsee the problems, but are now failing to prevent their recurrence. Summers, Geithner, and Bernanke have presided over the largest transfer of taxpayer wealth to private corporations in American history. Meanwhile, unemployment rises inexorably, while a "recovery" is achieved by proclamation. Some of what has been done in secret dealings between the Obama administration and the malefactors of great wealth rises to the level of criminal conspiracy.
3. Preserving and extending a permanent warfare state. Obama has increased defense spending above Bush administration levels, because he is firmly committed to a permanent warfare state. This enriches the Military-Industrial-Complex, while providing a safety valve for unemployed and restless young people. It is the highest form of treason to engage America in unnecessary wars.
4. Making the President the supreme arbiter of the law. Obama declared that he alone would ban torture, and that no Congressional action would be required. He blocked the prosecution of Bush Administration war criminals as a further demonstration that all power effectively resides in the presidency. His continuation of the use of signing statements is further evidence of the continuation of Bush's imperial presidency. This arrogant assertion that the President alone controls the detention and torture of prisoners in an endless war is a flagrant violation of the Constitution.
It is a sad thing that so promising a politician as Barak Obama has failed so badly, but we must accept the unhappy facts. Charm is no substitute for competence, and a smooth speaking style does not compensate for a faulty character. Obama the President is not what we were promised by Obama the candidate. The deficits in his performance are so great that they warrant removal. Impeach Obama while something of America remains to be saved.
This is the panel the Dog has been waiting for! Torture and accountability. On the panel we have Vince Warren,. Rep. Jerry Nadler, Marcy Wheeler and Melisa Goodman. The Dog is going to try to live blog this for those playing our home game.
Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog's on going letter writing campaign for accountability and the rule of law for the apparent Bush Era torture programs. The premise of this campaign is the Dog will write a letter to one of the key decision makers (with carbon copies to others) and provide the links to reach these worthies. Your job, gentle reader, is to either use the letter as a jumping off point for your own letter, or just cut and paste the letter and send it off under your own signature.
For all this time, we have been told to keep our powder dry. That he's on our side, got our best interests at heart. For all this time, the focus and outrage has been directed to Bush/Cheney. There is plenty of evidence he's doing the bidding of the military industrial complex, and not the bidding of his constituents.
Obama has been in office for just over 4 months. In that time, he has had the time to:
1) Extend warrantless wiretapping, and even extend his claim to that power
2) Defend government secrecy - even exceeding Bush's claims of executive power.
3) Publish evidence of Bush era war crimes
4) Declare theintention not to prosecute said war crimes
5) Close, then not close GTMO
-calling the detainees 'too dangerous to let go'
6) Reinstall military commissions for 'dangerous terrorists we CAn prosecute'
7) Continue unabated the TARP program, while doing little to save people's homes from foreclosure.
8) Bail out giant carmakers without requiring the money be used to support jobs at home.
9) Kept key Bushies like Gates on - keeping the previous military structure in place so propaganda can leak out just like before.
10) Asserted the intent to keep Don Seigelman in jail.
How on earth does this look different, other than the party label, than the last 8 years?
I believe in compassion, mercy and forgiveness...but when great and grievous wrong has been done, you don't skip straight to forgiveness. No, the first stop on the path to redemption is called justice.
When former governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state of Alabama, Don Siegleman gets thrown in federal prison for 9 months for being a progressive democrat and has to go around the country begging for justice once they finally let him out on appeal bond (fruitlessly I might add - they never did vote contempt for Karl Rove) then something is desperately wrong in this country.
Many people have been asking us, "Could Bush actually pardon himself?". Would it be despicable? Sure it would. Would it be shameless and cowardly? Yes, that and that too. But all those adjectives fit Bush like O.J.'s glove before it shrunk from being soaked completely in blood. Which means he is absolutely is planning on doing it.
And only impeachment could stop it. We need to talk about this. We need Congress to talk about this. And Congress is in session this week, so we need you to speak out this week while there is still time.
Tens of thousands of you submitted the action page on this last week. Do it again. Please speak out again while we still can. There is already a drum beat in the right wing media calling on Bush to pardon his whole administration. Only our voices can raise the price of such action so that there would be real consequences.
We have not given up, and will never give up hope on justice. We will be taking delivery of another huge shipment of the "Impeach Both!!!" caps that are still so popular. But this might be the last batch. So if you want to demonstrate your support for impeachment, please request yours now from the return page of the action page submission.
Will Congress now act? That is not the yardstick of the worth of our activism. We speak out because we must speak out, whether we are heeded or not. Let history record that we spoke out until the last minute to the eternal shame of those who did not. Because when enough of us speak out at once, the worst thing that can possibly happen is that we are building the progressive base for the REAL change of the future.
So Bush most certainly is planning on pardoning himself. And all the right wing lock down ideologues in the corporate controlled media will call it "healing". Let's all make nice with war criminals? Shall we all make nice with the gang rape of our economy, our environment and our Constitution? We think not.
And one more thing. You know that come January 20th the right wing will start calling for the impeachment of our new president, over a endless litany of the most ridiculous of trivial trifles. In fact it has already started even though he has not even taken office. If they are so hot on impeaching someone, let them speak out now, when it truly is called for, or shut the hell up in 65 days.
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
"I, Barack Obama.....blah blah blah....so help me God"
pause....Obama turns and points to Bush and Cheney and says "Arrest these men!"
This 'fantasy' is, By the Blessed Blinded Eyes of Justice, what SHOULD happen.
The President of The United States has broken the Law, and we are (in theory) a Nation of Laws, not a Nation of Men. Justice should know no boundaries of rank or privilege. True justice does not.
Be we do not live in a world of true justice. We live in a world of conditional justice, where there is one form of 'justice' for the poor and disadvantaged and differently colored, and another justice for the rich and privileged and connected.
I shall not address here, the ridiculous claim that one commenter med that there have been no crimes committed or no evidence fit to present for prosecution. Our President is guilty. Guilty of domestic spying by his own admission, and guilty of torture by his signed authorizations. Retroactive immunity passed by a cowardly and complicit Congress does not alleviate that guilt, it merely adds accessories. Corrupting the Department of Justice to the point of your henchmen, minions and co-conspirators there to the point that they will not allow even an investigation by serving subpoenas does not obliterate his guilt, it merely obscures it.
Or...perhaps...he is not. Perhaps the aggressive invasion of a sovereign nation in direst contravention of the Nuremberg accords was...an accident. Perhaps they really believed that attaching electrodes to a prisoners genitals or beating them to death while they were chained and helpless was just...a misunderstanding. perhaps the treasonous exposure of an entire CIA counter-terrorism unit for spite and politics was ....hmmmmm, even my imagination can't come up with anything for that.
Of all of the egregious acts committed by the Bush Administration, there is one that stands out as a symbol of every wrong turn our nation took in his blessedly ending era. The use of the word Homeland to describe the Land of the Free. The unmistakable fascistic overtones simply ring of despotism and tyranny. The mind almost inevitably hears the echoes of Hitler's Fatherland and Stalin's Motherland. Though of course we only flirted with that level of jingoistic totalitarian reality, the fear based propaganda that took hold after 9/11 was shocking in its depth....and in the way it was embraced...here in the greatest democracy ever established. Here in the Land of the Free. We were asked...no, we were TOLD that we were required to give up our individual Constitutional Rights for the good of the State. There are many names and terms for that requirement, for that abrigement of our hard won rights. None of them contain the word Freedom.
Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act. All direct assaults on our freedom, on what America stands for, on what our veterans fought for. The fight for the rights of the individual in opposition to all forms of tyranny. That is the founding principle of America. America IS the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, it IS The Declaration of Independence...from tyranny.
With the election of Barack Obama, we can now see the light through the trees on the road back to the Land of the Free, but we are far from out of the woods yet.
When people talk of the crimes and excesses of the Bush Administration now, they talk in the past tense. But these crimes and excesses are still here. We still live under them, we still live with them, every day. The rights that were abridged under the Patriot Act are still abridged. The para-military powers that were given to the intelligence agencies and agencies like ICE and the DEA are still in effect. The government can still search your home without a warrant and without even notifying you. They can still search your medical and financial records without you knowing as well.
YOUR Government is still spying on YOU.
And for all we know....the CIA is STILL torturing people in our name.
National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (www.iraqpledge.org)
Contact: Joy First 608 239-4327 jsfirst@tds.net or Max Obuszewski mobuszewski@verizon.net
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 7, 2008
CITIZENS WILLING TO RISK ARREST TO BRING INDICTMENT OF BUSH AND CHENEY
WHO: The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR) is a nationwide network of individuals and organizations committed to peace and justice, utilizing the nonviolent practices and disciplines of Gandhi and King through nonviolent civil resistance.
WHAT: Gathering at the Department of Justice to request a meeting. In September, members of NCNR sent a letter to Attorney General Mukasey, asking to meet with him to discuss the indictment of Bush and Cheney for war crimes. Attorney General Muaksey has not responded (See the letter below).
WHEN: At noon on November 10, 2008, members of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance will go to the Department of Justice in Washington, DC with a copy of the letter and again ask for a meeting with Attorney General Mukasey to discuss indicting Bush and Cheney for war crimes. If they are refused, some members of the group will be moved by conscience to risk arrest.
WHERE: DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 950 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC.
WE WILL BE MEETING ON THE CONSTITUTION AVENUE SIDE OF THE BUILDING AT NOON.
WHY:Obama has won the election, and now more than ever we need to continue our work calling for peace and justice. We must continue to demand that the new president ends the occupation of Iraq and does not escalate military action in Afghanistan. We also must call for justice and demand that Bush and others in his administration be held accountable for the deaths of over a million innocent people from Iraq, from Afghanistan, and almost 4,200 US soldiers.
Now that we've had a couple days to rest up from the long presidential campaign, it's time to get busy again. President-elect Obama is not going to govern from the left, or even that mythological "middle" everyone seems content to obsess over - he'll govern from the hard right, only subtly, as Bill Clinton did. Those who thought to use him as a springboard to enacting progressive policy failed to understand that Obama is a user, not someone who lets himself be used. Let's begin the work of making that fanciful notion so many of us held a reality.
I've done my criticism, and I'll continue to criticize, because I take Theodore's admonition regarding presidents to heart. But this entry is about offering up ideas and starting points; future ones shall be along this line of argument. We absolutely must organize, unite, and apply pressure before the tiny window of opportunity between now and January closes. We cannot afford a repeat of the Clinton years.
A good first step is in redirecting oil policy away from the industry and more toward independence - alternative, renewable sources of energy, naturally, but in other areas as well. The September-October issue of Science Illustrated contained a piece on bioplastics, that is, plastics made with chemicals derived from plant-based chemicals instead of petroleum. I wasn't able to find a direct link to the magazine article, unfortunately, but I did locate links pertaining to the subject.
Scientists are one step closer to replacing crude oil as the main source for plastic, fuels and scores of other industrial and household chemicals with inexpensive, non-polluting renewable plant matter (Science, vol. 316. no. 5831, pp. 1597-1600, June 15, 2007). "What we have done that no one else has been able to do is convert glucose directly in high yields to a primary building block for fuel and polyesters," says Z. Conrad Zhang, senior author who led the research and a scientist with the PNNL-based Institute for Interfacial Catalysis (UC; iic.pnl.gov). That building block is hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a chemical derived from carbohydrates such as glucose and fructose and that is viewed as a promising surrogate for petroleumbased chemicals.
Glucose, in plant starch and cellulose, is nature's most abundant sugar. "But getting a commercially viable yield of HMF from glucose has been very challenging," says Zhang. "In addition to low yield, until now, we always generated many different byproducts," including levulinic acid, making product purification expensive and uncompetitive with petroleum-based chemicals.
Zhang, lead author and former post doc Haibo Zhao, and colleagues John Holladay and Heather Brown, all from PNNL, were able to coax HMF yields upward of 70% from glucose and nearly 90% from fructose, while leaving only traces of acid impurities. To achieve this, they experimented with a novel nonacidic catalytic system containing metal chloride catalysts in an ionic liquid capable of dissolving cellulose. The ionic liquid, enabled the metal chlorides to convert the sugars to HMF.
What this means is that scientists are making glucose-derived plastics a viable alternative to the petroleum-based variety we commonly use. As the first step toward moving away from reliance on fossil fuels, funding and regulations could be implemented so as to grow the bioplastics industry. Glucose can be gotten from straw and saw dust - waste products generated by the agricultural and wood industries - for example, meaning freeing up more farmland for food production.
Combined with passing laws raising fuel efficiency standards, improving public transportation, and creating advertising campaigns to promote carpooling and energy efficiency, pushing bioplastics may be used to start us on the road to energy independence. With fossil fuels dwindling, and wars to obtain control over sources increasing in frequency and intensity, this is a matter of genuine pragmatism and economic sensibility. It's also something to press our elected officials over. President Obama will not be so stupid as to oppose his own political party if it passes progressive legislation.
Cross-posted at my blog (where you can see larger images) and on Docudharma)
Dimensions: 58"x40".
Description: Dress sewn of cut parchment replicas of the U.S. Constitution with blood stain over heart. (Started in 2008)
A hanger with American flag fabric and an eagle on it.
Materials: Like a lovely framed painting one might see in the National Gallery, the background fabric is burgundy brocade with fringe, velvet edges and gold braid nailed onto the wall. Gold metal hooks and grommets (in background fabric) hold the fabric and hanger up.
Dimensions: 56" x 20"
Description: Oversized American flag award ribbon with presidential seal and articles of Impeachment from Bill Clinton's term contrasted with the documented, yet not acted-upon, impeachable offenses committed by George W. Bush.
Materials: Three American flags, Acetate, gold trim, iron on transfer of Presidential Seal, plastic needlepoint grid.
See larger views of the artwork on my blog BLOG . Cross-posted there and at DailyKos.
Appearing on "The View" TV show July 28th, Speaker Pelosi admitted that she did not know of a single crime that had been committed by the Bush Administration. Joy Behar, one of the 5 co-hosts on the show, asked Pelosi why she had taken Impeachment off the table and continues to keep it off. Pelosi responded by reiterating how important it is to stay focused on the many domestic issues requiring our attention and not to get distracted by such issues as Impeachment. She went on to say that...
If somebody had a crime that the President had committed, that would be a different story.
You can watch a You Tube clip of both Pelosi on The View" and snips from the HOR JUd comm hearings "Shame on Pelosi". Be sure to watch to the end for a great surprise.
How sad! Pelosi obviously needs our help; we must refresh her memory and the memory of "we the people", who might have been confused by Pelosi's lapse of consciousness.
Compassion for her condition restrains me from being sarcastic when I ask, "Where has Madam Speaker been for the past 7 years? Was Rip Van Pelosi asleep and therefore unable to read Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment?"
The time is right; Ron Suskind has just come out with new allegations of Bush crimes and Impeachable offenses. These can all come together by holding a Press conference to repair this dangerous-RIP-loss of awareness.
I have some more details on this story. Author Ron Suskind appeared on the Today show and said that Bush ordered the CIA to forge a letter after the invasion linking Saddam Husein and al-Qaeda, in an effort to justify the invasion after the fact. His new book is "The Way of the World."
President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to to manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, an explosive new book claims.
On his program this morning Thom Hartmann mentioned some off-the-record conversations he had had with Democratic congressional insiders regarding the possibility of impeachment just 100 days or so away from November's general election.
These insiders told Hartmann that the Democrats would not push for impeachment so close to the election because, as has been said so many times before, "impeachment would suck all of the oxygen out of the room." Their belief is that the traditional media, with their deranged sense of "balance," would apportion all of their coverage of any impeachment hearings to the "Democratic" side of the ledger, and grant the bulk of the remaining, "Republican," side of the ledger to coverage of John McCain.
In other words, media coverage would consist of two things: John McCain, and impeachment.
I cannot think of a better way to win in a landslide this November than for exactly that to happen. Let me explain:
As much as I aspire to be motivated by factors more noble than fear - like love and compassion - as a human being I do have fears, and they do motivate me. My need to express and proactively confront these fears arises from my digestion of yesterday's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations.
I'll get to my point: some Republican members of the Committee stated that the primary role of Congress is to protect Americans, to focus on "national security", rather than conduct oversight hearings. They, of course, attempted to justify this position by mentioning threats from terrorists, which did elicit fear in me - but, I'm sure not in the way these members intended.
So, I listened to my fear, and I had a conversation with it:
House Judiciary Committee members have made their opening statements, and witnesses have made their opening statements. House members are now questioning the witnesses. Here is the witness list:
Panel One
The Honorable Dennis Kucinich, Representative from Ohio
The Honorable Maurice Hinchey, Representative from New York
The Honorable Walter Jones, Representative from North Carolina
The Honorable Brad Miller, Representative from North Carolina
Panel Two
The Honorable Elizabeth Holtzman, Former Representative from New York
The Honorable Bob Barr, Former Representative from Georgia, 2008 Libertarian Nominee for President
The Honorable Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson, Founder and President, High Roads for Human Rights
Stephen Presser, Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History, Northwestern University School of Law
Bruce Fein, Associate Deputy Attorney General, 1981-82, Chairman, American Freedom Agenda
Vincent Bugliosi, Author and former Los Angeles County Prosecutor
Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law
Elliott Adams, President of the Board, Veterans for Peace
Frederick A. O. Schwarz, Jr., Senior Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
