Rod Blagojevich is out as Ill. governor

The Senate voted today to remove Rod Blagojevich as governor of Illinois. They also voted to bar him from ever holding public office in Illinois again.

The vote to convict was 59 to 0. The minimum vote to convict him was 40 or more. It wasn't even close.

A proposed resolution to the Blagojevich mess

Mark Kleiman addresses the twin issues of the crooked Rod Blagojevich as Illinois Governor and his effort to appoint Roland Burris to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat.

An interesting point to keep in mind. Impeachment is not a judicial trial. No one has the right to the presumption of innocence when they are being impeached.

George McGovern advocates impeaching Bush

From today's Washington Post:

By George McGovern
Sunday, January 6, 2008; Page B01

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president. [Snip}

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.

From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.

In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?

How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?

It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an "imminent threat" to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks -- another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson's observation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world -- more than a billion people.

Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.

Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies -- especially the war in Iraq -- have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others.

Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Another good American weighs in on the clearly unAmerican regime that currently despoils the White House.

The American Republic is dead. Does anyone care enough to hold a funeral?

Former CIA analyst and Presidential briefer Ray McDaniel says that Bush and Cheney knew clearly that there were no WMD's in Iraq and Knew that there was no active Iranian nuclear weapons program as early 2005. They were lying to the American public in order to start a war with Iraq, then more recently were lying to start a war with Iran. Here is Ray McDaniel's article:

Former CIA analyst says evidence abounds for impeachment

PORTSMOUTH — The evidence for impeachment of the president and vice president is overwhelming, former CIA analyst and daily presidential briefer Ray McGovern told a room full of people at the Portsmouth Public Library Monday night.

McGovern, who provided daily briefings for former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as well as other high ranking officials during his 27 year CIA career, said he has witnessed a "prostitution of his profession" as the Bush administration lied to the American people about the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

"Don't let anyone tell you the President was deceived by false intelligence ... they knew," McGovern said.

For the next 40 minutes, he relayed a series of events leading up to 9/11 which illustrate the President's desire to go to war with Iraq well before 9-11, that reliable CIA evidence showed that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and was presented to the administration and the "facts were fixed" in order to legitimize the invasion.

"The estimate which said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was prepared to the terms of reference laid down by Dick Cheney in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002. It was the worst estimate of intelligence and came to the wrong conclusions, but it was designed to do that," McGovern said.

McGovern has been an outspoken commentator on intelligence-related issues since the late 1990s and since 2002 has been publicly critical of Bush's use of government intelligence in the lead-up to the war.

The recent report detailing Iran's stopping its nuclear weapons program four years ago, is an example of how the administration knows it can no longer hide such "incontrovertible evidence" from the American people in the fallout from the misinformation they received on the Iraq War, McGovern said. He added that he had almost given up on believing their were people still working at the top with a conscious and enough people at the top willing to let analysts do their job and accept independent analysis.

In late 2005, Congress requested an estimate on Iranian nuclear capabilities.
"My former colleagues got really good, incontrovertible evidence that the program, such as it was, has been ordered stopped since 2003. The evidence was such that not even Dick Cheney could deny it. That's why the report was not produced until three weeks ago," McGovern said, adding that the Bush administration has been putting "spin" on their rhetoric ever since.

McGovern also addressed the reasoning he believes is behind the threat of war with Iran. He said he believes Israel thinks they have a pledge from the White House to deal with Iran before Bush leaves office and relayed the story of the U.S.S. Liberty, which was attacked by the Israelis in 1967 and covered up by the United States. Thirty-four U.S soldiers were killed and about 170 were seriously injured.

"It seems to me, that on June, 8, 1967, Israel realized it could literally get away with murder," McGovern said.

McGovern said he also believes Congress will be of little help. Recently House Speaker Nancy Pelosi admitted to learning about torture and illegal eavesdropping in briefings, but said it was her understanding when briefed, that she will not share the information with anyone else, including other members of the House Intelligence Committee.

McGovern called Pelosi out on violating her oath to uphold the Constitution "against enemies, foreign or domestic" by allowing acts in violation of the Constitution to continue by not saying "diddly."

He added that although an impeachment bill currently in Congress is gaining more support, Democrats are shying away because of the influence of lobbies and political analysts telling them to "wait it out" until the election.

Charges in the impeachment bill sponsored by Dennis Kucinich, are very detailed and "as good as any," McGovern said, and referenced the illegal eavesdropping of American citizens. He added that the President has "admitted" to this "demonstrably impeachable offense."

"The argument for impeachment is overwhelming," Randy Kezar of Kingston said after the event. "Impeachment is constitutionally required."

McGovern's visit was co-sponsored by NH Codepink, Seacoast Peace Response, NH Peace Action, NH American Friends Service Committee, Seacoast 9-11 Questions Group, NH Veterans for Peace and Witness for Peace-N.E.
[Highlighting mine - Editor]

Bush has been a rogue madman in office, and the evidence keeps growing. Yet no leader in government - including the Democrats - has stood up to expose this criminal cabal. Anyone who fails to understand that America's government has failed America completely is either bought off by them, corrupt, or simply stupid.

The Democrats are almost as bad as the Republicans, doing anything to avoid conflict and get their personal graft. Then there is the media which seems seems to be more interested in the entertainment values of the war than in the deaths and financial cost. Oh, and the corruption of getting the government to allow it to consolidate. That's not for profit. It's for power. The media now elects our Presidents.

I wonder how many Romans realized that their Republic had died when it became the militarized Empire? Those of us alive in America today have seen a very similar destruction of the Constitutional government that created our Republic, and everyone seems to be moving on, fat, dumb and happy, whistling past the corpse of the the American Republic and the Constitution which was its core lying dead in the street at their feet.

Will anyone police up the corpse, or will it just be left to lie there and rot?

The Bush problem

Bush will ask others to do anything to avoid facing the fact that Bush totally failed America and failed as President when he ordered the invasion of Iraq.

OK. Leaders make decisions based on limited information and under real time constraints. We can't expect perfection, but we can hope they will recognize that the outcome of their decision shows they made the wrong choice and then take actions to correct the earlier error. It's part of being human. Bush, however, does not recognize the error he make in invading Iraq to eliminate terrorism.

Whether he is too stupid to recognize his error, is in an information bubble where no one dares explain the real problem to him, or knows the problems and simply refuses to admit his error is irrelevant. For whatever reason, Bush simply will not change his approach to Iraq. It's "continue to march and fight on for flag and country no matter how stupid the decisions" until the end of his term as President. That's 17 more months at an American death rate of 80 to 100 soldiers per month (minimum 1380 more American deaths between now and the end of January 2009) and no one knows how many Iraqi deaths. Iraqi deaths will be a lot more.

The solution built into the Constitution is impeachment. But the Constitution did not consider the growth of Political parties. Impeachment can be done in the House with a majority of the members approving. Impeachment is equivalent to having a Grand Jury recommend But then the Senate tries person impeached and requires a two-thirds majority to convict.

It is this two-thirds majority that makes the American two-party system most important. Representatives and Senators do not vote their conscience on the facts of the case. They vote the way their party tells them to vote. Two-thirds of the Senate is 67 Senators. Currently there are 49 Republican Senators, 49 Democratic Senators, and 2 Independent Senators. Presently there are 49 Democratic Senators, 48 Republican Senators, and two independent Senators who both vote with the Democratic caucus to choose the Senate Majority leader. Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY) died in June 2007 and has not yet been replaced. Under Wyoming law, the Wyoming Republican party will nominate three candidates and the Democratic governor of Wyoming will choose Sen. Craig's replacement from those three Republicans, so party affiliation will not change. The result in any impeachment trial will be 49 Democrats and 49 Republicans voting. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders can be expected to vote with the Democrats. Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman can be expected to vote with the Republicans. So any Party-line vote on an impeachment trial of Bush and Cheney can be expected to be 50 - 50.

Only a shift of 17 Republicans to towards conviction could remove Bush and Cheney. Why would 17 Republicans shift and vote against their party to remove Bush and Cheney? Assuming that they do not have an individual conscience that drives them to remove the current incompetents in office as President and Vice President (a historically-supported good assumption - few Senators will give up office simply for conscience), then it is only the threat that their voters will remove them from office that will induce them to go against the desires of their party. So the next election is really important to any possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

There are 34 Senator seats up for election in 2008. 22 of those are currently filled by Republicans and 12 by Democrats. Democrats currently hold 49 seats, so they would need to win 18 of the Republican seats and not lose any Democratic seats in order to be assured that they could remove an impeached President on a party-line vote. That's not going to happen.

Bush is the Re publican's President. As long as 18 of the Republicans refuse to impeach him, he remains as commander in chief.

As Bush made very clear in his speech Thursday night, he is not going to take any actions to end the war of occupation in Iraq. Instead he is setting it up for the American troops to occupy that country and fight there for at least a decade and longer if possible.

Unless 18 Republican Senators will vote with all the Democrats to remove him, the Constitution gives Bush the power to keep troops fighting in Iraq until the end of January 2009. 49 Democratic Senators would vote to remove Bush and Cheney today. That makes the war in Iraq a war fought for - but not by - the Republican party. Iraq is a Republican Party war, not an American war.

That makes the reelection of some 34 Senators critical to the direction of the occupation/war in Iraq. But that is also dependent on the willingness of Nancy Pelosi to begin to act on impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

I'd propose that Washington Democrats put pressure on Nancy Pelosi and on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Impeach Bush, Cheney; that will Elect Giuliani President

Is it possible that Bush and Rove are intentionally committing "High crimes and Misdemeanors" in order to bait the Democrats into impeaching Bush and Cheney? Here's why the Bush people would do that.

Not only is the Bush Presidency the Presidency of a criminal organization, it consists of failed criminals. When Bush leaves office in January 2009 he will leave behind an eight year Presidency that lacks any single significant success at all. Bush's signature action is not going to be his effort to track down the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11. It is going to be his too-smart-by-half misdirection in which he tried to overreach and totally reform the Middle East into his vision (and that of the free market oil-besotted Republicans) by attacking Iraq, the weakest Middle Eastern country he could attack. Iraq was the one major oil supplying Middle Eastern country Bush's father had already proven the American military could easily defeat. The result, through what Rumsfeld called "Shock and Awe," was suppose to be a new Middle East consisting of a set of peaceful modernized market-based Middle Eastern states ready to sell oil to the U.S. and recycle the resulting petrodollars by buying American consumer goods and services, all while leaving Israel alone.

Bush's God-given genius was going to create a miracle in the Middle East, and no one else had even thought to try it. The September 11 attacks opened the opportunity.

The many levels of stupidity built into the preemptive attack on Iraq will be studied for decades. Now sometimes even a stupid move can be carried out so that the end results look at least acceptable. Because of Bush's complete lack of any semblance of leadership skills and his inability to select and use competent subordinates that has not been a possible outcome of the abysmally stupid invasion and botched occupation of Iraq.

The American public is sick of Iraq, and Bush refuses to face reality and get us out of there. In so doing, he is destroying the Republican Party as a national party for at least a generation. (The really good part is that Bush has discredited the conservative movement so badly that it can only be replaced. It will never recover.)

Is there anything that could possibly reverse the unparalleled disaster that the Bush administration has perpetuated on America and on the Republican Party? Something that could be done now so that the Republicans could - somehow - retain at least the White House in 2008? Yes, there is, but it is nothing the Republicans can do themselves. They have to get the Democrats to do it for them.

To win or, more realistically, even limit the severity of the Republican losses in the 2008 elections the Republicans have to force the Democrats to impeach Bush.

God only knows that America has never had a President who deserved impeachment more. Even the two other Republican Presidents who well deserved impeachment (Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon) did not deserve impeachment as much as Bush does. Justice demands, even screams, that Bush and Cheney must be removed in disgrace immediately. Justice literally screams for impeachment!

But look at the argument Michael Tomasky of the Washington Post made yesterday regarding the political effects of impeaching Bush and Cheney.

Impeachment is not merely a bad idea, but the single worst course of action that Democrats could possibly undertake -- the only thing they could do that might, in one stroke, convert Bush from the figure of contempt and mockery he is now into one of vague sympathy. Just as bad, it's the one move that would definitively alienate nonideological voters and, therefore, harm the Democrats' otherwise excellent chances for winning congressional seats and the White House in 2008. And that's just what impeachment would do to the Democrats. Even worse is what it would do to liberalism and to the country.

You don't have to be as expert a nose counter as Lyndon B. Johnson to know that impeachment wouldn't succeed. You'd have to get both Bush and Cheney to make any difference, which makes it a heavier lift. Even if the articles of impeachment somehow got through the House -- a stretch, because 61 Democrats represent nominally "red" districts and thus may feel compelled to vote nay -- conviction would require 67 votes in the Senate. That means at least 18 Republicans would have to vote to remove a Republican president and vice president. (I'm assuming that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent, would vote no.) Of course, new bombshells could change all that. But for now, impeachment advocates are urging Democrats to start a fight they'd lose.

[Snip]

Republicans would be far more adept at turning a failed impeachment effort to their advantage in 2008 than the Democrats were in 2000. Back then, Al Gore, his handlers and Democrats in general sought to run from Clinton and push the conversation back to that bland terrain to which defensive Democrats always scamper: "the issues." Republicans, who aren't usually defensive and don't generally scamper, would make impeachment the issue, and by Election Day 2008, the GOP would have millions of Americans believing that -- get this -- the really merciless partisans of the Bush era were the Democrats.

One of the Democrats' strongest arguments for 2008, regardless of their nominee, will be that it's time for the country to set aside rampant partisanship and ideologically driven government. Impeachment would take away that argument.
[Highlighting mine - Editor WTF-o]

Let me briefly summarize the clear outcome of any effort to impeach Bush - Cheney.

1. The impeachment effort will fail. Senate conviction is impossible.
2. Any impeachment effort will shut down the Congress for all other actions. The Republicans don't even have to be obstructive to create the "do-nothing Congress" issue.
3. An attempt to impeach Bush Cheney is the only action that could possible make the Republican Party competitive in the 2008 election by shifting the onus of "Partisanship above the countries' business" onto the Democrats - and it would.

Karl Roves signature strategy for winning difficult elections has always been to convert the opponent's strength into a weakness and to convert his candidate's weakness into a strength.

Bush is so far down in the polls that he has no political strengths of any significance, and he has led the entire Republican Party into the same ditch he is in himself. That is the major weakness of both Bush and the republicans generally - only slightly ahead of the abysmal choice of candidates they have attempted to field to run for President, but that is another issue. How might Karl Rove apply his signature election strategy to the rapidly approaching 2008 election?

He might have Bush make a series of very provocative acts which are clearly high crimes and misdemeanors, tied into alleged efforts to fight the GWOT (Global War on Terrorism.) The effort would not be to create an impregnable Unitary Executive Presidency, since a Democratic President and Congress can reverse those actions starting in 18 months. The intent would be to bait the Democratic Party into attempting to impeach Bush and Cheney.

Mix a Democratic effort to impeach Bush and Cheney with the still very powerful and dangerous Republican propaganda machine and Rove would convert Bush's biggest weaknesses into strengths while converting the Democratic strengths going into the election into weaknesses.

Do you think that Bush and Rove would risk destroying America simply to ensure a Republican election victory (or reduce what is shaping up into a party-destroying loss) in 2008?

Sure they would. Wearing pleased smirks on their faces all the way.

Democrats need to resist the bait. Much as I hate deferring gratification, impeachment must remain off the table.

How to destroy the Constitution

Josh Marshall at TPM wrote the following this evening:

I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the constitution, acting as though not just the law but the constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn't apply to them.

If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.

I think Josh is highly intelligent and very sensible. I generally take political positions that are a little more extreme than he does. So I am really happy to see him catch up to me here. What I regret, and I am sure he does also, is that we have both come to the conclusion that Bush is working to destroy American Constitutional democracy.

The Bush administration is a rogue Presidency. It is out of control and has been since 2001. There has been a series of events that each should have been considered a Constitutional Crisis, but politicians and journalists have been afraid to call the Bush people on it, while the Republicans who have had control of the Congress until January 2005 have reveled in it.

Andrew Johnson, who became President when Lincoln was assassinated, did everything he could to prevent the freeing of the slaves after the Civil War. His impeachment was well deserved, and the failure to convict him in the Senate allowed him to remain in office where he did immense damage to America. The damage he did lasted until the period of the Civil Rights movement.

But it could have been worse. Congress learned after he survived the impeachment trial to work around Johnson and isolate him so that he became the next thing to a eunuch in the office of the Presidency.

Reid and Pelosi need to understand what was done to Andrew Johnson and apply those lessons to the single worst President American has ever had - bush.

One thing about Johnson, though. He did not have much scope for mischief making in international affairs. It is in that area that Bush and his puppet master Cheney have had their worst effects. That, too, must be considered.

America as a nation under the U.S. Constitution is in grave danger from Bush and the Republican Party as created by Goldwater. We have to stop them from destroying America, and when we accomplish that, we really need to hope that a semblance of America remains.

The rebuilding, if possible, will take decades at best.

NY times: Gonzales lied - also Bush expansion of Executive Privilige Unconstitutional, wrong

I rarely link to or even read New York Times editorials because of their overreaching subscription wall. If they want me to read something, it should be on the net for free without a time limit. Today's editorial is apparently meant to be read, however, since it is not behind the wall. It can be read here.

So why bother? Well,it covers two very current situations. First is regarding the lies Alberto Gonzales told Congress in his position as Attorney General.

When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wanted the USA Patriot Act renewed in the spring of 2005, he told the Senate, “There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse.” But The Washington Post reported yesterday that just six days earlier, the F.B.I. had sent Mr. Gonzales a report saying that it had obtained personal information it should not have.

Then further down the NY Times editors move on to Bush's demand that "Executive Privilege" be expanded to cover what Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara Taylor, a former top aide to Karl Rove know about the potentially criminal behavior of Attorney General's office in the case of the purge of the U.S. attorneys.

Mr. Bush’s claim is baseless. Executive privilege, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, is a judge-made right of limited scope, intended to create a sphere of privacy around the president so that he can have honest discussions with his advisers. The White House has insisted throughout the scandal that Mr. Bush — and even Mr. Gonzales — was not in the loop about the firings. If that is the case, the privilege should not apply.

Even if Mr. Bush was directly involved, Ms. Miers and Ms. Taylor would have no right to withhold their testimony. The Supreme Court made clear in the Watergate tapes case, its major pronouncement on the subject, that the privilege does not apply if a president’s privacy interests are outweighed by the need to investigate possible criminal activity. Congress has already identified many acts relating to the scandal that may have been illegal, including possible obstruction of justice and lying to Congress.

The White House argues that its insistence on the privilege is larger than this one case, that it is protecting the presidency from inappropriate demands from Congress. But the reverse is true. This White House has repeatedly made clear that it does not respect Congress’s constitutional role. If Congress backs down, it would not only be compromising an important investigation of Justice Department malfeasance. It would be doing serious damage to the balance of powers.

This is a pretty important statement for the newspaper of record to make on the day that Miers and Taylor are set to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify and yet have been directed by Bush not to testify. The Bush administration is an out-of-control runway Presidency making Unconstitutional demands of Congress and of the American people.

It is only the Republican Senators and Congressmen who are placing loyalty to their political party above loyalty to America and the Constitution which is holding up the totally necessary action of impeachment of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and as became very clear when his lies to Congress were just exposed, Alberto Gonzales.

It is the anti-Constitutional and anti-American behavior of the Republican politicians which is extremist, not the totally appropriate demands for impeachment of Bush, Cheney and Gonzales. The behavior of these self-serving Republican politicians must be considered for retribution when the next election occurs in November 2008 (and later for those Senators not up for reelection until 2010 and 2012.

This New York Times editorial demonstrates the need to remove these cancers on the body of American government and politics as rapidly as possible.

---

See also:

• Gonzales lied under oath to the Senate
  posted Tuesday, July 10, 2007.

Gonzales lied under oath to the Senate

John Solomon of the Washington Post, using documents received from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act, reports that the Attorney General lied to the Senate.

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Articles of Impeachment similar to those being prepared against Bush and Cheney need to also be prepared against the Attorney General - and quickly.

An impeachable crime has already been committed. Further hearings on the nature of civil rights abuse need to be held, but the impeachable offense of lying to the Senate under Oath should cause Gonzales to be removed immediately.

NY Times (finally) advocates setting deadline to get out of Iraq

Editor and Publisher allows us to get around the New York Time subscription wall and learn that their editorial writers have had it with the Bush/Cheney idiocy in Iraq. In their Sunday edition for July 8th They advocate setting a firm deadline to get out of Iraq.

A lengthy excerpt follows. The entire editorial is posted at www.nytimes.com
•

At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.

While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.

The political leaders Washington has backed are incapable of putting national interests ahead of sectarian score settling. The security forces Washington has trained behave more like partisan militias. Additional military forces poured into the Baghdad region have failed to change anything.

Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.

A majority of Americans reached these conclusions months ago. Even in politically polarized Washington, positions on the war no longer divide entirely on party lines. When Congress returns this week, extricating American troops from the war should be at the top of its agenda.

That conversation must be candid and focused. Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.

The administration, the Democratic-controlled Congress, the United Nations and America’s allies must try to mitigate those outcomes — and they may fail. But Americans must be equally honest about the fact that keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse. The nation needs a serious discussion, now, about how to accomplish a withdrawal and meet some of the big challenges that will arise.

The Mechanics of Withdrawal

The United States has about 160,000 troops and millions of tons of military gear inside Iraq. Getting that force out safely will be a formidable challenge. The main road south to Kuwait is notoriously vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks. Soldiers, weapons and vehicles will need to be deployed to secure bases while airlift and sealift operations are organized. Withdrawal routes will have to be guarded. The exit must be everything the invasion was not: based on reality and backed by adequate resources.

The United States should explore using Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq as a secure staging area. Being able to use bases and ports in Turkey would also make withdrawal faster and safer. Turkey has been an inconsistent ally in this war, but like other nations, it should realize that shouldering part of the burden of the aftermath is in its own interest.

Accomplishing all of this in less than six months is probably unrealistic. The political decision should be made, and the target date set, now....

The Question of Bases

The United States could strike an agreement with the Kurds to create those bases in northeastern Iraq. Or, the Pentagon could use its bases in countries like Kuwait and Qatar, and its large naval presence in the Persian Gulf, as staging points.

There are arguments for, and against, both options. Leaving troops in Iraq might make it too easy — and too tempting — to get drawn back into the civil war and confirm suspicions that Washington’s real goal was to secure permanent bases in Iraq. Mounting attacks from other countries could endanger those nations’ governments.

The White House should make this choice after consultation with Congress and the other countries in the region, whose opinions the Bush administration has essentially ignored. The bottom line: the Pentagon needs enough force to stage effective raids and airstrikes against terrorist forces in Iraq, but not enough to resume large-scale combat.

The Civil War

One of Mr. Bush’s arguments against withdrawal is that it would lead to civil war. That war is raging, right now, and it may take years to burn out. Iraq may fragment into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics, and American troops are not going to stop that from happening.

It is possible, we suppose, that announcing a firm withdrawal date might finally focus Iraq’s political leaders and neighboring governments on reality. Ideally, it could spur Iraqi politicians to take the steps toward national reconciliation that they have endlessly discussed but refused to act on.

But it is foolish to count on that, as some Democratic proponents of withdrawal have done. The administration should use whatever leverage it gains from withdrawing to press its allies and Iraq’s neighbors to help achieve a negotiated solution.

Iraq’s leaders — knowing that they can no longer rely on the Americans to guarantee their survival — might be more open to compromise, perhaps to a Bosnian-style partition, with economic resources fairly shared but with millions of Iraqis forced to relocate. That would be better than the slow-motion ethnic and religious cleansing that has contributed to driving one in seven Iraqis from their homes.

The United States military cannot solve the problem. Congress and the White House must lead an international attempt at a negotiated outcome. To start, Washington must turn to the United Nations, which Mr. Bush spurned and ridiculed as a preface to war....

The Neighbors

One of the trickiest tasks will be avoiding excessive meddling in Iraq by its neighbors — America’s friends as well as its adversaries.

Just as Iran should come under international pressure to allow Shiites in southern Iraq to develop their own independent future, Washington must help persuade Sunni powers like Syria not to intervene on behalf of Sunni Iraqis. Turkey must be kept from sending troops into Kurdish territories.

For this effort to have any remote chance, Mr. Bush must drop his resistance to talking with both Iran and Syria. Britain, France, Russia, China and other nations with influence have a responsibility to help. Civil war in Iraq is a threat to everyone, especially if it spills across Iraq’s borders.
•

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened — the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

After their own Judith Miller was so deeply involved in lying to get us into the mess in Iraq, now, at last, after over four years the New York Times is publishing something reasonable.

Combine this with the reports that polls now show that close to half the American public thinks that Congress should begin hearings into impeaching both Cheney and Bush and it looks like it is time to stick a fork into the Bush administration. They are finished.

Will someone please knock on the door and wake Congress up? It's time they started earning their pay and taking action.

Bush has nothing to lose, plenty of time to stonewall

Congress - in the form of Henry Waxman of the House Judiciary Committee - wants testimony regarding possible crimes from White House employees. The White House has refused to permit them to testify, so the House Judiciary Committee as Subpoenaed them. The White House has refused to comply, citing Executive Privilege. Next step, the Courts.

But the courts, if they respond at all, will respond slowly. The White House "wins" if it makes it to the election of November 2008 without responding. Why would the White House cave on letting his subordinates testify? He doesn't even have an anointed successor who needs his support? As soon as the Primary nominations are over, whoever the Republican nominee for President is will be running from the Bush Presidency like he was on fire.

Bush has lost everything in his Presidency. He has no successes beyond merely being elected twice. He just attempted to push immigration reform through Congress and got shot down by his own Party. His legacy is the invasion of Iraq. He is not going to create a twin legacy of Iraq - first invading, then being the President who admits defeat by withdrawing from Iraq.

Oh, yeah. Iraq. September.

Gen. Petreaus will report that there has been some slight progress, and we just need more time. I don't know the General, or even anything personal about him that hasn't been in the media, but there is no doubt that he is a professional with a great deal of respect from his peers. But he knows better than most what the occupation of Iraq has cost the military and how really well they have performed. Professionals do not quit when there is a possibility of success, especially when they have a heavy emotional investment. How could he continue leading our military in Iraq presently and count the costs in lives and treasure now, then in September come back and say "It can't be won"? Then, in the middle of the maelstrom there will always be indicators that point in every direction. All he has to do is select the indicators that suggest possible success. That will not be difficult. Admitting failure will be extremely difficult, professionally, politically, and very probably personally.

He is going to tell America, Bush and the Congress in September that Iraq can be won but it will take more time and effort. There were probably all kinds of indicators in the defeated South after Reconstruction that allowed predictions that the freed slaves would quickly assimilate into society and that Peace would be restored. Violent terrorism by the KKK and the White majority prevented that from happening for over a century, and it still required violence to end the twin evils of segregation and terrorist repression of the African-American population.

It won't be difficult for Gen. Petreaus to report that we can win in just a little more time, since that is the only message Bush is prepared to hear. That's the case for Cheney, too, if he is still in office.

What's left? Impeach Bush? Empty, time-wasting gesture. The Senate will never permit him to be convicted and everything else in Congress would come to a stop for six months to a year. The American people would see such a gesture as what it was - a symptom of Democratic frustration because they can't do anything to get the rat out of his hole.

Except for the Presidential nomination runs this year, the almost inevitable attempt by terrorists to attack America here in the homeland sometime before the next Presidential election, and possibly the third security threat to America predicted around year 2000 [*] - the California earthquake, probably in San Francisco, this looks like an extremely frustrating, even politically barren, year coming up.

The White House stone-masons are hard at work, and why not? They have nothing else to do until after November 2008 and they are in a well protected position. About all we can do is watch.

---

[*] the three predicted security threats to America were:

• A major terrorist attack on a large American city,
• A major hurricane hitting New Orleans, and
  
• A major earthquake hitting California, particularly in San Francisco.

The Bush administration did not prepare for any of them, and will express shock if the San Francisco earthquake hits on their watch. Remember Condi Rice saying "No one could have predicted that terrorists would hi-jack commercial aircraft and use them to attack American buildings." Of course, it had been predicted, and she was probably told. Her subordinates certainly were.

Nothing prevents the other two events from occurring again, either. Real life will continue regardless of what the politicians find it possible to do or to blather about.

Impeachment To Be Filed On Cheney

It has taken too long, but Dennis Kuchinic states he is going to file articles of impeachment on Dick Cheney.

In my opinion, Dick Cheney is the single most dangerous individual in a position of leadership in any major nation in the world today. It's about time the impeachment process began on him.

Is Joe Klein hinting impeachment? I really hope so.

Editor & Publisher gives an advance notice of what Joe Klein is expected to publish in tomorrow's "Time" magazine.

Klein claims, in referring to the president, that he has “tried to be respectful of the man and the office” but now he recognizes that the “defining sins” of his administration “are congenital: they’re part of his personality. They’re not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.”

Earlier in the column, Klein hits Bush's "adolescent petulance" and "indifference to reality in Iraq" and charges that his "hyper-partisanship" amounts to "a travesty of governance." He declares that the three major Bush problems of the year “precisely illuminate the three qualities that make this Administration one of the worst in American history: arrogance (the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S. Attorneys)."

This is an amazingly accurate representation of the Bush administration, one I never expected a major American publication to publish. That it appears in the traditionally conservative and sometimes reactionary "Time" magazine is surprising all by itself.

We can just hope that it is the beginning of a real tsunami describing the utter failure of this, the most incompetent person ever to occupy the office of the American Presidency.

Rove, Cheney, Libby all committed treason by outing Plame

I agree with Juan Cole. The people who provided Valerie Plame's name and CIA affiliation to journalists like Judy Miller (and in Rove's case, confirming that information to bob Novak) meet the Constitutional definition of Treason. That is:

Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The law may not properly deal with this situation, which is why the Constitution includes the impeachment procedure.

Cheney clearly was committing treason. Bush almost certainly knew, but even if he did not, his failure to conduct a thorough investigation of who leaked Plame's name. This came out last Friday in the House Hearings. [See FDL Liveblogs the House Plame Hearings and look down to where Dr. James Knodell, Director, Office of Security, The White House testified and stated that there has been absolutely no investigation into the leaking of Plame's identity by employee Karl Rove."

This might well be what Libby was protecting Cheney from when he took the fall and was convicted.

Why didn't the Libby Defense call Libby and Cheney?

In the opening statements of the Libby Trial, Libby’s lawyer made a big point that Libby was being presented as the “fall guy” in order to protect Karl Rove. But it was never mentioned during the trial itself. Then throughout the trial, the Defense appeared ready to call Cheney and to have Libby testify in his own defense. Then, almost abruptly, the Defense rested without calling either, even though it is extremely difficult for someone on trial for lies and perjury to convince a jury of his innocence if he doesn’t testify himself. Without those Defense elements, what was presented was extremely weak. Sidney Blumenthal at Salon [Day Pass or membership required] explains what happened.

”[W]hy was Libby virtually passive? If Libby knew he was going to offer the barest defense, why didn't he do as Rove did, amending his grand jury testimony to reflect the truth? Why didn't Libby do as former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer did, turning state's evidence and being granted immunity in exchange for his testimony? What stopped Libby from risking indictment? What prevented him from making more than a minimal defense that invited conviction?
Libby could not plead the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. Had he done so he would not have been able to continue in his position as Cheney's chief of staff; he would have been compelled to resign. But why didn't he testify? Why didn't he make the case of Rove's perfidy that his lawyer suggested?

Libby and Rove's falsehoods in front of the grand jury, in which they blamed reporters for telling them about Plame, were a cleverly contrived coverup. They did not believe that the prosecutor would be able to break through the curtain of the First Amendment or untangle the tale as told by journalists. Both Libby and Rove relied on the same alibi, hiding behind the press corps that they had manipulated for years and whose erratic habits they knew well. But prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was not about to be confounded by this device. He knew the law was on his side, and he received a judicial decision forcing the reporters to testify.

Just as Fitzgerald was about to indict Rove for perjury and obstruction of justice, Rove got a lucky break. A reporter for Time magazine, Viveca Novak, a colleague of Cooper's and privy to his conversation with Rove, became consumed with an overwhelming desire to be an important inside dopester, and she rushed to inform Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, about Cooper's information. Suddenly, Rove produced an e-mail from Cooper that he had not produced to the prosecutor for a year, refreshed his memory, altered his testimony, and was off the hook. (Novak did not tell her editors or Cooper of her freelancing, and she was forced to resign, in effect sacrificing her career to save Rove by the skin of his teeth.) Libby was left to take the fall alone.[Snip]

Did something change in the defense after its opening statement about Rove (Libby "will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected") that led to its refusal to follow up during the trial? Did the prosecutor have new information that has not yet been made public about Libby and Cheney? If so, that evidence would have been irrelevant to the precise charges against Libby but might have come into play if Libby and Cheney testified. Their appearances might have made them vulnerable to additional perjury and obstruction charges if they were found to have lied on the stand. But who might have proved that?

The missing piece in the extensive evidence and testimony that detailed the administration's concerted attack on Wilson, orchestrated by Cheney, is the conversations among Libby, Cheney -- and Rove. Rove had made a deal with Fitzgerald. Rove changed his testimony, escaped prosecution and went back for a fifth time before the grand jury. Fitzgerald owned Rove.

Only if Libby and Cheney appeared could Fitzgerald cross-examine them about their discussions with Rove, which presumably Rove had already testified about before the grand jury. Rove was the hostile witness against Cheney whom the prosecution had waiting in the wings, the witness who was never called. If Libby had come to the stand in his own defense, and summoned Cheney as well, Fitzgerald might have been prompted to call Rove from the deep to impeach Libby's and Cheney's credibility and reveal new incriminating information about them. Instead, Libby remained silent, Cheney flew off to Afghanistan and Rove never appeared. Rove was the missing witness for the prosecution.

Assuming all this is correct, then it seems to me that Rove will be the key witness in an impeachment and trial of Dick Cheney. Fitzgerald seemed to make a point in his final statement that while he intended no more indictments, his evidence was available to the Congress.

The imperial presidency - deja-vu all over again

Want to see what the Constitutional crisis that is building between the President and Congress? Digby presents the history from Nixon by way of Cheney to the Bush White House. We will see this working out in the next year or so, and since it is a matter of principle to Dick Cheney, it is extremely likely to lead to impeachment of Bush and Cheney both.