Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Cyber Space Remains Alive With The New Hampshire Campaign and Growing Clamor for Bush and Cheney Impeachment on The Torture Issue!
Betty and New Hampshire Make The Front Page at Michael’s Place!
ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING!
Give this post a good look. There are sites posted here for the first time, and they are superb!
New Hampshire Rallies for Impeachment
By davidswanson
Calling President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney "domestic enemies," Pentagon Papers icon Daniel Ellsberg headlined a rally in Concord last night calling for their impeachment. read more.
NH Bill Proposed To Impeach Bush
By SadInAmerica
"They are domestic enemies of the United States' Constitution," Ellsberg said of Bush and Vice President Cheney. He said he hopes impeachment proceedings could shed light on classified information from the Bush administration. .. Know The Lies - Demistifying... - http://www.knowthelies.com
Resolution could be challenged by Dems as well as GOP
Nashua Telegraph, NH - Apr 15, 2008
By KEVIN LANDRIGAN, Telegraph Staff CONCORD – You might consider state Rep. Betty Hall the patron saint of long-shot political causes. ...
Telegraph Editorial
Nashua Telegraph - Nashua,NH,USA
Proponents argue that some of the actions represent the types of "high crimes and misdemeanors" that merit impeachment of Bush and Cheney – no questions ...
Pro-Impeachment Statements from Two More New Hampshire State ...
By davidswanson
The Impeachment Resolution — NH State Representative Betty Hall Is An American Hero By Rep. Jim Splaine. One of my most golden memories of the New Hampshire State Legislature was in 1973, when I stood with just about two dozen other ...
200 Flock To Rally For Impeachment
By Randy W. Sandberg(Randy W. Sandberg)
The rally, which drew more than 200 people to the Capitol Center for the Arts, was aimed at the New Hampshire House, which is considering a resolution that would call on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney. ...
End Injustice Now! - http://endinjusticenow.blogspot
http://firedoglake.com/2008/04/16/senator-whitehouse-talks-about-justice-and-the-rule-of-law/
Advocates Push for Impeachment Resolution
NHPR - Concord,NH,USA
Several hundred people gathered in Concord Monday night to hear from state and national figures urging the New Hampshire House to pass the impeachment ... See all stories on this topic
NH State Rep Jim Splaine on Why He Will Support Impeachment Res ...
By Sue Serpa
But neither deserve to journey into history without the asterisk that there were efforts in various states to encourage Congress to impeach them. As they leave the White House, the past has shown us that former Presidents usually go ...
- http://www.neimpeach.org/wp
NH State Rep Jim Splaine on Why He Will Support Impeachment Res ...
By ralphlopez
If adopted, New Hampshire will not only be the first-in-the-nation presidential primary but the first-in-the-nation on impeachment, employing Jefferson's Manual rules, whereby a single state legislature may direct Congress to initiate ...
MyDD - http://www.mydd.com/section
Advocates Push for Impeachment Resolution
By Dan Gorenstein
The New Hampshire House is scheduled to take up a resolution to encourage Congress to begin the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
New Hampshire Public Radio - - http://nhpr.org
New Hampshire Impeachment Efforts Get Final Boost Before Vote
By mike hersh
by Dan DeWalt On April 14, close to 500 legislators and citizens packed the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord NH and sat through more than three hours of words and music making the case for the NH House to send an impeachment ...
Progressive Democrats of America Blog - http://blog.pdamerica.org/
Impeach Vote on HR24 Tomorrow in New Hampshire
By Daily Kos(Daily Kos)
If adopted, New Hampshire will not only be the first-in-the-nation presidential primary but the first-in-the-nation on impeachment, employing Jefferson's Manual rules, whereby a single state legislature may direct Congress to initiate ...
Daily Kos - http://www.dailykos.com
Lt. Col. Robert Bowman: "Impeach them [Bush and Cheney] for ...
By jamartellxiv
NH State Representative, Betty Hall, has introduced HR24 to the NH House of Representatives which, if passed, will call on the US Congress to begin impeachment proceedings of George Bush and Dick Cheney... HR24, a house resolution, ...
911Blogger.com - Paying Attention... - http://www.911blogger.com
New Hampshire Can Pass Impeachment Resolution Today: Email State ...
By davidswanson
Please email... hreps@leg.state.nh.us. SUBJECT: Testimony in support of bill HR-24 re: Impeach Bush and Cheney. MESSAGE: Please support Betty Hall's resolution that urges Congress to Impeach Bush and Cheney. read more.
AfterDowningStreet.org - Impeach... - http://www.afterdowningstreet
Impeach Bush … Please!
Betty Hall calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Here's some video of the NH "Impeach Bush" rally back in February ... and more ... and you'll find more when you open up these ...
JordanCornblog - http://www.jordancornblog.com
Impeach Bush and Cheney For Torture
By LHawes
It’s no excuse to say, “we can’t impeach Bush because President Cheney would be worse.” We know that Cheney directly approved torture, so they must be impeached together. If they were convicted by the Senate (or resigned to avoid ...
Synaptic Stew - http://synapticstew.com
YES, Beach Impeach 5 is ON, Bigger Than Ever
By beachblogger
Early on the morning of April 26, for the FIRST time we will outline "IMPEACH BOTH!!!" in 100-foot letters in the sand of Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Attendees (referred to here as volunteers) are asked to ARRIVE NO LATER THAN 10:30 ...
Beachblogger.net - http://beachblogger.net/pics
Nei lYoung, “Let’s Impeach The President”
By SEPA
“Let’s Impeach The President”. Let’s impeach the President for lying And misleading our country into war Abusing all the power that we gave him And shipping all our money out the door. Who’s the man who hired all the criminals ...
Progressive Network of Southeast PA - http://progressivenetworksepa
What now? Impeach For Real This Time.
By PurpleZoe(PurpleZoe)
Please sign the impeachment petition. Start there. We'll discuss what else 'the people' can do to ensure our government is healthy and truly in the best interest of the Village. Sign the Petition here: http://action.aclu.org/site/ ...
UltravioletUnderground - http://purplezoe.blogspot.com/
| Senator Whitehouse Talks About Justice and the Rule of Law By: looseheadprop Wednesday April 16, 2008 5:00 am
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As some of you know from the comment threads, this past Saturday I attended the Association of the Bar of the City of New York's Council on Criminal Justice retreat entitled "A Summit on the Prosecution Function." Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was both a panelist and the luncheon speaker and he graciously respond to my request for a copy of his speech, so that I might share some of the highlights with you.
The event as a whole was characterized by a bluntness and refreshing willingness to call bullshit and rip the fig leaves off of some of the more egregious behavior to come out of our system of justice in the last few years. Senator Whitehouse's speech fit right into that, it was blunt -- in the good way, it wasted no time shilly shallying politely making excuses in the name of not further damaging the Department of Justice. Nope, it cut straight to the chase, right on the first page:
While I won’t delve into the long litany of frightful stories regarding the tenure of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, I would like to touch on one simple point: the Attorney General simply did not seem to respect the institution that he was tasked to serve. I remember when I first took office as Attorney General of little Rhode Island, how strongly I felt the responsibility and honor of that office. I don’t think he ever felt that way. I think he felt he had seized more territory for George Bush.
He then went on to give a little report card that mentioned some reforms that AG Mukasey has instituted and to note some improvements of tone that the Senator has noticed since Muksaey took office. However, the Senator noted, despite these improvements, "much remains undone."
At which point, the good Senator launched into the topic of the Yoo memos. He had several great pickups. For example: that definiton of torture Yoo used, you know "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure ....", that one? Do you know where it comes from? 42 USC Section 1395w-22, a Medicare reimbursement statute! I kid you not.
And how did we get to the point where the highly respected Office of Legal Counsel was using Medicare reimbursement statutes – statutes utterly irrelevant to the interrogation of suspected terrorists – to justify its legal analysis on this issue?
Making matters worse, this “legal analysis” was used to justify the legality of a certain coercive interrogation technique that regrettably has become familiar to us all, “water-boarding.”
Water-boarding has a long and sordid history in the annals of tyrant regimes, and brutal occupations. It was used by the Spanish Inquisition, by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, by the French in Algeria, by the Japanese in World War II, and by military dictators of Latin America.
The technique ordinarily involves strapping a captive in a reclining position, heels above head, putting a cloth over his face and pouring water over the cloth to create the feeling of suffocation and drowning. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was held captive for more than five years by the North Vietnamese, has said this of water-boarding: “It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.”
The United States government said the same thing. Americans, on behalf of military tribunals, initiated war crimes prosecutions against Japanese soldiers who water-boarded American aviators in World War II.
In fact, the United States government itself brought a civil rights prosecution against a Texas sheriff who water-boarded prisoners. The indictment asserted that the defendants conspired to “subject prisoners to a suffocating ‘water torture’ ordeal in order to coerce confessions.” The sheriff and his deputies were convicted by a jury and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. At sentencing, the presiding judge admonished the former sheriff that “[t]he operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a primitive country.”
It is at this point that Senator Whitehouse brought up the matter of US v. Lee which we discussed yesterday afternoon. After that, a more chilling point:
I see the torture memo as part of a disquieting pattern at the Office of Legal Counsel. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have had the opportunity to review secret OLC opinions related to the warrantless wiretapping program. Those opinions are also deeply troubling. I was so offended by three legal theories contained in those memos, that I fought to have them declassified and brought to light. Those theories are, as declassified by the Director of National Intelligence:
1) An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it;
2) The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II; and
3) The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.
Point I=Emptywheel's Pixie Dust.
Suffice it simply to say that the first proposition -- that executive compliance with executive orders is optional -- turns the Federal Register into a screen of falsehood, behind whose phony regulations lawless programs can operate in secret. (Remember that a regulation has the “force and effect of law.”) Contrast the second proposition -- that Article II gives the President the authority to define his Article II powers -- with the famous language of Marbury v. Madison, that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.” And compare the third proposition -- that the President tells the Department of Justice what the law is, and not vice versa -- to the famous statement, uttered by Richard Nixon: “If the President does it, that means it is not illegal.”
As you know, I was nearly apoplectic when I heard AG Mukasey, a few mere weeks after his confirmation hearings, say that you could not say that waterboarding was legally torture, though it would seem like torture if performed upon his own person. I find myself wondering, was Mukasey telegraphing that whether or not he believed it to be torture, he could not say it was torture, because the President, pursuant to point 2 above has declared that it is not torture, and therefore, pursuant to point 3 above, no one at the Department of Justice can contradict the President?
Does it come down to something as stupid, foolish and illogical as that?
No wonder they don't want to turn over that memo, even though it's not classified, even though non-classified OLC opinions used to be published so they could provide guidance to everybody.
All I know is, if they ever release that remaining memo, we're gonna need a hundred part series to dissect all the things wrong with it. Anyway, thank you Senator Whitehouse for all you have done, all you are doing and all you will do in the future to preserve and restore the rule of law in this country.
Tell Congress to Impeach Over Torture!
Tell Congress to Impeach Bush and Cheney for Torture http://www.democrats.com/impeach-for-torture Dr. Martin Luther King famously said of the Vietnam War, "A time comes when silence is betrayal." When our President and Vice President ...
Events from My.BarackObama.com - http://my.barackobama.com/page
BuzzFlash.net - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude ...
theimpeachmenthearingroom
Michael Chertoff - RocketNews
theimpeachmenthearingroom
Court Of Impeachment And War Crimes: Changes at The Court Of ...
http://theimpeachmenthearingroom
Impeach Bush and Cheney for Torture
By Ann J.
Impeach Bush and Cheney for Torture On Friday, George Bush told ABC News he personally approved of the approval of torture - including waterboarding - by Dick Cheney , Condoleeza . . .
Gather: Articles by Gather Essentials... - http://news.gather.com
Tampa's Back Door Ways ... (OR...): Wasted Days and Wasted Nights
... Donate for Tim Johnson Campaign (1); EIGHTY NINE PERCENT (1); ELEVEN THOUSAND HOMELESS (1); Ed Dickau The Precinct Master Gave me the NOD (1) ...
Sign Petition to Arrest Bush and Cheney
By davidswanson
CLICK HERE.AfterDowningStreet.org - Impeach... - http://www.afterdowningstreet
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