Post-Convention Cull Day

Wow, a LOT apparently happened while I was busy at, or recovering from, the convention I worked at this past weekend. Too much for me to keep track of, or research, or comment in detail on.

So... it's Cull Day!

First off: Oklahoma becomes the first state to begin organizing its secessionist army.

Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.

. . .

"Is it scary? It sure is," said tea party leader Al Gerhart of Oklahoma City, who heads an umbrella group of tea party factions called the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance. "But when do the states stop rolling over for the federal government?"

Incidentally, folks, it should be borne in mind that, just before the Civil War, most newspapers in the South were agents of the fire-eating secessionist wing of the Democratic Party, deliberately ginning up fear, hatred and paranoia among their readership. Today... we have Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, NewsMax.com, Drudge, National Review... so, yeah.

The Tea Parties are trying to unite... except, well, it's only those tea party groups funded and run by Republican Party activists that are uniting:

Mark Skoda, a Tea Party leader from Memphis (and a founder of the recent Tea Party Convention), is serving as the chief spokesman for the effort, and appears to have played a leading role in putting it together. Skoda, working closely with Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation, had helped organize and promote February's convention, at which Sarah Palin delivered the keynote speech and which enjoyed widespread media coverage. Also part of the new coalition is the Tea Party Express, the brainchild of a team of California Republican political consultants.

But one prominent group, the Tea Party Patriots (TPP), doesn't appear to be joining the party. Jenny Beth Martin, a leader of TPP noted to TPMmuckraker that her group already considers itself the largest grassroots Tea Party organization, and said it hadn't been involved in planning the new federation. TPP had also stayed away from February's convention.

It should be noted that Tea Party Nation is the group founded and led by former Republican leader Dick Armey. This is a clear case of the Republican Party trying- and failing- to co-opt the teabaggers, who are definitely much more radical and bigoted than the national average. Even Fox News is calling the teabaggers out on their lunacy, now that they realize they won't be controlled.

Even as Virginia Governor McConnell apologizes and backtracks on his leaving slavery out of the Civil War, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour brushes slavery off as unimportant:

CROWLEY: You know what I'm trying to get at here is that there's a sort of feeling that this is insensitive. But you clearly don't agree?

BARBOUR: To me, it's a sort of feeling that it's a nit, that it is not significant, that it's not a -- it's trying to make a big deal out of something doesn't amount to diddly.

So, yeah: slavery was wrong, "everybody knows that," but apparently it wasn't important at all to the Confederacy. Riiiiight.

Matthew Yglesias cuts right to the heart of both the Republican desire to celebrate the CSA, and the core of teabagger support:

... something that links the mentality of today’s right to the mentality of the slaveowners and segregation proponents is the white southern political tradition’s very partial and selective embrace of majoritarian democracy. As long as national institutions are substantially controlled by white southerners, the white south is a hotbed of patriotism. But as soon as an non-southern political coalition manages to win an election—as we saw in 1860 and in 2008—then suddenly the symbols of national authority become symbols of tyranny and the constitution is construed as granting conservative areas all kinds of alleged abilities to opt out of national political decisions. Even if you think opposition to the Affordable Care Act has nothing whatsoever to do with race, the underlying political philosophy by which a George W Bush or James Buchanan is a national president but an Abraham Lincoln or a Barack Obama merely a sectional one remains incoherent and pernicious.

Meanwhile, if you haven't had enough reminders of innate Republican evil, Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff in the State Department, testified that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld knew full well they were imprisoning- and torturing- innocent people in Guantanamo and elsewhere:

I came to understand that there were several different reasons for the refusal to release detainees in Guantánamo, even those who were likely innocent. These reasons continued to the time of my departure from the Department of State in 2005. At least part of the problem was that it was politically impossible to release them. The concern expressed was that if they were released to another country... the leadership of the Defense Department would be left without any plausible explanation to the American people...

. . .

Another part of the political dilemma originated in the Office of Vice President Richard B. Cheney, whose position could be summed up as “the end justifies the means”, and who had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent, or that there was a lack of any useable evidence for the great majority of them. If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it. That seemed to be the philosophy that ruled in the Vice President’s Office.

Of course, with Dawn Johnsen's nomination to the Office of Legal Counsel scuttled, the last faint hope of Obama ever following up on this testimony has long since flown away.

And finally, a recent federal court ruling puts a major kink in plans for net neutrality regulations. That said, it was almost certainly the right ruling:

If “ancillary jurisdiction” is enough for net neutrality regulations (something we might like) today, it could just as easily be invoked tomorrow for any other Internet regulation that the FCC dreams up (including things we won’t like). For example, it doesn't take much imagination to envision a future FCC "Internet Decency Statement." After all, outgoing FCC Chairman Martin was a crusader against "indecency" on the airwaves and it was the FCC that punished Pacifica radio for playing George Carlin’s “seven dirty words” monologue, something you can easily find on the Internet.

Of course, this ruling can- and probably will- lead to more direct and stringent regulation of telecoms and internet providers by the FCC, since they won't be allowed to do spot-checks on egregious incidents. This issue is by no means settled.

Vote on Impeaching Bush Tomorrow...

Dennis Kucinich yesterday introduced a resolution to impeach George Walker Bush, standing for about five hours to read his entire 62-page resolution aloud into the congressional record.

Tonight the same resolution is being read aloud a second time, in order that the bill may be voted on tomorrow.

It's going to go to the House Judiciary Committee to die, the same as Kucinich's bill to impeach Richard Cheney. Nancy Pelosi has not moved on her position of no impeachment now or ever. As of this typing Kucinich has only one co-sponsor- Richard Wexler of Florida- and, aside from MSNBC, no mass media coverage to speak of.

To my mind, of course, this is a demonstration of the criminality of the current Democratic leadership, acquiescing yet again to an imperial presidency they hope to inherit. That's not as important in my view, though, as the thirty-five- count them, THIRTY-FIVE- articles of impeachment Kucinich proposes. Some are valid, some are interesting... and some are stretching the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors so far as to discredit the whole enterprise and make Kucinich look like more of a loon than usual. (Remember, when he was a Presidential candidate, one of his campaign planks was to use the power of the federal government to "encourage adoption of the vegan lifestyle.")

Anyway, here's a PDF with the full articles listed. I'm going to list them here by title and describe them in one of four (edit five- apparently I can't count) ways: Fair Cop (no reason why Democrats shouldn't vote for it), Complicit (Democrats supported it), Clinton-bait (involves the same kind of crimes Democrats voted NOT to impeach Bill Clinton for), Not a Crime (self-explanatory), and Just Plain Nuts (ditto).

Oh- and for "Democrats", read "Democratic members of the House of Representatives."

I. Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq. Fair Cop. Kucinich began his list with a very poor title. The meat of his case is not that Bush misled people about Iraq- which, although outrageous, is at best Clinton-bait- but that Bush spent taxpayer dollars to spread the lie and to persuade the American people that we were in imminent danger of being nuked by Iraq. The title should have been, "Misuse of Taxpayer Dollars for Partisan Purpose, To Wit a Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq." That said, the actual meat of the article of impeachment holds up.

II. Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression. Clinton-bait. This article, on the other hand, is simply about Bush lying, plain and simple. The Clinton impeachment made it plain that the majority of Democrats still in office today believe lying, even under oath as a witness in court, is not an impeachable offense. Kucinich does an excellent job of establishing that Bush did, indeed, deliberately lie to the American people, but Democrats can't vote yes on this now without admitting that they should have voted yes then.

III. Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War. Clinton-bait. Ditto.

IV. Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States. Clinton-bait. Ditto.

V. Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression. Complicit. Democrats failed to even make the effort to exercise Congressional oversight over military spending at the time, and indeed voted supplementary funds prior to the war to pay for the military buildup prior to the invasion. No Democrat can vote for this without essentially convicting themselves for the same crime.

VI. Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114. Not a Crime. Despite Kucinich's efforts to prove the contrary, HJRes114 was essentially a blank check for Bush to invade whenever he saw fit- the bill had no enforcement mechanism should Bush abuse it, in any case. Indeed, in my view anyone and everyone who voted for HJRes114 should be impeached for giving Bush (or ANYBODY) the power to use offensive military force without a declaration of war... but, in essence, HJRes114 acted as a war declaration for all legal purposes.

VII. Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War. Complicit. See above.

VIII. Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter. Not a Crime. The Constitution levies no penalty on the American government in general, or any officer within it, for violating a treaty. Indeed, the precedent for violating treaties goes back to George Washington himself, who violated our Treaty of Alliance with France by not declaring war against Great Britain during the French Revolution.

IX. Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor. Not a Crime. Negligence is not a crime in politics- otherwise every Democrat who voted against impeaching Cheney would be guilty as charged.

X. Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes. Just Plain Nuts. Not only is this not a crime, it's so commonplace throughout history that it's expected. What's more, Kucinich only gives the two most famous examples- Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman- as if there were no other cases of White House propagandizing using the dead and wounded- or hiding them, as the case may be. More to the point, in wartime- regardless of whether or not the war is just- the people want heroes. To quote the reporter in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When you're given a choice between truth and legend, print the legend."

XI. Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq. Just Plain Nuts. Would have been Not a Crime, except that the specific example Kucinich gives hasn't happened yet- it's still in negotiation with the Iraqi occupation government, which isn't having any of it.

XII. Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation's Natural Resources. Just Plain Nuts, because motivation for the war is essentially unprovable.

XIIII. Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries. Not a Crime, or if it were every Congressperson who ever told staffers to find facts to back their political positions would also be guilty.

XIV. Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. Fair Cop- despite Cheney's claims that the President and Vice President can declassify information at will without consequences, oversight, or due process of law.

XV. Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq. Not a Crime. The contractors in question were acting as de facto officers of the American government, and thus entitled to the sovereign immunity that also applies to, for instance, on-duty cops and military. The officers should have been fired and the contract cancelled immediately and Blackwater blacklisted- but Bush's State Department had every right under the law to give those mercenaries immunity.

XVI. Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors. Fair Cop- but another example of a very poorly titled article. In the text itself, Kucinich is essentially accusing Bush and his cronies of graft- giving plum contracts to their corporate buddies, especially Haliburton. "Misspending" is not only a matter of opinion- by most people's opinion, it's chronic in Washington, and incurable. "Graft and corruption in office" would be both more accurate and more compelling.

XVII. Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives. Complicit. Over sixty Democrats voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which authorized Bush to define what torture is and isn't, to prevent prosecution of any government officer or agent for torture, and to hold people indefinitely without benefit of habeas corpus. The Democrats who voted for that won't vote to declare it a crime now.

XVIII. Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy. Complicit. See above- and damn those Democrats for giving up the moral high ground for the sake of re-election.

XIX. Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to "Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture. Fair Cop- not even the Military Commissions Act authorized this, and there's no excuse whatever for not voting to impeach on this one.

XX. Imprisoning Children. Fair Cop- but not likely to get far, since quite a few of those children were caught carrying rifles or explosives, if not actively using them against American troops.

XXI. Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government. Clinton-bait, at least for the parts involving lying to the American people. The text of the article itself comes very close to Just Plain Nuts for citing a bunch of examples of Bush supposedly fighting a proxy war against Iran in secret with only single, alternative-media sources. Conspiracy theorists use similar tactics- you don't want your case for impeachment to sound like theirs if you want it to go anywhere.

XXII. Creating Secret Laws. Sadly, Complicit. Congress, including Democrats, gave Bush the power to keep all these things secret, most recently in its law giving him temporary authority to wiretap without warrants on anyone he saw fit to eavesdrop upon. (Thankfully, efforts to make that authority permanent have failed.) Before Democrats can impeach anyone on this, they must begin by stripping the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts of their secrecy.

XXIII. Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. Fair Cop- and too few people understand just why we have the Posse Comitatus Act in the first place. Hint: we don't want a permanent military establishment to get too powerful...

XXIV. Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment. Complicit- see my comments on Article XXII.

XXV. Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens. Technically Fair Cop, but will probably be treated by Kucinich's fellow Democrats as Complicit; see again my comments on Article XXII.

XXVI. Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements. Not a Crime. Saying, "I'm going to rob a bank," is not a crime; the person has to actually rob a bank. Kucinich would have done MUCH better to give examples where Bush had actually violated laws passed by Congress after issuing a signing statement- but Kucinich didn't do that.

XXVII. Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply. Fair Cop- and John Conyers has been a coward for not enforcing those subpoenas with Congress's inherent powers. If all else failed, Congress could create a new law enforcement agency separate from the executive branch for the sole purpose of enforcing subpoenas and other legal actions against the executive branch. Based on experience, that wouldn't be a bad idea in general...

XXVIII. Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice. Fair cop- clear examples of abuse of power.

XXIX. Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. There's a LOT in this one article, but by and large it falls under Just Plain Nuts- in that there's no way to prove that Bush was behind all of it. The examples all point to other people's conduct, particularly Ken Blackwell, a state official of Ohio and not legally under Bush's authority at all. It's conspiracy theory, and even if it's true it's going to discredit the rest of the articles.

XXX. Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare. Not a Crime. This article is an attempt to impeach Bush for being a politician and trying to get Medicare Part D passed by usual tactics- nothing more.

XXXI. Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency. Not a Crime. See comments on Article IX.

XXXII. Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change. Clinton-bait, and probably Not a Crime- politics again.

XXXIII. Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911. Not a Crime. See again comments on Article IX.

XXXIV. Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001. I'm uncertain about this one, but based on Kucinich's explanation I have to lean towards Not a Crime. Bush was not subpoenaed at the time, so you can't get him on that. In all other ways, he played the political game, fulfilling the bare letter of the law while utterly violating the spirit- but for legal purposes, of course, that's good enough.

XXXV. Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders. Not a Crime, unless you believe that the federal government is obliged to guarantee good health to all people. The worst Bush can be proven to have done regarding air quality at the World Trade Center cleanup site is negligence- and, again, negligence is very seldom a crime.

So- out of thirty-five articles, in my opinion only nine have a hope in hell of surviving, even if John Conyers weren't going to smother this as soon as it gets to his Judicial Committee. The bulk of Democrats would vote against the others even if Nancy Pelosi weren't dedicated to blocking impeachment- in some cases because the acts are not criminal, in others because they don't want to face up to their own crimes.

One thing gets me, though: Kucinich failed to name the one definitely, unequivocally criminal thing Bush has not only done but confessed to: the destruction of nearly two years' worth of White House emails, technically government records which are supposed to be preserved for posterity. Kucinich says nothing about those records in his articles- and I, for one, would have that article pretty damn prominent in the list. It's the only one that no investigation would be required to prove- we have the confession on tape, when Bush admitted as much to the world press.

I approve of Kucinich's goals- Bush and his policies must be repudiated beyond all possible doubt- but his tactics leave very, very much to be desired.

John McCain, Torturer

... or, at least, supporter of torture.

Today the Senate voted on a bill which, among other things, would hold all federal agencies to the code of conduct in the Army Field Manual in regard to questioning prisoners. In other words, waterboarding and other forms of torture would be clearly and plainly illegal.

The Republicans in the Senate had threatened to block the vote, but they decided to let it go. Part of the reason was that George W. Bush has promised to veto the bill. Another reason, as speculated on by Paul Kiel at TPMMuckraker, is that a cloture vote would force John McCain, a long-time vocal opponent of torture, to either vote to filibuster the bill and betray his principles... or else vote for the bill and go against his party, which is pretty much unified as gung-ho for torture. Without a cloture vote- with a straight up-down majority vote- McCain could abstain or vote "Present" or just not be there for the vote, thereby avoiding damage.

Well, that speculation on Kiel's part didn't hold up so well.

The final vote was 51-45. The bill goes to Bush for his inevitable veto.

McCain voted against it.

Repeating: McCain voted against a bill that would make it illegal for the FBI, CIA, etc. to use torture.

Which means McCain voted in FAVOR of torture.

Straight talk, yessir- straight like a two-lane West Virginia road.

(Other notable votes: Clinton and Obama were both out on the stump and did not vote. Republicans Susan Collins (ME), Chuck Hagel (NE), Wossname Lugar (IN), Idunno Smith (OR), Olympia Snow (ME) all voted Yea. Democrat Bill Nelson (NE) voted Nay. Independent Joe Lieberman (CT) voted Nay. Independent Bernie Sanders (VT) voted Yea.
All other Democrats voted Yea and Republicans Nay, except for those not voting.)

Cull Day, After a Long Time

My web browser's running slow, possibly due to all the news articles I've been holding onto the past few days. Let's get rid of some of those, shall we?

First, Hillary Clinton. The last couple days Hillary has been singing John Edwards' praises, but it's worth remembering that the Clinton campaign ran negative robo-calls the day of the South Carolina primaries. Granted, I agree with the content of the calls: I'm glad as hell John "Got Rich on Malpractice Suits Using Junk Science" Edwards is out of the race. But the transcript of these calls shows more and more what kind of people the Clintons are: burn your bridges now, mend them later after the battle's won. I'm hoping that Obama represents a bridge too far...

The rump FEC commission rules that two people pooling their money to attend a political convention or do anything else constitute a PAC... and thus must file with the FEC and abide by spending and donation limits and reporting. Thank God the Democrats are blocking four replacement members of the FEC against Bush's board-packing scheme, otherwise this piece of garbage would actually act as law. As it is, this ruling would quite effectively prevent any new or small groups from getting anywhere in the political arena, while old established PACs and the two big political parties can keep trundling on. Anyone who thinks the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was a good idea and that "public funding" of elections is a better one, beware... this is what your policies result in- the silencing of individual free speech.

You've probably heard this one again and again... Bush Administration Lied Nearly 1,000 Times About Iraq. My response: no shit, Sherlock.

Ezra Klien debunks Republican claims that the Bush years have been good for the economy. In truth, Dubya, who claims an economic record "other Presidents would envy", only beats out his father. All other Presidents back to JFK had greater economic growth in their Presidencies... even Jimmy Carter. (Shocker: Carter had the same rate of economic growth in his Presidency- four years- that Reagan had in his Presidency- eight years.)

The day after the State of the Union, the Bush administration kills the largest clean-coal experimental project. Apparent reason: the FutureGen project had chosen a site in Illinois for construction... rather than any of several proposed sites in Texas. Irony: this was done the day after Bush said, on worldwide television, that America needed to invest in new, experimental clean-coal technology. Apparently not unless those investments benefit Bush's buddies, huh?

Well, that seems to have sped up my browser. Let's look through a few of the O-L-D news bookmarks from last year and see if there's anything I can dispose of, hm?

From May of last year: Jim MacDonald writes about how the FBI and CIA actually creates domestic terror cells. Specifically, he talks about how agents act as provaceteurs and encourage nitwits to become terrorists for the promise of money. As soon as the nitwits begin botching together a plan- usually with the help of those undercover FBI agents- the Feds bust them, then brag about how they're protecting us from those evil horrible Islamo-fascists. And this helps us remain secure... how?

As was mentioned by Hillary Clinton last night- so this is still current eight months after this was written- the Pentagon has drawn up no contingency plans for leaving Iraq. They have contingency plans to invade Canada, in the event that a communist beaver regime takes over in Ottawa, but they're not even considering getting out of a nation which, more and more, is expressing its wish to be shed of us.

Jack Markowitz writes that we already have socialized medicine on the state level: the wasteful bureaucratic morass that is Medicaid. Although a ton of people are technically eligible, the paperwork requirement to prove you qualify is enormous... and yet the states, in particular Texas, have funded and expanded the program until it constitutes between a quarter and a third of all state budgets. All, according to Markowitz, in order to get votes and Federal matching funds. There may be an argument in favor of national health care, but Medicaid certainly isn't it.

One of the bad laws that passed the Texas legislature last year: now, if fifteen or more students request a bible study class, your local school district must provide it. Don't know if Perry signed it, but I don't see him not signing it, to be honest. There's no guarantee that the "religious studies" classes won't be used for Christian prosletyzing... and considering my home state, every reason to expect they WILL be used that way.

And finally... some of the richest people in the new Internet economy got that way by cyber-squatting. Have you ever typed in a URL and got, instead of what you expected, a page full of spam ads? These are the guys responsible. The leader, Kevin Ham, makes no bones about his plans: he wants to be one of a handful of people to control the Internet. It's time to drop a heavy boot on cybersquatting and misleading URLs and reopen domain name registry to the common man.

That's plenty of trouble for now...

Bush: You May Earmark It, but I Won't Spend It

Today George W. Bush issued an executive order to all executive departments- pretty much the whole federal government, really. The order states that no department is to spend money to fund any earmark which is not explicity listed in a Congressional budget bill and not voted on by the whole body of each house.

It sounds nice, but there are just a few problems with this.

(1) The biggest earmarker is George W. Bush himself. According to the Washington Examiner, David Obey, the Democratic chair of the House budget committee, said the President creates twenty times as many earmarks as all Congresspersons combined. Actual numbers come to billions of dollars- that's right, billions with a B, demanded by one man alone. If Bush wants to cut government waste, he should start by looking in a mirror.

(2) Bush's opposition to earmarks is strangely inconsistent... strange, that is, only to those who are politically colorblind. As reported in the New York Times, Bush signed bills into law over his Presidency with 55,000 earmarks totalling over $100 billion. Quoth the Times: "Such projects tucked into the endnotes of complex spending bills at the request of individual lawmakers with almost no oversight have contributed to a mounting pileup of waste and corruption, including sending the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the former congressman Randy Cunningham, a California Republican, to jail."

(3) Congress, under the Democrats, has already cut earmarks in half, according to the New York Times (subscription required). Bush, in the State of the Union, either ignored that fact when he promised to veto any bill that didn't cut earmarks in half... or, more sneakily, he might have made that promise so that he could take credit for the cuts in earmarks already made.

Finally, (4)... it's unconstitutional. The President does not have the authority to deliberately not spend money Congress has ordered to be spent, nor can he redirect those funds to other purposes. Bush's order hails back to the old and discredited concept of impoundment. Impoundment was first used in Thomas Jefferson's Presidency to postpone- not stop- spending on riverine gunboats until new technology became available. The first President to use impoundment to stop spending was Ulysses S. Grant (not a good example to take). FDR, Truman, and LBJ used impoundment in isolated cases, usually going to Congress to ask permission. Only one President ever attempted to use impoundment as a line-item veto power... Richard Nixon. (Source: The Imperial Presidency, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., book very highly recommended.)

Nixon's attempts to deny Congress its budgetary authority were consistently overruled by the courts. After Nixon's resignation, the principle appeared dead as the dodo, a relic of a president who wanted absolute power... until Bush, who despite Democrats holding Congress still appears to be a president who has been given absolute power by his party's members in the legislative branch.

During the Clinton administration, I supported the line-item veto. After seeing Bush, I oppose it. Dubya is again seeking to exercise powers the Presidency does not possess...

... and, if the past is anything to go by, he'll get away with it.

Get away with it despite angering one of his staunchest toadies supporters by using budget sleight-of-hand to kill off the Freedom of Information Act Office.

I repeat: the Republican Party is the party of evil.

Immunity for Spying Telecoms: Not Just to Cover Bush's Ass

Tomorrow debate resumes on the new FISA bill to replace the Protect America Act, which expires Friday. The Protect America Act, if you didn't know, gave George W. Bush six months of authority to conduct warrantless wiretaps on American citizens for whatever reason he sees fit to give. George W. Bush has promised to veto any replacement bill which does not give immunity from lawsuit to any of the telecomm companies who have cooperated with the Bush Administration in the spy operation during the period when it was NOT authorized by the Protect America Act- when, in short, it was a blatant violation of the FISA laws and the Fourth Amendment.

The odds are very good that the Democrats will fragment, with enough crossing the aisle to give the President what he wants rather than be seen as "weak on terrorism."

It's been said time and again by the pundits that the lawsuits against AT&T, Verizon, and other telecomm corporations are pretty much the last chance to find the smoking gun to prove George W. Bush's criminal activity as President. As such, the Bush White House wants immunity for one purpose: to prevent their lord and master from being impeached while in office or prosecuted in criminal court once out of office.

But this new item out Friday opens up a new aspect of this scandal. It seems AT&T wants to spy on its users' Internet use for its own purposes- not for any national security advantage.

Consider: what happens if the immunity provisions are passed intact by the Senate, as they already have been in the House version of the bill? The immunity won't just be retroactive- it'll be total. Congress will make it impossible for anyone to sue to prevent their Internet provider or the telecomm corporation that owns any part of the network from violating their privacy. The telecomms will be able to monitor all Internet traffic for content- the first vital step on the road to regulating and censoring the Internet for content.

This is by no means new. Recently retired AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre, who once told stockholders he intended to re-create the old Ma Bell monopoly on all electronic communications, made clear his wishes to screen out content providers who didn't pay a toll for access to AT&T users. His replacement, Randall Stephenson, is even more determined to make his wires pay-for-play. Whitacre, as CEO of AT&T, was a major supporter of Bush and the Republican Party. The ultimate goal, of course, is to return the Internet to its pre-1995 state: domination by a handful of online companies with limited services, content strictly controlled by those services, and virtually no crossover from one service to another.

Heretofore their efforts have been stymied by Net Neutrality activists, the remnants of common-carrier laws (gutted by Bush and his Republican Congress), and certain of their Internet competition such as Google. The lawsuits pending over the illegal NSA spying program, if they end in defeat for the telcomms, could set the firm precedent that telecomms have no right to restrict content on their networks, any more than they have the right to eavesdrop on private telephone calls.

Such rulings wouldn't just cost the telcomms massive amounts of money in damages. They wouldn't just expose George W. Bush for the lying, power-mad dictator he is. They would knock the idea of an Internet censored by corporate extortion and intimidation in the head, kill it deader than the XFL.

So count on the telecomms to lean heavily on every candidate they've donated campaign funds to, and don't count on them to settle out of court if they lose their fight in the Senate. This isn't just about politics: this is about naked, boundless greed.

Looking for My Candidate: Hillary Clinton

Let no one be confused on my opinion of Hillary Rodham Clinton: I think she's two-faced, shameless, power-hungry scum- just like George W. Bush, except without his incompetence, which must be part of the Bush family Y chromosome.

In the past few days, after people totally unassociated with Barack Obama's campaign pointed out that her saying that Martin Luther King, Jr. could not have accomplished anything without Lyndon Baines Johnson in the Oval Office was a slur on that notable's history, Clinton has accused Obama's campaign for bringing race into the contest. She's also attacked Obama for being inconsistent on the war, for being inconsistent on health care, for being inexperienced, corrupt, and lacking in substance. She's a very skilled politician, being able to play the victim while at the same time slinging mud faster than the gravel sorter at a sand quarry.

And what experience has she had? A Senate seat she won by being a Democrat in a safe Democratic state- and also by being the spouse of a popular but controversial President. She claims that being the spouse of a President and governor is experience equal to that of actually being President or governor- to which I reply: Did anyone ever propose Mamie Eisenhower or Betty Ford for elective office?

But worst of all is her actual Senate record, where she spent most of her time from 2001 to 2007 as, in essence, a safe vote for anything the White House had to propose. Her main legacy can be summed up with the image featured here.

And let's not forget her personality: her arrogance, her ability to change positions or lie without hesitation or qualm, her deep love of secrecy (as witness her ongoing efforts to keep all records from the Clinton White House out of the hands of researchers and investigators), and above all an obsession with self that even her most ardent supporters cannot ignore.

Nor, according to polls, am I the only one to hold such a negative view of the former First Lady. I've said since 2006 that the only way the Democrats could lose the 2008 elections would be if Hillary Clinton won the nomination. In fact, when polls came out showing 50% of all American voters would vote against Hillary and that Hillary loses to any and all Republican frontrunners, I told you about them. I personally believe Hillary would be as great a disaster for her party and for this nation as George W. Bush was- if not greater.

No, I don't intend to vote for Hillary... and Hillary's nomination would be the only thing that would get me to consider the Republican nominee, whichever noxious warmonger that would happen to be. Nonetheless, I'm going to put her through the numbers and see how she turns out...


Again, going by these standards:

WAR: Website claims to call for out-now, out-completely, but has waffled badly on the Iraq war. Supported it strongly until just before she began her Presidential run. In one debate, refused to guarantee a single soldier out before the end of her first term. Proposed a plan which would leave 60,000 troops on the ground permanently. Supports War on Terror. Supports Bush's get-tough rhetoric in Iran, voted to declare Iranian Republican Guard a terrorist organization. 0%.

SEPARATION OF POWERS: Approves of expanded Presidential power. Supports USA-PATRIOT. Fought to keep White House and personal records secret and out of the hands of investigators since 1994, possibly earlier in case of governor's records from Arkansas. Opposes Congressional supoenas, contempt of Congress, impeachment. Voted to end domestic spying. 25%.

HEALTHCARE: Universal health care plan based on universal mandates, forcing individuals to buy corporate insurance, forcing businesses to offer it, offering tax credits to offset (but not eliminate) cost. 0%.

TAXATION AND BUDGET: Tax cuts on middle class, massive tax hikes elsewhere. New targeted income tax credits to make system more complex and incomprehensible. Supports balanced budget, but shows no evidence of either stopping government borrowing or cutting spending anywhere. Indeed, proposes program after program which would require massive spending hikes. 0%.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: Voted for McCain-Feingold, other acts to censor political speech. Supports censorship of electronic media. Voted to restore habeas corpus. Voted to end torture, but also voted to block Guantanamo detainees from seeking judicial relief. Mixed record on military tribunals. 35%.

IMPEACHMENT: Leading opponent of impeachment in the Democratic Party, even more so than Nancy Pelosi. 0%.

IMMIGRATION: Path to citizenship. Vague statements about "stronger border enforcement." Favors immigration reform that would require immigrants "meet a high bar", i. e. more restrictive. 33%.

TRADE: Strongly protectionist. 0%.

ENERGY: Supports taxing oil corporation profits to pay for alternative energy research; otherwise supports conventional energy sources, forced conservation, new bureaucracies for enforcement of policy, tax credits to buy "green" homes. Proposes 55 MPG minimum fuel standard for gasoline-powered autos by 2030- impossible. 0%.

ENVIRONMENT: Supports "cap and trade" system, government-enforced conservation, individual mandates to buy more efficient and cleaner products... or else. 0%.

TORT REFORM: Former trial lawyer. 0%.

AVERAGE SCORE: 8.5%

VOTE KILLERS:

GUNS: Voted repeatedly to outlaw types of guns and ammunition, make private exchange of weapons illegal, require that weapons be locked when not in use, etc. Past advocate of handgun bans and federal firearm registry. Voted (one of only eleven Senators, thankfully) against a law that barred Federal officers from confiscating weapons without warrant or crime during emergencies such as Katrina. Recently claimed to support the Second Amendment. Sorry, NO, Mrs. Clinton, not buying.

IRAN: Voted to declare Iranian Republican Guard a terrorist group, thereby giving Bush an excuse to attack Iran whenever he wants.

RANKINGS TO DATE

Candidates in italics are not in consideration due to vote-killer positions.

Dennis Kucinich - 40.9%
John McCain - 33.6%
Ron Paul - 28.2%
Rudy Giuliani - 22.3%
Mike Huckabee - 16.9%
Mitt Romney - 14.8%
Duncan Hunter - 11.8%
Fred Thompson - 11.1%
Hillary Clinton - 8.5%

Next time: John Edwards, who, despite being a trial lawyer who made millions and drove North Carolina's OB-GYNs mostly out of business by brazen deceit, has to be better than Mrs. Clinton...

Bush to Veto Defense Budget...

... because, apparently, his victory over the anti-war Democrats wasn't large enough.

Bush claims he's vetoing the bill because of a provision to allow victims of Saddam Hussein's regime to sue for damages. What those victims are supposed to do without this provision Bush doesn't say- but I personally suspect that this issue, brought up at the very last minute before the budget would become law without Bush's signature, is only an excuse.

The real issue is this: Bush wanted $180 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, with no restrictions or oversight. After a token resistance, the Democrats allowed a budget to pass that funded the wars by only $70 billion- but with no restrictions or oversight.

For Bush, this is not enough.

Bush wants it ALL.

George W. Bush views Congress as nothing more than a rubber stamp for his elective monarchy. He, as the Great Decider, makes all the decisions; Congress has no option but to endorse them. Any resistance, even the minimal resistance of not giving him all the money he wants, is unacceptable.

Bush says he'll work with Congress to produce a new bill, one that gives troops a pay raise and fully funds the military. In the past, whenever Bush has said, "work with Congress," he's actually meant, "tell Congress what they're going to do, to hell with anyone and anything else."

Why should things be different now?

How Do NeoCons Think?

Here's a good example.

The evil begins with the first two paragraphs:

A recent story in the New York Times documented the steady proliferation of Halal food pushcarts in Midtown Manhattan, which I can attest to in my capacity as a sidewalk gourmet. These Muslim street food vendors -- mostly Middle Eastern men who can be seen praying on mats beside their carts -- are now nearly as ubiquitous, and popular, as New York's iconic hot dog stands. They deserve their success: the food is very good and it's priced right. Still, one might wonder whether this New York Jew living in a post-9/11 world finds the Big Apple's epicurean Islamicization a worrisome trend. No, honestly, I'm not nervous about it. Here's why.

When I belly up for my chicken on pita, these men invariably greet me with cheerful deference, often referring to me as "boss." That polite gratuity is a clear sign they understand their standing the melting pot can only be maintained through good citizenship and proper behavior. To put it bluntly, their instincts tell them the Muslim community isn't on top in polyglot America.

This sounds like George Wallace saying that he doesn't mind blacks, so long as they don't "get uppity." So long as Muslims are on the bottom looking up, bowing and scraping to their "betters", Mr. Friedman likes them just fine. Just don't let them pretend to be equals or to have (gasp) rights.

Friedman then goes on to recap how Bush has failed in Iraq. Friedman believes the fundamental cause of failure was this: Bush did not commit to a permanent American hegemony. Friedman believes it was a mistake to try to give Iraq back to the Iraqis; instead, a heavier military presence and martial law, he claims, would have kept things secure for as long as was required. In short, Friedman regards humanity as weakness; we should have kept an iron hand on Iraq until we had a puppet government in place to take over.

Not to worry, though: Friedman has a one-shot cure to reclaim Iraq and end the insurgency there.

Bomb Iran.

Will Iran invade Iraq or close the Persian Gulf in retaliation? Stuff and nonsense, says Friedman.

Next, the Iranians would do nothing -- bupkes. They don't attack Israel, they don't choke off the world's oil supply, they do not send hit squads to the United States, there is no "war" in the conventional sense of attack counterattack. Iran already has its hands full without inviting more trouble. Its leaders would be reeling from the initial US attack and they would know our forces are in position to strike again if Iran provokes us or our allies. They would stand before mankind with their pants around their ankles, dazed, bleeding, crying, reduced to bloviating from mosques in Teheran and pounding their fists on desks at the UN. The lifelines they throw to the Iraqi insurgents, Hezbollah and Syria would begin to dry up, as would the lifelines the double-dealing Europeans have been throwing to Iran. Maybe the Mullahs would lose control.

Um... first off, this presumes the Iranians act rationally, which they might not. Second, it ignores the fact that the theocratic government of Iran cannot afford to let an attack go unchallenged. Third and foremost, it ignores the very basic fact that, in every single case without exception, bombing another nation has always RALLIED that nation to its government. Bombing Iran's nuclear sites would guarantee a ground war with Iran- whose ground forces outnumber ours in Iraq and Afghanistan combined by as much as six to one.

But in Friedman's happy shiny bomby world, Iran and all the other fundamentalist Muslims, rather than become more dedicated to their jihad, will cower in fear, and the Democrats will dry up and blow away, and Iraq's leaders will quit their civil war and behave, allowing the United States to:

From that point on, with our arms free of the quicksand, we can fight the war on terror the way it should have been fought in the first place. Using our enormous edge in weapons, intelligence and technology, and building on it, we launch quick, lethal, ad hoc strikes wherever in the world we determine terrorists are working to harm us, shooting first and asking for permission later.

In other words, the United States will become the largest terrorist organization on Earth. You'll never know where we're going to strike; we won't allow anyone to stop us; and we'll crush anyone who dares get in our way.

Do I even need to explain why I find this mode of thought unacceptable for people in power?

So He FINALLY Figured It Out... Wait No

It's the talk of the beltway this week: Bush compared Iraq to Vietnam.

This is a major change for Bush, who heretofore consistently denied that there was any comparison between Iraq and Vietnam. Let's examine this:

Unpopular government propped up by American arms and devoted to engaging its own corruption rather than helping the people: check.

Insurgency driven by deep and widespread hostility to both the current government and the American presence in the country: check.

Rival nation supplying the insurgency with weapons, training and other support: check.

Enemy determined to fight despite any and all setbacks and casualties until America leaves and the existing government falls: check-a-roonie.

Unwinnable war that wastes American lives and money to no good end: check.

OK, so the comparison holds up pretty well.

But what lesson should we take?

Well, here's what Bush says:

"Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields,' "

In other words, Bush thinks it was a mistake for the United States to get out of Vietnam.

Oh, wait- here's another quote:

"The militarists of Japan and the Communists in Korea and Vietnam were driven by a merciless vision for the proper ordering of humanity. They killed Americans because we stood in the way of their attempt to force this ideology on others."

Um, right on Japan and Korea, wrong on Vietnam. (And let's not forget that in Korea we fought to maintain Singman Rhee, every bit as much a dictator as Kim Il Sung, the North Korean leader.) In Vietnam the vast majority of the South Vietnamese supported Communism- and more to the point supported Vietnamese unity and nationalism, and resented a puppet dictatorship imposed on them by force of American arms. It was first the French, then the Americans, who tried to force the Vietnamese to follow their ideology- an ideology in which the Vietnamese were nothing more than pawns in a greater Cold War against the myth of monolithic Communism.

And on these grounds- not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the past- Bush wants us to stay in Iraq... indefinitely.

Until the Iraqis no longer resist our presence.

No matter how much the Iraqis, or the American people, want us out.

Well, what can you expect from a man who defended the Houston Ship Channel and rural Alabama from the Viet Cong?

Impeachment Support from an Unlikely Side...

... the far right fringe, to be exact. Alan Keyes' followers, notable for being rabidly anti-abortion and pro-"intelligent design", are calling on fellow Republicans to support the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

For any Republicans reading this, let's look at the articles of impeachment (minus the formal boilerplate) against Bill Clinton and see if what Bush has done matches them:

From the first article, on perjury:

"On August 17, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before a Federal grand jury of the United States. Contrary to that oath, William Jefferson Clinton willfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury concerning one or more of the following: (1) the nature and details of his relationship with a subordinate Government employee; (2) prior perjurious, false and misleading testimony he gave in a Federal civil rights action brought against him; (3) prior false and misleading statements he allowed his attorney to make to a Federal judge in that civil rights action; and (4) his corrupt efforts to influence the testimony of witnesses and to impede the discovery of evidence in that civil rights action."

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have carefully avoided giving any testimony under any oath in any venue whatever. However, on many occasions, ranging from the GOP Emails Scandal to the DoJ Firings to, of course, Iraq, Bush and Cheney have lied, bare-faced, to Congress. Is that close enough?

Article 2, obstruction of justice in the Paula Jones civil suit:

"(1) On or about December 17, 1997, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly encouraged a witness in a Federal civil rights action brought against him to execute a sworn affidavit in that proceeding that he knew to be perjurious, false and misleading.

"(2) On or about December 17, 1997, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly encouraged a witness in a Federal civil rights action brought against him to give perjurious, false and misleading testimony if and when called to testify personally in that proceeding.

"(3) On or about December 28, 1997, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly engaged in, encouraged, or supported a scheme to conceal evidence that had been subpoenaed in a Federal civil rights action brought against him.

"(4) Beginning on or about December 7, 1997, and continuing through and including January 14, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton intensified and succeeded in an effort to secure job assistance to a witness in a Federal civil rights action brought against him in order to corruptly prevent the truthful testimony of that witness in that proceeding at a time when the truthful testimony of that witness would have been harmful to him.

"(5) On January 17, 1998, at his deposition in a Federal civil rights action brought against him, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly allowed his attorney to make false and misleading statements to a Federal judge characterizing an affidavit, in order to prevent questioning deemed relevant by the judge. Such false and misleading statements were subsequently acknowledged by his attorney in a communication to that judge.

"(6) On or about January 18 and January 20-21, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton related a false and misleading account of events relevant to a Federal civil rights action brought against him to a potential witness in that proceeding, in order to corruptly influence the testimony of that witness.

"(7) On or about January 21, 23 and 26, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton made false and misleading statements to potential witnesses in a Federal grand jury proceeding in order to corruptly influence the testimony of those witnesses. The false and misleading statements made by William Jefferson Clinton were repeated by the witnesses to the grand jury, causing the grand jury to receive false and misleading information."

Again, Bush has avoided sworn testimony. Both he and Cheney, and their staffers, have routinely mislead and outright lied to investigators, most notably during Plamegate when they denied any involvement in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent. As for corruptly influencing witnesses, the commutation of Lewis "Scooter" Libby's perjury sentence, and the probable future pardon of Libby, is the single greatest incident of payback for coverup.

Now, for the rest of us, here's Richard Nixon's articles of impeachment. Bold items indicate crimes Bush has either committed or mirrored.

(Article 1, the coverup of Watergate)

"The means used to implement this course of conduct or plan included one or more of the following:

"1. making false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States;

"2. withholding relevant and material evidence or information from lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States;

"3. approving, condoning, acquiescing in, and counselling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States and false or misleading testimony in duly instituted judicial and congressional proceedings;

"4. interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees;

"5. approving, condoning, and acquiescing in, the surreptitious payment of substantial sums of money for the purpose of obtaining the silence or influencing the testimony of witnesses, potential witnesses or individuals who participated in such unlawful entry and other illegal activities;

"6. endeavouring to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency of the United States;

"7. disseminating information received from officers of the Department of Justice of the United States to subjects of investigations conducted by lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States, for the purpose of aiding and assisting such subjects in their attempts to avoid criminal liability;

"8. making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States into believing that a thorough and complete investigation had been conducted with respect to allegations of misconduct on the part of personnel of the executive branch of the United States and personnel of the Committee for the Re-election of the President, and that there was no involvement of such personnel in such misconduct: or

"9. endeavouring to cause prospective defendants, and individuals duly tried and convicted, to expect favoured treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony, or rewarding individuals for their silence or false testimony."

Article 2, violations of the Constitution:

"1. He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

"2. He misused the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, and other executive personnel, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, by directing or authorizing such agencies or personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance or other investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; he did direct, authorize, or permit the use of information obtained thereby for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; and he did direct the concealment of certain records made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of electronic surveillance.

"3. He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, authorized and permitted to be maintained a secret investigative unit within the office of the President, financed in part with money derived from campaign contributions, which unlawfully utilized the resources of the Central Intelligence Agency, engaged in covert and unlawful activities, and attempted to prejudice the constitutional right of an accused to a fair trial.

"4. He has failed to take care that the laws were faithfully executed by failing to act when he knew or had reason to know that his close subordinates endeavoured to impede and frustrate lawful inquiries by duly constituted executive, judicial and legislative entities concerning the unlawful entry into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and the cover-up thereof, and concerning other unlawful activities including those relating to the confirmation of Richard Kleindienst as Attorney General of the United States, the electronic surveillance of private citizens, the break-in into the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, and the campaign financing practices of the Committee to Re-elect the President.

"5. In disregard of the rule of law, he knowingly misused the executive power by interfering with agencies of the executive branch, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Criminal Division, and the Office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, of the Department of Justice, and the Central Intelligence Agency, in violation of his duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

Article 3:

"In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, contrary to his oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives on April 11, 1974, May 15, 1974, May 30, 1974, and June 24, 1974, and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas. The subpoenaed papers and things were deemed necessary by the Committee in order to resolve by direct evidence fundamental, factual questions relating to Presidential direction, knowledge or approval of actions demonstrated by other evidence to be substantial grounds for impeachment of the President. In refusing to produce these papers and things [the President], substituting his judgment as to what materials were necessary for the inquiry, interposed the powers of the Presidency against the the lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives, thereby assuming to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the sole power of impeachment vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives."

And what I really want to know is this: why hasn't Ron Paul, who portrays himself as the quintessential Constitutionalist, why hasn't he come out in support of impeachment? He should have been the first voice to speak, even before Dennis Kucinich or Cynthia McKinney...

Impeachment: Why It is Vital

"The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other officers, and shall have the sole power of impeachment." - Constitution of the United States (1787), Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 5.

"The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside; and no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present." - Constitution of the United States (1787), Article 1, Section 3, Paragraph 6.

"Judgment of cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States; but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial judgment and punishment, according to law." - Constitution of the United States (1787), Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 6.

"The President, the 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." - Constitution of the United States (1787), Article 2, Section 4.

"shall, verb participle; an auxiliary used in formal speech: (a) to express futurity in the first person, and determination, obligation or necessity in the second and third persons..." - Webster's Second Unabridged Dictionary

The tragedy of our current government is in a missing shall. According to the Constitution of the United States, the President shall be removed from office upon impeachment and conviction for high crimes and misdemeanors- there's no option. Unfortunately there is no clause that states that Congress shall impeach and convict the President if and when he does commit high crimes and misdemeanors. Congress has the option to ignore the President's conduct... and, by ignoring it, endorse it.

Of course, it's easy to understand Congress being reluctant at this point. On July 6 an American Research Group poll showed that 46% of respondents favored beginning impeachment hearings against George W. Bush in the House of Representatives- only one point less than the 47% opposed. (The same poll showed a clear majority of 54% for impeaching Vice President Cheney.) That spurred a rash of "yay! impeach now!" posts on various blogs and LiveJournals, but it should be tempered by two other polls coming out about the same time: USA Today / Gallup showing only 36% favoring impeachment hearings and 62% opposed, and Rassmussen unveiled a poll showing 39% in favor, 49% against. Averaging the three polls gives 40.3% in favor of impeachment... a number not much greater than the level of support in 1998 for impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton, which was an average (from six polls) of 36% according to Time blogger Ana Marie Cox. Popular support is not there.

And why isn't it there? I did a small nonscientific poll courtesy of LiveJournal, and among the questions was whether or not Bush should be impeached. The reasons given by those who said no to impeachment were on two grounds. First, the votes aren't there in the Senate to convict- and thus impeachment would be a waste of time. Second, impeachment would backfire against the Democrats- thus giving the Republicans back the White House and Congress and ensuring that the policies of Bush and his cronies are perpetuated.

I disagree with both these points, but it'll take me a bit to explain why.

First, let's look at what George W. Bush has done which would qualify as high crimes and misdemeanors. C-SPAN has a good article about what that phrase means. High crimes means just that- actions which are criminal under the law. Misdemeanors means- or meant at the time of the writing of the Constitution- actions which, while not strictly illegal under written law, served to injure the nation or the system of government itself. Using this test, of the three articles of impeachment passed by the Judiciary Committee against Richard Nixon- who clearly deserved impeachment-only one article was impeachment for high crimes (obstruction of justice). The other two were for abuse of office and for exercising powers not granted to the President by the Constitution- which, although they undermined our system of limited government, were either not illegal by statute or were illegal but unenforcable.

(Side note: that last link is only the second time I've seen a .info domain that wasn't a spam site. Alas. But I digress...)

So, what actual crimes has Bush committed? We only know of one for certain: the illegal and unwarranted search and seizure embodied in the NSA's domestic wiretap program. Bush has confessed that he did it, in direct violation of statute law. He defends the program as an extension of his war powers as Commander in Chief- powers which are defined nowhere in the Constitution, and are therefore questionable at best. Other crimes may come up in investigation- for example, the ordering of torture of prisoners in violation of the War Crimes Act, the deliberate destruction of White House records in the GOP email scandal, or the hiring and firing of federal attorneys on political grounds- but the current stone wall of "executive privilege" can only be overcome if the investigation is done on the grounds of possible impeachment, which trumps executive privilege.

But there's more to Bush's criminal conduct in the Oval Office than what actual statute laws he has broken. His misdeeds are not limited to tapping phones, ordering torture, destroying records, or politicizing the Department of Justice. George W. Bush deliberately used misleading or outright wrong intelligence to drum up support for the invasion of Iraq. He's manipulated the use of government secrecy to conceal corporate wrongdoing and push an anti-science, anti-environment agenda, while at the same time using strategic declassification to destroy his enemies and distract the public from his own misdeeds. He's held people in prison without habeas corpus, then had his stooges make his imprisonment and torture of those prisoners legal ex post facto. He's used his office to make select corporations billions, if not trillions, of dollars in profit at American taxpayer expense. He's done a lot of other things, too... but most, if not all of these, are not strictly speaking illegal, because there's no actual law against exceeding the legitimate powers granted the office of the President.

Despite this, some people still argue that nothing Bush has done constitutes an impeachable offense. He might have committed crimes, he might have abused his office, but it's not bad enough to warrant throwing him out of office, they say. However, it's important to remember that there is no other means of punishing someone in office, according to the Constitution, except by impeachment. In fact there's a very specific principle of law that states that no person serving in political office can be prosecuted for actions taken while performing that office until after they leave- if ever. In short, there is no means whatever for stopping a President out of control except impeachment.

And let's not mince words: the President, and his Vice President, are definitely out of control. Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic has come out in favor of Cheney's impeachment, which as of this writing has thirteen sponsors in the House, but his article applies just as well to Bush. Both men believe, as Richard Nixon did, that the President is only accountable once every four years- when he is elected. For the rest of the time, the President is all-powerful, accountable to no one, subject to no law, and limited by no aspect of the Constitution. In short, he's an elected monarch- king for four or eight years- unless he is impeached.

And here's something important to note: sovereign immunity extends, in many cases, for the lifetime of the former officeholder. That means that if George Bush is not impeached, and he is allowed to leave office on January 20, 2009, the odds are extremely good he can never be tried in criminal court for anything- ANYTHING- he has done in office. Impeachment is the only way he can be made liable to the criminal courts.

That's what's on the table. If George W. Bush is not impeached, he and Cheney and all their cronies and supporters will go forever unpunished, forever unaccountable. There is no lesser punishment available than impeachment- censure is not merely unconstitutional, it's powerless and without effect.

Now to get back to the two main objections against impeachment- that the votes aren't there, and that the Democrats will lose if they try it.

First, the issue of the votes. We know there is a majority, although a slim one, which will vote at least one count, and probably more, of impeachment in the House. That means that, if impeachment comes to a vote, Congress will at least say that the President's conduct is criminal and will not be tolerated. The one bit of good that came out of the 1998-9 impeachment of Clinton was that the House of Representatives upheld the principle that perjury and obstruction of justice were wrong. (And yes, I think perjury should be impeachable, and I believe Clinton should have been convicted, no matter what the lie was about. The more prominent and powerful the criminal, the more severe should be the punishment, to show that power should not block justice.)

But if Congress fails to act- if Congress ignores all of Bush's crimes, fails to even vote on impeachment, and lets him leave office untouched- then Congress has in effect admitted that Bush committed no crimes, that his actions were within his legitimate powers as President. Signing statements, use of military intelligence to spy on peace protesters and political enemies, wire taps, Guantanamo, Abu Gharaib, and all the rest will not be evils to be rooted out- they will be tools left in place for the next President, and all Presidents thereafter, to use as they see fit.

In short, if we want to repudiate the principle of the "unitary executive," or elected monarchy, and if we want to make clear that Bush's actions in office are illegal, unconstitutional, and intolerable, impeachment must at least be attempted. To fail to at least make the attempt is to acknowledge by silence the justice and rightness of Bush's assertions of executive power.

This leads into the second point. Suppose Congress does not act, the Democrats win the White House, and a Democratic President is sworn in on 1-20-2009. That Democratic President would then have the power to use executive privilege to make every single action, every single conversation, every aspect whatever of the executive branch of government wholly secret from every single citizen of the United States. That President would have power to hold people indefinitely, incommunicado, with no legal venue to challenge their imprisonment. That President would have power to kidnap people off the streets of the world, torture them, and then dispose of them as they saw fit. In short, that President would have unlimited power to do anything and everything that President wanted... and thanks to the unchallenged precedent of George W. Bush, there would be no way to stop him or her.

Bill Clinton, Democrat, was a slick, two-faced, double-talking slimeball from Arkansas who had more rumors and scandals surrounding him than any President since Harding and before George W. Bush... would you trust him, or his wife, with the same power Bush now claims?

Lyndon B. Johnson, Democrat, expanded a war in Vietnam on a bold-faced lie, lied even more about the conduct of the war to the people, used intimidation and blackmail to get his way in Washington, and used the powers of his office to attack his enemies... would you have trusted him with the same power Bush now claims?

Woodrow Wilson, Democrat, sent the United States armed forces into half a dozen countries to overthrow their governments, from Haiti to the Soviet Union. He ordered the imprisonment of tens of thousands of American citizens strictly for their political beliefs. He completed the segregation of the Federal government and military and worked to destroy the few remaining protections black people had against the use of the law to enforce race prejudice. Would you trust Woodrow Wilson- a bigot, a xenophobe, an enemy of free speech, and a warmonger- with the same unlimited power Bush now claims?

No President, no matter their party, no matter their beliefs or intentions, should ever have so much power. In many of the specific powers involved, no one in government should have them at all.

But Bush currently has it, and he's using it, and he will not willingly relinquish it until his term of office expires.

For the sake of our Constitution- for the sake of our freedom- George W. Bush must be impeached, convicted, and removed from office. Preferably Dick Cheney should go first, to give Bush a chance to name a successor that keeps Pelosi out of the Oval Office, but both should go regardless of any other consequences. Even the Iraq War comes second to impeaching Bush- because Bush has vowed, repeatedly, that America will not withdraw from Iraq while his presidency lasts, and Congress has proved it can't stop the Commander in Chief from sending troops anywhere he wants.

Bush must be impeached- or else we give the Presidents to come unlimited power and, in turn, place ourselves wholly at their mercy.

Three Proposed Constitutional Amendments

Bush commuted Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, simultaneously vindicating the jury's guilty verdict on perjury while at the same time ensuring Libby will never set foot inside a prison. Not only does Bush attempt- with some success- to have his cake and eat it too, but this commutation effectively slams the door shut on any further attempt to investigate or prosecute the Plame leak scandal. Prosecutors now have no lever whatever to use on the one person who might possibly have fingered either the President or Vice President as responsible for leaking Valerie Plame's identity... which means, in all likelihood, that no one will be made accountable for the destruction of Plame's career and reputation.

Outrageous as this is, this is merely the latest, and hardly the largest, of George W. Bush's abuses of power. Today's news merely serves as a convenient trigger to reveal something I've been considering for months, something I personally think is vital to the survival of the United States as a free republic, vital to reining in a Presidency that acts like an elected monarchy rather than the executive of a democracy.

The Constitution needs to be amended.

Each term of Congress dozens of proposals are made to amend the Constitution of the United States. Over two thousand proposals have been voted on by one or both houses of Congress since it first convened in 1789; only twenty-seven have been ratified. As a general rule, attempting to amend the Constitution is a waste of time... unless there's an extremely strong reason to do so.

I believe the actions of the Bush administration, and those of the Democratic leadership in failing to even attempt to make that administration accountable for its misdeeds, provide very strong reason for amending the Constitution. George Bush has abused his power through his war in Iraq, by the authorization of torture, by the imprisonment without charge of thousands of people, by using "signing statements" to evade or nullify laws passed by Congress, and by undermining the very mechanisms of justice which should serve to hold him accountable. To make things worse, those who should act when the President exceeds his authority- the Attorney General, the Supreme Court, and the current Democratically controlled Congress- are actively sitting on their hands, refusing to do the only effective things to stop Bush before he further violates his oath to defend and uphold the Constitution.

First, to more clearly define the limits of Presidential power, here's what I call the Bush Amendment:

THE BUSH AMENDMENT

Section 1. The President of the United States acts as the Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States of America; but the President shall have no power to take offensive action against any nation, or against belligerents outside the United States (except for pirates on the high seas) except in time of war as explicitly declared by both houses of Congress, or under provisions of treaties with foreign nations as ratified by the Senate.

Congress shall have sole, exclusive, and non-delegatable power to declare war. Congress shall also have power to order, by joint declaration of a majority of each house, the President to cease offensive operations and withdraw armed forces from the territory of foreign nations. Refusal by the President to obey the will of Congress expressed in this manner shall constitute an impeachable offense.

The President of the United States retains the power to respond to invasion, revolt and insurrection within the territory and jurisdiction of the United States.

Section 2. The opinions of the President on the intent of any law, or its compliance with the Constitution, shall bear no weight in law, nor shall they be regarded by any officer or employee of the Federal government of the United States.

Section 3. The executive powers of pardon, commutation and clemency exercised by the President of the United States shall not extend to himself or herself, the Vice President, any member of Congress, or any person serving within the executive branch of the Federal government of the United States under that President.

Section 4. The right of habeas corpus shall not be denied to any person held prisoner by the Federal government of the United States or any department within that government, regardless of the prisoner’s citizenship.

Section 5. Torture, defined as the infliction of pain, degradation, or other cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners, shall be a Federal crime punishable by such sentence as Congress shall establish; but no sentence shall carry less penalty than ten years of imprisonment without parole or early release, forfeiture of any office of trust, and loss of all benefits and privileges of that office.

Any person who authorizes other persons subordinate to them to employ torture shall themselves be considered guilty of torture.

Torture shall constitute an impeachable crime under this Constitution.

Section 6. The President and Vice President, being citizens of the United States and members of the executive branch of the Federal government of the United States, may not exempt themselves from any law, regulation, executive order, or other ordinance or instrument applicable to all citizens of the United States or all members of the executive branch.

But wait- this depends on an Attorney General to investigate and produce evidence for impeachment. The Attorney General is appointed by, and personally loyal to, the President- so how is he supposed to work to impeach him? Hence my second proposal, which I call the Gonzales Amendment:

THE GONZALES AMENDMENT

Section 1. Congress shall establish a Department of Justice, the senior officer of which shall be entitled the Attorney General of the United States. The Attorney General shall be an American citizen of at least thirty years of age, resident in the United States without interruption for the previous five years, and shall not currently hold any elected office or other office of trust within the Federal government or any lesser government body within the jurisdiction of the United States.

The Attorney General shall be elected for a term of two years on the first Tuesday in November of odd-numbered years by majority vote of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

No Attorney General, having been elected by the Supreme Court, shall again be eligible to serve as Attorney General after the expiration of his or her full term.

Section 2. The Department of Justice shall organize, operate, and oversee any and all law enforcement organizations instituted by the Federal government to enforce the laws of that government. The Attorney General shall have power to appoint, with the advice and consent of the Senate, any and all lesser officers in such agencies; but on no account shall any person’s race, gender, creed, religion, or partisan affiliation be considered or questioned as a condition of or qualification for appointment or employment within the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice shall have power to order and carry out the investigation of any officer within the federal government, including members of Congress, the President, the Vice President, and any seated justice of any Federal court, including the power to convene grand juries of inquest and to issue and enforce subpoenas of witnesses to testify before grand juries convened by the Department of Justice. In aid of such investigations, the Attorney General or such lesser officer as he or she may designate shall show probable cause to any justice of the Supreme Court and, with the justice’s consent, obtain warrants for search and seizure of evidence. No declaration of legislative or executive privilege shall have power to stay or challenge the execution of any subpoena or warrant issued by the Department of Justice.

Section 3. The President of the United States shall appoint, with the advice and consent of the Senate, a Solicitor General to act as the representative and advocate for the Federal government of the United States in any and all cases at law in which that government shall be a party. The Solicitor General shall have no law enforcement powers, nor any power of subpoena, and shall not be considered a member or officer within the Department of Justice.

Both the Attorney General and the Solicitor General shall be considered advisors to the President of Cabinet rank; however, the President shall have no authority over the Attorney General or the Department of Justice, nor may he terminate the term of the Attorney General in office.

And yet despite this Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, refuses to even consider impeachment- the only effective punishment for a President out of control. There is one good reason why, though: if both Bush and Cheney are impeached at the same time, Pelosi becomes President. Under the circumstances, it could look like Pelosi sought impeachment solely to become President herself- which, in turn, would destroy the Democratic Party in 2008. Let's simplify things for her, then- by taking impeachment out of Congress' hands. Here's the Pelosi Amendment:

THE PELOSI AMENDMENT

Section 1. Any two Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, upon being presented evidence of treason or other impeachable crimes, shall have power to impeach any officer within the Federal government, including any member of Congress, the President, the Vice President, and any head of any department or agency established by Congress, excepting justices seated in Federal courts.

The Supreme Court of the United States shall have sole power to try impeachments, except in cases against Federal justices appointed by the President, a vote of two-thirds of all the justices of the Supreme Court being necessary for conviction.

Congress shall retain power to impeach and try justices seated in Federal courts.

Section 2. Impeachment and conviction shall carry no penalty beyond immediate removal from office, permanent disqualification for any future office of trust within the United States or any body of government within it, and the forfeiture of any and all privileges held by former holders of the office held when impeached; but any person impeached and convicted shall remain liable to indictment, trial, and punishment according to law.

Section 3. The following shall be considered impeachable crimes:
• Treason;
• Abuse of power, defined as the use of the powers of an office to violate the rights of others unjustly or to violate the Constitution of the United States, or the use of the powers of an office for personal gain other than financial profit;
• Corruption, defined as the use of the powers of an office for the enrichment of oneself or of one’s friends and family through bribery, graft, or other illegitimate means;
• Obstruction of justice;
• Perjury;
• Deception of Congress, defined as deliberately lying to or otherwise misleading Congress in order to influence its deliberations and votes;
• And any crime designated a felony by Congress or the legislature of any State.

Please feel free to pass these proposals on and to discuss them with others. If something like these proposals gains popularity, perhaps we can at least deny the next Democratic President all the power that Bush is exercising and abusing.

I can only hope.