Kangaroo Congress in Contempt: Decider alone "shall" be "serious"
On December 1, 2005, John Yoo, an architect of U.S. legal policy on torture, publicly claimed that George Bush has the authority to order the torture of children. ... Does President George W. Bush agree? Are Yoo's remarks an expression of what is now offical policy and practice? ... During a debate in Chicago, John Yoo (Bush's former Department of Justice lawyer who created the justifications for the torture policies as being legal and the suspension of rights, and of absolute Presidential authority) said that presidential powers include the right to order the torture of suspects, including their children. John Yoo, a key architect for post 9/11 legal policy of the Bush Administration, has continued to advocate White House policies on torture, wiretapping and unlimited presidential powers.
The president of the United States just (7/20/07) issued a public pronouncement declaring, as a matter of U.S. policy, that a single man has the authority to detain any person anyplace in the world and subject him or her to secret interrogation techniques that aren't torture but that nonetheless can't be revealed, as long as that person is thought to be a "supporter" of an organization "associated" in some unspecified way with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, and as long he thinks that person might know something that could "assist" us. ... but "supporter" isn't defined, nor is "associated organization." That leaves the definition broad enough to permit the secret detention of, say, a man who sympathizes ideologically with the Taliban and might have overheard something useful in a neighborhood cafe, or of a 10-year-old girl whose older brother once trained with Al Qaeda. ... This isn't just hypothetical. The U.S. has already detained people based on little more. According to media reports, the CIA has even held children, including the 7- and 9-year-old sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In 2006, Mohammed was transferred from a secret CIA facility to Guantanamo, but the whereabouts of his children are unknown.
If witnesses refuse to honor congressional subpoenas and are found in contempt, the matter is referred to the U.S. attorney from Washington, D.C., "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action." The wording of that law doesn't give the U.S. attorney any leeway. It doesn't say that he or she "can" or "may" bring it before the grand jury. It says he or she "shall" bring the matter to the grand jury, so the courts can resolve the conflict between the other two branches of government .... And that would set the stage for a whole range of nightmares, up to and including impeachment.
With polls showing that a majority of the country now favors impeachment, and with Conyers, Pelosi, and the Democratic Congress sinking deeper and deeper into disfavor even as the president continues to add to his list of Constitutional crimes, something’s gotta give. After all, the Founders, in writing impeachment into the Constitution, did not say the test was whether Congress had the votes to impeach. They wrote that if the president abused his power, or committed other high crimes and misdemeanors, bribery or treasson, Congress “shall” impeach.
If Congress does not begin impeachment hearings soon, the President of the United States does not only have the right, but the duty to dissolve it, even without a pretext of a new war or a new terrorist attack or other unnamed and unnecessary nation emergency or crisis. They will have cemented themselves as one of the most corrupt and craven political institutions of all time, blind to any and all but the most heinous of crimes, all for political gains, ideological and political influence, willing to ignore the law and the Constitution every bit as much as the President himself may have, which they have concluded by every speech and every inaction, is beyond even investigation.
There is a difference between being able to win elections and being fit to rule. Especially nowadays when it is technological technocrats, spin-doctors (liars), Madison Avenue admen, and blatant propagandists that have the most influence during political campaigns which have become so much about gaining and spending obscene amounts of money in a cycle of corruption that makes direct kickbacks to mobsters look circuitous and complex by comparison. Money is raised by making promises to corporations, often those most “influential” who control the media, for the purposes of their help which both parties fall over themselves to improve their stranglehold and monopolies on the airwaves which are given to them freely by the state, raise millions of dollars which they give back to these companies in purchasing advertising for campaigns. Then there is the political “technologists” who prune voter lists of legitimate voters for spurious reasons, disrupt the campaigns of rival candidates, put out fabrications to the medias they are purchasing ads with and allowed to make unsubstantiated or wholly fictitious claims out during campaigns which receive little scrutiny if they are “major” or “serious” candidates in the eyes of the press who judge relevance by the size of their campaign chests.
Were it not bad enough for these people whose job it is to bend laws and break rules, being given free reign once every two or four years to do their duty and wreak havoc, trying to “purchase” and “control” the democratic system, blur the facts and tilt the scales of justice to get their man into office, but they now have put up their feet as the “managers” of government themselves. Since leaders are now constantly required to run for reelection almost on the day they take up office since the price of elections is so high, campaign managers and media advisers become chiefs of staff, presidential advisers, able to fire and marginalize career diplomats, government lawyers, FBI and other law enforcement agencies, all for political ends. Those who run the elections, most often by the most dubious legal means and methods possible, now run the government itself.
And when this comes out as a “bad thing”, when this penchant for law breaking and public manipulation by constantly lying and leaning on those media corporations they have an insidious if not incestuous relationship with becomes public by those who know nothing about governing but everything about manipulation and deceit becomes let upon the light, when it is finally coming out how the courts and police have been corrupted by political apparachniks comes out, what does those who have any ability to rectify it do? They have party line votes with their own campaign managers advising them how to proceed based upon their own calculations of how much they can “spin” what is going on to provide them with votes or more influence or more campaign contributions for the next election cycle of course! What else would they do, conduct themselves according to their duties under the Constitution? No, they ask themselves what would Karl Rove do far more than what would a statesman do.
If the diligent reporter Amy Goodman is correct, ("The Democratic leaders call the impeachment drive a distraction that would hinder chances at winning the 2008 elections") . that the Democratic leadership has gone on record as saying they would put off or ignore their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution because they think it would cost them votes in the next elections, they have broken their oaths and are a party to obstruction of justice as much as Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, Harriet Miers, or anyone they hold in “contempt”. Impeachment is not a political tool, no matter what politicians think, it is a legal method for redressing criminal behavior and using it, or failing to use it and overlook crimes, makes either or both party leaderships in Congress as guilty of obstruction of Justice as Scooter Libby, if they hesitated for political reasons to launch preliminary hearings based upon political considerations. They would far more than the attorney scandal be using or failing to use the law, failing to put aside politics in the name of an open search for the truth, letting the public know what their government has been up to when the most serious of crimes is being not only alleged, but overwhelming evidence of criminal wrongdoing and abuse of power constantly leaked before a public increasingly awed and repulsed not only by the inactivity to address it, but that it all is and will be forevermore considered “normal” and that there is no depths to which the law and the courts are not willing to go or allow themselves to be “bent”.
Congress has failed as an institution, not because the public has yet been completely turned off by its corruption, by allegations of tainted elections, by it unconcern for their voices and opinions if they are not wealthy or influential, but because they have been as willing as anyone they condemn to put political machinations and party loyalty above what is best for their nation, above their oaths to defend its Constitution, and their total disregard that they are now the only protection for rule of law or continued democracy. In light of the greatest crisis to this nation, they would consult their Karl Rove's, their Machiavelli's, instead of their consciences. They have proven themselves every bit as much unfit to rule as the President might have, and now with all the pieces in place for the President to disband it, I for one can no longer see the difference if he did.
Impeachment you do not do because you know you have the votes in the Senate to convict. The Senate function is a trial, and you do not go to trial with a predetermined or preordained outcome in mind. That is a Stalinist Trial. That is a Kangaroo Court. That is what those who still care complain our country is moving toward. If that is what either party suggests should be the case, they should recuse themselves now.
Impeachment is an indictment. It is done because there is enough evidence to warrant a trial, to suggest criminal wrongdoing. The greatest indictment to the political system is those who would suggest as “Senator” Obama has done, that there has yet been any evidence of serious criminal wrongdoing or subversion of the Constitution. In this, unlike the Senate whose outcome should not even be considered at this point, the amount of evidence is important. It can be overwhelming, enough to ensure a guilty verdict, or it can be enough to show complicity in criminal wrongdoing up to the level to be removed from office. If the evidence is not there or thought to be too weak, their ought to be no impeachment. But that evidence will not be brought forth, than investigatory hearing will not commence to try to gather that evidence, that points to the greatest failing yet to date of the political and justice system.
I have pointed now for years the precipice we are upon. It has been the military which has leaked the greatest amount of information on the criminal wrongdoing by this administration. It is under grave situations like this that the military will ultimately decide whether impeachment will be “allowed” if Bush should declare that during a time of war, he is the sole “decider” and that his generals would have to decided, whether their oaths to uphold the Constitution were not just blowing hot air. And, as former CIA analyst Roy McGovern and others have pointed out, a President under indictment with the possibility of soon being removed from office would give the military reason to not uphold illegal orders to start provocative action or begin to escalate current conflicts or begin new conflicts to save one sorry leaders ass. Impeachment would be the legal cover they would need to stop what they know has been a political war of choice, and they might be able to prevent another one they have, against their better judgment, been told to prepare for in Iran.
Many have open worried that the US is moving toward a military dictatorship model or that we have already become one. That would be true if Congress does not begin impeachment hearings, far less than if it did attempt to begin impeachment and they were stopped from doing so by the courts or the military from exercising their sole remaining potential to stop the madness before a new wider war begins or spreads at Bush's “discretion”. That is because if no veneer or illusion that democratic institutions remained after they have overwhelmingly now would have proven they have ceased to function, it would be far easier for Bush to removed via the military's own competency rules, should he indeed be then the sole “elected decider.” A dictatorship exposed as such is far easier to topple than one that hides behind a puppet legislature.
Not only that, but Congress would be complicit in the deaths of all who might die due to a Gulf of Token type incident for failing to respond to that threat which has been pointed out relentless to them as of late as a real possibility. The US, democracy, liberty, and our military are now dying a slow death, and Congress seems content to due little else besides non-binding resolutions, meaningless censures and contempt charges that will be openly ignored by an administration that not only holds the President above the law, but anyone he that works for he or that he designates too is above the law, and that all rights under the Constitution given to anyone else, he can revoke at his discretion. If Congress cannot find “high crimes and misdemeanors” in that, they no longer have eyes to see, no longer a consciousness with which to think, and have already surrendered to the President any authority to decide anything they previously thought they might have had. In that case, I would agree with the President if he suspends Congress completely. They will have become a costly illusion of democracy and a waste of money.
People have come forward against this administration's wrongdoing and it may as well have been to a firing squad. The press has been threatened when doing its job correctly, uncovering illegal programs, and other times has been rewarded for raking over the coals anyone who profoundly displeased the administration. Whistleblowers against Bush have been told to go to hell by the Supreme Court. And Congress, by not beginning hearings on impeachment has told them don't bother, no one will watch your back. Silence your conscience, it is ok, make your deal for a pardon, the Decider will have your back, and Congress is just one more entity that will throw you off the pier if you try to come forward. Their hesitation has made their immunity and protection worthless in the face of a 'unitary executive', and the President's favor is beyond measuring in cost, it is literally your life and the lives of your children at his discretion, and sole whim.
The president of the United States just (7/20/07) issued a public pronouncement declaring, as a matter of U.S. policy, that a single man has the authority to detain any person anyplace in the world and subject him or her to secret interrogation techniques that aren't torture but that nonetheless can't be revealed, as long as that person is thought to be a "supporter" of an organization "associated" in some unspecified way with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, and as long he thinks that person might know something that could "assist" us. ... but "supporter" isn't defined, nor is "associated organization." That leaves the definition broad enough to permit the secret detention of, say, a man who sympathizes ideologically with the Taliban and might have overheard something useful in a neighborhood cafe, or of a 10-year-old girl whose older brother once trained with Al Qaeda. ... This isn't just hypothetical. The U.S. has already detained people based on little more. According to media reports, the CIA has even held children, including the 7- and 9-year-old sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In 2006, Mohammed was transferred from a secret CIA facility to Guantanamo, but the whereabouts of his children are unknown.
If witnesses refuse to honor congressional subpoenas and are found in contempt, the matter is referred to the U.S. attorney from Washington, D.C., "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action." The wording of that law doesn't give the U.S. attorney any leeway. It doesn't say that he or she "can" or "may" bring it before the grand jury. It says he or she "shall" bring the matter to the grand jury, so the courts can resolve the conflict between the other two branches of government .... And that would set the stage for a whole range of nightmares, up to and including impeachment.
With polls showing that a majority of the country now favors impeachment, and with Conyers, Pelosi, and the Democratic Congress sinking deeper and deeper into disfavor even as the president continues to add to his list of Constitutional crimes, something’s gotta give. After all, the Founders, in writing impeachment into the Constitution, did not say the test was whether Congress had the votes to impeach. They wrote that if the president abused his power, or committed other high crimes and misdemeanors, bribery or treasson, Congress “shall” impeach.
If Congress does not begin impeachment hearings soon, the President of the United States does not only have the right, but the duty to dissolve it, even without a pretext of a new war or a new terrorist attack or other unnamed and unnecessary nation emergency or crisis. They will have cemented themselves as one of the most corrupt and craven political institutions of all time, blind to any and all but the most heinous of crimes, all for political gains, ideological and political influence, willing to ignore the law and the Constitution every bit as much as the President himself may have, which they have concluded by every speech and every inaction, is beyond even investigation.
There is a difference between being able to win elections and being fit to rule. Especially nowadays when it is technological technocrats, spin-doctors (liars), Madison Avenue admen, and blatant propagandists that have the most influence during political campaigns which have become so much about gaining and spending obscene amounts of money in a cycle of corruption that makes direct kickbacks to mobsters look circuitous and complex by comparison. Money is raised by making promises to corporations, often those most “influential” who control the media, for the purposes of their help which both parties fall over themselves to improve their stranglehold and monopolies on the airwaves which are given to them freely by the state, raise millions of dollars which they give back to these companies in purchasing advertising for campaigns. Then there is the political “technologists” who prune voter lists of legitimate voters for spurious reasons, disrupt the campaigns of rival candidates, put out fabrications to the medias they are purchasing ads with and allowed to make unsubstantiated or wholly fictitious claims out during campaigns which receive little scrutiny if they are “major” or “serious” candidates in the eyes of the press who judge relevance by the size of their campaign chests.
Were it not bad enough for these people whose job it is to bend laws and break rules, being given free reign once every two or four years to do their duty and wreak havoc, trying to “purchase” and “control” the democratic system, blur the facts and tilt the scales of justice to get their man into office, but they now have put up their feet as the “managers” of government themselves. Since leaders are now constantly required to run for reelection almost on the day they take up office since the price of elections is so high, campaign managers and media advisers become chiefs of staff, presidential advisers, able to fire and marginalize career diplomats, government lawyers, FBI and other law enforcement agencies, all for political ends. Those who run the elections, most often by the most dubious legal means and methods possible, now run the government itself.
And when this comes out as a “bad thing”, when this penchant for law breaking and public manipulation by constantly lying and leaning on those media corporations they have an insidious if not incestuous relationship with becomes public by those who know nothing about governing but everything about manipulation and deceit becomes let upon the light, when it is finally coming out how the courts and police have been corrupted by political apparachniks comes out, what does those who have any ability to rectify it do? They have party line votes with their own campaign managers advising them how to proceed based upon their own calculations of how much they can “spin” what is going on to provide them with votes or more influence or more campaign contributions for the next election cycle of course! What else would they do, conduct themselves according to their duties under the Constitution? No, they ask themselves what would Karl Rove do far more than what would a statesman do.
If the diligent reporter Amy Goodman is correct, ("The Democratic leaders call the impeachment drive a distraction that would hinder chances at winning the 2008 elections") . that the Democratic leadership has gone on record as saying they would put off or ignore their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution because they think it would cost them votes in the next elections, they have broken their oaths and are a party to obstruction of justice as much as Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, Harriet Miers, or anyone they hold in “contempt”. Impeachment is not a political tool, no matter what politicians think, it is a legal method for redressing criminal behavior and using it, or failing to use it and overlook crimes, makes either or both party leaderships in Congress as guilty of obstruction of Justice as Scooter Libby, if they hesitated for political reasons to launch preliminary hearings based upon political considerations. They would far more than the attorney scandal be using or failing to use the law, failing to put aside politics in the name of an open search for the truth, letting the public know what their government has been up to when the most serious of crimes is being not only alleged, but overwhelming evidence of criminal wrongdoing and abuse of power constantly leaked before a public increasingly awed and repulsed not only by the inactivity to address it, but that it all is and will be forevermore considered “normal” and that there is no depths to which the law and the courts are not willing to go or allow themselves to be “bent”.
Congress has failed as an institution, not because the public has yet been completely turned off by its corruption, by allegations of tainted elections, by it unconcern for their voices and opinions if they are not wealthy or influential, but because they have been as willing as anyone they condemn to put political machinations and party loyalty above what is best for their nation, above their oaths to defend its Constitution, and their total disregard that they are now the only protection for rule of law or continued democracy. In light of the greatest crisis to this nation, they would consult their Karl Rove's, their Machiavelli's, instead of their consciences. They have proven themselves every bit as much unfit to rule as the President might have, and now with all the pieces in place for the President to disband it, I for one can no longer see the difference if he did.
Impeachment you do not do because you know you have the votes in the Senate to convict. The Senate function is a trial, and you do not go to trial with a predetermined or preordained outcome in mind. That is a Stalinist Trial. That is a Kangaroo Court. That is what those who still care complain our country is moving toward. If that is what either party suggests should be the case, they should recuse themselves now.
Impeachment is an indictment. It is done because there is enough evidence to warrant a trial, to suggest criminal wrongdoing. The greatest indictment to the political system is those who would suggest as “Senator” Obama has done, that there has yet been any evidence of serious criminal wrongdoing or subversion of the Constitution. In this, unlike the Senate whose outcome should not even be considered at this point, the amount of evidence is important. It can be overwhelming, enough to ensure a guilty verdict, or it can be enough to show complicity in criminal wrongdoing up to the level to be removed from office. If the evidence is not there or thought to be too weak, their ought to be no impeachment. But that evidence will not be brought forth, than investigatory hearing will not commence to try to gather that evidence, that points to the greatest failing yet to date of the political and justice system.
I have pointed now for years the precipice we are upon. It has been the military which has leaked the greatest amount of information on the criminal wrongdoing by this administration. It is under grave situations like this that the military will ultimately decide whether impeachment will be “allowed” if Bush should declare that during a time of war, he is the sole “decider” and that his generals would have to decided, whether their oaths to uphold the Constitution were not just blowing hot air. And, as former CIA analyst Roy McGovern and others have pointed out, a President under indictment with the possibility of soon being removed from office would give the military reason to not uphold illegal orders to start provocative action or begin to escalate current conflicts or begin new conflicts to save one sorry leaders ass. Impeachment would be the legal cover they would need to stop what they know has been a political war of choice, and they might be able to prevent another one they have, against their better judgment, been told to prepare for in Iran.
Many have open worried that the US is moving toward a military dictatorship model or that we have already become one. That would be true if Congress does not begin impeachment hearings, far less than if it did attempt to begin impeachment and they were stopped from doing so by the courts or the military from exercising their sole remaining potential to stop the madness before a new wider war begins or spreads at Bush's “discretion”. That is because if no veneer or illusion that democratic institutions remained after they have overwhelmingly now would have proven they have ceased to function, it would be far easier for Bush to removed via the military's own competency rules, should he indeed be then the sole “elected decider.” A dictatorship exposed as such is far easier to topple than one that hides behind a puppet legislature.
Not only that, but Congress would be complicit in the deaths of all who might die due to a Gulf of Token type incident for failing to respond to that threat which has been pointed out relentless to them as of late as a real possibility. The US, democracy, liberty, and our military are now dying a slow death, and Congress seems content to due little else besides non-binding resolutions, meaningless censures and contempt charges that will be openly ignored by an administration that not only holds the President above the law, but anyone he that works for he or that he designates too is above the law, and that all rights under the Constitution given to anyone else, he can revoke at his discretion. If Congress cannot find “high crimes and misdemeanors” in that, they no longer have eyes to see, no longer a consciousness with which to think, and have already surrendered to the President any authority to decide anything they previously thought they might have had. In that case, I would agree with the President if he suspends Congress completely. They will have become a costly illusion of democracy and a waste of money.
People have come forward against this administration's wrongdoing and it may as well have been to a firing squad. The press has been threatened when doing its job correctly, uncovering illegal programs, and other times has been rewarded for raking over the coals anyone who profoundly displeased the administration. Whistleblowers against Bush have been told to go to hell by the Supreme Court. And Congress, by not beginning hearings on impeachment has told them don't bother, no one will watch your back. Silence your conscience, it is ok, make your deal for a pardon, the Decider will have your back, and Congress is just one more entity that will throw you off the pier if you try to come forward. Their hesitation has made their immunity and protection worthless in the face of a 'unitary executive', and the President's favor is beyond measuring in cost, it is literally your life and the lives of your children at his discretion, and sole whim.
posted by Jared DuBois | 7:38 AM
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