imprisonbush.com

Now that Congress is discussing impeachment of George W. Bush openly, and multiple impeachable offenses are being brought to the attention of the American people even by some mainstream media outlets, the question must be asked: Is America behind the effort to impeach Bush?

An online MSNBC poll provides an unscientific suggestion that America is very eager to impeach Bush. Of course, the poll is not a random, unbiased representation of American opinion, because all those who answer the poll are volunteers. Nonetheless, the results are striking. As of the evening of December 29, the online poll about impeaching Bush shows that 86 percent of over 178,000 respondents favor impeaching Bush.

Does that mean that 86 percent of Americans favor impeaching Bush? Probably not. But it does suggest that, among those Americans who favor impeaching Bush, there is a great deal of enthusiasm for the idea and, among those Americans who oppose impeaching Bush, there is little enthusiasm for blocking an impeachment.

Consider this within thje framework that the MSBNC audience skews Republican. The political will is there among the American people for impeachment. Will America’s political leaders now step up to the task?

Nearly an entire week after Representative John Conyers introduced h. res. 635, a House resolution that would establish an independent investigation into multiple areas in which George W. Bush is now alleged to have committed impeachable crimes as President of the United States, the Library of Congress has finally made the text of the resolution public.

So far, there are seven co-sponsors to the Conyers resolution:
Rep Capps, Lois [CA-23]
Rep Jackson-Lee, Sheila [TX-18]
Rep Lofgren, Zoe [CA-16]
Rep Payne, Donald M. [NJ-10]
Rep Rangel, Charles B. [NY-15]
Rep Waters, Maxine [CA-35] –
Rep Woolsey, Lynn C. [CA-6]

There are many others who should be ready, once Congress reconvenes in January, to add their names to the resolution, and add helpful amendments.

Unfortunately, the Republicans are trying to delay the 2006 season of Congress for as long as possible because they’re still trying to protect Congressman Tom DeLay, even though he’s currently on trial on corruption charges. The sooner Congress reconvenes in January, the sooner Tom DeLay receives his comeuppance and loses power, and the Republicans would hate to see that.

In the meantime, you can be part of the grassroots effort to enhance and refine h. res. 635, which could be the legislation that finally puts George W. Bush in prison, where he belongs. Visit our own wikimpeachment page to revise the Conyers resolution to get involved – adding new grounds for investigation and impeachment, as you see fit.

There’s a secondary scandal going on around the newly invigorated movement to impeach Bush.

It’s in the Library of Congress, which has a newly updated web site featuring sparkling clean graphics – but the same old damned slow process of getting information about vital information out to the American public.

It’s been two days now since Representative John Conyers introduced legislation to the floor of the House of Representatives proposing an independent investigation of crimes committed by George W. Bush that would, upon the completion of its work, come forward with a recommendation about whether to impeach George W. Bush. The legislation is known formally as H. RES. 635

I’d like to be able to add the text of H. Res. 635 to our wikimpeach Bush pages – for you to review and revise. Yet, with two days time, the Library of Congress has yet to make the text of H. RES. 635 available to the American public.

Why? Why can’t we know what this resolution says? Why can’t we see the status of the resolution? Why aren’t we allowed to see the information about which representatives are cosponsoring the resolution?

Is it a conspiracy? No. It’s even worse. It’s lazy Republican bureaucracy at work.

With all the Republican budget cuts and efforts to promote secrecy in government, the Library of Congress has yet to move beyond the technology of 1995.

With legislation being composed in computers in the offices of senators and representatives, the Library of Congress should be able to take important legislation and make it available for public viewing withing minutes, not days.

We cannot have a democracy when our representatives are working on legislation that the American public is unable to read. Learning about developments in legislation two or three or four days after the fact leaves citizens impotent to actually do anything about it.

Now more than ever, American citizens need the power to wrest control of the federal government from Republican Washington insiders.

The mechanisms of the Library of Congress must be updated if democracy is to become anything but something we read about after it has happened.

Yesterday, Congressman John Conyers introduced H. Res. 635 to the floor of the House of Representatives. Wouldn’t you know it, the slow pokes at the Library of Congress have yet to make this important resolution public online. Still here’s what the resolution boils down to:

It would create an independent commission to investigate the illegal activities of George W. Bush and possibly recommend his impeachment.

It’s about time, isn’t it?

While this resolution is being read and debated, we’re offering yet another new feature here at Imprison Bush. We’re working on a wiki system that will allow you to create and edit Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush, as well as suggest amendments to the Conyers resolution to initiate an investigation. We’re calling it wikimpeachment.

No kidding – you get to take part. All you have to do is visit our wikimpeachment pages, which are pretty rudimentary right now, and click edit on any of the pages to make changes to the articles of impeachment already suggested by the folks over at Impeach Bush. You don’t have to let Ramsey Clark do the talking for you anymore. YOU can make your own articles of impeachment, using his suggestion as a template, or starting from scratch. Then, other people will have the opportunity to make revisions to your revisions.

It’s a democratic system for working toward an impeachment movement that will work. You remember democracy, right?

Don’t wait. Get involved. wikimpeach Bush!

We’ve already seen how Bush has justified his illegal spying on Americans by citing the post 9/11 resolution passed by Congress granting him the authority to fight terrorism “by all means necessary.”

John Kerry has now come out and called this excuse for the Bush administration’s criminal activity “lame,” because “there is no wording whatsoever in the law that permits what he engaged in.” (Source: AP, 1/21/05)

What part of “all means necessary” does Kerry not understand? All means necessary means Bush can do whatever he wants. All means necessary means Bush is above the law. All means necessary means he can pimp your grandmother if he damn well pleases, as long as he can come up with some bogus excuse that he’s fighting terrorism by doing so.

Want to know what’s really “lame?” What’s really lame is that Bush came to Congress asking for authority to pursue Al Qaeda militarily in Afghanistan, while handing Congress a piece of paper asking for imperial powers for the president. And what’s even more lame is that Democrats, in a fog of shock after 9/11, signed off on those imperial powers.

In the 2004 elections we got plenty of chances to hear how Kerry, as a young soldier in Vietnam, kept a clear head and did what he needed to do, even when he was under attack. But in the days after 9/11 he lost his head when America was under attack. He got disoriented in the fog of bogus bipartisanship, and when it came time to do what he had to do, he choked. He blew his chance to defend American democracy.

While Kerry froze, the Republican dirty tricks machine kept right on trucking. In the bipartisan post-9/11 fog, Congress signed off, giving Bush the power to do whatever he wanted. That bipartisan feel-good fog turned out to be nothing more than a smoke screen for Republican dirty tricks all along. Bush’s illegal wiretaps, along with whatever other still-secret dirty tricks, began in 2001.

Back in September of 2001, only one person in either the House or Senate kept a clear head even in the face of attack. Representative Barbara Lee of California saw clearly that giving Bush the power to employ “all means necessary” was an attack on American democracy. She stood up and fought back, leading the charge against this un-American resolution. She took a look back to see who was with her, and found out she was all alone. And she kept charging anyway, casting the only dissenting vote against Bush’s “all means necessary” powers.

What Kerry and all our other Senators and Congressmen forgot, she remembered. In the fight to preserve American democracy, being dazed and confused is not an option. If you choke up for even a second, the results can be dire. Thank you Barbara Lee, for keeping your head while all those around you lost theirs. And for all those around her, there has been wake up call after wake up call over the last four years. Quit hitting the snooze button, shake the cobwebs out of your heads, and fight for democracy already.

Yesterday, George W. Bush said that Congress had oversight over the illegal program to spy against American citizens by listening to their telephone calls and reading their emails without ever getting a search warrant or even going to the special terrorism courts designed to give out warrants with extreme speed.

Did Congress really have oversight? Consider:

- Out of the hundreds of members of Congress, Bush only told a small handful about what was going on.
- There is evidence that the few members of Congress who were briefed were given incomplete information about the program.
- The handful of members of Congress who were briefed about the program were told that they would be hauled off to prison if they told anyone else, even another member of Congress, their staff, or their spouses.
- The few members of Congress who were briefed were not given any authority to stop the program, just to hear about it and then do nothing.

Where is the oversight? There was no congressional oversight of the program to spy on Americans.

You want to know what congressional oversight really looks like? Let’s use the Republican standard – what George W. Bush himself has been demanding for years now: A full up or down vote on the floor of the House and Senate.

That’s easy to remember, isn’t it? Bush and his Republican followers have been using the phrase for years as a standard of what proper oversight is.

So, now, turnabout is fair play. Without at least the possibility of a full up or down vote on the floor of the House and Senate, there is no possibility of congressional oversight. Failure to notify Congress and allow oversight is against the law.

You’re now hearing the language hinted at in the halls of Congress: The time has come (heck, it’s long overdue) to impeach Bush.

Enough is enough. No, enough is more than enough. It’s time to get the movement to impeach and imprison Bush to get turbocharged.

Bush has actually come out and declared that he has the powers of the dictator – that the laws of the United States of America don’t apply to him.

The impeachable offenses of the Bush Administration have never been more clear.

To do our small part to bring the impeach Bush and imprison Bush movement into a higher gear, we’re adding a new feature to the Imprison Bush web site this morning:

The Imprison Bush discussion forum – a place for people interested in helping to impeach and imprison Bush to get together and talk about ways to cooperate to make the effort stronger and successful.

Today, I offer up the first topic of discussion – a poll of our readers: Is Bush’s program to spy on American citizens an impeachable offense? Cast your vote.

Let’s review:

A worldwide network of secret torture prisons
Multiple secret programs to spy on lawful political dissidents
Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of civilians killed
A war based on blatant lies
The restriction of free speech protests to designated zones
An system of government propaganda and lies planted in newspapers around the world and in the United States
A general attack on liberty in the name of The Homeland
A President who declares that he is exempt from the law

Stand back and take a look. Can you not see what’s going on?

What will it take for you to stand up and so no to this outrage?

What makes it okay? Is it that they haven’t taken your SUV? Is it that they haven’t come after you yet?

If you continue to do nothing now, will you tell your grandchildren that they have to understand that nobody knew what was going on?

You know what’s going on.