imprisonbush.com

Today, America learned that the CIA took videotapes of the torture of people kept prisoner by the President of the United States, and then destroyed them. When a federal judge asked to see the videotapes, the CIA lied to the judge and said that the videotapes never existed.

The videotapes could have been used as evidence of prosecutorial misconduct in a criminal trial, and were destroyed in order to prevent the torture from ever being known by the American public.

But, will anyone in the CIA be held responsible? Will George W. Bush be impeached?

No, no, certainly not. After all, the news was released on a Friday, and very few Americans were in the mood to pay attention to serious things. Tomorrow, there shall be college football, and the day after that, the NFL games, and then, by Monday it will be mostly forgotten.

Justice will rot underneath our feet, and nothing will be done to stop it.

Why is the Democratic Congress so unpopular? It isn’t because the Democrats in Congress are taking strong stands that anger Republican voters. Rather, it is because most Democrats in Congress are failing to act on the majority, mainstream view in America: That George W. Bush and Dick Cheney must be impeached.

Dennis Kucinich has introduced a resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, but Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has tried to destroy that resolution even before Congress has the chance to debate the resolution’s merits.

The editors of the Battleboro Reformer, a Vermont newspaper, rightly identify Pelosi’s opposition to impeachment as “a perfect illustration of why Congress has a lower approval rating than President Bush.” They write,

“A Democratic majority was elected to Congress last year to end the war in Iraq and rein in the Bush administration. Neither thing has happened. On issue after issue, the Democrats have caved in to Bush. And impeachment remains off the table.

Under House rules, Kucinich or any other member could introduce a motion for impeachment every day that Congress is in session. We think that sounds like a good idea. The administration has committed many crimes that rise to the level of impeachment — chief among them lying about the need to invade Iraq and sending this country into war based upon those lies. But Congress will not carry out its constitutional duties.

Bush and Cheney must not be allowed to leave office without being held accountable for their behavior. History will not look at the current members of Congress kindly if they fail to do what is right and necessary to preserve our democracy.”

Read the complete editorial here.

This week, the National Lawyers Guild has passed a resolution calling upon Congress to begin the process of impeaching both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The move opposes the move by the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives to try to kill a resolution of impeachment against Dick Cheney, and calls upon the House and Senate to move quickly to protect American democracy by removing Bush and Cheney from the White House.

The NLG impeachment reads as follows:

The Resolution on Impeachment of Bush and Cheney

Whereas George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney:

1. deliberately misled the nation and doctored intelligence, as described in the Downing Street
minutes, http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html about the threat from Iraq in order to
justify a war of aggression and an occupation of Iraq, as further described in House resolution H.
Res. 333 http://kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/int3.pdf
and as listed in House Resolution H. Res. 635
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr109-635

2. committed crimes against peace by initiating war against Iraq in violation of the UN Charter
http://www.worldpress.org/specials/iraq/;

3. committed crimes against humanity in their conduct of the occupation of Iraq in which they
killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and created millions of
refugees http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1892888,00.html and http://edition.cnn.com/2
006/WORLD/meast/10/13/iraq.main/index.html;

4. killed over 3700 American soldiers and severely wounded nearly 30,000 more in the pursuit of
an illegal, immoral, and unjust occupation of Iraq. While Bush and Cheney have stated no
truthful noble cause for the war, one of the central purposes appears to be to take control of Iraq’s
immense oil reserves to financially benefit private corporate interests. See Bush’s benchmark
listing fact sheet released the same day Bush announced the “surge” that expressly called on the
Iraq parliament to “enact hydrocarbons law to promote investment . . . ”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-
3.html and http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/56672/;

5. committed further crimes against peace by threatening Iran in violation of the UN Charter, as
described in House resolution H. Res. 333 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/query/z?c110:H.RES.333: and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6649053.stm;

6. detained thousands of prisoners without charges and without providing the ability to confront
their accusers at a fair trial http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/United-States-of-
America;

7. condoned the torture of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the US anti-torture
statute of 1994, the US War Crimes Act of 1996, and the oath of
office http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/24/usint8614.htm and
http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/United-States-of-America and
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/03/24/bush_shuns_patriot_act_requirement/.
Bush’s refusal to faithfully execute the laws prohibiting torture and his declaration on February 7,
2002 that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo
set the stage for torture there http://hrw.org/reports/2004/usa0604/2.htm. The Rumsfeld approved
Guantanamo torture techniques were then imported to Iraq in August 2003, where the
International Committee of the Red Cross found “systemic” mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in
several facilities and where the Schlesinger Report confirmed in August 2004 that abuses were
“widespread” and “serious both in number and in effect,” and that there is both “institutional and
personal responsibility at higher levels;”

8. approved at least two different illegal electronic surveillance programs of American citizens
without a warrant in violation of the fourth amendment and in violation of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and repeatedly lied to the American people by stating that
no surveillance was taking place without a court order. The first program includes intercepting
phone and email conversations without warrants and was exposed by the NY Times on December
16, 2005 http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/CPC/NYT_15cnd-program.html. After that program
was exposed Bush said the program was carefully targeted to just include international calls and
suspected members of Al Qaeda. Then, the second program was exposed by USA Today on May
11, 2006. It provides a wholesale attack on the fourth amendment by recording call identification
information of tens of millions of purely domestic calls as well as international calls
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm;

9. attacked basic human rights protections in the constitution including habeas corpus, fifth
amendment freedom from loss of life, liberty and property without due process of law, eighth
amendment freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and fourth amendment freedom from
unreasonable search and seizure;

10. attacked the separation of powers in an effort to consolidate power in the executive;

11. attacked the messenger who revealed that Bush “twisted” intelligence “to exaggerate the Iraqi
threat.” Just as Nixon retaliated against former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg, according to papers filed in court by special
prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in April 2006, there was “concerted action” by “multiple people in
the White House” to “discredit, punish or seek revenge against” former Ambassador Joseph
Wilson for his July 6, 2003 NY Times op ed piece
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/06WILS.html?ex=1372824000&en=6c6aeb1ce960
dec0&ei=5007 that ripped the cover off of Bush’s false assertions in his 2003 state of the union
address that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa for building a nuclear bomb. In
retaliation, and to silence other would-be critics, the White House collected information about
Wilson and disclosed to reporters that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert agent in the CIA
counterinsurgency division, putting her life, and the lives of her contacts, at risk in violation of a
US law protecting intelligence personnel (The Impeachment of George W. Bush, by Elizabeth
Holtzman);

12. as the sole person under the Federal Stafford Act with responsibility and authority to issue
emergency orders to mobilize the military and any federal resources needed to aid and assist in a
disaster (see Failure of Initiative, February 2006 report of the House Select Bipartisan
Committee to investigate the Preparations for and the Response to Hurricane Katrina
http://katrina.house.gov/), Bush failed to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, violated
the public trust, and demonstrated reckless and inexcusable indifference to human life before,
during and after Hurricane Katrina. Bush knew but did not act until too late, and then he lied
about it on national TV. Footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 demonstrate that
Bush was personally told well in advance of the “unprecedented strength” of the hurricane, the
“devastating damage expected,” and that “water shortages will make human suffering
incredible,” according to highly accurate predictions by the National Weather Service. The
Associated Press reported that “in dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster
officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck
that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm
rescuers, according to confidential video footage,” http://www.truthout.org/cgi-
bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/47/18079. Yet Bush failed to muster resources to evacuate residents in
advance and failed to assist New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina hit. Then three days
later Bush told Good Morning America, “I don’t think that anybody anticipated a breach of the
levees.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030202130.html In years before the storm
Bush demonstrated inexcusable criminal negligence and violated the public trust by cutting the
budget for hurricane defense, though the high probability of the breaching of the levees and the
enormous risk to human life from a major hurricane hitting New Orleans were predicted and well
known for years before the hurricane hit
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/03/katrina.chertoff/index.html;

13. failed to take care that the laws be faithfully executed by issuing signing statements
that claim the authority to disobey laws based on the president’s own interpretation of their
constitutionality, and then by taking action in violation of these laws, including the US law
making torture a crime, laws regarding Congressional oversight that require providing
information to Congress, laws regarding domestic spying, laws regarding civil liberties, and laws
strengthening whistle blower protection, thereby expanding the president’s own power by
stepping into the legislative and judicial functions at the expense of Congress and the
courts, upsetting the balance among the three branches of government, and moving us away from
the rule of law toward vastly increased executive
power; http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_l
aws/ and
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/03/24/bush_shuns_patriot_act_requirement/;

14. converted the Justice Department into an arm of the Republican Party by firing meritorious
federal prosecutors who refused to base decisions on whom to prosecute on political
considerations–to help Republicans win election, an offense James Madison discussed in a
speech to the Senate on June 17, 1789, in which Madison said, “The danger then consists merely in
this, the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it.
What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that
operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be impeachable by this house, before the senate, for such
an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject
him to impeachment and removal from his own high
trust.” http://www.gwu.edu/~ffcp/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=fc11904
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/27/113/print/;

15. condoned criminal conduct and obstructed justice by commuting the sentence of convicted
perjurer Scooter Libby to keep him silent and to demonstrate that Bush and Cheney will not
allow high officials in the administration to be held accountable for their criminal acts;

16. obstructed congressional investigations of these and other acts by the administration by
defying subpoenas from Senate and House committees seeking documents and testimony under
oath by administration officials and former administration officials; and

Whereas the constitution requires the president to take the following oath of office: “I do
solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and
will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States;”
and

Whereas the constitution provides that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully
executed;” and

Whereas the constitution mandates that “the President, 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;” and

Whereas impeachment was so important to our founding fathers that it is mentioned six times in
five different sections of the constitution; and

Whereas George Mason, a primary author of the Constitution, said that impeachment was the
single most important part of the entire document. “Shall any man be above Justice? Above all
shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?”
http://gunstonhall.org/georgemason/constitution.html July 20, 1787; and

Whereas “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is a term of art that means a serious abuse of power,
whether or not it is also a crime, that endangers our constitutional system of government, or an
abuse of public trust. (See Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment: Report of the House
Judiciary Committee, 1974, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/watergatedoc_3.htm, articles by Elizabeth Holzman who
served on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment hearings of Richard Nixon in
1974 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/holtzman; and
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070212&s=holtzman, and the book, The
Impeachment of George W. Bush, by Elizabeth Holtzman)

Whereas each of the above listed acts meets or exceeds that standard; and

Whereas impeachment is the only constitutional method to protect Americans from a president
intent on abusing power, violating the constitution, violating the laws, and breaching public trust;
and

Whereas Bush and Cheney threaten further crimes, including launching a war of aggression
against Iran, and whereas sufficient time remains in their term of office for them to commit those
crimes so allowing either or both of them to remain in office for that remaining time will
facilitate these crimes, and whereas pretexts for attacking Iran have been issued, as described by
a former CIA Middle East field officer and current Time Magazine columnist
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1654188,00.html; and

Whereas failing to hold Bush and Cheney accountable not only condones their crimes but
facilitates a future president committing similar or greater crimes; and

Whereas members of Congress swear an oath to “support and defend the constitution of the
United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and no part of this oath permits
exception for partisan advantage, the next election, political expediency, whether it is distracting
from other issues, or how much time they have left in office; and

Whereas failure by Congress to initiate the one remedy–impeachment–provided by our
founding fathers to protect the constitution from such serious abuses has put that constitution, the
rule of law, civil liberties, our democratic form of government, the separation of powers, the
lives of our men and women in uniform, and the lives of countless civilians at severe risk; and

Whereas citizen pressure led the Vermont State Senate and 87 cities and towns around the
nation to pass impeachment resolutions; and

Whereas a poll conducted by http://www.americanresearchgroup.com on July 5, 2007 found that
54% of American adults want the US House of Representatives to begin impeachment
proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney while only 40% oppose, and whereas the poll
also found that 45% are in favor of the same thing for President George W. Bush while 46%
oppose; and

Whereas in view Congress’ ongoing complicity with the war, the torture, the lies, the warrantless
wiretapping, and the imprisonment without trial, and its failure to protect rights and civil
liberties, it is up to the people themselves to defend the constitution and our civil liberties by
building larger grassroots movements, including a movement for impeachment;

Therefore be it resolved that the National Lawyers Guild calls upon the U.S. House of
Representatives to immediately initiate impeachment proceedings, to investigate the charges, and
if the investigation supports the charges, to vote to impeach George W. Bush and Richard B.
Cheney as provided in the Constitution of the United States of America; and

Be it further resolved that the National Lawyers Guild will establish an NLG Impeachment
Committee open to all members to coordinate action by the NLG in support of impeachment, to
work with national and grassroots impeachment organizations, and to provide legal assistance for
those efforts to strengthen the national campaign for impeachment; and

Be it further resolved that the NLG Impeachment Committee will help organize and coordinate
events at the local, state, and national level to build public participation in the campaign to
initiate impeachment investigation, impeachment, and removal of Bush and Cheney from office
without further delay; and

Be it further resolved that the National Lawyers Guild calls on NLG members to ask their
respective member of Congress to support H. Res. 333 to impeach Cheney and to introduce or
support other impeachment resolutions; and

Be it further resolved that the National Lawyers Guild calls on all other state and national bar
associations, state and local government bodies, community organizations, labor unions, and all
other citizen associations to adopt similar resolutions and to use all their resources to build the
campaign demanding that Congress initiate impeachment investigation, impeach, and remove
Bush and Cheney from office without further delay; and

Be it further resolved that the National Lawyers Guild will forward a copy of this resolution to
the Speaker and the Clerk of the US House of Representatives, to Representative John Conyers,
Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to the various state and federal bar associations, to
other peace and justice organizations, and to the news media.

Implementation: By the NLG Impeachment Committee established by this resolution, by
interested local chapters, and by national officers.

Submitted by: James Marc Leas, jolly39@juno.com

The resolution cosponsors are:
Audrey Bomse, Marjorie Cohn, Laura Safer Espinoza, John Wheat Gibson , Eileen Hansen, Larry Hildes, Jim Klimaski, Jordan Kushner, Jim Lafferty, James Marc Leas, Kerry McLean, Bill Monning, Dorinda Moreno, Michael Ratner, Susan Scott, Jennifer Van Bergen, Aaron Varhola, Karen Weill

Yesterday, Dennis Kucinich brought a resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney to the floor of the House of Representatives.

In what is certainly a disappointment, but is no longer surprising, the Democratic Party leadership tried to have the impeachment resolution eliminated even before it could be considered and debated in Congress. They tried to squelch the popular Democratic support for impeachment.

Some Democrats had enough integrity to break away from their leaders’ treachery against Democratic voters. 86 Democrats voted against eliminating the impeachment resolution. They succeeded. The resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney remains alive, to go to John Conyers in the House Judiciary Committee.

Call Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers today, to tell him you want that impeachment resolution to be approved by his committee. His office’s number is (202) 225-5126.

The following are the 86 Democrats in the House of Representatives who voted to preserve the resolution to impeach Cheney. If your Representative is among them, give a call of thanks today.

Abercrombie
Allen
Baca
Baldwin
Braley (IA)
Capps
Capuano
Clarke
Clay
Cleaver
Cohen
Conyers
Crowley
Cummings
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
Dicks
Doggett
Doyle
Ellison
Farr
Filner
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hare
Hinchey
Hirono
Hodes
Holt
Honda
Hooley
Inslee
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Johnson (GA)
Jones (OH)
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kilpatrick
Kucinich
Lee
Loebsack
Maloney (NY)
McDermott
Meeks (NY)
Michaud
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Napolitano
Ortiz
Pallone
Pascrell
Perlmutter
Price (NC)
Rangel
Richardson
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Shea-Porter
Sherman
Slaughter
Solis
Stark
Stupak
Sutton
Thompson (CA)
Towns
Velazquez
Waters
Watson
Watt
Weiner
Welch (VT)
Wexler
Woolsey
Wu
Wynn

If your Representative is not on this list, give a call today and ask them to change their position.

Bush lied - again. This time, it isn’t Bush Lied, People Died, however. It’s Bush Lied, People Were Buyed. Pardon my bad grammar, but I’m angry.

It turns out that the Bush White House, the same Bush White House that insisted that it never had anything to do with convicted bribe man Jack Abramoff, is withholding 600 pages of documents about Jack Abramoff from Congress. That’s in addition to 3700 pages that were released.

Bush lied when he said he never met Jack Abramoff.

Now, Bush has been caught lying again to Congress, and defying the constitutional authority of Congress to conduct oversight.

What is on those 600 documents about Jack Abramoff’s dealings with the White House, and why is George W. Bush refusing to allow anyone to see them?

The time for asking nicely is over.

Investigate Bush.
Subpoena Bush.
Censure Bush.
Impeach Bush!

Michael Mukasey has insulted the United States Senate once again. When asked by Senators whether he will consider, as Attorney General, the horrific act of waterboarding to be a form of torture, Mukasey has refused to answer over and over again - three times now, by my count.

Mukasey’s latest refusal to answer the question comes in this form: Mukasey says he will decide whether to count waterboarding as torture after the United States Senate confirms him as Attorney General. Then he’ll let the Senate know the answer to the question.

That’s an answer in itself. It’s clear that Michael Mukasey intends to continue the practice of torturing prisoners by waterboarding, authorizing the torture, and claiming that it doesn’t break the many laws against torture, merely by declaring that waterboarding is, in fact, not torture.

That’s like saying that decapitation is not murder, and then saying that, while the government may chop people’s heads off, it does not murder.

George W. Bush’s pick for Attorney General has, in effect, declared that he intends to help the President continue to break the law.

Michael Mukasey must not be confirmed as Attorney General.

George W. Bush must be impeached.

Thanksgiving will be a holiday of specific thanks this year for Americans who care about the rule of law. Dennis Kucinich has promised that he will take to the floor of the House of Representatives and make a motion to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, and do it before Thanksgiving. Kucinich has already introduced an impeachment resolution to the House. Now, Kucinich will force a vote by formally moving impeachment to consideration through the power of of personal privilege.

It’s about time. Actually, it’s long past time.

Please call your member of Congress, and him or her to support Kucinich, and vote in favor of the impeachment of Cheney.

Yet more criminal activity in the Bush Administration: The House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee has sent a letter to NASA Adminsitator Michael Griffin, ordering him, under the authority of federal law 18 U.S.C. 1505, to stop destroying information about commercial airline safety that has been requested by Congress.

Why is this letter necessary? It seems that, after Congress requested information about a secret survey of airline safety conducted by a contractor for NASA, NASA officials ordered the contractor to give them all the survey information, and then to destroy their own files with information about the survey.

This isn’t the first time this year that evidence of a criminal cover-up at NASA has emerged. The congressional letter to Griffin explains, “As I am sure you know, this is not the first time this year that we have written regarding a report that NASA was involved in the destruction of materials. In that prior instance, your own General Counsel destroyed video records of your appearance before the staff of the Inspector General. The evidence of misconduct was so clear that the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee sent a bipartisan referral letter to the Department of Justice seeking the prosecution of your General Counsel.”

Earlier this month, it was revealed that NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Luedtke denied a Freedom of Information Act request for the results of a survey of airline pilots about commercial airline safety because, Luedtke said, allowing the public to know the results of the survey “could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey.”

It seems that NASA has information that should lead the American public to lose confidence in the safety of commercial flights within the United States, yet is refusing to give that information to the American public, and is allowing people to fly on commercial airlines in apparently unsafe conditions, all in order to protect the financial interests of airline corporations.

When did government of the people, by the people, for the people change into government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations?

What involvement was there of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in this criminal cover up? What did they know and when did they know it?