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The following email was sent to impeachment supporters in the Takoma Park area; I’ve added a video link to the campaign video mentioned in the second paragraph.

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Dear Takoma Park Impeach Bush & Cheney supporter,

We — Thomas Nephew, Lisa Moscatiello, and Michelle Bailey — are writing to endorse Gordon Clark (Green Party) for Maryland’s 8th Congressional District seat in the House of Representatives.  We’re confident that as the kind of independent thinker who has supported impeachment, you’ll be very impressed with Mr. Clark, who is opposing incumbent Chris Van Hollen (Democratic Party).  For our part, all three of us will be voting for him on November 4th.

To learn more about Gordon Clark, visit his web site at www.clarkforcongress.net.  While you’re there, be sure to check out his latest campaign video — a great two minute summary of why Gordon Clark is running for Congress.*  There’s also a video of his recent debate with Republican Steve Hudson and Van Hollen legislative aide Bill Parsons (Van Hollen couldn’t attend because of the bailout bill vote).

The centerpiece of Clark’s campaign is a Green New Deal — an Apollo program, Manhattan Project, and Marshall Plan all rolled into one — to put America on the path to renewable energy independence.  He also supports universal health care, opposes threatening war with Iran, and wants a complete withdrawal from Iraq; as you’ll see from an issues chart comparison, Chris Van Hollen falls short on these and other counts.  There’s more, everything is well documented — and you’ll probably find yourself agreeing with Gordon Clark much more often than not.

There will be a Clark volunteer meeting today (Sunday, October 26th) from 4-6PM at 822 Gist Avenue, Silver Spring; to get in touch with the campaign, contact Sara Gilbertie at 860-233-4097 or sara@clarkforcongress.net, or visit the campaign web site at www.clarkforcongress.net.

What about Clark’s views on impeachment?  Here’s what he told Internet radio host Chip Gibbons earlier this year:

Read the rest of this entry »

In one very important way, impeachment does — and maybe soon.

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The news was quickly buried under an avalanche of financial crisis, Palin, debate, and election horse race stories, but it was significant all the same.  In late September, Murray Waas reported in Atlantic.com that Department of Justice investigators were zeroing in on former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s July 24, 2007 testimony to Congress.  In this testimony, Gonzales asserted that in a critical March 10, 2004 meeting — immediately prior to the notorious “hospital confrontation” between Comey, Ashcroft, Gonzales, and Card — a key group of Congressional members privy to intelligence secrets* shared a “consensus” with Cheney, Addington, and Gonzales that the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program described to them should go forward.

Unfortunately for Gonzales, this assertion was denied** by many of the congressmembers involved. Waas:

Gonzales said that he had told the congressional leaders “in the most forceful way that I could [about] … the disagreement that existed.” Gonzales said that in response to that, there had been a “consensus in the room” from the legislators, “who said, ‘Despite the recommendation of the deputy attorney general, go forward with very important intelligence activities.’ ”

This assertion that there had been “a consensus” is currently under investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general as possible perjury or as a false statement under oath.

According to Waas, Gonzales also developed after-the-fact “notes” on the March 10 meeting, at the direction of President Bush; beginning with one sentence(!) , jotted down on March 11.  Gonzales asserted he wrote up the remainder of his notes on the March 10, 2004 meeting “the following weekend,” i.e., March 13 and 14.

But on March 11, when he renewed the NSA warrantless surveillance program, Bush could only have had Gonzales’s say-so and the alleged one sentence note as “documentation” of Congressional acquiescence.  According to accounts like those by the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman, Bush finally modified his March 11 order on March 19 — well after being informed by Comey, on March 12, of likely widespread resignations at the Department of Justice should the program continue in its prior form.

The NSA warrantless surveillance program may well have always been an impeachable offense.  Its continued approval through March 19, 2004, despite the March 12th disapproval of Acting Attorney General Comey — was even more certainly one, at least in my view and that of many others.  Should the March 11th reapproval have been based on evidence of congressional “acquiescence” known to be false or even suborned, that would be yet further grounds for Bush’s impeachment.

But I think it’s also crucial that by feigning that evidence — and by restating that lie in his July 24, 2007 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee — Alberto Gonzales can be impeached as well. And there’s nothing President Bush could do to stop that — not even a pardon.

Read the rest of this entry »

…so let’s make it a bad one for George Bush, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and Josh Bolten by joining this American Freedom Campaign petition:

…In order for our government to function, we must have checks and balances. In order to prevent a president from assuming king-like powers and to ensure that all presidents are held accountable for their actions, Congress must have effective congressional oversight ability. And, of course, our presidents must respect that power.

George W. Bush does not.

It is time to put an end to this defiling of our Constitution. The U.S. House of Representatives has set September 26 as a target date for adjournment. By that time, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and Josh Bolten must comply with the congressional subpoenas they have been issued – and which a federal judge has ordered them to follow.

If they do not, then George W. Bush must be impeached and removed from office….

Full text and petition here — and of course, feel free to join it before September 17th.  The American Freedom Campaign is organizing more than that for Constitution Day, as a press release last week explained:

Groups From Across the Political Spectrum Call on Presidential Candidates – and the Media – to Dedicate Constitution Day (September 17) to Addressing Constitutional Issues

…This year, an ideologically diverse coalition of civil society groups and think tanks from the human rights, civil liberties, environmental, civil rights, open government, limited government, and public interest communities have joined forces in a rare effort to foster respect for the U.S. Constitution by an incoming administration. Leading the effort are the American Freedom Campaign, World Resources Institute and the Liberty Coalition.

The organizations are calling on presidential candidates from all parties to describe their commitment and ability to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” as the next president. These groups recognize that presidents exercise a great deal of discretion and flexibility in interpreting the Constitution and that abuse of constitutional rights and safeguards can have significant harmful effects on the American people’s lives. It is therefore essential, they assert, to understand where candidates stand on constitutional rights and the separation of powers prior to their election. These groups also believe it is the responsibility of the media to inform the public about the candidates’ positions on constitutional issues and to press the candidates for their positions if they are unknown…

I.e., what Charlie Savage did with all the candidates late last year for “executive power” issues (something I turned into a spreadsheet rating system and described in a blog post here.)

There’s broad support for this initiative at the “grass tops” level and — I hope — at the grass roots level as well. I attended a press conference last Friday announcing the plan, and Sarah Dufendach (Common Cause), Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights), Dane Von Breichenruchardt (American Conservative Defense Alliance), and Robin Murphy (World Resources Institute), among others, all spoke about the urgency of this moment. Jon Pincus, Aviva OThirtytwo, and I were there (in person or by phone) representing “Get FISA Right”, one of the most recent expressions of citizen/netizen dissatisfaction with where our civil liberties are headed.

I went in hopes that this might become another nucleus of activism for a political drive like Nell Lancaster was writing about last week:

…post-power impeachment hearings are the single best way to uncover just what lawbreaking was done. Not only do impeachment investigations have much stronger testimony-extracting powers than regular Congressional hearings, but post-term impeachment is much less easily characterized as a “partisan witch hunt” because it’s removed from an electoral landscape. [...]

Impeachment is the key to reversing the damage of the last eight years, not simply papering it over. The time to organize for demanding it is not after the election, but now.

Now as campaign director Steve Fox stressed at the press conference, advocating impeachment is not a goal of the “Constitution Day” initiative per se — and the goal of elevating an election campaign above lipsticks, pit bulls, and hockey moms is hugely important in its own right.

But AFC’s own willingness to use the “I word” in its demand for Rove, Miers, and Bolten to take the stand shows they’re a potential ally for impeachment later on — whether before or after the election, and whether they’re ready to consider that right now or not. After all, even if the September 26th recess comes and goes with no progress in getting testimony from the White House, the urgency of sanctioning a presidency that thumbed its nose at the Constitution won’t go away.

Nor will all the benefits of impeachment. See Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution (emphasis added):

Judgment in 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.

Moreover, Article II, Section 2 states:

[the President] shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

The implications are left as an exercise for the reader.

While it wasn’t her point, Nell’s excellent post earlier this week (”Prepare to Dare or Prepare to Despair“) reminds me that I’ve been less energetic than I should have been in supporting and discussing Dennis Kucinich’s H.Res. 1258 resolution calling for George Bush’s impeachment.  The lengthy resolution presents 35 articles of impeachment, leading with Bush’s propaganda campaign for the Iraq war:

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully 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 under article II, section 3 of the Constitution ‘to take care that the laws be faithfully executed’, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, illegally spent public dollars on a secret propaganda program to manufacture a false cause for war against Iraq.

The resolution is a resource in its own right, presenting factual bases for each of the charges.*   As David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org said,

Impeachment is only a lengthy process when you don’t already have the evidence.  President Andrew Johnson was impeached three days after the offense for which he was impeached. … Bush and Cheney could be impeached, tried, and convicted in a week.

Not even every impeachment supporter will agree that every single article in H. Res. 1258 merits Bush’s impeachment,  removal from office, and  banning from future federal office.  But even in this the resolution serves a useful function, reminding us that impeachment is by design a political tool, to be wielded by the House of Representatives — not a judicial one or one limited to narrowly proveable violations of U.S. law.

To be sure — for those who insist on them — there are (in my opinion) such statutory and treaty violations involving illegal detention (Article 17), torture (Article 18), and illegally spying on American citizens (Article 24).

But impeachment can and sometimes must also be applied to the kinds of breaches of trust and willful poor judgment that have characterized the Bush administration, even if no specific statute is broken, even if “only” our constitutional system itself is at stake.   The cannon of impeachment may seem less warranted for, say, the relative fly of “endangering the health of 9/11 first responders,” (Article 35), but quite a bit more so for the propaganda catapult of misleading claims about Iraq and 9/11 (Article 2), Iraqi WMD (Article 3), or “even” climate change (Article 32) — regardless of whether particular statutes were broken in the latter cases.  Yet others strike at the equally profound subversion of the American political system, such as those about tampering with free and fair elections, corruption of the administration of justice (Article 28), creating secret laws (Article 22), and announcing intent not to follow duly enacted law (Article 26).

As AfterDowningStreet.com is reporting, Dennis Kucinich will present petitions supporting immediate impeachment hearings to Speaker Nancy Pelosi today. (You can still add your support here.)

Kucinich will also reportedly urge the formation of a truth and reconciliation commission — something Mark Gisleson (”Norwegianity”) supports in an article written for Mick Arran’s impeachment blog “The Bush/Cheney Impeachment Papers.” The arguments of Mr. Gisleson and others (like local congressional candidate Gordon Clark) notwithstanding, I see the “T&R” idea as a half measure ratifying a drift away from the Constitution and towards unwritten and impotent customs and conventions.

But even the half-measure of “truth and reconciliation” is not eagerly embraced by the Obama campaign.  As Mark Benjamin reported for Salon.com (via Mick Arran) this summer:

…don’t hold your breath waiting for Dick Cheney to be frog-marched into federal court. Prosecution of any officials, if it were to occur, would probably not occur during Obama’s first term. Instead, we may well see a congressionally empowered commission that would seek testimony from witnesses in search of the truth about what occurred. Though some witnesses might be offered immunity in exchange for testimony, the question of whether anybody would be prosecuted would be deferred to a later date — meaning Obama’s second term, if such is forthcoming.

On the other hand (and for what it’s worth), while it doesn’t call for either a commission or impeachment, the draft Democratic platform identified many of the same issues highlighted in H. Res. 1258.  And it closed the relevant “Reclaiming our Constitution and Our Liberties” section with the ringing words:

Our Constitution is not a nuisance. It is the foundation of our democracy. It makes freedom and self-governance possible, and helps to protect our security. The Democratic Party will restore our Constitution to its proper place in our government and return our Nation to our best traditions–including our commitment to government by law, and not by men.

Impeachment is not a nuisance either — it’s an integral part of the Constitution.  Impeachment is no esoteric afterthought — it’s the biggest actual “check and balance” in the document, and it’s mentioned six times.  Impeachment is literally patriotic.  And it would be a far more powerful tool towards uncovering the truth than any congressional committee or even special prosecutor would be — refusal to honor impeachment-related subpoenas was itself an article of impeachment in the Nixon articles of impeachment.

As Nell Lancaster wrote:

Impeachment is the key to reversing the damage of the last eight years, not simply papering it over. The time to organize for demanding it is not after the election, but now.

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* I’m planning to find or publish a web page of the resolution with hyperlinks to supporting documents and reports.

I’m not especially well-informed about the history of the Catholic Church, the Reformation, and the Counterreformation. I therefore simply direct readers to an interesting set of posts by Mick Arran:

• Open Letter to Barack and Nancy: Why “Moving On” Is a Recipe for Disaster (1)
• Open Letter (2): The Catholic Church and the Danger of Irresolution
• Open Letter (3): Nixon, Reagan, and the Church

Arran argues that there are instructive historical parallels between the great shipwreck of the Catholic Church on the rocks of the Reformation and today’s American political scene. In a nutshell, by failing to root out and punish corruption in its midst, the American political establishment of the late 20th and early 21st centuries strongly resembles the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, and is inviting a similar period of steady decline.

Arran points to Ford’s pardon of Nixon for and Bush’s pardon of Weinberger as akin to the Catholic Church “General Council” failures to end abuses like selling “benefices” and self-enrichment:

…not once, but twice, American presidential administrations have defamed and trampled on some of the most serious and solemn provisions of the Constitution of the United States WITHOUT LEGAL CONSEQUENCES OF ANY KIND FOR ANYONE INVOLVED. But most especially there was no action whatever taken against those at the top levels of govt who had ordered those violations: the president and the vice president. Is it any wonder that the Bush Administration felt free to do whatever it wished, to violate US law, the Constitution, and Congressional orders lawfully given? To do its business entirely in secret, refusing even to let the Congress itself know what it was doing? The lesson they had learned and learned well was that a president could ignore laws, the Constitution, Congress, the judicial branch, and the people themselves WITHOUT FEAR THAT THEY WOULD EVER HAVE TO PAY A PRICE FOR THEIR CRIMES.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Pakistan. The New York Times’s Jane Perlez reports:

Under pressure over impending impeachment charges, President Pervez Musharraf announced that he would resign Monday, ending nearly nine years as one of the United States’ most important allies in the campaign against terrorism. [...]

Mr. Musharraf has been under strong pressure in the past few days, as the coalition said it had completed a charge sheet to take to Parliament for his impeachment. The charges were centered on “gross violations” of the Constitution, according to the minister of information, Sherry Rehman.

Yeah , whatever; bet Pakistan doesn’t have 72 Olympic medals. U-S-A! U-S-A!

From the Jane Mayer interview by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!:

JANE MAYER: Many of the detainees have said they lied to stop the torture. Shaykh Ibn al-Libi was perhaps one of the most fateful cases, because he was taken into custody by the CIA, sent to Egypt, where he was basically beaten up. While he was in Egypt, this was before the war in Iraq. He was asked, “Are there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? And are there connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein?” He later said he had absolutely no idea. He didn’t even really know what weapons of mass destruction were. But he told his interrogators whatever they wanted to hear. And what he told the interrogators made its way into Colin Powell’s speech to the UN, which was one of the major turning points in selling the war in Iraq. Colin—

AMY GOODMAN: February 5, 2003, five weeks before the invasion.

JANE MAYER: Right. And it was a speech that was very powerful, convinced an awful lot of people who were on the fence about whether we needed to go to war. One of the things Powelll talks about in that speech is the information that came from al-Libi saying that there was WMD and that there were connections between terrorists from al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Almost one year after Powell’s speech, this same detainee, Shaykh Ibn al-Libi, recanted. He told the CIA he made it up. He said he had to say something, because they were killing him.

You know, one of the things, though, that I think people haven’t picked up on in that story is not only the disinformation that came out of this program, but that there were really doubts about al-Libi at that time that Powell gave that speech, and Powell was not told about the doubts. The DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, already suspected that al-Libi was fabricating things, because his confessions lacked all the kind of detail that’s convincing. And the DIA was sounding an alarm, but Powell wasn’t told about this when he gave his speech.

AMY GOODMAN: And what was Cheney’s role?

JANE MAYER: Well, Cheney vetted the speech, so he—his office was just deeply involved in almost all of these issues. You know, David Addington was up in Congress not very long ago, and he testified. And again, people didn’t pick up on this much. But he said as kind of an aside that he was very involved in the CIA’s interrogation program, which is extraordinary. Now, why is the lawyer for the Vice President involved in the CIA’s interrogation program? Well, when the history of this is told—and I did my best to tell it in The Dark Side—you’ll see there’s sort of fingerprints from Cheney and the people in his office all over this program.

While this hasn’t escaped attention before now, there are two reasons the bolded parts remain important and worth emphasizing, I think. First, obviously, a key convincing spokesman went to the United Nations with a story that was built on sand — leading to the deaths and maimings of (at minimum) tens of thousands of Iraqis, and thousands of Americans. Second, perhaps less obviously, there was an effort — a conspiracy, to put it bluntly — to have him do so. I’ve compiled a short and no doubt partial list of other major instances of this kind of deception here — “Practice to Deceive.”

For people to argue that torture or deception leading to war (or, in this case, both) were somehow done in good faith is to “hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil.” It’s wilful blindness in the face of overwhelming evidence. In my view, these were part of a conspiracy of war crimes, crimes against U.S. statutes, and impeachable acts. There must be accountability for them; all I can do, I suppose, is point that out — and hold it against politicians, pundits, and others who argue otherwise.

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UPDATE, 7/29: Support Dennis Kucinich’s call for impeachment hearings here; your name will be forwarded to your Representative.

Gordon Clark is a former SANE/Freeze, Peace Action, and Public Citizen state and national organizer who is challenging Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD-8) in the November election, as the Green Party candidate for Maryland’s 8th Congressional District seat in Congress. As befits a Green Party and progressive candidate, he’s centering his campaign on the issues of the Iraq war, global warming, and to some extent on the storm clouds gathering for a possible Iran war; as I noted at the time, I first learned about the execrable H.Con.Res.362 bill demanding a blockade of Iran via a press release from the Gordon Clark campaign.

I was curious where Mr. Clark stands on impeachment, accountability, and the dream of a healthy constitutional democracy in the United States. Via his website, I just got through listening to an interview he gave on June 13th on the (quite excellent) BlogTalkRadio news show “Radio Resistance,” hosted by Chip Gibbons. The Clark interview begins at around 32:30 minutes*; the key part, for me, is here:

GIBBONS, “RADIO RESISTANCE” (at around 44:52): If you were in Congress right now instead of Representative Van Hollen, would you be pursuing impeachment of George Bush?

CLARK: As I said, I think it’s a tough call in some ways. I’ll start off by saying: yes, I would. [...] If I were in the legislature right now, there’s no question that this administration has committed crimes that deserve impeachment and I would be forced to vote for it.

(All emphases are mine.)

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• From a 4th of July parade watcher I spoke with: “I figured Obama would disappoint me sometime; I just didn’t think it would be so soon.”
• Walking back from the parade, I ran into a neighbor who asked why the costume. Explained about FISA, and he asked “So, you’ve given up on impeachment?” So I answered, “No, everyone else did.” That’s not strictly true, of course;“No, you did” was what I thought, but that would have been a little too sharp.
• Overheard in a bookstore, in front of Scott McClellan’s book: “Here it is! He’s the snitch I was telling you about, he’s snitchin’.”