"The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo, who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal."
"This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law. Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us, when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth.
No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country."
"I suggest impeachment is like beauty: apparently in the eye of the beholder. But I hold a different view. And it's not a vengeful one, it's not vindictive, and it's not craven. It's just a concern for the Constitution and a high respect for the rule of law. ... as a lawyer and a legislator for most of my very long life, I have a particular reverence for our legal system. It protects the innocent, it punishes the guilty, it defends the powerless, it guards freedom, it summons the noblest instincts of the human spirit.
The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door."
"What is on trial here is the truth and the rule of law. Our failure to bring President Clinton to account for his lying under oath and preventing the courts from administering equal justice under law, will cause a cancer to be present in our society for generations. I want those parents who ask me the questions, to be able to tell their children that even if you are president of the United States, if you lie when sworn "to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," you will face the consequences of that action, even when you don't accept the responsibility for them."
"There can be no shading of right and wrong. The complicated currents that have coursed through this impeachment process are many. But after stripping away the underbrush of legal technicalities and nuance, I find that the President abused his sacred power by lying and obstructing justice. How can parents instill values and morality in their children? How can educators teach our children? How can the rule of law for every American be applied equally if we have two standards of justice in America--one for the powerful and the other for the rest of us?"
"I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the President. He is not above the law. If an ordinary citizen committed these crimes, he would go to jail."
"When someone is elected president, they receive the greatest gift possible from the American people, their trust. To violate that trust is to raise questions about fitness for office. My constituents often remind me that if anyone else in a position of authority -- for example, a business executive, a military officer of a professional educator -- had acted as the evidence indicates the president did, their career would be over. The rules under which President Nixon would have been tried for impeachment had he not resigned contain this statement: "The office of the president is such that it calls for a higher level of conduct than the average citizen in the United States."
"Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.
It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law."
"The Bush administration simply cannot answer this one question - if time was of the essence, why didn't they conduct the searches and get the warrants after the fact, something that is allowed under the FISA law? They conducted the searches alright, but they never once sought the retroactive warrants."
IMPEACH: Guerrilla Marketing Takes Off
by Kagro X [Subscribe]
Tue Dec 20, 2005 at 03:11:40 PM ESTWell, yesterday's diary sure felt good.
In case you missed it, we've decided not to wait around for our elected officials to carry our water for us on the impeachment front. We all know the barriers they face in that fight.
Instead, we're doing what we can -- what anyone can -- just to take the word off the TV, reclaim ownership of it from the necktied wonks, and make it something everyone feels. We're putting it in the public square, and making it something everyone can see is being talked about, everywhere, by everyone.Have you printed your own Do-It-Yourself sign or stickers? Remember, that's the beauty of this idea. You can do it all yourself, anytime you want.
So first, let's mine that earlier thread for the best D-I-Y suggestions.
Wanna do simple, easy stickers?
- Click here, where Arabiflora has done all the work for you. Just follow his directions (though he uses Times New Roman and I prefer Verdana), and print yourself up a sheet of IMPEACH labels that you can take with you wherever you go.
Wanna have someone do stickers for you?
- andrewsomething says that Stickerguy.com does decent work, though you may have to wait a few days to get your stuff. Twenty bucks gets you 250 stickers.
Wanna make your own bumper sticker?
- Click here for the online supplier found by bumblebums
Wanna do fancier stuff?Wanna do homemade banners?
- Click here for some suggestions on cheap materials, from Peanut
- Click here for some tips from Timroff for safely and securely fastening a banner to a highway overpass.
Wanna have someone do a cheap paper banner for you?
- caliberal says Kinko's will do a 21" long and 15" wide sign for $5.
Wanna spread the holiday cheer?
- Take a tip from queerbklynboy and get rubber IMPEACH stamps made as stocking stuffers!
- Or how about a tee-shirt from bilge?
Wanna volunteer to do a blog or website for us?
- Let's talk to Shadan7, who says we can have theimpeachproject.org to build on. (Fabooj, is your hand still up?)
- Or perhaps you'd like to contribute to kennyt's IMPEACHment wiki page?
Finally...Show your work!I'd really like to get your pictures of what you've done, preferably "deployed," where you plan to have others see it. And I'd REALLY love to have your pictures of your first chance encounter with SOMEONE ELSE'S work. Something as simple as a picture showing that you're participating can be an enormous inspiration to the rest of us, who want to feel like we're part of something real. then, once we start to see OTHER people's work out on the street... fuggeddaboutit!
So take your pictures to the online Photo Chain, something we were turned on to by Avidity, and which should make it easy for anybody to share photos and inspiration with the rest of us.
Check it out. And if you haven't already done it, or are planning to do more, how about joining us for an IMPEACH movement "live blogging" event, wherein participants go out and place their materials, then post photos of them in real time? Coming soon to a diary near you! Like, let's say during your lunch hour tomorrow? Bring a sign and a digital camera to work, and you're in! Or hell, any of you can do the same any time you're ready to roll. That's the whole point.
But whatever we do, we should keep this ball rolling, with something new each day. Soon, we'll be ready to talk about the big stuff: group purchases and placement of large banners; billboards; and maybe, just maybe, that crazy skywriting idea.
Stay tuned, have fun, and remember that when you do it yourself through Daily Kos, we all do it together!
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The Constitution in Crisis: Censure and Investigate Possible Impeachment
by Congressman John Conyers [Subscribe]
Tue Dec 20, 2005 at 11:36:36 AM ESTFor more information, go to www.johnconyers.com
Cross Posted at Huffington Post and ConyersBlog
Today, I am releasing a staff report entitled, "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Coverups in the Iraq War.
Before talking about the report, I must express my profound gratitude to the readers of this site, who kept this story alive when no one would cover it, and continued to talk about it after some in the media moved on. Much of the research in this report is a product of the input and hard work of DailyKos, Huffington Post and Conyersblog readers over the last six months (the help with my "timeline project" was particularly useful). I also am so grateful to progressive talk radio hosts and listeners, who have refused to allow the American people to forget the nation was deceived into war.
Now on to the Report and what I plan to do about it. In sum, the report examines the Bush Administration?s actions in taking us to war from A to Z. The report finds there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice-President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration.
The Report concludes that a number of these actions amount to prima facie evidence (evidence sufficiently strong to presume the allegations are true) that federal criminal laws have been violated. Legal violations span from false statements to Congress to whistleblower laws.
The Report also concludes that these charges clearly rise to the level of impeachable conduct. However, because the Administration has failed to respond to requests for information about these charges, it is not yet possible to conclude that an impeachment inquiry or articles of impeachment are warranted.
In response to the Report, I have already taken a number of actions. First, I have introduced a resolution (H. Res. 635) creating a Select Committee with subpoena authority to investigate the misconduct of the Bush Administration with regard to the Iraq war and report on possible impeachable offenses. In Watergate, for example, the Congress did not begin matters as an impeachment inquiry, but investigated matters ? through the Ervin Committee ? and referred impeachable evidence to the Judiciary Committee.
Second, I have introduced Resolutions regarding both President Bush (H. Res. 636) and Vice-President Cheney (H. Res. 637) proposing that they be censured by Congress based on the uncontroverted evidence already on the record and their failure to respond to Congressional and public inquiries about these matters and have never accounted for their many specific misstatements in the run up to War.
As you know, taking these steps means that I am likely to be criticized by the political and media establishments in Washington and attacked by the right wing noise machine. There is a school of thought among Washington political consultants that criticizing the President about Iraq will make Democrats appear to be weak on national security. There is a media establishment that marginalizes politicians for espousing beliefs held by the majority of Americans. The right wing noise machine in turn retaliates against the President's critics.
Be that as it may, I just could not be silent any longer. The title of the report is exactly right: the Constitution is in Crisis. There are serious and well-substantiated allegations that the Executive Branch has usurped the sole power of the Congress to declare war by deceiving the Congress about the evidence for war. There are serious and well-substantiated allegations that the Executive Branch has deceived the American people to manufacture the people's consent for war.
If you agree with me, I am going to need your help like never before. Please go to my website, www.johnconyers.com, where you will find an action center, including a copy of the Report via Raw Story, and ways you can help. Also visit www.censurebush.org to join with other activists who want to move this issue forward.
