Letters to the Editor
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Glenn, you're a God.
I love your writing, your values, and your moxie.
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What if?
What if the dems actually grew a pair and impeached these bastards? I know it isn't going to happen because that bitch Pelosi took it off the table. Plus the repugs in congress have no honor and march in lockstep with Bush. They aren't going to vote to convict them. But put all that aside and say the impossible happened and they were impeached and convicted. What if they refused to leave office? Bush says he is above the law and neither the courts or congress can restrain him. So I can see him refusing to vacate the oval office. Who's going to make him? That we are discussing these scenarios because they now seem entirely possible, is a sign of how far our country has descended. No one, not even the most paranoid right-winger, would of ever entertained the notion that Clinton would refuse to leave office at the end of his term. No one would of ever thought of Clinton declaring martial law and cancelling elections. Now the unthinkable has become thinkable. God help us all.
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@casual_observer, @micteis
Casual Observer: Yes. I see no point in screwing around with pursuing contempt proceedings against Miers. Impeach her bosses.
Nicteis: No. The remedy for an executive who refuses to "faithfully execute the laws" is impeachment.
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Help me Jesus
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/07/19/national/w133854D51.DTL
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales came under new questioning Thursday about President Bush's wiretapping program and the administration response to congressional subpoenas.
In a closed-door session, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes said members were especially interested in the reasons behind Gonzales' controversial 2004 visit to the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, reportedly to pressure the ailing attorney general to endorse Bush's surveillance program. Ashcroft, said to have been barely conscious at the time, refused.
"He, I thought, explained it very well in terms of why they had gone there," said Reyes, D-Texas, declining to provide specifics because many details are classified.
"When there are issues of national security at stake, I think certainly one should not question the motivation of individuals," Reyes told reporters. "I'm willing to accept the rationale behind it."
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if the impossible happens...
Bush'll just issue a blanket pardon!
Cheney will issue a blanket pardon!!
Fuck, Nancy Pelosi will just issue a blanket pardon!
All in the name of "maintaining the dignity of the Presidency" and "not dragging Americans suffer the indignity of seeing a President behind bars."
Long live the Banana Republic!!
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@JoshChicago
I share your feelings of helplessness. I have written letters to Nancy Pelosi and to my Representative, John Larson (D-Connecticut), who is deputy chair of the Democratic Caucus. I have even confronted Larson in person, urging him to introduce a resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney.
Pelosi, of course, never replies. Larson, too, only took the position, in person, of citing the difficulties and futility of successfully impeaching and removing Bush and Cheney from office. I got the distinct impression that he just doesn't want to rock the boat, that he wants to pin Bush's failures on the Republicans so that Democrats can control Congress and the White House in 2009. Meanwhile, we're left with the precedents that Glenn has indicated.
The only action that I can think of is to join with others who try to bring pressure to bear on Congress to get something moving. Their presence is common on the Internet (e.g., http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/ and http://impeachforpeace.org/ImpeachNow.html). Will it do any good? I don't know. But doing nothing, attempting nothing guarantees failure.
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@All re: LWM
He said this: Considering how vociferously we all know you campaigned for impeaching Clinton over a blow job. If you can't answer my questions because they expose your own hypocrisy I'll take that as a sign you are at least aware of it finally.
There is no basis for it, and let me just finally state, as Jebbie noted a few weeks ago, I have known Glenn Greenwald for some time, as has Jebbie. Were it true -- that I was all into impeaching Clinton at the time -- Greenwald would know it. It isn't true, but that's the sort of shit LWM throws out, because he is fixated on me.
No one should believe one word LWM writes about me. He is crazy in some respects. All I shall say to or about him henceforth when he addresses his BS at me, is that he is a baiting lunatic whose inane substance about me I will not address.
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What I've Learned Today
If I might be permitted to summarize, after much hand-wringing (and some hand-holding, too, I think), the consensus answer appears to be: IMPEACH
So, with impeachment in mind, let's return to what I see as the key sentence in Glenn's post:
"The only real question is what, if anything, we are willing to do about that."
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King George
Old-line Republican warns 'something's in the works' to trigger a police state
Muriel Kane
Thursday July 19, 2007
"Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Order which allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.
He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts -- a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War -- by quoting the "strong words" which open Roberts' latest column: "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney,
a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."
"I don't actually think they're very strong," said Roberts of his words. "I get a lot of flak that they're understated and the situation is worse than I say. ... When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."
Roberts said that because of Bush's unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why "the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush's follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year's election."
However, Roberts emphasized, "the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling." Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party.
"Something's in the works," he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.
"The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," Roberts continued.
"Chertoff has predicted them. ... The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. ... You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda's not going to do it, it's going to be orchestrated. ... The Republicans are praying for another 9/11."
Hartmann asked what we as the people can do if impeachment isn't about to happen.
"If enough people were suspicious and alert, it would be harder for the administration to get away with it," Roberts replied.
However, he added, "I don't think these wake-up calls are likely to be effective," pointing out the dominance of the mainstream media.
"Americans think their danger is terrorists," said Roberts. "They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. ... The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just aren't able to perceive that."
Roberts pointed out that it's old-line Republicans like himself, former Reagan associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, and Pat Buchanan who are the diehards in warning of the danger.
"It's so obvious to people like us who have long been associated in the corridors of power," he said. "There's no belief in the people or anything like that.
They have agendas. The people are in the way. The Constitution is in the way. ... Americans need to comprehend and look at how ruthless Cheney is. ... A person like that would do anything."
Roberts final suggestion was that, in the absence of a massive popular outcry, "the only constraints on what's going to happen will come from the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military. They may have had enough. They may not go along with it."
http://tinyurl.com/3x9ztv