Letters to the Editor
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Re: "It will matter little whether or not heads actually roll..."
...When the day comes when we have the power to present it -- and I think it will -- it will matter little whether or not heads actually roll, so long as the crimes are exposed, and the reasons for them become part of an accurate historical record of the events and policies in question. If nothing else, such exposure will have a salutary effect on future volunteers for the shooter242 brigade.
-- William Timberman
The failure to prosecute and the pardons of Watergate & Iran-contra criminals from Nixon to Weinberger to Bush I et al are the very foundation for Bush II's criminal administration, i.e. Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Otto Reich, John Poindexter, John Negroponte. Bush I shut down the Republican independent prosecutor's case through his pardons, and effectively provided the means for Bush I avoiding his own prosecution.
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What Legal Options Exist?
Glenn, or anybody...
If it's known that our government bodies, or military, are breaking the law, why is it so damn difficult to bring charges? I'm guessing only the legislative branch can bring charges in this case, but I might be wrong.
Aside from voting for the right people, which will never happen, is there anything else that can be done by the average citizen?
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lichen. There are plenty of seeds, insects, and other grub worms. In the winter I'll roll some peanut butter in a seed ball on a string.
A ornithologist says this Place is celestial in the blueberry season. She can tell a bird by the chirp song.
Some pickers would see a couple kissing on a blueberry hill, and feel no thrill at all. Why? Full of a loathsome self. It's bewildering.
Lovable kissers Ignore the sneers.
The haters are mentally ill. I agree.
Call shooter 242 "karl" or a dog, Snoopy?
Name 242 "karl"`corny242? Maybe he is on steroids?
I'd miss 242 if he just vanished. Pick him last for volleyball.
Who knows? Take the NSA snoops to the wash kennel.
The acting Attorney General grew up in a Laundromat.
My dirty clothes are piled so high. I wish I had a dachshund dog.
The puppy dogs and humans under five, seem to get along with me.
Lichen is amazing. Nature is changing. Nature will constantly entertain you.
Lichen. No joke. If you saw this one lichen tree on the farm. you'd love your name.
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Assuming this is so...
Rove will contemptuously ignore any subpoenas until after inauguration day, when blanket pardons will render his crimes moot.
...and I have no reason to doubt it, wouldn't he then be unable to refuse to testify, having already been pardoned?
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1/09
The end of the worst presidency in history. Now lets see how many blanket pardons are given by the WORST president ever and who he lets off the hook.
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@ cleetcleet
The failure to prosecute their earlier crimes did indeed leave the usual suspects free to refine their plots and come back for a second try. The reason why I don't think that this is the single most important factor in our attempts to defang them is that the crimes in question are essentially political crimes, and the political conditions which allowed them to be committed in the first place are still in existence.
It is these conditions which must be reversed; once they are, the crimes can no doubt be more successfully prosecuted, but the convictions secured will be significant largely as a seal on a political victory which has already taken place.
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"Wonder where they'll find defense attorneys for them all?"
Regent University! If it's good enough for the rest of us, it's good enough for Executive branch defendants.
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@WT
Philippe Sands was able to do it about the torture issue.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05092008/profile3.html
It will happen slowly over the course of interminably long congressional hearings and commissions. Anyone indicted, if anyone is indicted, will probably get off light. None of this will please certain people and quarters but there it is and the government does not come crashing down. This fact, of course, makes some other people very unhappy.
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Can we impeach?
Why can't we begin impeachment proceedings, if nothing else as to prevent Bush from pardoning anyone (including Libby) when he leaves office? --farbie
If it's known that our government bodies, or military, are breaking the law, why is it so damn difficult to bring charges? --jonnymac27
Is there anyone here with the legal expertise to answer; can we impeach the president during a national emergency?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/09/20070912-2.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/09/20070920-9.html
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@WT
It's kind of like the case law about trials. Eventually the Courts ruled that the constitution does not guarantee a perfect trial, just a fair trial. The constituion doesn't guarantee a perfect government, either. Just the best we the people can manage, or as some say, deserve. Some people get very resentful and angry if every little thing isn't just so and perfect. If something isn't perfect, it must be smashed and tossed aside. I call that obsessive compulsive disorder.
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Welcome back!
How was your vacation?
I'm taking a nap.
Cheap vacation and I'm always rested.
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@ShawnB
I don't know about the law and impeachment regarding national emergencies, but to me the good news is what we are hearing from Marjorie Cohn and the National Lawyers Guild. As she pointed out in her congressional testimony last week and as detailed in a white paper from the NLG, the legal concept of jus cogens applies to the crimes of torture and aggressive war. As detailed in the white paper, nothing the US Congress or the US President does in terms of pardons or laws granting retroactive immunity can render those responsible for these crimes immune. Justice, eventually, will be served.
The white paper can be found here (h/t Pedinska):
http://www.nlg.org/news/statements/White Paper - Yoo hearing.doc
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I lose more respect for boomers every day....
Your point is fair, adnoto, but it's wrong nevertheless
My point is wrong is it? I am not sure how you even have the balls... well, actually, the fact is you obviously don't have any balls. You are ducking and everyone here knows it. All your BS rhetoric will never change the fact that I never said word one about, nor likened our situation to the official Soviet propaganda machine. Go back and read my initial post from that day. READ IT. You were the one to do the comparing and contrasting as if it made a damn bit of difference. You still are. It still doesn't matter and yet you continue to beat a meaningless comparison to death all in the hopes of hiding your impotence and what? Educating me? Educating the dirty masses? Well, I can't speak for the rest of the dirty masses but I don't need your education at the expense of sanity and action.
Either it is propaganda or it isn't. Even your hero Glenn Greenwald seems to have come around to the notion that "it" is propaganda. What the hell is your problem WT? Seriously? Is it just abject fear? There is a time, a place and an audience for lectures but you are in the wrong fucking time, in the wrong fucking place and lecturing the wrong fucking person. Who the hell do you think you are?
This isn't the 90's when it might have been ok to wallow in blissful catatonia under the rule of "the best republican since Lincoln." This shit we are going through is no joke and it will only continue to get worse if we do nothing. Obamania be damned. It can't be "talked away." It can't be made better solely through intellectual blathering. People like you do potentially more harm than the evil we face simply because you are content to sit on your ass and council others to do likewise. You and your ilk are immobilizers. Inhibitors to real, permanent, lasting change. Now you tell us there really doesn't actually need to be a reckoning, that no one really need be held accountable in any real way for the pervasive illegality we have seen. Exposure will be enough. Exposure and a remembrance will save us in the future. What utter horse-shit. That is nothing more than up front excuse making. An up front excuse to protect corporatist Obama and mainstream faux populists like yourself from ridicule when nothing changes. Well I am not buying it and, in the end, I am not going to live with it.