Impeachment | buzz twang

how to impeach bush cheney and not spill your gin and tonic

July 14, 2007 by DJ Lanphier

The sad irony is: If the US government were actually run like a real business, a Conservative goal, then Bush and Cheney would have been fired a long time ago. But, this isn’t the case. More of an ideological problem, and an emotional one, than one based in any type of reality. The Carpetbagger goes deep, while Gavin at Sadly No! puts this into proper perspective, cause if we don’t laugh we’ll scream.

Conservative icon Bill O’Reilly has been brainwashed by the “defeatists”. They attack while you sleep, sometimes in tandem with the Gayoids and the Ayrabs and Darkies from Below the Border. If they can get to Bill, they can get to YOU!

Impeachment is the topic on hand in tonights Bill Moyers Journal. Some good background here. A highlight of some of the Impeachable offenses committed by Cheney:

- Asserted Presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes.

- Claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the President’s say-so alone.

- Initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists.

- Championed a Presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.

- Engineered the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

- Orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications.

- Summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force.

- Retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, through chief of staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration’s evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq. (Read Fein’s SLATE article)

In all honesty, I’m not a fan of the conspiracy theories that the Cheney Administration orchestrated 9/11. At best, I’d say it was incompetence, at worst, they allowed it to happen and gave it a nudge. So, when a former speech writer for the boy president comes out and hints of the latter, it makes sense. The manner in which the Conservatives took advantage of 9/11 and politicized it from the first days after is undeniable and a matter of history. Within weeks, anyone who opposed anything the Cheney Administration put forward was branded as a traitor by the administration, and their footlockers in the press and in Congress. And, as the presidents political capital falls deeper into the mire, so does the power that he wielded upon “loyalists” who did his bidding. It’s all unraveling as we always knew it would.

bush and cheney play twister with the constitution

June 29, 2007 by DJ Lanphier

While President Bush “…asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers’ demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors…” at the same time Vice-President Cheney is apparently “backing away from the claim” that his office isn’t part of the Executive Branch and is in essence a “fourth branch of government” even though the VP has claimed use of Executive privilege in the past.

Not even a good fiction writer could come up with stuff like this…

Power grab du jour

May 30, 2007 by DJ Lanphier

Cheney planning insubordinant end run on the Bush White House. Dick the loose cannon? Dick the rogue? Even a good fiction writer couldn’t make this shit up.

Via Douglas Rushkoff, from 10 Zen Monkeys we learn of Greg Palast’s investigative report that says:

…4.5 million votes will be shoplifted in 2008, thanks largely to the “Rove-bots” that have been placed in the Justice Department following the U.S. Attorney firings. Being the guy who uncovered the voter “purge lists” of 2000 that disenfranchised black voters, he’s (Greg Palast) worth listening to, even if the mainstream press chooses not to.

This time around, he claims to have 500 emails that the House subpoenaed and Karl Rove claims were deleted forever. They prove definitively, says Palast, that the Justice Department is infested with operatives taking orders from Rove to steal upcoming elections for Republicans and permanently alter the Department.

For more, go to Palast’s site, and check out this interview at Buzzflash.

The current wisdom: The Gonzales DOJ scandal, which is getting good, is likely connected to the plan to steal the election in 2008. For starters. Yup.

Laura Bush says President "suffers"

April 26, 2007 by DJ Lanphier

There is a very powerful reality at the heart of the reason the US has lost the war in Iraq, and why the media and the Bush Administration has always had its head up its collective ass in dealing with the Iraqi people and the war in general. The following exchange between Ann Curry and Laura Bush sums up the arrogant self-centered truth behind the people who got us into this mess in the first place:

“You know the American people are suffering watching –,” Curry said to the first lady.

“Oh, I know that very much,” Laura Bush responded. “And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this, and certainly the commander in chief, who has asked our military to go into harm’s way.”

Curry then asked, “What do you think the American public need to know about your husband?”

“Well, I hope they do know the burden, the worry that’s on his shoulders every single day for our troops,” Bush said. “And I think they do. I mean, I think if they don’t, they’re not seeing what the real responsibilities of our president are.”

Yeah, the American people and President Bush are suffering so much. Man, it really sucks having to see stuff like this, let alone having actually caused it:
Somebody should give people like Curry and Bush a slap in the face. Feeling bad isn’t suffering. Having your parents blown away right in front of you and having their blood splatter all over you, that’s suffering.

The pathetic thing is that someone like me actually has to point that little fact of reality out.

gonzales and bush feel the tough love…

March 29, 2007 by DJ Lanphier

reap, sow… and other foibles from the wingnut world.

The NY Daily News writes that it’s “open warfare” amongst the Gonzales crew at DOJ. The Carpetbagger Report has more… This little gem is worth noting:

White House officials have all but given up on their official email system, preferring private, un-archived, and unaccountable email addresses.

If true, it’s worth examining. If there is nothing to hide, you don’t hide. Of course, it could also mean that WH employs don’t feel secure communicating via email because of internal pressure and oversight. Both I suspect. But, this quote is certainly interesting:

“We just got a bit lazy,” said one aide. “We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don’t think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong.”

Yes, power does that to people. “It’s not fascism when we do it.”

The Saudi’s back out of a state dinner at the Bush White House, which isn’t a good thing, a then comes this big news:

Saudi King Abdullah, whose country is a close US ally, on Wednesday slammed the “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq in an opening speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh.

“In beloved Iraq, blood is being shed among brothers in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and ugly sectarianism threatens civil war,” Abdullah said.

He also said that Arab nations, which are planning to revive a five-year-old Middle East peace plan at the summit, would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region.

You gotta hand it to Dubya. When he fucks up, he does it full throttle.

The perpetually confused Confederate Yankee seems to think that enlisting in the military and requesting deployment in Iraq is the same as accepting an invitation from the Pentagon to visit Iraq. It is amusing to watch chickenhawks attempt to fend off the label whilst completely affirming it. Then again, if Confederate Yankee is saying that it is now so dangerous in Iraq that visiting is equal to being a soldier in the field, that’s another thing entirely. I doubt that the danger is that imminent to visitors in the Green Zone who venture out via secured areas rather than patrolled routes and known high risk zones. My hat is off to anyone who goes though. Good luck.

The big number… How many Iraqi’s have died because of the the US war in Iraq?

The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.

Phoenix Woman at FireDogLake has the lowdown.

The big picture: If what Steve Soto outlines is true… gloves come off.

The Politico sucks in more ways than one. Good doggy.

fish in a barrel

February 11, 2007 by DJ Lanphier

Poll says Arabs don’t like Bush. What’s to like? From their perspective he’s overseen the invasion of two sovereign nations and is actively pursuing a third. Everyone likes to strive for self rule and independence, devoid of “outside influences”. Forcing “freedom” on on nations is about as successful a policy as trying to get American’s to curb their addiction to oil. Not that the two are connected or anything. Just sayin’.

Joe Klein is inconsistent? Say it ain’t so Joe!

Fox News biased? Fish. Barrel. Shoot. Fillet. Fry. Eat. Yum.

Avedon aims, shoots, bullseye:

Boy, that Dick Cheney sure is special: “Every executive agency in the government, including the president’s office, is required to issue an annual report disclosing statistics on document classification and declassification activity. Every executive agency, that is, except for one: the vice president’s office.” Or so they believe. Impeach, already!

It makes sense to impeach Big Dick first. He’s the power center. Bush is merely the impetuous figure head with the blind spot.

Of course, any real movement towards impeachment will ignite a power grab by the Cheney Administration the likes of which this country has never seen. Would the democracy survive? I like to think so. My fears are two-fold: A terrorist attack that is used as political fodder to solidify the Cheney Administration and the lack of any real information about what occurs if the US is attacked again. The question of what exactly happens when we do go to Red Alert has never really been answered, but the words “Marshall Law” have been mentioned in close proximity. There’s not really any wiggle room beyond where we are at Orange Alert. And, historically, Marshall Law allows for great advances in the securing of power by regimes that wish to maintain their grasp upon power.

I’m not interested in conspiracy theories. But, I can see how it might unfold that way. Also worth noting, how the bombings in London were not particularly used as a prop as 9/11 was used to prop up a failing administration. Unless I’m missing something.

Digby writes:

Benen says: “At the risk of sounding intemperate, this is insane.”

At the risk of sounding even more intemperate, Dick Cheney may need to be removed from office. This makes Dick Nixon’s theories of presidential power look like childsplay.

A must read.