…Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends (our unalienable rights), it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government… When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same objective, evinces a design to reduce {the people} under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government… from the U.S.
Declaration of Independence – July 4th, 1776
The above excerpt from our Declaration of Independence provides the original rationale for the founding of our nation. The first great thought in that document is that all people have unalienable rights just because they’re human. Its second great thought is that we create governments to secure those rights. And the third great thought is, as noted in the above excerpt, that we have the right to abolish our government if it because destructive of our unalienable rights. That is the whole gist of the founding of our nation.
So, in order to secure our inalienable rights, our Founding Fathers created a government for us, based on a Constitution that specified the framework for that government. One of the most important parts of that Constitution dealt with how to abolish the leaders of our government,
without the need to resort to violence as our Founding Fathers did, when our leaders become destructive of our unalienable rights. This of course was a direct offshoot of our Declaration of Independence.
The reasons for impeachment of a presidentNote that there is nothing in the portion of our Declaration that deals with reasons for abolishing our government that says that our leaders have to commit a “crime” before they should be removed from office. Rather, it uses the words and phrases such as “becomes destructive of these ends”, “abuses and usurpations”, and “despotism”. I mention this not because we don’t have abundant evidence of numerous crimes committed by George Bush and Dick Cheney, but because the bar for impeachment and removal from office is lower than that. Or rather, more accurately, the bar for impeachment and removal from office is both lower than and higher than the committing of a “crime”. The most important issue is not whether or not the technical definition of a “crime” has been fulfilled, but whether or not our government has abused its powers and failed to fulfill its obligations to the people it was elected (or chosen in this case) to serve.
It isn’t only our Declaration of Independence that makes this point. Here are opinions on this issue from three of our most prominent Founding Fathers, a Supreme Court Justice, and the U.S. House Committee that drew up the articles of impeachment on Richard Nixon, with the reasons for impeachment in italics:
James MadisonIt was Madison's view that impeachment was an "indispensable" provision for defending the American experiment - and the American people - "against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate." The promise of another election, at which a wrongdoing executive might be removed, was not enough to provide such protection
Alexander HamiltonA well constituted court for the trial of impeachments… The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
Thomas JeffersonWhen once a republic is corrupted there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption . . . every other correction is either useless or a new evil.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph StoryThe offences, to which the power of impeachment has been, and is ordinarily applied, as a remedy, are of a political character. Not but that crimes of a strictly legal character fall within the scope of the power, (for, as we shall presently see, treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors are expressly within it); but that it has a more enlarged operation, and reaches, what are aptly termed, political offences, growing out of personal misconduct, or gross neglect, or usurpation, or habitual disregard of the public interests, in the discharge of the duties of political office.
Three Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon Each of the three articles drawn up by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee for the impeachment of Richard Nixon contained this language inserted at the end of the description of the evidence:
In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.
How much more investigation do we need?Many people who are every bit as concerned about the state of our nation as I am, including many DUers, say that we need more investigations before we proceed with impeachment. It’s not that I’m against investigations per se – other than for the fact that it is unlikely that the Iraq War will be ended or that the nuking of Iran will be taken off the table as long as Bush and Cheney remain in office. But the fact that impeachment has been “taken off the table” by our House leader and there is no sign at all that impeachment hearings will begin any time soon, despite massive overwhelming evidence of impeachable crimes and other offenses, after a half year of Democratic control of Congress, makes me worry that Congress has no intention at all of moving for forward with impeachment.
Evidence of impeachable offenses by Bush and Cheney: John Conyers’ “The Constitution in Crisis”When considering current evidence of impeachable offenses committed by Bush and Cheney, a good place to start is John Conyers’ 198 page investigative report, including 1,401 references, “
The Constitution in Crisis – The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Cover-ups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance”, which Conyers put together while the Democrats were in the minority in Congress. Among the conclusions of that report are:
The single overriding characteristic running through all of the allegations of misconduct identified in our Report has been the unwillingness of the Bush administration to allow its actions to be subject to any meaningful outside review.
Actually, the Report understates the issue by referring to the offenses as “allegations”. Let’s consider some of the “allegations” contained in “The Constitution in Crisis”:
The abuse and torture of our prisonersI’ll start with the abuse of power that I consider the most serious because it violates everything our country is supposed to stand for, which is the right of people to be free of arbitrary government oppression. The abuses and
torture of our prisoners have been frequent and abundantly documented. Regarding those abuses, the U.S. Supreme Court so much as branded George W. Bush a ‘war criminal’ for violating the Geneva Convention, in their
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision, as
explained by Vyan. In that decision Justice Stevens, speaking for the majority, explained that the petitioner Hamdan was “entitled to the full protection of the Geneva Convention”, and that the “military commission convened to try him was established in violation of both the UCMJ and Common Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention”. Justice Kennedy further elaborated on the Geneva Convention that the USSC determined the Bush administration to have violated:
The provision is part of a treaty the United States has ratified and thus accepted as binding law… moreover, violations of Common Article 3 are considered “war crimes,” punishable as federal offenses…
Lying our country into warThe rationale that the Bush administration used to justify the Iraq war was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ties to al Qaeda that posed a vital threat to our country. Foremost among the WMD threats was Iraq’s alleged nuclear capability, based on their alleged attempt to purchase yellow cake (natural uranium) from Africa and their possession of aluminum tubes alleged for use in the construction of a nuclear weapon. Though these claims were frequently repeated by the Bush administration to Congress and to the American people, it is quite evident that George Bush and Dick Cheney knew all of these claims to be false.
Regarding the yellow cake claims: In March 2002, Joe Wilson, the man who was sent to Niger by Dick Cheney’s office to verify the yellow cake claim, reported that there was
no evidence for that claim; our own government’s
National Intelligence Estimate stated that “claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are highly dubious”; and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told our government on March 3, 2003, that the
Niger uranium documents were forgeries.
Regarding the aluminum tube claims: On September 7, 2002 Bush claimed that a new IAEA report stated Iraq was 6 months away from developing a nuclear weapon – though
no such report existed; later that same month the
Institute for Science and International Security released a report calling the aluminum tube intelligence ambiguous and warning that “U.S. nuclear experts who dissent from the Administration’s position are expected to remain silent…”; and on January 24, 2003, the
Washington Post reported that the IAEA stated “It may be technically possible that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium, but you’d have to believe that Iraq…”
And to top it all off, on March 7, 2003, just a few days before Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq,
the IAEA reported “We have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.” George Bush and Dick Cheney had to have known all of this. Yet they uttered not a word of it to Congress or the American people as they tried to sell their war, as George Bush repeated both claims, and more, in his January 28, 2003
State of the Union speech.
Illegal warrantless spying on American citizensThe Bush administration has repeatedly violated the
FISA Act, as well as the
Fourth Amendment to our Constitution, by using wiretaps to spy on tens of thousands of Americans annually, without even attempting to obtain a warrant. This is not a matter of conjecture – he has
publicly admitted it numerous times.
Illegal oppression of whistleblowersThen there is the matter of how the Bush administration treats whistle blowers who try to bring to the attention of the American public matters that the Bush administration finds embarrassing or inconvenient. The
Whistle Blower Protection Act has some very important purposes, and one of the most important of those purposes is to prevent government abuses of power, by making it easy for government employees to inform the public of government abuses. The Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated its contempt for this law – most notably in the case of the Valerie Plame scandal, where both
Dick Cheney and
Karl Rove conspired to “out” an undercover CIA agent in retribution for her husband’s contradicting the Bush administration in its lying about its justification for invading Iraq. Conyers documents numerous similar examples in his Report.
Other impeachable offensesBeyond what Conyers documented in his Report, there have been numerous other impeachable offenses committed by the Bush administration:
Signing statementsWhenever George Bush is presented by Congress with a law that he doesn’t like, he merely disposes of it with a “
signing statement”, rather than go through the legal process of vetoing it and risking an override of his veto. The American Bar Association
said about this that Bush’s use of the signing statements undermines the separation of powers provided in our Constitution. And House Judiciary Chairman, Rep. John Conyers, said regarding his
Congressional investigation into this issue:
Bush's widespread use of the signings challenge at least 800 provisions in laws passed while he has been in office… The administration has engaged in these practices under a veil of secrecy… This is a constitutional issue that no self-respecting federal legislature should tolerate.
Violation of the public trust, corruption, and negligenceIf things like gross violation of the public trust, corruption, negligence, or incompetence are rightly recognized as a valid reason for impeachment, then in addition to the above noted offenses, things like the Bush administration’s
gross negligence in its response to Hurricane Katrina, its
failure to provide adequate health care to veterans, and the
loss of billions of dollars associated with no-bid contracts for reconstruction in Iraq given to Bush administration cronies, would all easily be considered as additional impeachable offenses.
Perversion of governmentThe American people or anyone else would be hard pressed to find a single aspect of government that hasn’t been perverted by George Bush and Dick Cheney. Let’s consider some major examples:
George Bush’s war against scienceAs a scientist who has worked for the FDA for the past eight years, I have personally witnessed how George Bush has corrupted one organization whose purpose was previously supposed to be to protect the public’s health. Issues I have written about include: The FDA’s
preference for industry representatives over the public with respect to meeting invitations; George Bush’s gutting of our
Civil Service system; and, the time that a scientific article of mine
was pulled by the FDA Commissioner just before it was due to be published in a medical journal and just
after the Commissioner had met with representatives of the corporation that manufactured the medical device that was the subject of my article. An article that describes a
poll of FDA scientists conducted by The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) last year sums up what has been going on at the FDA:
The results paint a picture of a troubled agency: hundreds of scientists reported significant interference with the FDA's scientific work, compromising the agency's ability to fulfill its mission of protecting public health and safety.
Of course, the Bush administration’s war against science is not limited to the FDA. Consider: Bush’s
squelching of embryonic stem cell research; how Bush
tried to silence Dr. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA on the issue of global warming, following Dr. Hansen’s December 2005 lecture calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases in order to reduce global warming; the Bush administration’s continued
obstruction of public education regarding the use of condoms to prevent sexually transmitted disease, in favor of its
religiously motivated abstinence only approach; and, the
accusations by former Surgeon General Richard Carmona on how George Bush consistently put politics above science.
The perversion of our Justice DepartmentWhen
Senator Patrick Leahy said of the U.S. attorney firing scandal that “It is an abuse of power committed in secret to steer certain outcomes…” he touched on a larger issue that is perhaps of unprecedented importance to our nation and its people. The purpose of U.S. attorneys is to promote and ensure justice in our country with respect to serious federal crimes. In order to accomplish that they must be independent – that is, not subject to political manipulation. But the Bush administration has totally perverted that purpose, in order to use the U.S. attorneys for its own political ends. And more ominous still, they
used a provision in the Patriot Act – a piece of legislation that was presumably enacted for the purpose of national security – to accomplish that perversion of justice.
Furthermore, it would appear that the
nine fired U.S. attorneys are just the tip of the iceberg with respect to this perversion of justice. How many federal employees have the courage to say NO to pressure from the Office of the President? I don’t know the exact answer to that, but I think that it would be safe to assume that most would not have that kind of courage, especially when dealing with a highly vindictive Presidential administration. Therefore, it would be safe to assume that for every U.S. attorney who was fired there were perhaps several more who gave in to pressure from the Bush administration to serve the Bush/Cheney political agenda rather than to serve the American people whom they were hired to serve.
What do you call it when the most powerful federal employee of all – the President of the United States – uses the power of his office to subvert justice and serve his own political ends to enhance his own power? Senator Leahy called it an “abuse of power”. But when taken to an extreme I think a more appropriate and descriptive word for it would be “tyranny”. But then, that word is (unfortunately in my opinion) not currently considered to be politically correct when uttered by an elected official.
And when we consider that a major purpose of the attorney firings was to prepare the way for
sham investigations of Democratic “voter fraud”, we would be wise to consider how the 2008 elections will play out if George Bush and Dick Cheney are still in office by then.
Failure to comply with Congressional investigationsAnother issue that hardly needs any investigation is the Bush administration’s repeated refusals to comply with Congressional investigations. Not only has Bush (and Cheney) repeatedly
refused to comply with Congressional subpoenas, using the unfounded claim of “executive privilege”; he has even
ordered witnesses not to appear before Congress.
Many people have talked about the “need to hold the Bush administration accountable” as if that represented some sort of substitute for impeachment. But how is it possible to hold this administration accountable short of impeachment? It refuses to cooperate with Congressional investigations, as if it was a law unto itself. And even when top Bush administration officials are
convicted of crimes, George Bush makes sure that they
won’t be held accountable.
Does anyone really think that George Bush can be held accountable for anything while he is pResident, short of impeachment?
What some of our leaders have had to say about the issue of impeaching George BushI am thoroughly perplexed by the continuing lack of Congressional enthusiasm for moving on with impeachment. Some of our elected leaders and presidential candidates, declared or undeclared, have had some very powerful things to say about this, even while, strangely, most of them don’t actually advocate impeachment per se. Here are some prime examples:
John ConyersUpon producing his report, “The Constitution in Crisis”, Conyers was asked about his report’s relevance to impeachment. Conyers
summed up the evidence in his report as follows:
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 … The Report concludes that a number of these actions amount to prima facie evidence that federal criminal laws have been violated… The Report also concludes that these charges clearly rise to the level of impeachable conduct.
Russ FeingoldOn the Bush administration violating our FISA laws and our Fourth Amendment rights,
Feingold had this to say:
I've seen some strange things in my life, but I cannot describe the feeling I had, sitting on the House floor during Tuesday's State of the Union speech, listening to the President assert that his executive power is, basically, absolute, and watching several members of Congress stand up and cheer him on. It was surreal and disrespectful to our system of government and to the oath that as elected officials we have all sworn to uphold. Cheering? Clapping? Applause? All for violating the law?"
I don't have to tell you how important this issue is. It gets to the core of what we as a country are all about. We all agree that we must defeat the terrorists who threaten the safety and security of our families and loved ones. Why does this President feel we must sacrifice our freedoms to fight terrorism? This is a gut check moment for members of Congress. Do we sacrifice our liberty? Do we bow to those who try to use security issues for political gain? Do we stand and applaud when the President places himself above the law? Or, do we say enough?
Stop the power grab, stop the politics, stop breaking the law.
It's time to stand up - not to cheer, but to fight back.
Wesley ClarkHere’s
what Wes Clark had to say in response to Amy Goodman asking him whether or not Bush should be impeached:
Well, I think we ought to do first thing's first, which is, we really need to understand and finish the job that Congress started with respect to the Iraq war investigation. Do you remember that there was going to be a study released by the Senate… to determine whether the administration had, in fact, misused the intelligence information to mislead us into the war with Iraq? Well, I’ve never seen that study. I’d like to know where that study is…. We should have been investigating why this country went to war in Iraq.
Chuck Hagel Any president who says, I don’t care, or I will not respond to what the people of this country are saying about Iraq or anything else, or I don’t care what the Congress does, I am going to proceed — if a president really believes that, then there are — what I was pointing out, there are ways to deal with that… You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don’t know. It depends on how this goes.
Dennis KucinichIn a speech on the House Floor, in March of this year, Dennis
Kucinich warned:
"This House cannot avoid its constitutionally authorized responsibility to restrain the abuse of Executive power," Kucinich said on the floor today. "The Administration has been preparing for an aggressive war against Iran. There is no solid, direct evidence that Iran has the intention of attacking the United States or its allies."
Kucinich noted that since the US "is a signatory to the U.N. Charter, a constituent treaty among the nations of the world," and Article II states that "all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state," then "even the threat of a war of aggression is illegal"….
"Since war with Iran is an option of this Administration and since such war is patently illegal, then impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran," Kucinich said today.
Mike GravelGravel had this to say about impeachment and the Iraq War:
The other course of action for impeachment would be to hold hearings in the judiciary committee of the House and the Senate on how the fraud was committed on the American people. We’re getting enough stuff coming out of the Libby Trial and a whole host of other areas – some hearings that Levin held with the armed services committee – that now they can now build on that body of knowledge and probe more, issue subpoenas all over to hell and get these people to testify or perjure themselves.
Barbara BoxerBarbara Boxer is the only U.S. Senator who has outright called for the impeachment of George Bush. In particular,
she has said during a recent radio interview (scroll up to top):
I've always said that you need to keep it (impeachment) on the table, and you need to look at these things, because now people are dying because of this administration. That's the truth. And they won't change course. They are ignoring the Congress. They keep signing these signing statements which mean that he's decided not to enforce the law. This is as close as we've ever come to a dictatorship. When you have a situation where Congress is stepped on, that means the American people are stepped on. So I don't think you can take anything off the table. Because in fact the Constitution doesn't permit us to take these things off the table.
Al GoreIn his book, “
The Assault on Reason”, Al Gore says:
If the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop,
imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap, and torture, then what
can’t he do? After analyzing the executive branch’s claims of these previously unrecognized powers, Harold Koh, dean of Yale Law School,
said: “If the president has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.”…
The administration has also launched an assault on the right of the courts to review its actions, on the
right of the Congress to have information on how the public’s money is being spent, on the
right of the news media to have information about the policies that it is pursuing, and on
anyone who criticizes its excesses… This same pattern characterizes virtually all of the Bush administration’s policies… and its appetite for power is astonishing…
The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact that the executive branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so, and dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and judicial branches to restore our constitutional balance. After all, the other branches can’t check an abuse of power if they don’t know it is happening.
This administration has not been content simply to reduce the Congress to subservience. By closely guarding information about their own behavior, they are dismantling a fundamental element of our system of checks and balances. A government for the people and by the people should be transparent
to the people. Yet the Bush administration seems to prefer making policy in secret… insulated from any meaningful participation by Congress or the American people…
On the need to hold impeachment hearingsSome people have suggested that there’s not enough desire for impeachment on the part of the American people to enable Congress to act. I believe that that suggestion is very misguided. Even in the absence of impeachment hearings, most polls, depending on how they are worded, show close to 50% approval of the American people for impeachment.
Here’s one that clearly shows greater than 50%.
But there is a much larger point. If Congress initiated impeachment hearings, our corporate news media would be forced to cover it intensively. Does anyone seriously believe that the current ongoing Congressional investigations are reaching nearly as many Americans as how many would be reached by impeachment hearings? Here is how
Glenn Greenwald explains it:
You can't convince Americans of the need to stop abuses until you demonstrate to them in a dramatic and undeniable way that those abuses are being perpetrated and that they are harmful and dangerous… what we urgently need are compelled, subpoena-driven, aggressive hearings designed for maximum revelation and drama. Hearings are able, in a dramatic and television-news-friendly environment, to shed light on how extreme and radical this administration really has been in all of these areas. Democrats in Congress need to realize right now that the administration will not produce or disclose any meaningful evidence unless and until they are truly forced to do so.
The choice is not whether to provoke a constitutional crisis. The real choice is whether to recognize that we have one and to act to end it, or continue to pretend that it does not exist by acquiescing to the President's ongoing abuses and fundamental encroachments into every area… Democrats have to internalize that this administration does not operate like previous ones. No rational person can doubt that they are limitless in their contempt for legal restrictions or notions of checks and balances.
And televised, highly publicized confrontations over the administration's hubris and arrogance and utter contempt for our legal institutions and political traditions is not something to be avoided. It is something we desperately need as a country…