MEDIA BLACKOUT OF THIS HEARING... NETWORK
AUDIO: C-SPAN: Limits of Executive Power (Impeachment)
THIS IS A HISTORY MAKING HEARING!
Judiciary Cmte. hearing on the executive power
and the Bush Admin. The hearing is partly based on a single
article of impeachment he brought against Pres. Bush, and on
alleged misconduct and unlawful expansion of executive power.
C-SPAN: Limits of Executive Power (Impeachment)
AUDIO: (THIS IS A 2 HOUR HEARING THAT TURNED INTO 6 HOURS:
AUDIO: PART I
http://www.apfn.net/pogo99/L001I080725-2008A.MP3AUDIO: PART II
http://www.apfn.net/pogo99/L002I080725-2603B.MP3AUDIO: PART III
http://www.apfn.net/pogo99/L003I080725-1308C.MP3=======================
C-SPAN: Limits of Executive Power (Impeachment)
There Are NO Statutes of Limitations on MURDER
YOUTUBE:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kDzJ1lffu5ABush Administration's 935 Lies to Iraq War Part 1 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz9Ew1UBBj0Bush Administration's 935 Lies to Iraq War 2 OF 3
YOUTUBE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQMmLiCScZ4Bush Aministration's 935 Lies to Iraq War Part 3 of 3
YOUTUBE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D81JxE20MRs&feature=relatedREF INFO AND LINKS:
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/leakgate.htmhttp://www.apfn.org/apfn/iraq_war.htm==============================================
935 Lies on the Way to a War
By Scott Horton
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002235MEDIA BLACKOUT OF THIS HEARING... NETWORK
Notes from the Non-Impeachment Hearings
OpEdNews, PA - Jul 27, 2008
... originally billed the hearing as "The Imperial
Presidency" and later milded down even that, to "Executive
Power and Its Constitutional Limitations. ...
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Notes-from-the-Non-Impeach-by-mikel-weisser-080726-259.htmly mikel weisser Page 1 of 1 page(s)
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BACKGROUND: some time around Monday evening, June 9, there was a giddy moment when it seemed that justice was still possible in America. On the Friday before, the Senate Intelligence committee had issued their report condemning the Bush propaganda machine efforts to kick-start the Iraq War as intentional deception. As folks had been saying along Bush lied, Thousands Died. Impeach. And by that following Monday, Dennis Kucinich stood before the assembled might of the US Congress and read 35 different, verifiable, reasons George Bush could at last be removed from office. All across America millions of citizen finally exhaled our sighs of relief and waited for history to happen. And of course it didn't.
As planned. With Speaker Pelosi sternly disapproving and Steny Hoyer dutifully leading his majority away from the topic with all post haste, it turned out the Republican party were the ones who championed hearing for impeachment, hoping to easily out debate and embarrass Dem leadership. They actually pressed to have the thing heard right there, but it wound up in committee, presumably to die.
And so we waited through June, recurring calls to the Judiciary gave no clue that their stance on why impeachment should not be discussed and when challenged as ineffective against Bush, Conyers office would refer to the ousting of Alberto Gonzales, who was embarrassed out of office over the Attorney General firings. So true to the promise he made to Congress and to the American people, when Congress failed to act for more than 30 Days, on July 11th, Kucinich again introduced impeachment but this time focusing on one charge: the deceptions of imminent threat regarding Hussein in the fall of '02.
And somehow an amazing thing happened: on the 17th Conyers Judiciary Committee announced hearings. While the bombshell flashed through the online progressive community, it remained a non-starter for mainstream media. Unlike either the Nixon Hearings over Watergate or Clinton's BJ impeachment, no mainstream media outlet had plans to cover the hearing live for the public to decide. In fact when called in a July 24th survey of the major TV news networks, NBC backpedaled through 6, count 'em, 6 different viewer service reps who didn't even know who to ask to find out if the network was covering it. And the guy who answered the phone in the ABC national news newsroom, not only had not heard about the hearings and but did not even know how to check on the Judiciary committee's schedule of upcoming hearings. When finally guided to the public notice, he grudgingly allowed they'd "do something on it, I'm sure," and hug up.
Of course not wanting to draw too much attention to the hearings in advance, the ever meek Conyers originally billed the hearing as "The Imperial Presidency" and later milded down even that, to "Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations." In fact when the hearings finally started after a good twenty minutes of live glad-handing, Conyers duly admonished the crowd they were not allowed to show any reaction to any statements made and both witnesses and committee members were neither allowed to speak of impeachment nor in the pejorative in general of the president or name him directly in any accusatory fashion.
A faux rule which easily fell to the wayside once the testimonies started. At first I was so dazzled by the fact that the hearings were even happening, that my wife and daughter and I got up early and gathered in front of the TV at 7am AZ time for the opening gavel on CSPAN and just stared open mouthed.
The line that eventually got me to realize I could be taking notes was, "Informed criticism, as annoying as it may be to those in positions of power, is the stuff of democracy"-Brad Miller D-NC in his opening remarks.
What follows is an attempt keep up live with the pace of the action over the nearly six hour hearing. I am not a stenographer and so many of the issues discussed required a certain amount of background info to contextualize that the quotes are few and the summaries many. However since the chances are good mainstream media may never present much coverage of this hearing historic hearing, here's my best shot:
Following Conyers' gentle often befuddled sounding opening remarks, which included the lines, "the politicization of the Department of Justice, the misuse of signing statements, the misuse of authority with regard to detention, interrogation and rendition, possible manipulation of intelligence regarding the Iraq war, improper retaliation against critics of the administration... and excessive secrecy," several committee members also made opening remarks with GOP loyalists uniformly outraged over the very essence of the hearings Ranking Repug Lamar Smith hissed loudly the mantra of the GOP objections: congressional consideration of the numerous lies, deaths, unjust imprisonments, and misspent billions of President Bush amounts to "the criminalization of political partisanship." In other words the problem is not that Bush and his supporters committed these heinous acts, but that they were members of the Republican Party and those complaining about their actions are members of the Democratic Party.
Trent Franks (my own representative, woe is me) gave the most offensive anti-hearing address complaining that the terrorists were winning because the hearings were taking up time that Congress should have been working to further restrict and invade rights in the War on Terror. Franks contended that though the president has only has a 30% approval rating Congress' approval rating is in single digits due largely to its despicable hounding of the poor president. Coincidentally later that same day MSNBC showed the latest poll which had the numbers at Bush 23%, Congress 15%.
Walter Jones D-NC complained about the signing statements which Bush has repeatedly used to, in some cases, completely undo the purpose of the legislation, noting that though signing statements go all the way back to Monroe, all presidents before Bush only totaled to 600 that Constitutionally damaging or violating and Bush alone has generated over 800 alone.
After several Dem reps talked about the various areas of neglect and abuse of the Bush admin and the bills they've introduced to try to combat these abuses, Elizabeth Holtzman, author of the book, The Impeachment of President Bush and former US rep. from New York laid out a forceful case on numerous legitimate sounding "high crimes and misdemeanors."
It is worth remembering that Bob Barr, the 2nd public witness before the committee, is a strident conservative and had been one of the key players in the Clinton impeachment process. He said there are "legions of instances ... where, to be most generous, the understanding of liberty are lacking." Barr, speaking with purposefully dispassion, clarifies that the Bush usurpations of presidential power and Constitutional abuses did not start with Bush, but his administration has taken it to new extremes. And further this is first the first step for future presidents who, he noted, typically use the excesses of previous presidents "not as a ceiling, but as a floor." Unlike the vast majority of the actual testimony in the hearing, Barr's testimony was available online within hours of the hearing and can be found here.
Former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson focused the way the extensive secrecy the Bush admin has invoked suggesting that the sheer number of things we don't know due to the intensive secrecy of the Bush Admin is perhaps the scariest part of the matters at hand. Due to that secrecy, without Congress pressing for investigation the world may never on the possible scope of "the monstrous human rights abuses" of the Bush admin.
SEE FULL REPORT:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Notes-from-the-Non-Impeach-by-mikel-weisser-080726-259.htmlNoted Conservative, Stephen Presser, the Northwestern University law professor who had provided the definition for the Constitutional concept of impeachment during the Clinton Impeachment in 1998, served the same role in these hearing and, in order, threw out the all 6 of the major issues that those calling for impeachment had championed: including signing statements, willful defiance of congressional subpoenas, the politicalization of the Justice Dept., the whole signing statements debate, the misrepresentation of WMDs, misuse of authority and even torture.
Assertions which the next witness, Bruce Fein, former Reagan Deputy Attorney General also a Constitutional law expert, intensely disputed, claiming the executive branch has pillaged our Constitution and civil liberties as thoroughly "as the barbarians sacked Rome."
Next celebrity DA/author, Vincent Bugliosi, whose current bestseller is called The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, attempted to summarize his whole book in a short five minute time limit and focused on the now widely documented lies the Bush Admin used in the run-up to the Iraq War, opened by saying at this stage of his career he doesn't have time to mess around: the lies that Bush has told have led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. At this the crowd in the hearing room burst into applause. Rep. Lamar Smith returned to his role as designated killjoy asked the room be cleared. Conyers, ever polite, declined to do this, but admonished the crowd politely.
As if brought in to be a balancing act to Bugliosi's vitriol, Jeremy Rabkin, a George Mason University law professor, acknowledged he had been called in by the minority contingent, even though he didn't want to be put in a position of defending the Bush Admin. He then quite clearly dismissed the efforts of various witnesses to bring in additional issues such as FISA and signing statements, since those lesser abuses pale in comparison to the charges of lying to the public and Congress on WMD. That charge alone is enough though he personally rejects it to the point of treating it as laughable. (Coincidentally the 2nd round of Kucinich's impeachment attempt took that very other same approach and whittling the initial 35 charges to one: liar us into war.) In conclusion Rabkin condemned the hearings themselves as disloyal and out of touch with the vast majority of Americans, noting "the rest of the country is not in this bubble to think it is OK to refer to the president as Caligula."
Frederick A. O. Swartz, who had serious objections to the Bush Admin, repeatedly referred to torture and the suspension of habeas corpus among other things, noting that the "US should not adopt the methods of our enemies," called for further investigation before America completely loses her "moral luster." Still, despite his concerns with Bush's abuses, he explained that he does not support impeachment, because of the timing, not enough time before the election and the regrettable invariability of the process becoming even further political.
Lastly, Elliot Adams, president of the Noble Prize winning Veterans for Peace, opened by recounting the famed Benjamin Franklin quip from the Constitutional Convention that America now had a republic, "if we can keep it." After listing the various good works of his organization, he explained he had to break away from that stuff to focus on the war crimes of the Bush Admin, and as a soldier, he was outraged.
When given a chance to restate or give additional comment, Holtzman again called for the rejection of lesser measures because the president has been able to evade all lesser efforts to rein him in. Bob Barr comically had a heavily redacted version of the Bill of Rights warning that if we don't stop Bush we won't be able to stop some later president.
Rocky Anderson addressed points brought forward by Presser and Pence went so far as to use the word "Fraud." Presser, while complimenting the process, flatly dismissed the suggestion that the 944 false statements the Bush admin made were intentional lies. There was no proof, he contended, that the president acted "with lack of good will."
Bruce Fein warned that the shape of the war on terror and the expansion of presidential powers are timeless, timeless threats to America. Following Bugliosi's second reiteration of the lies Bush told and the contention that all subsequent deaths based on those lies, Americans and Iraqis alike, audience member Cindy Sheehan got herself ejected, in the new round of audience applause.
Rabkin simply yielded his time saying that he was not impressed with people repeating their alarmist statements with greater emphasis, so he did not intend to repeat telling them "to calm down." Frederick Swartz's second reminded us of the importance of action.
Next came the committee members turn to ask questions. When ranking Republican Lamar Smith, R-TX, cross-examined he focused, too little surprise, on Presser and Rabkin, the witnesses that supported his assertions that the whole thing was an overblown waste of time and stain on the great Republican Administration of George Bush. Presser was focused on the non-criminal nature of Bush abuses of power. Rabkin simply listed other presidents who had led the country into wars on less than truthful statements (such as McKinley, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson) doubted that the public would take accusations against those presidents either.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler D-NY flat out rejected Presser's and Rabkin's defense of Bush lies as innocent unintentional mistakes based on good intentions and pointed out that there is considerable proof (such as the Senate Intelligence Committee report of June 4th or the Center for Public Integrity's exhaustive listing of 935 documented "false statements.") that Bush consciously lied to Congress in Oct. of '02, and so it doesn't matter what his intentions were, a lie is a lie. Next, cross examining Bruce Fein, Nadler explored possible future Constitutional remedies for presidential abuses and ways to limit presidential pardon powers, to which Fein replied that the necessary and proper clause, our friend from Article I, Section , 8, paragraph18. Nadler, feeling very enthused, then moved on to Holtzman to compare the current process to her role in Nixon's aborted impeachment. Again animated Holtzman exclaimed the process started wit