For the second time in two months, a federal court has ruled that the president is in violation of the Constitution. This time it's a federal court in Detroit that has ruled that President Bush has violated the Fourth Amendment against illegal search and seizure for his order to the National Security Agency to monitor the phone and Internet messages of Americans without bothering to obtain a court order based upon probable cause.
The first time, it was the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in late June that the president had violated the Constitution by asserting he had the power to ignore the Third Geneva Convention on Treatment of Prisoners of War-a treaty formally signed into law by the U.S. and made an integral part of the U.S. Criminal Code.
The important thing about these two rulings--and it is a point that the squeamish mainstream media have shied away from mentioning--is that they both are declaring the president to be a criminal. That is, he has been found in the first case to be in criminal violation of the Constitution, as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and in the second, he has been found to be in violation of U.S. and International Law.
Note that when someone has committed a felony--say a bank robbery or a case of assault and battery or of murder--and when a court has found that person to be guilty of the crime in question, that person is from that moment hence considered a criminal. The case may be appealed to a higher court, but in the meantime, judgment has been rendered, and a penalty assigned.
In Bush's case, the highest court in the land has reached its verdict in the War Crimes case involving Bush's claim that as Commander in Chief he had the power to ignore both law and Constitution and declare captives in the so-called war on terror and in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to be excluded from the protections of the Geneva convention. The justices, by a margin of 5-3, declared that his claim was bogus. He has no power to ignore the Constitution, whether in wartime or peacetime. The clear result of that ruling is that the president is a war criminal.
The latest federal court decision, in a case brought by the ACLU, has reached the same conclusion, and on the same grounds. The president has been claiming that as commander in chief, he has the right to ignore both the FISA law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. And a federal judge has again found that his claim is bogus. The president, the judge has declared, is bound by the Constitution to follow the letter of the law, and has criminally failed to do so.
Now there has been no penalty established in either of these crimes, serious as they are, because under the Constitution, the president cannot be convicted or punished by a court unless he is first impeached and removed from office, but the facts of his serial criminal behavior has been established.
It is important to point out, as Barbara Olshansky and I have done in our book The Case for Impeachment, that impeachment is not, primarily, about actual criminal acts by a president. The Founders, when they included impeachment as a remedy for removing elected officials, including the president, from office, were clear that they were primarily concerned about political crimes, which may or may not be literally against the law. Such crimes, it is clear, referred to actions that threatened the political system--for example abuse of power, or lying to Congress or to the American people. At the same time, it is also clear that the Founders saw impeachment as an appropriate measure when a president actually breaks the law, if the violation is so serious as to threaten the political system or the welfare of the American people. So even if a higher court later overturned the Detroit federal court's decision, Congress could still determine that the president had committed a political crime against the Constitution in authorizing warrantless domestic spying, and could impeach him.
What Bush and his administration have done in both of these cases falls clearly into that category. By claiming to be above the law and even above the Constitution, the president has in both the NSA spying case and in the Geneva Conventions case, claimed the power of an absolute despot. He has asserted that in time of war--including a so-called "war" on terror which clearly has nothing to do with an actual war--he operates without any checks and balances or any oversight.
He has twisted the role of commander in chief, which the Founders included in the powers of the presidency solely to insure that there would be a civilian responsible to the citizenry above any general, into the role of a generalissimo--a military ruler in charge of the entire nation.
The lock-step Republicans and spineless Democrats in Congress have not challenged this coup by lexicographical manipulation, but the judicial branch has thrown down the gantlet.
Now it is time for the People of the United States to follow up this action.
In November, all the members of the House of Representatives are up for election, along with one-third of the Senate.
For the sake of the future of Constitutional government and for the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, it is essential that the American people wake up and replace in November all those members of Congress who have allowed this presidential dictatorship to develop unchecked.
The courts have spoken: this president is a criminal on multiple counts. Now the process moves to our elected representatives in Washington. No member of Congress who is unwilling to hold Bush and his accomplices to account and initiate impeachment proceedings against him for his crimes and violations of the Constitution should be returned to office in November.
Some critics have argued that impeachment is an unnecessary diversion from the task of government, since Bush will be gone in 2008 anyway. These people miss the point that leaving this president's crimes and constitutional affronts unchallenged and unpunished would enshrine his transgressions in the mantle of precedent, allowing the next president and her or his successors to pick up wherever Bush leaves off.
Journalist Dave Lindorff, a regular columnist for Counterpunch and Op-Ed News, is co-author with Barbara Olshansky of "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006). For his other work, or to learn more about the impeachment issue and the book,go to www.thiscantbehappening.net
Does anyone ever take legal actions against Congress? What are their guidelines for behavior? What would happen to them in the case of impeachment? (or individual members) If Bush were to be impeached, who would take over? Cheney? What would happen? Maybe someone who reads this article would be willing to continue with the informative aspect of proceedings.
I am not really that ashamed to admit that I am politically not 'on top of things'....especially the details and laws and procedings. I also suspect that many American are no more educated than i am....considering that only 28 years ago, every person i spoke to either asked me if everyone in Germany had red hair, or if I was from East or West Germany. (The latter came from the so called politically sophisticated) To this day people sometimes tell me that they know someone in Germany...then give me the name...and wait for my answer. I must say though, that I am an exception to anyone who grew up in Germany and who is not 'on top of things'.
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Katrin R. (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 514 comments)
on Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 1:02:34 AM
About the only segment of the population that regularly votes are senior citizens. As a senior citizen and social security recipient myself, I vote for Democrats every election to protect my sole source of income. The things that amazes me is the number of poor people my age who vote Republican. I used to remind them that Republicans have opposed Social Security from day one, and have done everything in their power to undermine and sabotage Social Security ever since. Incredibly, they dispute that assertion and vilify me!
Someone coined the term Invincible Ignorance to describe republican voters who ignore easily verifiable facts out of partisan idolatry. The Republican party is their religion and it's leaders their Gods!
Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I have proposal to put before Democratic voters. Call it a modern day Boston Tea Party.
Having rigged the last two elections with electronic voting machines they own and operate, Republicans will most assuredly rig the upcoming election. If they do, pickup a sledge hammer, return to the place where you voted and smash the machines.
The State owned media will no doubt call us criminals, but I call it patriotism. I hope you agree with me.
Republicans pay lip service to Jesus, but they worship Mammon.
by
rabblerowzer (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 227 comments)
on Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 8:55:46 AM
Oh that was the MOST excellent and delicious comment you made. How lovely, to breathe such a deep sigh and feel the cleansing hand of righteous anger; it is an anger that points to purity and Truth, the anger simply a response to being violated, and in that way beautiful and True in the only senses of the word. A rage that curls off of love like the thorn on a rose-stem is a protection invested in us by the hand of creation, without which our entire race would have perished long ago.
I'm sure you ought to be careful where and how you advise violence, however, on a practical level. I"m just thinking of your own safety.
But on an ideological and spiritual level, I applaud you for being one of the few humans I've run across who seems adamantly and passionately sure how they have been wronged. There's so much stuffy intellectual discussion of just how we are being raped and robbed. It's depressing and boring.
Thank you.
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Nezua (42 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 93 comments)
on Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 1:28:04 PM
So you claim there is a valid case for impeachment. Multiple agendas converge on this point. Advertising/Propaganda campaigns are even in place to push this view on illiterate americans who are registered to vote.
So what will you do in 2007, where there is a status change in Congress, yet they still don't even vote for impeachment. Much less in 2009 when you will have a Democratic President in office and likely a non republican majority in congress. And yet there will still be no legal action (by the govt) against GWB.
What will you do Dave, vanity press another book decrying the man or will you find some new authoirty figure to rant against? I ask this because I can't get a rational non evasive response to my original question (what will you do when they don't impeach or even move to impeach).
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Vulture (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 150 comments)
on Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 12:07:15 PM
Thank you for laying that out. It is now clear to many, instead of few, that there is an unprecedented liar and criminal in office. I'm sure it won't take much longer before the cornered animal that is our "leader" springs, though, when he sees the walls closing in on him. I hope not, and that instead justice-as it has been taught to us in the schoolbooks,-is done on this fraud, this genocidal maniac, this simple-minded man in the hands of dark agents.
We cannot begin to heal until Bush is in irons.
Thank you for speaking on this.
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Nezua (42 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 93 comments)
on Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 1:30:46 PM
Mr. Lindorff, I am one who has refused to jump on the impeachment bandwagon for the reason you cited - waste of congressional time and taxpayer dollars - among others. If impeachment is to succeed, it must be for violations of the Constitution such as the administration's disregard for our right to privacy, not for violations of the Geneva Conventions or other international treaties and accords. Empowering the international community is a separate "cause" that will not be served in the exercise of any individual nation's so-called justice system; in fact, such exercise can be interpreted as a further snub on the part of this prideful nation. Furthermore, I am less interested in seeing the perpetrators in irons than I am in hitting them where it hurts - in their bank accounts - so that we can at least begin to compensate their victims. And as another reader pointed out, let's attend to the order of succession lest we jump from the frying pan into the fire!
But I was caught by surprise when you said, "...under the Constitution, the president cannot be convicted or punished by a court unless he is first impeached and removed from office..." Is that so? Would you be willing to highlight that point and cite the specific Article that says so? I don't think I'm the only person - including members of Congress - who would be much more willing to undertake the incredibly cumbersome and costly task of impeachment if this were widely known.
by
Livingston (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 at 3:29:35 PM
8 comments
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