Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) advocated for the Constitution, balance of power in government, as well as 9/11 truth by saying, "The proper kind of attention has to be directed to [9/11] from the very beginning...There were more than 40 intelligence briefings delivered to the top levels of this administration from January 2001 through September 10, 2001. ...All of those briefings included references to al-Quaeda [and] bin-Laden. ...The most prominent one of those [Presidential Daily Briefs] ...was delivered on August 6th [2001]... which was so obvious--particularly in its headline, ['Bin-Laden determined to strike in the US.'] ... The warnings to the White House about Osama bin-Laden... should have promoted actions to prevent the attack of September 11, but they did not. And why they did not is a major question that we should be confronting here in the Congress, particularly here in the House of Representatives."
A impeachment panelist was introduced by Chairman Conyer's as the 2008 Libertarian Candidate for President, Former Rep. Bob Barr (D-GA ) who said in an unassuming, gentile manner, "The privacy trust rankings if US government agencies... in [a non-partisan] 2008 survey...named the US Postal Service as the most trusted institution of the federal government, (laughter) but ranking near the bottom, is the Department of Justice...
"Nearly 4 times as many Americans ...would sooner place their trust in the US Postal Service than the US Department of Justice. That should concern all of us as Americans...regardless of which side of the isle they sit. ...
"One does not need to impune the reputation nor the motives of any one President ... to recognize the validity and importance of the matters before this committee. As one of America's greatest Justices, Lewis Brandie said... 'The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men whose zeal is well meaning -- but without understanding. It is up to this committee to provide ... the understanding [that] the institution of liberty is sorely lacking."
Stephen Pressor, Professor of History at Northwestern University defended Bush by reading, "I can't believe there are any grounds for impeachment here... There is no doubt that the Constitution does give considerable discretion to each branch of the government to determine for itself the reach of it's own powers. As near as I can tell this is what is meant by the theory of the unitary executive ... in the course of fulfilling his executive responsibilities--particularly in a time of war or a national crisis, the President needs the freedom to act defectively [that is not a typographical error] in the national interest. If a President--in good faith seeks to act in the national interests rather than his own, his conduct is not impeachable."
Conservative Bruce Fein, Associate Deputy Attorney General, 1981-82, and Chairman of the American Freedom Agenda, spoke confidently without notes from the passion of his convictions and evident mastery of historical and Constitutional knowledge.
C-SPAN coverage was somehow interrupted with audio difficulties exactly when the sheer power of his message struck a fatal blow to the Neo-conservative status quo. It was like watching a tied football game where your team's quarterback was heading toward the opposing teams goal line in the last 3.5 seconds...and the cable goes out.
Fein began, "[Last night, I learned that] ... there was an insistence on prohibiting pejorative references to President George W. Bush or Vice-President Richard Cheney. For example, insinuating they had committed high crimes and misdemeanors. ...So I puzzled over the dilemma and then the answer came like an epiphany from Dragnet's Sargent Friday, 'I changed the names to protect the guilty.'
(laughter)
"...If President George W. Bush had knocked to enter the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, the presiding officer George Washington would have denied him admission, and thereby hangs an alarming tale.
The executive branch has vandalized the Constitution every bit as much as the barbarians sacked Rome in 410 AD. The Executive branch has destroyed the Constitution's time-honored checks and balances; taking the nation perilously close to executive despotism. The Executive branch rejects the basic philosophical tenets of the United States of America. It does not accept that America was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that sovereignty in a republican form of government lies with the people -- not with the executive; that there are no vassals or serfs in the Constitution's landscape; that every man and woman is a king or queen but no one wears a crown; and, that the Rule of Law is the nation's civic religion. And the founding fathers fashioned impeachment as a remedy for attacks against the Constitution order. ...
"What [the President] has asserted in the aftermath of 9/11 is that every square inch of the world, including the United States, is an active battleground--including where we're sitting at present. And that if he has a suspicion-- maybe by his gut instincts or otherwise-- that there's al-Quaeda or an international terrorist anywhere--he can use military force. He can impose military law in order to wage war-- in his view successfully.
"He can invade Iran if he thinks that's necessary to succeed in the war against international terrorism--irrespective of what this branch may do. Now that truly is an alarming power. ...Any time any president claims that he is fighting international terrorism, he can kidnap, arrest [or] kill anyone he thinks is in international terrorist. There is no second guessing him. He doesn't go to court and ask for probable cause--'cause in wartime you shoot first and ask questions later.
"Now it's true he hasn't asserted that authority ...in the United States yet, but we shouldn't wait around until we have a coup before we take protective action...
"[In response to their repudiation of taxation without representation] the founding fathers didn't say, '[the British] haven't asserted their authority yet. Let's wait till the tyranny comes!'"
"Let me ... explain the dilemma we confront now: As the Roman republic degenerated into the Roman empire and dictatorship [Tacitus] said, 'The worst crimes were dared by few, practiced by more but tolerated by all.'"
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