George McGovern: Impeach Bush

Former South Dakota Senator and 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate, George McGovern has called today for the impeachments of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

See Why I Believe Bush Must Go - Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse, in today's Washington Post:

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.

...I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.

For blog commentary on the McGovern op-ed, see:

• Impeach! - Seeing the Forest
• McGovern’s Impeach Cheney and Bush Op-Ed makes it into the Washington Post - Crooks and Liars
• George McGovern calls for impeachment - Think Progress
• George McGovern Rewrites History - Volokh Conspiracy

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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President Bush Commutes Scooter Libby's Jail Sentence

An explanation from TPM:

I havent seen this noted but I think the reason for the commutation is that a pardon would mean that Libby was no longer exposed to criminal sanctions and thus had no Fifth Amendment privilege. As it stands he has a fine and probation at stake during the pendency of the appeal which insulates him (and Bush and Cheney) from having to answer questions before Congress.

Editorial boards at leading newspapers across America weigh in.

An eventual, full pardon is apparently still on the table (but only if Libby asks for it). Bush spokesman Tony Snow:

"The reason I will say I'm not going to close a door on a pardon is simply this: that Scooter Libby may petition for one," Snow said. "But the president has done what he thinks is appropriate to resolve this case."

"There is always a possibility - or there's an avenue open - for anybody to petition for consideration of a pardon," he added.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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US Attorney Purge Scandal Heats up

So now it appears President George W. Bush and Karl Rove were both directly involved in the firing of a New Mexico US Attorney, David Iglesias.

Friom TPMmuckraker:

The firing of U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias continues to smoke....

So we have two different streams of complaints from the White House -- the first in October about voter fraud and then another in November, stemming from Domenici's concern at Iglesias' failure to move certain cases. Of course, both of them at their base were about Iglesias' failure to prosecute enough Democrats. [Emphasis added]

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Website: www.wiselaw.net

Hagel: Bush Impeachment an Option

From MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - With his go-it-alone approach on Iraq, President Bush is flouting Congress and the public, so angering lawmakers that some consider impeachment an option over his war policy, a senator from Bush’s own party said Sunday...

GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent critic of the war, stopped short of calling for Bush’s impeachment. But he made clear that some lawmakers viewed that as an option should Bush choose to push ahead despite public sentiment against the war.

“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,” said Hagel, who is considering a 2008 presidential run.

-Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Website: www.wiselaw.net

Boston Globe: Impeach A.G. in "Attorneygate"

A Boston Globe op-ed (from Raw Story):

THE HOUSE of Representatives should begin impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Gonzales, the nation's highest legal officer, has been point man for serial assaults against the rule of law, most recently in the crude attempt to politicize criminal prosecutions. Obstruction of a prosecution is a felony, even when committed by the attorney general....

It's hard to imagine a more direct assault on the impartiality of the law or the professionalism of the criminal justice system. There are several other reasons to remove Gonzales, all involving his cavalier contempt for courts and liberties of citizens, most recently in the FBI's more than 3,000 cases of illegal snooping on Americans.

Why impeachment? In our system of checks and balances, the Senate confirms members of the Cabinet, but impeachment for cause is the only way to remove them. The White House, by refusing to cooperate, has now left Congress no other recourse...

In refusing to cooperate, Bush puffed himself up to the swaggering truculence that has worn so thin, declaring, "We will not cooperate with a partisan fishing expedition." But this investigation is hardly partisan, since several Republican senators and congressmen have called for Gonzales to resign. And if there were ever a legitimate subject of full congressional investigation, tampering with criminal investigations on political grounds is surely one.

Frank Rich of the New York Times also pipes in:

But why go to the mat for Alberto Gonzales? Even Bush loyalists have rarely shown respect for this crony whom the president saddled with the nickname Fredo; they revolted when Bush flirted with appointing him to the Supreme Court and shun him now. The attorney general's alleged infraction -- misrepresenting a Justice Department purge of eight U.S. attorneys, all political appointees, for political reasons -- seems an easy-to-settle kerfuffle next to his infamous 2002 memo dismissing the Geneva Conventions' strictures on torture as "quaint" and "obsolete."

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Website: www.wiselaw.net

More Impeachment Drumbeats

Now, from American conservatives:

Senator Chuck Hagel (R- Nebraska)

"The president says, 'I don't care.' He's not accountable anymore," Hagel says, measuring his words by the syllable and his syllables almost by the letter. "He's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don't know. It depends how this goes."

The conversation beaches itself for a moment on that word -- impeachment -- spoken by a conservative Republican from a safe Senate seat in a reddish state. It's barely even whispered among the serious set in Washington, and it rings like a gong in the middle of the sentence, even though it flowed quite naturally out of the conversation he was having about how everybody had abandoned their responsibility to the country, and now there was a war going bad because of it.

Andrew Sullivan:

Something is rotten in the heart of Washington; and it lies in the vice-president's office. The salience of this case is obvious. What it is really about - what it has always been about - is whether this administration deliberately misled the American people about WMD intelligence before the war. The risks Cheney took to attack Wilson, the insane over-reaction that otherwise very smart men in this administration engaged in to rebut a relatively trivial issue: all this strongly implies the fact they were terrified that the full details of their pre-war WMD knowledge would come out. Fitzgerald could smell this. He was right to pursue it, and to prove that a brilliant, intelligent, sane man like Libby would risk jail to protect his bosses. What was he really trying to hide? We now need a Congressional investigation to find out more, to subpoena Cheney and, if he won't cooperate, consider impeaching him.

-Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Website: www.wiselaw.net

U.S. Attorney Purge - Congressional Hearings Begin

Andrew Sullivan has this hard-hitting commentary from an observer of the Congressional hearings that began today into the dismissals of eight US Attorneys in December, 2006:

On another explosive front, a lawyer writes:

I have spent much of today watching the webcast of the Judiciary Committee hearings with the dismissed US Attorneys - from California, New Mexico and Arkansas. The testimony has been the most riveting I can remember in many years, and what's coming out is shocking.

Remember, all of these US attorneys are highly qualified, smart, professional REPUBLICANS. People who expect to have a career in elective politics, usually picked, among other things, for their long-term potential as political candidates. No problem with that after all. And that's what makes their testimony so compelling. Because they're portraying Alberto Gonzales and his deputy Paul J McNulty like figures out of a play by Bertolt Brecht.

The key is crude political direction of the prosecutorial service - go get Democrats, and do it in a way to get maximum electoral benefit; lay off the corrupt Republicans; use your prosecutorial authority for voter suppression projects targeting minorities. This is exactly the sort of conduct that the system is constructed to make impossible. For three years now I've heard a steady flow of whispers from DOJ professionals that this sort of stuff is going on, and even I (certainly no friend of the Administration) kept thinking: no, it can't be. But it is. This will call for very stringent action: the appointment of a special prosecutor, an independent investigation, and certainly the dismissal of Gonzales and McNulty.

Ultimately perhaps their prosecution.

-Garry J Wise, Toronto

Visit our Website: http://www.wiselaw.net/