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Bruce Fein's DEVASTATING Indictment of Dick Cheney
I don't often call something must-read, but Bruce Fein's indictment of Dick Cheney is utterly devastating - and everyone in America should read it.
Fein, of course, is no liberal - he was Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan Administration and had posts at the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Moonie Times.
Impeach Cheney
The vice president has run utterly amuck and must be stopped.
By Bruce FeinUnder Dick Cheney, the office of the vice president has been transformed from a tiny acorn into an unprecedented giant oak. In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president's insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney's multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify...
President George W. Bush outsourced the lion's share of his presidency to Vice President Cheney, and Mr. Cheney has made the most of it. Since 9/11, he has proclaimed that all checks and balances and individual liberties are subservient to the president's commander in chief powers in confronting international terrorism. Let's review the record of his abuses and excesses:
The vice president asserted presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes. The Supreme Court rebuked Cheney in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Mr. Cheney claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the president's say-so alone, a frightening power indistinguishable from King Louis XVI's execrated lettres de cachet that occasioned the storming of the Bastille. The Supreme Court repudiated Cheney in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.
The vice president initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists. This lawlessness has been answered in Germany and Italy with criminal charges against CIA operatives or agents. The legal precedent set by Cheney would justify a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kidnap American tourists in Paris and to dispatch them to dungeons in Belarus if they were suspected of Chechen sympathies.
The vice president has maintained that the entire world is a battlefield. Accordingly, he contends that military power may be unleashed to kill or capture any American citizen on American soil if suspected of association or affiliation with al-Qaida. Thus, Mr. Cheney could have ordered the military to kill Jose Padilla with rockets, artillery, or otherwise when he landed at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, because of Padilla's then-suspected ties to international terrorism.
Mr. Cheney has championed a presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.
He has advocated and authored signing statements that declare the president's intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law that he proclaims are unconstitutional, for example, a requirement to obtain a judicial warrant before opening mail or a prohibition on employing military force to fight narco-terrorists in Colombia. The signing statements are tantamount to absolute line-item vetoes that the Supreme Court invalidated in the 1998 case Clinton v. New York.
The vice president engineered the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. He concocted the alarming theory that the president may flout any law that inhibits the collection of foreign intelligence, including prohibitions on breaking and entering homes, torture, or assassinations. As a reflection of his power in this arena, today the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Cheney's office, as well as the White House, for documents that relate to the warrantless eavesdropping.
The vice president has orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications. He has summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force, and to frustrate the testimonies of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys.
Cheney scorns freedom of speech and of the press. He urges application of the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists who expose national security abuses, for example, secret prisons in Eastern Europe or the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. He retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, through Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration's evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq. Mr. Cheney is defending himself from a pending suit brought by Wilson and Plame on the grounds that he is entitled to the absolute immunity of the president established in 1982 by Nixon v. Fitzgerald. (Although this defense contradicts Cheney's claim that he is not part of the executive branch.)
Of course we know all of these things happened, but the Bush Administration and its media whores have spent 6 years denying each of them, insisting they were legal, changing laws and regulations to make them legal - or all three.
Fein breaks new ground by laying all of these crimes at the feet of Dick Cheney, drawing on this week's reporting in the Washington Post.
This list of charges is so overwhelming that House Democrats can no longer ignore them.
Call your Representative and demand they sign on as a co-sponsor of H. Res. 333, Dennis Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment for Dick Cheney.
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It is time to Impeach Cheney
I realize that Pelosi promised that this was not an option, but we the people believe that Dick Cheney answers to the people. Not his big fat cat oil buddies.
I think it is high time that the Congress listen to the people who elected them.
Today they managed to get a pay raise. Now, they need to do what the majority of the people want and that is the impeachment of Dick Cheney
This has gone too far. I am so sick of these people being weak. This man has broken the law and must be held accountable.
But Did He Get a BJ? If no, no impeachment!
[sorry, the devil made me say it]
Thanks for Dick Cheney
Thanks for Dick Cheney Joel S. Hirschhorn When someone in high elected office shows the nation how vulnerable our Constitution is, we should be thankful for the wakeup call. Like many ruthless dictators, evil kings, and monster generals, Dick Cheney is the leading practitioner of the ends-justify-the-means mentality, where only his vision of the desired ends counts. And if this means disregarding and disobeying the Constitution, torturing prisoners, killing thousands of American soldiers, disrespecting Congress, destroying our environment, embracing the invasion of illegal immigrants, increasing out national debt, and disregarding the will of the vast majority of Americans, so be it. Serving corporate interests rather than serving the people is Cheney’s brand of patriotism. Cheney’s self-righteous ego is bigger than George W. Bush’s, and what makes Cheney more striking is that he is enormously smarter and more competent than Bush, his token boss. He is so dangerous and frightening that no impeachment of Bush effort ever stood a chance. Not as long as “President Cheney” enters your consciousness. Cheney became Bush’s shield. When reality hits the fan we use the-lessons-learned approach to stay sane. With his finger-in-the-eye disdain for what anybody else (or history) thinks of him, Cheney offers a far better lesson learned benefit than the stumbles and fumbles of Bush-the-smirker. Bush is a joke. Cheney is a monster. Take Cheney’s current view that he is a part of the legislative branch, not the executive, so he does not have to comply with an Executive Order on reporting use of secret materials. It is wildly inconsistent with his prior claims of executive privilege. But Cheney has no use for logical consistency. Only what Cheney wants matters. (The only law that Cheney regularly obeys is gravity.) When we witness the brazen acts of Cheney and Bush we should envision these types of constitutional amendments. An amendment could explicitly state that the Vice President is a member of the Executive Branch, and the Office of the Vice President must comply with Executive Orders. And perhaps we should consider a statement of the criteria that the President can invoke for firing the Vice President with the consent of Congress. And why not consider a different method of breaking ties in the Senate. If someone from the Executive Branch can do it, then why not someone from the Judicial Branch? Why not the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? Or, better yet, why not make the constitutional solution what is the House uses. A tie vote means that the question fails. We could eliminate the position of President of the Senate. As another example, consider the frequent assertion of executive privilege by Cheney and Bush to withhold information that Congress believes it needs. The Constitution does not provide for executive privilege. Considering how strong the presidency has become and the predilection to invoke executive privilege, we need an amendment that explicitly says there is no such thing as automatic executive privilege. Any assertion of it should be presented to the Supreme Court and only it should rule that it is appropriate in a particular case to protect the national interest. As the final example, consider the clear need for an amendment that prohibits the President from using any kind of signing statement to announce and justify not obeying part of a newly signed law. We can give thanks for Dick Cheney just like we give thanks eventually that a catastrophe or disaster makes us stronger in the future. He has exposed constitutional weaknesses. The principles that define the best of our nation must be protected through amendments that learn from history. In particular, how the ingenuity and boldness of people has allowed them to disobey and dishonor those principles. Dick Cheney sought and achieved power sufficient to make a mockery of our nation’s finest principles and he was enabled by George W. Bush who apparently sought more guidance from his God than from our Constitution. One thing is clear. History provides little confidence that Congress will propose constitutional amendments that deserve full public discussion. Now is the time to use what our Constitution offers us: an Article V convention for proposing amendments. If we are to make our federal government work for the good of we the people, then we require the nation’s first Article V convention. Why is it now so appropriate? Because Americans now have so little confidence in Congress, the President, and the Vice President, and because the corruption of politicians by money has reached unprecedented heights. As much as politicians deserve our mistrust, we the people deserve to have an Article V convention. Politicians fear it because they know the public will support amendments that make the government subservient to us – the sovereign American citizens. Politicians are not supposed to rule us. They are so supposed to justly represent us. But they do not. They represent the moneyed interests that control them. As Thomas Jefferson said, “An elected tyranny is not what we fought for.” Our Constitution should not allow the government to make us victims and our nation hated by so much of the world. That’s what Cheney should teach us. Now, it’s up to us. Pray that a petulant Bush does not learn from Cheney, exploit the Constitution by resigning, and create President Cheney.