IMPEACHMENT IS NOW REAL!!! (Huffpo)

[kpete]

Martin Garbus
Impeachment is Now Real

An hour after the New York Times described Bush’s illegal surveillance program, I wrote on the Huffington Post that Bush had committed a crime, a “High Crime,” and should be impeached.

Was there then enough evidence to justify the beginning of an attempt to impeach the President?

No.

Did the President have a good defense that he relied on Gonzalez, Ashcroft and the best lawyers in the country (in the Solicitor General’s and Department of Justice’s offices)?


Yes.

Would any significant number of Americans of Congressmen then support such a process?

No.

Given all that, would the turmoil and consequential turmoil have justified the start of that brutal process?

No.

But that has all changed.


Because we shall soon see the consequences of those warrantless searches, the consequences of the government’s five years of secrecy, and even the citizens of the “Red States” will be outraged. Firstly, the warrantless taps will infect hundreds of “terrorist” and criminal cases throughout the country. Not only future cases, but past and present cases, even if there were convictions or plea bargains after the survellance started.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-garbus/impeachment-is-now-real_b_12972.html

[LeftNYC]

1. Proof that Shrub is an idiot...

How can you play the national security/terrorist threat card when known terrorists are going to make a mess in court over your stupidity?

I am actually scared that some real terrorists will get second chances just because Bush wanted to listen to John Kerry talk to his wife...

[karynnj]

4. Well - he copied Kerry's answer on the most important fp issue facing

the US - nucleur proliferation, but this is pathetic. Laura would clearly pick up on the improvement in conversation if he copied this too. :)

[FreedomAngel82]

8. Or as my brother said

listen to a little old quaker lady talk about her soaps. Heh. My brother joked he was spying on them so he could catch up on his soaps. :eyes: Heh heh. But the whole "terrorist" angle is pure nonsense. The case is building up. If it was for "terrorist" than he wouldn't have bibased the FISA court or the NSA. They would have let him. But they didn't for some reason and he still violated the law. I can't believe he's still there when he should be in jail now! I wonder if he's still spying on people. Does anybody remember where it was told the judge who resigned from the FISA court said he did so because he wanted to testify against Bush and also in protest?

[The Backlash Cometh]

24. If only. I doubt Bush was stupid enough to include John Kerry on the list

No one can possibly be that stupid. I refuse to believe that this super nation was fooled for five years by someone that was that incredibly devoid of intelligence.

[electropop]

30. He's stupid enough to go on national TV and confess 30 impeachable crimes.

Yup, he's exactly that stupid. The reason he bypassed FISA is because the people he wanted to tap were political and personal enmies, not terrorists. There's no other reason he would need to.

[The Backlash Cometh]

31. Well, sure he's stupid enough to admit to 30 impeachable crimes,

but THOSE crimes are hard for his right-wing constituents to really mentally grab hold of because they can still dismiss them as necessary to national security. But wiretapping Kerry is strictly Watergate material. It would be a slam dunk for the lame brains we need to convince.

[RazzleDazzle]

34. No, ARROGANT enough. He/they fully expect to get away with it

It's post-9-11, don't you know? Everything's different: dictators get their way if they can generate and pump up enough fear.

[BeHereNow]

36. In utter despair, I agree with you.

With a corporate owned congress and a
unjust judicial system, WHO exactly is
going to impeach TPTB?
They are one in the same.

I take his admissions as the
final mockery of we, the people of the United States.
He might as well have said, "Hey, Fuck you all.
I cheat and I will always win and you can't do a thing about it."

I for one, do not believe he will be impeached
and even if he is, it will just be for show
and TPTB will simply replace him with yet another
of their hand picked puppets.

BHN

[livvy]

2. I was thinking about this earlier today.

I would think the lawyers of many convicted and those accused have been very busy looking into the ramifications of the nitwit's spying. If their client's rights have been violated, doesn't this make their convictions something to consider? What a mess the courts may become, just like everything else the nitwit and his malicious crew touches. They are one disaster after another.

[JuniperLea]

3. Right

What happens to evidence that was obtained illegally? It's tossed out, right?

Fekking dumbass Bush. His arrogance has already cost us all far too much.

[livvy]

5. It will be hard to claim how much safer ...

he and his malicious crew have made us, when they have to set everyone they have so "carefully" gathered up, free again.

[Oceansaway]

6. exactly !!...n/t

[oldtime dfl_er]

12. exactly

It can't be used in a court of law anyway!

http://www.cafepress.com/scarebaby/658010

[JuniperLea]

15. My guess is

He never intended to use it to fight terror. He just wanted to spy on those with opposing viewpoints and opposing campaigns.

[alfredo]

10. It has inspired a letter to the editor

first draft.

Getting off on a technicality is a term we have heard many times, and we've heard it applied to the fate of common street thugs and to Ollie North. Nobody likes to hear that a criminal got off due to misconduct or a mistake made by the state, but we are a nation of laws. All must act in a lawful manner, especially those who swore to enforce and obey the laws.

When bush decided to bypass the FISA court because they modified some of his warrants, he broke the law. Not only did he break the law, he damaged our efforts to combat terrorism. All the evidence collected without a warrant can now be challenged by defense lawyers.

Did bush commit an impeachable crime? Maybe, but that is up to congress to decide. I doubt they have the courage to go against their own party.

The real offense committed by Bush was giving the "evil doers" a legal weapon to use against us. If Bush had acted in a legal manner instead of a spoil child of privilege, the evidence gathered over the past four years by the NSA could have been used when the "evil doers" are captured. Now it is all useless.

[Evergreen Emerald]

11. good job

It is however: getting off on a technicality :)

[TahitiNut]

17. I dunno. I 'get off on technology' every time I walk into Best Buy ...

... Circuit City, or CompUWare. :silly:

[alfredo]

20. glad I posted it here. I might have missed that

in the second or third draft. I'm still kind of dingy from the holiday.

TKS

[livvy]

14. Truly, think about how many convicted or accused...

people this could potentially involve. There have been many people found innocent due to technicalities of a minor sort. Violating their basic rights is not exactly minor. How many people were arrested due to this illegal invasion of privacy and warrant less searches? It most likely has not been limited to those with "terrorist" affiliations, but other areas as well. Think about the cost of all the possible litigations as a result of this also.
I've always believed that the little nitwit wouldn't complete his second term. This could very well be leak in the dam that old Rover can't spin closed.

[alfredo]

21. I'd say quite a few. bush has been ignoring the law for four years.

[BR_Parkway]

39. Not many actually - in five years of "we're keeping the country safe" how

many people have they actually caught and convicted? You know the MSM would be blathering over every single case in support of the Shrub. It would go on for weeks, pundits talking about the legal angles, the far reaching ramifications - Scotty and crew would be having news conferences every 15 mins, Condi would be on every talking head show - it would be all about "Look what the ReThugs have done to keep you safe - the Dems can't do it, they're weak on defense - vote ReThug in '06"

So ask yourself - how many of these cases have we even heard about? And here at DU we're much more plugged in than the average Joe Blow flipping channels waiting for American Idol or Apprentice to start.

Even breaking the law and secretly monitoring every electronic conversation out there - who have they bought to justice? What 'terra' attacks have they prevented?

I can't think of any.

[truth2power]

16. Good work, Alfredo...but,

you may have meant "getting off on a technicality. :-)

edit: Oops, sorry! Looks like Emerald beat me to it.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

26. And in your final paragraph

It should be "spoiled," not "spoil."

Excellent letter overall, by the way.

[alfredo]

35. thanks.

[Mme. Defarge]

18. I wonder if this

will become a factor in the Brandon Mayfield case. He was the Portland, OR attorney and Muslim convert who was falsely accused of involvement in the Madrid train bombing base on a partial fingerprint. The case was dismissed, but he has filed severa lawsuits over the invasion of his privacy. I believe his attorney is Gerry Spence.

[paparush]

7. How the f#ck are we going to impeach Bush**???

We haven't even gotten the notes from Cheney's Energy Policy Meetings from YEARS ago. These guys are the master stonewallers, liars, manipulators, trash slingers, etc..

[flyarm]

19. * admitted he lied..the judges will do the proving for us!!

if he is proven to have lied and misused his power and the branches of government ..there will be no choice but impeachment!

fly

[goforit]

37. And this will release him from power?..Not!!...

[Independent_Liberal]

9. Giving this a kick!

Kicking for chimpeachment!

:)

[Mme. Defarge]

13. Wow! And read this ...

"The American public will also learn what this Administration has thus far successfully hidden. When Bush came into office, he signed an Exeutive Order making all of his, and his father’s, papers privileged. The order, extending 12 years out, also says if the President is incapacitated, then a third person can execute the privilege. This means anybody – a wife, a family lawyer, a child. The order also says the Vice President’s papers are privileged. It is an extraordinary Executive Order – this has never been anything like this. No one ever suggested a Vice President has executive privilege. If we do not find out what they are hiding, we will see witholding on a scale never before seen. He will no longer be able to use 9/11 and the war on terror as an excuse. It will confirm the fact that illegality and secrecy existed long before 9/11, that it started as soon as Bush-Cheney-Rumsfield got into office. It will show deliberate attempts to avoid any judicial or legislative oversight of the illegal use of executive privilege."

[marylanddem]

22. He is such a snake. Can't wait for impeachment. n/t

[Mme. Defarge]

27. Can't wait to see them all

in orange jumpsuits. Or, perhaps some will be "raptured" while others are secreted away in the witness protection program. At any rate, I keep having fantasies of the White House being vacated suddenly in the night.

[The Backlash Cometh]

23. God, I really needed to hear this today.

DU is now becoming my source of positive news. Helps block out all the other shit going on.

[Stand and Fight]

25. Very good analysis.

Maybe the whole damn house of cards will come down afterall. I ain't holding my breath though. :hurts:

EDIT TO ADD: K&R

[kerry-is-my-prez]

28. We need to find "regular" people who have been spied on....

The freeper argument is that these people are all "suspect."

[Warren Stupidity]

29. NSA's system doesn't do individual wiretaps.

It snarfs the entirety of electronic communications - everything from everybody. The snarfage goes into a huge distributed front end system and then is processed into a backend database that is most likely the planet's biggest database system, they certainly have outspent anybody else on the planet in this area. The snarfing program (google echelon) collects information about who communicated with who, when they communicated, and what keyword phrases were contained in the communication. This data gets fed into the mother of all relational databases. Later, at their leisure, analysts can go back and ask that database ANY GODDAMN THING THAT THEY WANT TO ASK IT.

It ain't wiretaps on some phones. It is total monitoring of all communications. It is the nightmare of technology married to totalitarianism. It is the proverbial all pervasive tv eye of 1984, only instead of an eye it is an ear. It is big brother and it is listening to you.

If the OP is correct that this taints terror and other investigations - it potentially screws up every criminal investigation since 2001. The list of who was illegally monitored is quite simply everyone who made a phone call of any sort, or sent email, or otherwise communicated via the internet (for example this message itself.)

And now for the obligatory humor. Given that the NSA has put such time and effort into echelon, I'm sure that they have had to deal with the spam problem while snarfing email for terror messages. Perhaps they could share their spam filtering algorithm with the rest of us, it has got to be pretty damn good.

[shance]

32. Exactly. It is the level of surveillance one would see in a police state

This does not address the other many forms of surveillance either.

[Dunvegan]

33. There is no "Fruit of the Poisioned Tree" problem with illegal wiretaps...

...if the rest of the "BFE" (Bush Family Empire) gets the full-court press (pun intended) infrastructure and power they are "thaaaaat close" to consolidating.

Enough power, and their word and deed IS law.

They can't afford to lose this one...and actually go to jail.

Watch for the madmen in the administration to take the power grab to the limit.

Because without complete power, they will not be safe from judgement and punishment...which they would never stand for (think of the attitude of the Nuremberg defendants.)

I think it's not over until Madame DeFarge knits her last straight-jacket for this cabal.

[Silverhair]

38. Really?? I don't see any proceedings going on.

Sorry, but it is still a pipe dream, not a reality. You are like a man in the Sahara who searches the sky, finds a slight hint of a cloud, and begins yelling, "Flood".