"The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. ...
... Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." -- Article II, Section I, United States Constitution
Article II of the U.S. Constitution contains four sections, just 13 paragraphs, describing the manner of election, and the duties of the president of the United States. (Unlike Article I, which describes the same for Congress in some 54 paragraphs and 9 sections...) The duties are simple -- only appearing in Section 2, eight paragraphs inso the Article: the president commands the armed forces, as well as the state militas in times of war; he can require written opinions from each Cabinet head within the executive branch; he can make treaties, but only with the assent of two-thirds of Congress; he can appoint ambassadors, consular officials and judges, including Supreme Court Justices, subject to Senate approval, and he can make recess appointments to certain government and judicial posts when the Senate is not in session. And of course, he can grant pardons and commutations.
[Nowhere in the Article, the Constitution, or in the oath of office, by the way, does the president pledge to protect the American people. That is the collective responsibility of the American government, and it rests equally with the three branches.]
The Congress, on the other hand, has the power to borrow and even coin money, and then to determine its value, to borrow money on the credit of the United States, to establish immigration and bankruptcy rules, establish post offices and toll roads, to collect taxes, punish crimes committed on the high seas, to create tribunals below the level of the Supreme Court, to raise and support armies and to declare war, among other things.
And that's where we pick it up with President George W. Bush, and the case that is to be made for his impeachment.
Count 1: Violation of his oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
Article II, Section 9, paragraph 2 of the Constitution states that: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." President Bush violated that article when he ordered U.S. citizens to be held incommunicado, and without trial, wrongs which were ultimately righted by the Supreme Court in the Hamdan case, but which were made more egregious by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, signed by the president, which calls for any person, including U.S. citizens, who is found, by the president, to have consorted with enemies of the United States, will bypass the courts and the writ of habeas corpus, and be tried by a military commission.
Count II: Engaging the United States in violations of international law:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The past five years have seen the USA engage in systematic violations of international law, with a distressing impact on thousands of detainees and their families. Human rights violations have included:
Secret detention Enforced disappearance Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment Outrages upon personal dignity, including humiliating treatment Denial and restriction of habeas corpus Indefinite detention without charge or trial Prolonged incommunicado detention Arbitrary detention Unfair trial procedures
The specific violations here, are of the United Nations Charter, and of the Geneva Conventions, something this administration and its attorney general have characterized as "quaint," but both of which constitute the "supreme law of the land" under the Constitution. In addition, the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody both in Guantanamo Bay, and at secret CIA prisons around the world, may have violated U.S. anti-torture laws.
Count III: The outing of Valerie Plame, something unprecedented in the annals of U.S. history, and a possible violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. And, the probably coverup of violations of that act by the vice president (also grounds for impeaching him.)
Count IV: Illegal domestic surveillance, wiretapping, syping on bank records and the seizure of the assets of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. These include probable violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Count V: Politicization of the office of attorney general, and suborning the possible perjury of Attorney General Gonzales before the Congress in the firings of U.S. Attorneys, and in Gonzales' fibs regarding his knowledge of FBI misuse of national security letters. The most egregious issue in the U.S. attorney scandal is that the misuse of the powers of the attorney general and U.S. attorneys may have been part of a widespread GOP attempt to violate the Voting Rights Act, by creating hindrances for African-Americans to vote.
And last but not least...
Count VI: Lying to Congress about the case for war against Iraq. This is the one most people seize on, but the plain truth is that there is ample evidence that the Bush administration knew, right up until the day they ordered the "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad in March of 2003, that they had no case for war against Iraq. The CIA had made clear to the administration that Iraq was not, in fact, reconstituting its nuclear weapons -- or at least that there was no evidence that they were. Yet, Mr. Bush made just that case in his January 2003 State of the Union address. And there is also ample evidence that the case presented to the Congress, let alone to the American people, was false and misleading. A good book on the subject can be found here. And then of course, there is the Downing Street Memo, which told us that the British government knew that:
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
None of the above is new, but the fact that it has become such common knowledge makes the case for impeachment even stronger. And perhaps as important, Congress should impeach President Bush in order to restore the meaning and relevancy of impeachment, following the silly, politicized impeachment of President Clinton.
Lastly, there is the fact that a preponderance of the American people support impeachment, something that was not the case with President Clinton. Ultimately, impeachment is a political process, and the politics of the present time, when two thirds of Americans believe Mr. Bush's Iraq surge to be a failure, and nearly as many judging his presidency to be the same, demand that Congress stiffen its spine, stop whining about how bad they'd look (they wouldn't) and get on with it. Democrats are masters at misreading public sentiment. What a shame it would be if they did it again. Even if they couldn't win a conviction in the Senate, the impeachment of this president, (his vice presidnet, and his attorney general, while they're at it,) would send a message to future presidents that Congress will indeed guard its Constitutional primacy, and force the president to faithfully uphold this country's laws and founding document. Otherwise, they consign themselves to irrelevancy.
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
