Public Hungry For News On Impeachment

Public Hungry For News On Impeachment: "Public Hungry For News On Impeachment
by Dave Lindorff "
Before Barbara and I got a chance to get any real national attention for The Case for Impeachment outside of programs on Air America, the best the book did on the Amazon sales ranking was about #3500.Then last weekend, we had the opportunity, over a period of two days, to air a 7.5-minute interview on NPR, and a 75-minute presention on C-Span's "Books TV" program. Suddenly the book leapt in the rankings to #42, well ahead of #400, Greg Palast's best-selling Armed Madhouse, and even #80, Ann Coulter's Godless, and closing in on #27, Al Gore's best-selling Inconvenient Truth!It makes you wonder what would happen if the mainstream media, like the NY Times, Washington Post and LA Times, and liberal publications like the Nation, In These Times, Salon, Slate, the Progressive, Harper's, the New Republic and others, or shows like "Fresh Air" and "Democracy Now," would stop ignoring the book and instead review it.But ignoring "The Case for Impeachment" is just part of a larger censorship going on around impeachment, as I explain in this story which is appearing in the current issue of Extra!, the publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (www.FAIR.org):

Adultery was serious; this is just the ConstitutionImpeachment Not on Media's
Radar
By Dave Lindorff
There is a growing grassroots campaign demanding the impeachment of George W. Bush. Across the nation, towns and cities have been passing pro-impeachment resolutions. Websites promoting impeachment keep springing up. In several states, bills have been introduced in state legislatures that, if passed, would become formal bills of impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives, requiring initiation of impeachment hearings under congressional rules dating back to the early 19th century.Starting last fall, several polls (Zogby, 10/29=29/05, 1/9=12/06; Ipsos, 10/6=9/05) reported that a majority of Americans thought Bush should be impeached if he lied the country into war in Iraq or if he authorized warrantless spying on Americans. Those poll results were reported all over the Internet, but they barely made it into any mainstream corporate news reports. Indeed, impeachment itself is getting short shrift in the media, despite all this impeachment organizing activity.When the House Judiciary Committee's ranking minority member, Rep. John Conyers (D.-Mich.), introduced a bill in December calling for creation of a select committee to investigate "possible impeachable crimes" by Bush, the dramatic move received virtually no mainstream coverage beyond an AP wire item (12/21/05). Even as the number of Democratic House members co-sponsoring that bill rose from an initial handful to 39, it has received scant attention. The first time impeachment made the front page of the Washington Post was March 25, 2006, when that paper finally ran a story on the wave of town government resolutions across the country.Interestingly, though, the Post did provide Conyers space on the op-ed page for a column explaining that he would not immediately push for impeachment should he become chair of the House Judiciary Committee ("No Rush to Impeachment," 5/18/06).Similarly, when Sen. Russ Feingold (D.-Wisc.) introduced a censure measure in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the New York Times tucked it away on page A17 (3/13/06). But days later, when Republicans tried to sideline the measure by claiming that such a move would help them in November by "energizing" their conservative base, the Times perversely played that classic "reaction" story on Page 1 (3/16/06).In part, the media downplaying of impeachment may reflect a now-longstanding fear on the part of editors of frontally challenging the Bush administration. It may, however, also reflect the affinity of many in the higher echelons of the corporate news media for the timid and conservative Democratic Party leadership, which has made no bones about its fear and loathing of impeachment and of other more confrontational stances of the party's progressive wing.Certainly the corporate media's approach to calls for Bush's impeachment contrasts markedly with the same outlets' coverage of the Clinton impeachment effort in the late 1990s. Though public support for Clinton's impeachment never got above about 36 percent, even at the height of congressional impeachment proceedings, many media outlets responded to the prospect of impeachment by calling on Clinton to resign. According to the Columbia Journalism Review (11=12/98), by September 1998, 181 newspapers (roughly one in 10 papers in the country) had called for his resignation--including major papers like USA Today (9/14/98) and the Philadelphia Inquirer (9/12/98). Other news organizations, among them Business Week (9/28/98) and the Houston Chronicle (9/10/98), were calling for censure.Yet Clinton's offense was simply lying under oath about an adulterous affair.Bush, in contrast, has admitted to ordering the National Security Agency to monitor Americans' telecommunications without a warrant, in clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (New York Times, 12/16/05). Beyond that, documents show he okayed torture of captives in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, contravening the Third Geneva Accord on treatment of prisoners of war, an international accord that was long ago adopted as U.S. law (Human Rights Watch, "Background Paper on Geneva Conventions and Persons Held by U.S. Forces," 1/29/02).He has blatantly subverted the Constitution by claiming the right to ignore (so far) 750 acts [now over 800] duly passed by Congress (Boston Globe, 4/30/06). He has defied the courts in revoking the most basic rights of citizenship-the right to be charged and tried in a court of law (Guardian, 12/5/02). And the evidence is overwhelming that he knowingly lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and about Hussein's alleged link to Al-Qaeda, in order to win public and Congressional approval for his invasion of Iraq (Center for American Progress: "Claims vs. Facts: Iraq/Al-Qaeda Links").These and other Bush offenses pose direct threats to the Constitution and to the survival of the Republic, and yet, despite widespread concern and outrage among the public about many of these actions, not one major corporate news organization has called for Bush's resignation, the initiation of impeachment proceedings, or even for censure --even those that made such fervent appeals for Clinton's removal or resignation over a transgression that at worst was an embarrassment to the nation."The media have been acting drastically differently this time around than they did with Clinton," says David Swanson, co-founder of the organization AfterDowningStreet.org, which has been helping to organize an impeachment movement, and to make impeachment part of the 2006 off-year Congressional election campaign. "Under Clinton, the media were gung-ho for impeachment or for resignation, and the public refused to cooperate. Now the public wants impeachment and the media won't cooperate."Swanson argues that the media's avoidance of the impeachment story is akin to their ducking of responsibility during the build-up to and in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. "Just as they've been afraid to publish each new piece of evidence about the lies that led to war," he says, "they've been afraid to expose the president's impeachable crimes. I think it's because in both cases they've been complicit in those lies and crimes. It's not so much loyalty to Bush over Clinton as it is fear of investigations. With congressional investigations, people would start asking, 'Why didn't we know any of this stuff before?'"There are signs that the impeachment story may go mainstream, however. Pelosi and Senate minority leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) are both still trying to downplay the notion that the Democrats would move to impeach Bush if they succeeded in capturing the House in November. But as the prospects for such a shift continue to grow (only 15 seats need to change hands), and as Bush's support (as low as 29 percent in current polls) continues to tank, the realization that an impeachment bill will likely be filed after election day, whether by some state legislature or by a newly elected or re-elected Democratic representative, is starting to sink in in newsrooms.At some point, the public's concerns about presidential abuses of power--and about administration incompetence, which has reached the level of criminal negligence in cases like the Katrina response or the failure to plan for the post-war occupation of Iraq--will compel more honest and forthright coverage of the constitutionally provided remedy for such crimes: impeachment.

International Law Authority Rips Bush Policies

International Law Authority Rips Bush Policies: "International Law Authority Rips Bush Policies
by Sherwood Ross "
BUSH POLICIES ARE "ONGOING CRIMINAL ACTIVITY"UNDER U.S. AND WORLD LAW, LEGAL SCHOLAR SAYS
If anyone knows anything about international law it's Dr. Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and he's more than a little ticked off at the moment at President Bush. Dr. Boyle's credentials are little short of amazing.
Now he's written an article with a ring of urgency, saying the House of Representatives "must impeach President Bush for war, lying about war, and threatening more wars."The Bush Administration "demonstrates little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, international organizations, and human rights, let alone appreciation of the requirements for maintaining international peace and security," Boyle asserts.

Bush: I'm Commander In Chief, Screw Your Rights

Bush: I'm Commander In Chief, Screw Your Rights: "Bush: I'm Commander In Chief, Screw Your Rights"
by Robert R. Regl
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." - 4th Amendment to the ConstitutionOn August 17 in a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled that Bush's warrantless Terrorist Surveillance Program is in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the Separation of Powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, and the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution.President Bush, however, is determined to spy on us without a court order so it's not surprising that he voiced his profound displeasure with the decision and has declared his determination to appeal the ruling. As expected he is trying to salvage whatever political advantage he can out of this judicial denunciation of his audacious power grab. With the help of Carl Rove , Ken Mehlman and the rest of the RNC he is circulating the blatant lie that Democrats are opposed to wiretapping terrorists. They're not.Bush first told us that warrants were obtained for all wiretapping; that was a lie. Then he said that taps were conducted only if one of the parties was in a foreign country; that too was a lie. Now he says that we're at war and he doesn't need a warrant under any circumstances. This is, of course absurd on the face of it. The problem is that Bush doesn't want a sworn record of whom he's tapping and why. Obtaining a warrant from the FISA court is a simple, even routine matter; only 4 of more than 20,000 requests have ever been denied in FISA's 27 year history. However getting a warrant is more than a mere technical nuisance; it furnishes a sworn record of the reasons for the need to wiretap and it gives assurance that it is not a capricious intrusion on civil liberties.
I don't trust the government to have unchecked powers over individuals - regardless of who the President is - that's why the Bill of Rights was included in the Constitution. If a President has the kind of authority over us that Bush claims then the nation the founders created is dead and its citizens are nothing more than feudal vassals. It makes little difference to the serf whether he's captive of a domestic tyrant or a foreign one, his enslavement is the same.

The War Crimes of George W. Bush

The War Crimes of George W. Bush: "The War Crimes of George W. Bush"
Benjamin Ferrencz is a man on a mission. The eighty-seven year old former Nuremberg prosecutor wants to see President George W. Bush in the same International Criminal Courts docket with Saddam Hussein on war crimes charges. "Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime" Ferrencz said. "The atrocities of the Iraq War-from Abu Ghraib to the massacre at Haditha were predictable at the start of the war."

The only difference between Bush and Saddam is Bush has more money, weapons, and a bigger armed force behind him. Those things may not insure victory for Bush, but they do give him a huge advantage in making the world capitulate to his wishes. When you're the only leader who can offer carrots or sticks, other leaders tend not to stand in your way.

Some look at President Bush through rose-colored glasses, believing everything he's done in Iraq is justified and that Saddam is criminally insane. However, in a world that is clouded in a hazy gray, crusading tyrants look very much the same. One may carry a Koran in his inside suit pocket and another may mouth sermons from the Bible at Morning Prayer breakfasts. When either of them moves against innocents they align themselves with those Ferrencz prosecuted sixty years ago at Nuremberg. And they each deserve the same judgments that were meted out on that dark day.