Amnesty International Ad on Waterboarding

Not In My Name Department: Bush vetoes anti-torture bill

Here is the real Bush legacy. Bush asserts his authority to torture when and who he wishes. Bush refuses to adhere to the US Army restrictions on torture and the treatment of prisoners.This heinous action draws less attention than who was eliminated from the latest round of idol as Rupert and friends give us bread and circuses to distract from our loss of ourselves and what we thought we stood for.***US President George Bush has vetoed legislation passed by Congress that would have banned the CIA from using waterboarding and other controversial interrogation techniques.Lawmakers included the anti-torture measure in a broader bill authorizing US intelligence activities.Read more of article from tvnz

The GWB Library

Thanks to Jim S.:

The George W Bush Presidential Library is now in the planning stages. You’ll want to be the first at your corporation to make a contribution to this great man’s legacy. The Library will include: 

 

The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction. 

 

The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you can’t remember anything. 

 

The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don’t have to even show up. 

 

The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don’t let you in. 

 

The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don’t let you out. 

 

The Weapons of Mas s Destruction Room (which no one has been able to find). 

 

The Iraq War Room.  After you compl ete your first tour, they make you to go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth tour. 

 

The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shooting gallery. 

 

Plans also include: The K-Street Project Gift Shop – where you can buy (or just steal) an election. 

 

The Airport Men’s Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators. 

 

Last, but not least, there will be an entire floor devoted to a 7/8 scale model of the President’s ego. 

 

To highlight the President’s accomplishments, the museum will have an electron microscope to help you l ocate them. 

 

When asked, President Bush said that he didn’t care so much about the individual exhibits as long as his museum was better than his father’s.

 

The Real State of the Union-Call Bush’s Bluff

Lies

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

 

Take a look at the report here:   http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard. 

* * * CALL FOR DISTRICT 22 FOR IMPEACHMENT CAMPAIGN * * *

(please distribute far and wide)

January 6, 2008

 

Dear Impeachment Activists of Congressional District NY 22 (Hinchey),

 

Last month we distributed a letter to organizers of local and County impeachment efforts to gauge the interest in coordinating a Congressional District-wide campaign that develops and implements strategies over the next few months and beyond. From Ithaca to Kingston the response was very positive, so we are moving forward with our first planning meeting:

 

DISTRICT 22 FOR IMPEACHMENT PLANNING MEETING
Saturday, January 19, Noon – 4:00 PM
Unitarian Universalist Church
183 Riverside Drive, Binghamton NY

 

We have worked at the municipal and County levels with great legislative success, and it is time we think more strategically and regionally over the next few critical months. Rather than seemingly “isolated” calls for impeachment, a district-wide campaign would make it very clear what the mainstream media andWashington leaders refuse to acknowledge: that there is overwhelming public support for defending and protecting the U.S. Constitution against a reckless, allegedly criminal administration. With calls for impeachment increasing both in Congress and in mainstream media, coordinating our efforts across the Congressional District would add volume and influence to our demands.

 

Please share this with key organizers in your County, and RSVP to bcimpeachment@yahoo.com at your earliest convenience. An agenda with more details will be mailed to those who respond with interest. As for now, please know that we will prepare and host lunch from Noon – 1:00 pm (allowing some social time), and then convene the meeting from 1:00 – 4:00 pm.

 

We congratulate and applaud the good patriots in District 22 for serving as bright lights in a time of darkness. Let us walk this difficult path together, with courage and compassion.

Sincerely,

 

Tarik Abdelazim & Kevin Bunger

Co-coordinators of Broome County for Impeachment Campaign www.bcpeaceaction.org

 

 

*This proposal is co-sponsored by Broome County Peace Action and Broome County Veterans for Peace

Here’s one of those increasingly rare instances when the NYTIMES reminds us why it was once a great newspaper:

December 31, 2007

Editorial

Looking at America

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American jailers.

In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where “high-value detainees” were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that “experts” could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.

The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

Sign the American Lawyers Defending the Constitution statement

I don’t know about you, but I am tired of living under an administration that does not respect our Constitution or the laws of the land. For this reason, I just joined more than 60 law professors and other passionate legal professionals in signing the statement below, calling for hearings before the U.S. House and Senate Judiciary Committees to investigate whether the Bush administration has violated the Constitution and federal laws.

In a recent speech, former Governor Mario Cuomo decried the actions of the Bush administration and called on lawyers to take action. He said, “If not the lawyers, then who? If not now, when?” This captures the spirit of the “American Lawyers Defending the Constitution” campaign perfectly.

Please read the statement below and then add your name by visiting the following link.

 

Message to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy from American Lawyers Defending the Constitution

We are lawyers in the United States of America. As such, we have all taken an oath obligating us to defend the Constitution and the rule of law from those who would violate and subvert them, and to hold wrongdoers accountable. We believe the Bush administration has committed numerous offenses against the Constitution and may have violated federal laws. Evidence exists that it has illegally spied on Americans, tortured and abused men and women in its direct custody, sent others to be tortured by countries like Syria and Egypt, and kept people in prison indefinitely with no chance to challenge the bases of their detention. Moreover, the administration has blatantly defied congressional subpoenas, obstructing constitutional oversight of the executive branch.

Thus, we call on House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy to launch hearings into the possibility that crimes have been committed by this administration in violation of the Constitution, federal statutes, and international treaties.

 We call for the investigations to go where they must, including into the offices of the President and the Vice President. Should these hearings demonstrate that laws have in fact been broken by this administration, we support all such legal and congressional actions necessary to ensure the survival of our Constitution and the nation we love.

Click on the following link to sign the statement.

Out of the Mouths of Lawyers

In U.S. and Zimbabwe, Parallel Snooping Laws

Coincidence? Consider these two news items:

• Mugabe Signs Law to Monitor Phones and E-mails:

“Robert Mugabe has signed into law an intrusive piece of legislation that gives his regime the power to snoop on phones and e-mails. A government notice published on Friday confirmed Mugabe has approved the Interception of Communications Act, despite intense opposition from press freedom campaigners, media groups and others. The move has already heightened the fears of ordinary people over the privacy of their communications.”

• New Law Expands Power to Wiretap:

“President Bush signed a new law yesterday that expands the government’s power to wiretap phone calls and e-mails on American soil without court oversight, capping a sudden victory for the White House despite loud criticism from advocates of civil liberties and privacy rights.”

Of Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, Wikipedia says:

“The Mugabe administration has been criticized around the world for corruption, suppression of political opposition, mishandling of land reform, economic mismanagement, and deteriorating human rights.”

And of Bush? Draw your own conclusion.

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on August 8, 2007 at 12:21 PM | Permalink

I really like Robert J. Ambrogi’s blog posts.  Of course, he is a Boston College Law School alum, which earns him some points with me as a fellow garduate.  Check out his blog.

 

No Sense of Shame

On Aug. 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon announced he would resign following damaging revelations in the Watergate scandal.**** To have a sense of shame that is less than that of Richard M. Nixon, is to have none at all.  If Bush/Cheney had been the focus of Watergate, they would have brazened their way through, with Rovian guidance.  Oh that Bush/Cheney had the moral sense of Nixon!! My God!!