Duty to Warn

My nomination for Man of the Year in 2005 is Patrick Fitzgerald. Anyone who could flush out a sleazy journalist like Judy Miller and toss her in jail without blinking an eye gets my vote. More significantly, though, it was only after Fitzgerald’s tenacious investigation that the media woke from its stupor and discovered that the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s CIA identity was more than just another Washington scandal – which is where they seemed happy to leave it. So we began reading about – get this now --possible attempts by the Bush administration to dissemble, deceive and distort, as they “fixed the intelligence” to sell the Iraq war to Congress and the American people. It’s clear that Fitzgerald’s dogged efforts had that hard-to-define tipping effect, where what had been obvious all along, but was being ignored for lack of momentum, suddenly gets new life.

Dear friends,

The year 2005 brought new hardships but also new hope to the people of the world. Hope because the Bush administration has shown itself before the world to be lawless, cruel and brutal but also inept and incompetent. In Iraq the Pentagon has shown it is incapable of repressing a growing resistance from the Iraqi people. Meanwhile the government has been caught running torture camps inside Iraq and outsourcing torture around the world.

The people of the U.S. have decided the war is unjust and not worth the price in Iraqi lives or the sacrifice of our youth. Young people are refusing to enlist in the military in sufficient numbers to carry on the illegal occupation and continuing assault on the Iraqi people. In New Orleans the government did nothing for a week while the city drowned. Now more than four months later tens of thousands remain homeless. More and more of the population is outraged by the crimes emanating from the White House and are enlisting in the campaign to stop those crimes.

ImpeachPAC today announced the formation of a Citizens Impeachment Commission to make 2006 the "Year of Impeachment."

"We are honored by the broad support for impeachment from this distinguished group of true American patriots," said Bob Fertik, President of ImpeachPAC. "Impeachment is not a 'fringe' position, as the Bush Administration would like Americans to believe. With a recent Zogby poll showing Americans support impeachment hearings by a solid majority of 53%-42%, there is far more support for impeachment than there is for the War in Iraq," Fertik said.

"Despite three rounds of Iraqi elections, 845 brave young Americans died in Iraq in 2005, only 3 fewer than the 848 lost in 2004. Also 30,000 to 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed in the wake of the U.S. invasion. George Bush and Dick Cheney are personally responsible for each of those deaths, because they deliberately lied to Congress and the American people to start this disastrous and never-ending war," Fertik added.

Folks at the White House stay pretty busy these days just trying to untangle the lies George Bush keeps telling every time he opens his mouth. For example, back in April 2004, Bush explained to a cheering audience and an unchallenging press corps in Buffalo about "eavesdropping" on Americans -- "When you think 'Patriot Act,' constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because," he said earnestly while leaning over the podium, his hand on his heart "--because we value the Constitution."

Bush "Value that (insert Lord's name in vain) piece of worthless paper" I think not. From his actions and manner of speech, it is doubtful that Bush has read either the US Constitution or the holy book upon which he placed his hand twice and swore to preserve, protect and defend it.

The generation of American leaders who fought the American Revolution and crafted the United States Constitution examined the most important issues of government. They considered (1) war and peace, (2 ) the limits to government power vs. individual liberties, (3) how officeholders should be controlled by the citizenry and (4) the raising and management of public money. That generation devised impeachment to remove tyrants and corrupt officeholders from positions of public power based on their experience under the government of King George. Under the present circumstances, it is likely that they would vote to impeach and remove from office George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Bush deserves to be known as Liar-in Chief because he has not been honest with the American public on the most important issues of public policy for the past 5 years of his government. It is amazing that Republicans in Congress were willing to impeach President Bill Clinton over lying about an essentially personal issue over his sex life but are defenders of Bush when he is dishonest on the most important issues of government and public policy.

Sometime around 1850 my great-grandmother’s second cousin, James Lord Pierpont, wrote a song that for more than a century has been sung the most often in celebration of Christmas, especially by children. The song is “Jingle Bells.” A quick glance at its lyrics, however, reveals that Pierpont never once mentioned Christmas. “Jingle Bells” merely describes a winter scene and people frolicking in the snow, possibly on Washington’s Birthday (no, make that Presidents Day).

The illegal wiretaps authorized by the Bush Administration unnecessarily undermined American security by not following the legal requirements of court approval. The special law regulating national security wiretaps of potential foreign intelligence agents (and other potential enemies) permits wiretaps authorized by a special, highly secret court even after the wiretaps are in place.

The law gives the Executive Branch amazingly extensive powers and flexibility concerning national security wiretaps. There was simply no reasonable excuse for the Bush Administration for not following the lax guidelines established by this law. Not following the legal guidelines severely undermined the entire wiretapping operation by the National Security Agency. The Bush Administration demonstrated severe incompetence in the national security field with their obvious contempt for American law.

Members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, led by ranking minority member John Conyers (D-MI) have now released their full 273-page report, The Constitution in Crisis, said to be more than six months in the making, on the Administration's use/abuse of pre-war intel, torture policies and much more.

Along with the report, Conyers has introduced three resolutions in the House which call for the Censure of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for failure to provide oversight materials to Congress and for "misstatements" in their lead-up to war. One of the resolutions also calls for the creation of a new "Select Committee" -- with subpeona power -- to discover whether there are grounds for Impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. This committee has been described to us by a Judiciary Committee staffer as "similar to the Ervin Committee on Presidential Campaign Acitivites that kicked off Watergate, to conduct further investigation of the matters described in the report." The committee would then refer evidence constituting impeachable offenses to the House Judiciary Committee.

For weeks, President Bush declared he would not accept a short-term extension of the Patriot Act. Then in a bi-partisan manner last week, prompted by the startling front-page news that Bush repeatedly authorized illegal NSA spying on Americans domestically, the Senate filibustered to prevent the legislation from being renewed. The Senate pushed for an extension, allowing lawmakers time to negotiate stricter civil liberties protections, but the Bushies rejected, and instead went on the PR warpath against Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (NV), Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA).

But Wednesday Bush backpedaled, as he's had to do so many times lately (Harriet Miers, McCain/torture, war mistakes). He blasted the Democratic leadership, choosing to deceive Americans yet again by ignoring the fact that this was a bi-partisan action.

The International Day of Action to Stop Global Warming on December 3 was a very important day. Approximately 100,000 people took action worldwide, with the major actions taking place in Montreal and London. At least 30,000 marched in Montreal, including hundreds of U.S. activists, and 10,000 marched in London. More information on what happened worldwide can be found at http://www.globalclimatecampaign.org.

In the United States there were at least 40 actions in at least 25 states on December 3 rd or during the two-week time period when the U.N. Climate Conference was happening in Montreal. We’ve been able to gather reports on what happened in many of those localities, found below.