Is Cheney Above The Law?

[zengrifter]

Cheney: Neither Here Nor There?

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, June 21, 2007; 1:36 PM

The House Oversight Committee is demanding that Vice President Cheney explain himself. Is his office part of the executive branch? Part of the legislative branch? Or is Cheney suggesting that as far as federal rules are concerned, his office essentially doesn't exist?

The issue at hand is Cheney's insistence that his office is exempt from an executive order issued by President Bush in 2003 requiring all federal agencies or "any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information" to report annually on its activities regarding the classification, safeguarding and declassification of national security information.

...more - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?nav=hcmodule

[zengrifter]

Bush claims oversight exemption too
The White House says the president's own order on classified data does not apply to his office or the vice president's.

By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer
June 23, 2007

WASHINGTON — The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney's office, President Bush's office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information.

An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said.

...more - http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...la-home-center

[zengrifter]

Democrats plan to cut Cheney out of
executive funding bill

Josh Catone
Published: Saturday June 23, 2007

Following Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that his office is not a part of the executive branch of the US government, Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) plans to introduce an amendment to the the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill to cut funding for Cheney's office.

The amendment to the bill that sets the funding for the executive branch will be considered next week in the House of Representatives.

"The Vice President has a choice to make. If he believes his legal case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch," said Emanuel in a statement released to RAW STORY.

...more - http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Democr..._out_0623.html

[zengrifter]

White House faces
wiretap subpoena


Leahy said repeated requests for information on the
wiretapping programme have been "rebuffed" [EPA]

The White House and the office of Dick Cheney, the US vice president, have been sent subpoenas demanding documents relating to the administration's decision to eavesdrop on Americans. The programme, which saw the administration intercept emails and telephone calls without a warrant, was adopted after the September 11 attacks.

The National Security Council will also receive a subpoena issued by a US senate committee on Wednesday.

...more - http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...205151FA97.htm

[moo321]

I think it's pretty much time we impeached Bush. He has clearly violated the constitution and US law on several accounts; allowing torture of prisoners, refusing to bring US troops home when Congress wants them home, wiretapping citizens without warrants. Can't believe he considers himself a Republican.

[zengrifter]

White House blocks subpoenas over fired prosecutors

Thu Jun 28, 2007
By Thomas Ferraro and Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush set up an anticipated court battle with the Democratic-led Congress on Thursday by refusing to comply with subpoenas in its widening probe of fired federal prosecutors.

"The president has decided to assert executive privilege and therefore the White House will not be making any production in response to these subpoenas for documents," White House counsel Fred Fielding wrote lawmakers.
Photo

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy shot back, "Increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law --- in America no one is above law."

"We will take the necessary steps to enforce our subpoenas, backed by the full force of law so that Congress and the public can get to the truth behind this matter," said Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.

...more - http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldN...32190620070628

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by moo321

I think it's pretty much time we impeached Bush. He has clearly violated the constitution and US law on several accounts; allowing torture of prisoners, refusing to bring US troops home when Congress wants them home, wiretapping citizens without warrants. Can't believe he considers himself a Republican.

"I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."--Voltaire
Just Say NOW!

By Marcus K. Dalton
Tribune Media Group | August 19, 2005

For the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, that is.

Under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, impeachment of the co-conspirators in the White House should be part of mainstream political discourse.

Minutes taken from a summer 2002 meeting involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveal that the Bush administration was ''fixing" intelligence data to justify invading Iraq. US intelligence used to justify the war demonstrates repeatedly the truth of the meeting minutes -- evidence was thin and needed fixing.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused the deaths of over 2,000 U.S. military personnel, as well as untold suffering and tens of thousands of civilian dead in Iraq. The Downing Street Memo confirms what we already knew -- that a conspiracy to deceive the American people led us into the war, and that this conspiracy constitutes 'high crimes and misdemeanors' according to the U.S. Constitution.

President George W. Bush and his closest advisers promoted a non-existent nuclear and chemical weapons threat from Iraq to justify a war -- an obvious question presents itself: Why aren't Americans talking seriously about impeachment?

After all, Mr. Bush now stands plausibly accused of the lofty crime of subverting the Constitution of the United States -- that is, lying to Congress about an imminent danger to the American people in order to collect enough votes to authorize his corporate/imperial project in Iraq. Yet, outside of a few brave remarks from Senator Robert Graham, and the considered opinion of Watergate stool pigeon John W. Dean, almost nobody dares speak the "I" word.

Is the notion really so preposterous? Reasonable people can disagree about the "intent" of the founding fathers when they wrote the clause that states that "the president... shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors."

President Clinton was impeached for perjury about his sexual relationships. Comparing Clinton's misbehavior to a destructive and costly war occupation launched in March 2003 under false pretenses in violation of domestic and international law certainly merits introduction of an impeachment resolution.

Indeed, the genius of James Madison and his colleagues lay not so much in their literal specificity, but in their deliberate ambiguity. Depending on the era and circumstances, one man's high crime is Bill Clinton lying about sex with Monica Lewinsky in front of a grand jury; another's is Richard Nixon's involvement in (and lying about) the Watergate burglary cover up. Lately, my idea of a high crime is lying to Congress, before the authorization for war was voted last Oct. 11 -- a time when the administration was touting an atomic bomb threat from embargo-starved Baghdad.

Eighty-nine members of Congress have asked the president whether intelligence was manipulated to lead the United States to war. The letter points to British meeting minutes that raise ''troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war." Those minutes describe the case for war as ''thin" and Saddam as ''non-threatening to his neighbors," and ''Britain and America had to create conditions to justify a war." Finally, military action was ''seen as inevitable . . . but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Indeed, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor any imminent threat to the United States:

Alexander Hamilton asserted that an impeachment was warranted for "those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust… as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself." And James Madison at Virginia’s ratification convention stated: “A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.”

As fact after fact come forth revealing the truths of the Iraq War and a democracy turning into a tyranny behind the mask of wartime necessity, President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney have continuously abused their powers and the public trust, and violated the constitutional principles in an attempt to subvert the Constitution. The American people and the Congress can now hold the President and the Vice President accountable for their misconduct and unconstitutional actions against the United States of America.

The president and vice president have artfully dodged the central question: ''Did the administration mislead us into war by manipulating and misstating intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to Al Qaeda, suppressing contrary intelligence, and deliberately exaggerating the danger a contained, weakened Iraq posed to the United States and its neighbors?"

Can there be any greater violation of the public trust than to bear false witness to the people's representatives in pursuit of short-term political gain? Can there be injuries more immediate to society than to send American citizens to their death on a fraudulent pretext? With each shooting of a U.S. soldier in Iraq, the case for impeachment grows stronger.

If this is answered affirmatively, then Bush and Cheney have committed ''high crimes and misdemeanors."

It is time for Congress to investigate the illegal Iraq war as we move toward the third year of the endless quagmire that many security experts believe jeopardizes US safety by recruiting and training more terrorists. A Resolution of Impeachment would be a first step. Based on the mountains of fabrications, deceptions, and lies, it is time to impeach.

Certainly, if the U.S. House of Representatives can impeach President Clinton for sex and lying about sex, then the House can, should, and must impeach President Bush Jr. for war, lying about war, and threatening more wars. Otherwise, the alternative will be an American Empire abroad, a U.S. Police State at home, and continuing wars of aggression to sustain both. We must terminate America's Imperial Presidency and subject it to the "Rule of Law."

The recent disclosures of secret memos of meetings involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair's staff have underlined just how cynical and deceitful the people entrusted to lead the United States were in fabricating intelligence to get this war under way. It has become clear that they never had any intention of letting the United Nations try to settle the dispute. It seems clear now that they had made up their minds nearly a year before that Saddam Hussein was to be forcibly deposed.

Yet Bush and his lieutenants kept telling the American people that war would be waged only as a last resort.

As Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said last week, "The veracity of those statements has - to put it mildly - come into question."

Because the administration refuses to answer questions about the so-called Downing Street memo and others that have surfaced since and because Bush's party controls all of Congress, Conyers had to resort to a "public forum" to gather testimony on the issue.

In a matter of a few days, more than a half million Americans signed petitions backing Conyers in urging the president to explain the memos. So far, Bush has dismissed it all as "falsehoods" and refused to comment further.

It's time for the American people to speak out. It's time for the Congress to do their duty. It’s time for the American people, through the representatives of the Congress, to impeach the President and the Vice President of the United States.

We drove Nixon from office after he won a massive victory in 1972 because he committed crimes against the American People. Nixon was a model citizen compared to the 'Bush Occupation.' The Bush campaign cheated in Ohio and elsewhere to deny, deprive and suppress the right to vote. This, plus several other crimes Bush, Cheney and others committed require that all good and decent Americans oppose the Bush Occupation and work for its removal.

Just say NOW!

-------------------------------
Marcus K. Dalton is the Managing Editor of the Las Vegas Tribune.

[zengrifter]

How Cheney abused his power in war on terror

By Tim Shipman in Washington, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 9:28am BST 01/07/2007

Vice-President Dick Cheney was personally responsible for American policies that subjected terrorist suspects to cruelty and denied them the right to a fair trial, according to revelations from senior US government officials.

The details have laid bare more than ever before the remarkable influence of Mr Cheney in shaping the prosecution of the war on terror which led to the scandals at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

The claims that Mr Cheney manoeuvred to circumvent both American and international law came as the vice-president last week faced three new congressional demands that he release information on his activities.

...more - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...wcheney101.xml

[zengrifter]

[zengrifter]

Immediate Impeachment *
The Only Way Out & Back!

By Ted Lang
rense.com | 7-24-7

The reality of Vice President Dick Cheney's unprecedented, awesome and totally illegal power and authority over the people of America, the United States Congress, the Supreme Court, and all bureaus and agencies of American government, serves not only to invalidate totally the Constitution and the very founding of the United States, but proves correct as well the fears the Founders voiced when recognizing the threat of political parties. Identifying what is right or wrong with this country and its government no longer matters. Evaluating what is lawful and what is not are now devoid of both a system of recognition and a remedy. Attacking what is constitutional and what is not is now irrelevant; "it's just a goddamned piece of paper." Healing and corrective measures available to repair severely damaged and crippled government functions are overridden by concerns of resultant political fallout and posturing

For whatever reason the Washington Post chose in allowing its staff writers, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, to launch their four-part series exposing Dick Cheney as America's first functioning dictator, it opened the door to Bruce Fein's call for Cheney's impeachment in his editorial posted in Slate. Fein and the Post have legitimized and given substance to Congressman Dennis Kucinich's House Resolution calling for just that action.

And in his July 9th article published in The New Yorker commenting on the Post's effort and appropriately entitled "The Darksider," Hendrik Hertzberg's opinion of Cheney's Svengali-like domination of our clueless frat boy president is marvelously articulated: "The story of the scowling, scheming, domineering, silently sinister Vice-President and the spoiled, petted prince who becomes his plaything is irresistible-set in a pristine White House, played against an ominous, unseen background of violence and catastrophe, like distant thunder, and packed with drama, palace intrigue, and black comedy."

...more - http://rense.com/general77/impeach.htm