Replies to post #146247 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[teapeebubbles]

Why Has Bush Abandoned the People of Tibet, Burma, Uzbekistan, East Timor and Other Oppressed Places, Yet He Has Destroyed Thousands of Lives and Wasted Billions of Dollars AFTER "Liberating" Iraq from Saddam Hussein? Very Good Question. Indeed.

[teapeebubbles]

Bush Elected President Of Iraq

December 28, 2005 | Issue 41•52
Bush Elected President Of Iraq

Iraqi President-Elect George W. Bush.



BAGHDAD—In a vast outpouring of gratitude to the man they call "Our Great Savior From The West," the people of Iraq flooded the polls during yesterday's first free elections, voting overwhelmingly for President George W. Bush as their first democratically elected leader.

Bush, who spent nearly half a trillion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money on his campaign, received a concession call from Abu Musaiya at 11:30 EST last night.

After the Bush landslide was announced on Al-Jazeera, ecstatic crowds chanted in the streets throughout the recently liberated nation: "Hail George Bush, the president of Iraq!"

"May Allah bless him and his children to the seventh generation!" shouted free Iraqi citizen Abdullah al-Hallasid, firing his gun into the air repeatedly and injuring seven U.S. soldiers. "At last, we are free!"

Bush, who surged in the polls after all of the other candidates were killed by either coalition forces or insurgents in the final week leading up to the election, characterized his victory as the dawn of democracy in the Middle East, and proof that the system works.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I thought he did that a couple years ago??

Either way,,,why the heck are WE still paying for his vacations?

[teapeebubbles]

President Bush’s Illegal Spying Is, First and Foremost, an Affront to the Rule of Law - Not Just Civil Liberties
Posted December 28th, 2005 at 7:02 am by Jon


OATH OF OFFICE
“I, George Walker Bush, do solemnly swear 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.”
— January 2005Felon-in-Chief: The Bush team is hoping that Democrats will go after the president’s illegal wiretapping as an abuse of civil liberties, rather than as a flagrant violation of a United States law - in this case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Attacking the president’s violation of FISA purely as an affront to civil liberties helps the Bush regime because they can easily contort this position - with the media’s help - into “Democrats prefer civil rights for terrorists over national security.”

Certainly, the wiretapping of U.S. citizens without a warrant paves the way for unchecked abuse of power. Who knows whether Bush operatives have eavesdropped on their political enemies, including Democratic and Republican members of Congress.

Leaving all that aside, however, the damage the president has done to our democracy is very simple:

President Bush broke the law.

He has admitted he subverted FISA and conducted warrantless wiretaps hundreds of times. The Bushists have offered no valid reason for breaking the FISA law. Their main excuse, that it would take too long to get a FISA warrant, is pure baloney: The law grants them 72 hours after an emergency wiretap to obtain the warrant - and an even longer period in war time, which, arguably, we are in.

The FISA law clearly sets out what the penalties are for spying on U.S. citizens without first obtaining a FISA warrant:

Section 1827 imposes criminal sanctions for intentionally executing a physical search for foreign intelligence gathering purposes under color of law within the United States except as authorized by statute. In addition, criminal penalties attach to a conviction for intentionally disclosing or using information obtained by a physical search under color of law within the United States for the purpose of gathering intelligence information, where the offender knows or has reason to know that the information was obtained by a physical search not authorized by statute. In either case, this section provides that a person convicted of such an offense faces a fine of not more than $10,000, imprisonment for not more than five years or both.
During the Clinton years, Republicans repeated phrases “no one is above the law” and “the rule of law is paramount” as their mantras. Now we learn - as we suspected then - it was never about the rule of law with them. It was always about politics.

Where Are These Voices Today?

“No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That’s the principle that we all hold very dear in this country.”

- Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), October 1998
“As John Adams said, we are a nation of laws, not of men. Our nation has survived the failings of its leaders before, but it cannot survive exceptions to the rule of law in our system of equal justice for all.”

- Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Arkansas) December 1998
“The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door. It challenges abuse of authority… There is such a thing lurking out in the world called abuse of authority, and the rule of law is what protects you from it. And so it’s a matter of considerable concern to me when our legal system is assaulted by our nation’s chief law enforcement officer, the only person obliged to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.”

- Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) December 1998
“The framers of the Constitution devised an elaborate system of checks and balances to ensure our liberty by making sure that no person, institution or branch of government became so powerful that a tyranny could be established in the United States of America. Impeachment is one of the checks the framers gave the Congress to prevent the executive or judicial branches from becoming corrupt or tyrannical.”

- Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), December 1998
“[A] nation of laws cannot be ruled by a person who breaks the law. Otherwise, it would be as if we had one set of rules for the leaders and another for the governed.”

- Rep. Richard Armey (R-Texas) December 1998
“No one is above the law, not even the president.”

- Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Connecticut), December 1998
Topic: Message Points, Politics, GOP Scandals - Abuse of Power |
3 comments for President Bush’s Illegal Spying Is, First and Foremost, an Affront to the Rule of Law - Not Just Civil Liberties »
The law is quite clear. Bush must drink the hemlock (metaphorically) or else Socrates died in vain.

Comment by Frankly, my dear, ... — December 28, 2005 @ 10:54 am

This ought to be a no-brainer. Bush admitted he broke the law hundreds of times. The true conservatives should be furious and the Dems should be proceeding towards IMPEACHMENT for this issue alone. [There are quite a few other reasons to consider impeachment besides Bush’s obvious incompetence.]

Comment by Jeff — December 28, 2005 @ 4:00 pm

This is very much worse than merely breaking a law.

For starters, imagine if Bush starts eavesdropping on Congressional Democrats. Some will have secrets (marital infidelity, sexual foibles, whatever) which would allow Bush to blackmail them into always voting how he wanted. Or he could expose the secrets come election time instead of using invented Rovian smears.

Now imagine he eavesdrops on Congressional Republicans too. They seem a lot more prone to marital infidelity and sexual foibles. They also seem a lot more prone to corruption. The Republicans generally present a united front in public, but some of them are now distancing themselves from Bush. With a little blackmail most of them will be under his complete control.

With that achieved, Bush will no longer have to overdose John Yoo with LSD so that he comes up with bizarre legal constructs that say Bush can do something that legislation never intended. Bush will be able to get any legislation he wants passed. A new bill defining torture as the pain equivalent to organ failure? No problem.

Worse is if Bush can blackmail a supermajority in both houses of Congress plus majorities in three-fourths of state legislatures. Then he can amend the Constitution at will. So it’s goodbye XXIInd Amendment and hello President-for-life Dubya the 1st.

Legislation won’t be enough to stop his eavesdropping. He’s already ignored existing legislation that should have stopped it. And we saw how he reacted to McCain’s amendment: a revision of the Army Interrogation Manual which will contain eight pages classified as secret (but we all know what they will contain).

Impeachment is the only thing that will stop him. And it has to be done quickly, before he gets to the point where Congress is under his thumb. Once that happens, impeachment is no longer an option.

Fortunately, Republicans (if they work out what will happen or have it pointed out to them) will impeach Bush. They may have been pretty much a rubber stamp for Bush but up until now they had the freedom to vote against Bush. They won’t want to give that up. And the corrupt ones would suspect (almost certainly correctly) that if Bush wiretaps them he’ll want a very large cut of their illicit deals.

If we can make Congressional Republicans see where this is leading, impeachment is sure to follow.

Comment by Brian de Ford — December 28, 2005 @ 4:47 pm

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2005/12/28/president-bushs-illegal-spying-is-an-affront-to-rule-of-law/