ImpeachForChange

Paris Says No Pardons!

Bob Fertik — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:31:17 -0400

For his final official act, Bush plans to pardon himself and everyone in his administration for all of their crimes. Can Paris stop him? Sign our petition and spread the word!

How to Create a Congressional District Impeachment Committee

Bob Fertik — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:11:57 -0500

Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leaders in Congress say impeaching Bush is "off the table." We must change their minds!

Our plan is simple: we will form Impeachment Committees in all 435 Congressional Districts to persuade all of our Representatives to support impeachment.

Help us Impeach Bush by taking the following 4 steps:

1. Join (or create) an Impeachment Committee in your Congressional District.
2. Collect petitions and handwritten letters.
3. Build support for impeachment by holding an educational town forum, writing letters to the editor, etc.
4. Meet with your Representative, deliver the petitions and ask them to Impeach Bush.

More detailed instructions are below.

1. Join (or create) an Impeachment Committee in your Congressional District (existing committees here)

Login to Democrats.com
Check your profile to make sure your Congressional District is correct - if not, click "Change Personal Information" below Voter Registration and fix your address (no apartment please), then save the changes - if the Congressional District is still wrong, contact us with the correct district
Click the "Local" button in the navigation box at the upper left to check for the latest announcements in your Congressional District (also County and State)
Look for an announcement of an Impeachment Committee in your Congressional District. If you do see one, reply to it and say you want to help.
If you do not see one:
- click the link to "create forum topic"
- for subject, enter "Impeachment Committee"
- for forum, choose "Impeachment - Congressional District Organizing"
- for topic, choose "ImpeachForChange"
- for subscriptions, click the box if you want to get an email when someone from your district replies
- for local, choose "Congressional District"
- in the body, identify your Congressperson by name (if you don't know click here)
- add the address of their District Office by searching for their name here and clicking their name and looking under "Contact Information" for the "District Office"
(note: newly elected Members will not have offices until January)
- Propose a time and place when local activists can conveniently meet
- we suggest Saturday at noon at the busiest place in town, but another time and place might work better for your group

2. Collect petitions and handwritten letters (click printer-friendly version below to print this page)

download our petition form
print as many copies as you'll need (19 signers per page)
bring clipboards and pens
bring blank paper for handwritten letters
bring an ironing board for letterwriting (optional)
wear impeachment buttons or anti-war buttons
stand in a safe location that gets a lot of foot traffic (but don't block anyone)
as people approach you, ask them in a reasonably loud voice if they would like to sign our petition to impeach Bush
if they say yes, hand them the clipboard and pen and thank them
tell them you will email them when you get home so they can sign our full petition online and email it directly to their Representative and get a personal reply
ask them if they have another minute to write a personal letter that you will hand-deliver
here is a simple letter they can copy or modify:
[Date]
Dear Rep. X,
I urge you to Impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney for violating the Constitution and breaking the law. I am particularly upset that they:
- lied about Iraq to start a war
- allowed torture of prisoners
- gave corrupt no-bid contracts to their rich friends
- wiretapped our phones and emails without a warrant
Sincerely,
[Name and address]
when it's time to leave, find a copy shop where you can make copies of the petitions (not handwritten letters)
bring (or mail) the original petitions and letters to the Representative (you can call in advance to get the name of the District Manager and schedule a brief visit)
keep the copies to keypunch the emails (only) into our petition invitation form
the keypunchers should login and click here:
http://democrats.com/impeach-petition
and look just below the message for the "send to friend" link
the "send to friend" page lets you keypunch up to 20 email addresses, one per line
copy/paste all the emails and save them in a convenient document (Email distribution list, spreadsheet, or Word document) for future organizing in your community
press "submit"
this will email each person and invite them to sign our petition

3. Write letters to the editor and op-eds and call radio and TV talk shows because Representatives pay attention to the issues people are raising in the local media.

4. Organize a Honk-to-Impeach event - if possible do it every week, same time same place.

5. Schedule a district meeting with your Representative

Your Representative spends some work weeks in Washington and some at home.
November will be mostly in Washington, December and January mostly at home.
Designate one well-spoken person to call the District Office and request a meeting with a group of impeachment supporters to discuss why impeachment is absolutely necessary.
Each member of the group should read and bring one book or serious article on impeachment and prepare a couple of sentences for the meeting summarizing the most important argument in that book or article.
The group should meet for coffee an hour before the meeting to discuss who will say what and avoid duplication.
The person who scheduled the meeting should be the first to speak and thank the Representative for the meeting and then let each person say their name and neighborhood
One person should take notes
The key questions to ask are:
Do you agree that invading Iraq on the basis of lies is an impeachable offense?
Do you agree that allowing prisoners to be tortured is an impeachable offense?
Do you agree that wiretapping countless innocent Americans without a warrant is an impeachable offense?
Do you agree that nullifying laws with signing statements is an impeachable offense?
If you agree that one or more are impeachable offenses, what will it take for you to publicly support impeachment?

6. Organize a Town Hall Meeting on December 10, 2006.

Details here.

Find Your Congressional District Impeachment Committee

Bob Fertik — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 10:49:47 -0500

AL03, AZ01, AZ03, AZ08, CA01, CA03, CA05, CA06, CA07, CA09, CA11, CA13, CA14, CA13-14-15, CA23, CA25, CA26, CA28, CA29, CA30, CA36, CA37, CA38, CA47, CA49, CA50, CA51, CA52, CA53, CO01, CO03, CO07, CT04, CT05, DC00, DE00, FL01, FL02, FL06, FL08, FL10, FL16-19-22, FL18, FL20, FL24, GA07, HI01, HI02, IA05, IL01, IL03, IL05, IL09, IL11, IL13, IL16, IN01, IN05, IN06, IN09, KS01, KY06, LA02, MA01, MA03, MA04, MA05, MA06, MA07, MA08, MA10, MD03, MD06, ME01, MI03, MI06, MI07, MI10, MI12, MN01, MN04, MN05, MO03, MO08, MA02, MS03, NC02, NC04, NC05, NC06, NC09, NC10, NC11, NC13, ND00, NE03, NH01, NH02, NJ01, NJ12, NY05, NY07, NY08, NY09, NY10, NY11, NY12, NY13, NY14, NY15, NY18, NY19, NY20, NY21, NY22, NY23, NY24, NY28, OH11, OH18, OK01, OK05, OR01, OR02, OR03, OR04, PA06, PA07, PA08, PA11, PA13, PA15, PA17, PA18, PA19, SC03, SD00, TN05, TX07, TX18, TX24, TX25, UT01, UT02, VA02, VA03, VA06, VA07, VA08, VA11, VT00, WA01, WA02, WA03, WA06, WA07, WA08, WA09, WI02, WI03, WV01, WV02

Don't see a committee in your district? Help us create one! http://democrats.com/cdic

Bush is the Most Hated President in Polling History

Bob Fertik — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:10:49 -0400

As Chris Bowers writes, Bush Now Least Popular President Since Polling Began. Here's the data to prove it:

President	Low Approval	High Disapproval	High Margin
Bush 2	25	70	-45
Clinton	36	50	-14
Bush 1	29	60	-31
Reagan	35	56	-21
Carter	28	59	-31
Ford	39	45	-6
Nixon	24	66	-42
Johnson	35	52	-16
Kennedy	56	30	+26
Eisenhower	48	36	+12
Truman	22	65	-43
FDR	48	43	+5

Sadly, Bowers blows it big time with his conclusion:

The whole thing makes you long after a parliamentary system of government. That we have been forced to put up with Bush despite his low disapproval for so long strikes me as a flaw in our electoral system.

Um Chris, that's why the Founding Fathers put impeachment in the Constitution.

Viewing the Constitution from the Right

davidswanson — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:31:34 -0400

By David Swanson

Bruce Fein's new book "Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy," is written by someone who admits he voted for Bush and Cheney twice, supported the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito with no apparent regrets, proposes Robert Bork as a model justice, admires Rehnquist and Scalia, supported the impeachment of Bill Clinton and wanted him convicted, served as associate deputy attorney general to Ronald Reagan and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission under Reagan (who -- you'll recall -- eliminated the Fairness Doctrine), worked as research director for Congressman Dick Cheney when they blocked investigation of Reagan's Iran-Contra crimes and prevented his impeachment, has been a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, opposes Roe v. Wade and affirmative action and any minimum wage, supports discrimination against homosexuals, and -- in an unfortunate bit of timing -- openly declares on page 20 that he "frowns on government regulation … to manipulate or distort free market choices."

Yet, if you set aside pages 19 through 21, I agree with pretty much all the main points in this book. That they come from someone on the right has had no impact on them that I can discern. That they come from Bruce Fein has given them a unique foundation in historical and legal facts, benefitting from Fein's understanding of history, both distant and Nixonian. Fein did not support Nixon's crimes any more than Bush's and Cheney's, but he does recognize the greater gravity of the latter.

Fein's political perspective may have had some impact -- I don't know for sure -- on his choice of which crimes to focus on. His book is particularly worth reading if you want the low down on illegal spying, illegal secrecy, and illegal rendition. Fein goes very light on the war and many other crimes and abuses. On page 2 he rather obscenely refers to the "hundreds [sic] of civilians who have been killed by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan." Two serious studies have been done of the Iraqi death count resulting from the invasion and occupation, both placing the count well over a million. One is Just Foreign Policy's updated figure based on an initial but now outdated report by Johns Hopkins / Lancet. The other is an August 2007 study by the British polling company Opinion Research Business, then estimating 1.2 million, now also out of date. See: http://justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html I think you'd be hard pressed to find any neocons in Washington who would claim the total was under 10,000, except apparently for Fein.

I also object to Fein's claim on page 41 that the American people have not "flooded Pelosi's office with protesting Emails or phone calls," over her refusal to impeach. Where did Fein get such an absurd idea? From Pelosi? And he believed her? Or did he just pull it out of thin air based on the Washington Post's and the Washington Times' failure to report on the fact that we've shut Pelosi's office down with floods of Emails, faxes, and phone calls over a period of well over a year, that we've sat in her office, delivered petitions to her office, camped out endlessly in her front yard in San Francisco (which has made lots of media and generated her complaint that she can't have us arrested the way she would if we were poor people unprotected by the First Amendment), disrupted her speaking events, marched from Boston to her DC office, saturated the internet and progressive radio with complaints against her, and run Cindy Sheehan against her as an impeachment candidate for Congress.

I also disagree somewhat with some of Fein's points on pages 44-45. Fein thinks that Americans are slow to grow outraged over abuses of civil rights because most of those abused are non-Americans with foreign-sounding names. I think there is a lot of truth in that, and yet there are numerous American victims, including political prisoners like the former governor of Alabama. Americans have been spied on. American whistleblowers, including in the Justice Department -- such as Jesslyn Radack -- have had their careers destroyed as retribution for speaking out, and for speaking out against abuses of other Americans. Americans have been deceived by illegal propaganda. Americans (like Cindy Sheehan's son) have been sent to their deaths for a pile of lies. Americans live on the globe the accelerated warming of which Fein does not touch on. In short, there are specific American victims, and we are all victims of outrageous criminal acts and criminal negligence. And when Fein proposes that candidates for president should promise not to "detain without trial any American citizen," I think he is playing to the same xenophobia he diagnoses. We should not tolerate the detention without trial of anyone.

But these are minor points I'm picking out of a 204-page book that is absolutely devastating in its demand for the immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney. And this is obviously a book that can be given to your right-wing uncle with the most likely chance of him not dismissing it quickly. Fein's analysis of the peril in which we find ourselves is devastating -- and depressing. Sadly, he offers no advice for what we can do about it, other than demanding impeachment. He organizes nothing, and he openly predicts failure, which is just not an effective way to encourage action. And yet it seems pure and honest, and Fein offers these dead-on accurate and ethical words of advice:

"It might be asked, if the overwhelming majority of Americans are vastly more thrilled by sporting events and creature comforts than they are by the moral challenges and burdens of self-government, then why struggle against this inexorable tide? The answer is two-fold. Anything else would be dishonorable. And you might leave footprints in the sands of time to inspire someone yet to be born to champion freedom in more propitious circumstances."

Alan Grayson (FL-08) Promises Jail for War Profiteers

Bob Fertik — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:50:21 -0400

Alan Grayson is the Democratic candidate in FL-08 against Ric Keller, and he's promising real accountability for the war criminals inside and outside the Bush Administration.

Nadler: It's Not Too Late to Impeach

Bob Fertik — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:25:26 -0400

September 17, 2008

Dear Congressman Nadler,

We are sure this will come as no surprise, but your inexplicable refusal to uphold your oath of office or wield the power entrusted to you as a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the chair of the its Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties subcommittee to bring about impeachment hearings has gravely disappointed thousands of your constituents.

You did not challenge Nancy Pelosi when she took impeachment off the table. You did not call upon John Conyers to initiate hearings, and you did not stand with your courageous colleagues who put principle before Party by calling for impeachment hearings.

The thousands of names accompanying this letter are the names of those who signed the online petition at www.AskNadler2Impeach.org and who have been working tirelessly to convince you to call for impeachment hearings. Over the past year and a half, we have called your office, written letters to you, met with you and your staff, created the online petition at www.AskNadler2Impeach.org, organized a Town Hall meeting with constitutional scholars to address the issue of impeachment, and produced a DVD of that town hall meeting which we hand delivered to each member of the House Judiciary Committee. So far all of our efforts to convince you of the need for impeachment hearings have fallen on deaf ears.

Before the 110th Congress adjourns, you still have an opportunity to redeem yourself in the eyes of history by demanding that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney be held accountable for the impeachable offenses they have committed.

The hour is getting late, Representative Nadler. Call for impeachment hearings as if our constitutional rights depended upon it.

Yours truly,

For www.AskNadler2Impeach.Org

(Original letter lists the names of 2,355 signers of the online petition at www.asknadler2impeach.org )

The Eight Year Bailout

davidswanson — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:17:13 -0400

By David Swanson

Every time there's a new Cheney-Bush scandal, every time we discover that Dick Cheney lied to Dick Armey, or another top Iraqi informed the White House there were no weapons, or another missile kills another large family in Afghanistan, or the wars in Pakistan and Iran get out of control before we'd realized they'd begun, or we discover that Cheney's lawyer signed the Attorney General's name to an authorization to search Democrats' body cavities, or a chunk of the North Pole floats past the Republican convention, every single time this happens … there's a moment of thrilling fantasy in which we can imagine that the American people or their so-called representatives in Washington will snap out of their hypnosis and ship the whole damn kleptocracy to the Hague in wooden crates.

And the same goes for the latest proposal to steal a trillion dollars from our unborn grandchildren and give it to Wall Street. And here I thought the unborn were the only people these fascists did care about!

While I love the idea of clinging briefly to the notion that there really is something new here and that it will wake somebody from their slumber, I secretly have to wonder how exactly this differs from the past seven years and eight months. For that length of time, our government has enthusiastically gone out of its way to provide protection for (rather than from) predatory mortgage lenders, and to treat foreclosures as no more verifiably real than evolution or global warming. In March of this year Bush and his treasury secretary transferred a pile of public money to J.P. Morgan/Chase via the Federal Reserve to assume the liabilities and assets of Bear Stearns at a price not determined in the free market or via public bidding.

But borrowing money and throwing it at the people who least need it began before Cheney and Bush moved into their new public housing in 2001. Remember that Cheney had earlier served as secretary of "defense" and given Halliburton the contract to draw up a plan calling for giving more contracts to companies like Halliburton. Then Cheney had revolved out the revolving door to spend five years as the chief executive of Halliburton, during which period Halliburton had illegally done major oil and construction business with Iran, Iraq, and Indonesia, and had illegally sold nuclear technology to Libya. Cheney had then left his Halliburton job, along with a $33.7 million parting gift, to return to government as vice president, in which position he directed the Pentagon to grant no-bid contracts worth many billions of dollars to Halliburton. For at least two years as vice president, Cheney received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Halliburton in "deferred compensation." Of course, that was justifiable in terms of the public good: society might have collapsed had Cheney not piled up more riches.

But his riches and Halliburton's were a little crumb off the loaf of large-scale looting that has been the primary focus of our government all these years. While Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes called their book about Iraq "The Three Trillion Dollar War," they were being very conservative. If you read their book, you find that incredibly conservative calculations place the amount of money wasted at no less than five trillion dollars, and mounting, with no end in sight. And who gets that money? Well, certainly not "the troops" so cynically used to squeeze it out of those gelatinous masses of spineless goo that go by the name "House" and "Senate." And certainly not the Iraqi people. Nobody's been liberated, and nothing's been reconstructed. Over a million men, women, and children lie dead, but killing them didn't cost five trillion dollars. Most of that money has gone to war profiteering robber barons, the people who handle the financing of the debt, and China.

The as-yet-unsuccessful proposal to give our Social Security savings to Wall Street is part and parcel of this same scheme. The mission of our government simply is to transfer wealth from those who need it to those who do not, and the most absurd thing about this is the number of commentators who claim that George W. Bush is in some way a "failure." Most of us can just be grateful we have so little to lose, and give thanks to Nancy Pelosi for having taken impeachment off the table. She did so on May 7, 2006, and I would like to propose that the next Congress honor her wisdom by legislating a national holiday. Every May 7th from here on out let's celebrate by getting too drunk to stand up straight and going pheasant hunting with shotguns.

Cheney Tied to Ted Stevens' Bribery Scandal

Bob Fertik — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:39:03 -0400

ThinkProgress:

Newsweek reports that in a conversation “secretly tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006,” Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) “discussed ways to get a pipeline bill through the Alaska Legislature with Bill Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about $250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits.” Stevens promised Allen, “I’m gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, ‘Look … you gotta get this done’.” Two days later, Vice President Cheney undertook the unusual move of writing a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to “promptly enact” a bill to build the pipeline.

To summarize: Bill Allen is accused of bribing Ted Stevens to get his pipeline deal approved by the Alaska Legislature. Stevens promised "bigwigs" would help. Two days later, Cheney helped.

Cheney may or may not have been bribed directly, but he participated in a bribery scheme. Former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) went to jail for a similar scheme involving Jack Abramoff.

The Constitution is crystal clear on bribery; after treason, it is the gravest possible offense:

The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

So when will Congress impeach Dick Cheney?

Kucinich Pursues Impeachment to Prevent 'October Surprise' Attack on Iran

Bob Fertik — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:29:57 -0400

Rightwinger Deborah Solomon interviewed Dennis Kucinich for the NY Times and got a lot more than she bargained for - the truth:

Q: But why bother with impeachment when Bush is on his way out of Washington anyhow?

A: This president is capable of taking us into war, in October, on the eve of an election, to try to change the outcome of the election. We need to keep the ability to impeach at the ready in the event that this president continues to exercise a wanton approach toward the use of power, particularly the war power. The events in Georgia are a premonition.

Q: A premonition of what?

A: A premonition of an attack on Iran. When Georgia moves against South Ossetia as the Olympics are starting, the Bush administration begins its own Olympics — the war Olympics.

Q: Are you saying the Bush administration is likely to declare war soon just to help Republican candidates pick up some votes?

A: Well, you know, they increased the funding to Georgia a while back for military purposes.

Q: You think President Saakashvili of Georgia was encouraged, possibly by the American government, to cry victim?

A: Look. Saakashvili had an American lobbyist who is now part of the McCain campaign, and I am sure he was given advice. The idea of striking during the Olympics would have to come out of Madison Avenue. We have to be able to see through this. And the one thing I have shown an ability to do is to cut through the b.s.