Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment?

While the republicans use money to legislate pork for their pals, the American People continue their march to support these corrupt congressmen and the administration. Most probably still haven't heard of Abramoff or DeLay or those congressmen that have taken thousands of dollars in illegal payoffs.

I resent that, sir. My vagina would never start a war for a personal vendetta or for oil, nor would any other vagina I know. They can also express themselves more coherently than the Pres.

Although i was referring to the use of the term as vernacular of Ireland, Scotland and England, these are nevertheless points which cannot be denied. My regrets and sincere apologies to your vagina, which i am certain is unoffending in those regards.

I am appeased, as are all parts of my anatomy.

There was a joke where a secretary was asked whom she would like to spend a night with in an isolated tropical island - Brad Pitt, Setanta or Clarence Darrow?
Surprise answer: Her husband's boss.
Why?
Her answer: Her husband's constantly chanting of his boss - what a p*ick, what a p*ick!

Should Bush be impeached? yes.

Are we the same kind of people that impeached Nixon?

Is the nature of our government the same?

Our we the same country?

Bush by one name or another could be in the white house forever.

As usual, you're just making sh!t up. High Crimes and Misdemeanors are no where defined in the constitution, nor in any of the amendments thereto. At no point does the constitution state that crimes and misdemeanors shall be construed as Brandon deems logical. Read the bill of impeachment against Andrew Johnson sometime--not only did the House draw up their indictment according to their own lights, they described his actions as "high misdemeanor," a term which does not appear in the constitution. If you are ever in jeopardy of your freedom or your life in a court of criminal law, for god's sake get a competent lawyer--you have no clue what you're on about. The constitution was drafted by lawyers, and men with experience of the law who referred to the lawyers in their midst for the manner in which they would frame the constitution. It is not an accident that these terms were left imprecise, it is not an accident that "high crimes and misdemeanors" is nowhere defined in the document, it is not an accident that the passage proceeds from terms of treason or bribery to the much less precise and general--catchall one might say--terms "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Andrew Johnson was indicted by the House--he was impeached--mainly for an alleged violation of the Tenure of Office Act, an act passed in 1867 to prevent him from firing Edwin M. Stanton. He could find no way to test the constitutionality of the Act, so he fired Edwin M. Stanton, and for that the House impeached him--indicted him--for what is described in the first article of the bill as "high misdemeanor."



Articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson.

Were the subject matter science or mathmatics, i'd give your statements credence because you have demonstrated knowledge and command of those areas of subject matter. In issues historical and political, however, you have consistently demonstrated that your intellect is subordinate to your partisan motives--such as the ludicrous contention that the House of Representatives could not impeach an official for lying unless it were alleged that the lie or lies constituted perjury. The only reason you came up with that crap is because that was the feeble basis for the witch hunter Ken Starr to attempt to remove Clinton from office. Not only was Clinton impeached and acquitted in unseemly haste--it was embarrassing to jurists to have seen the attempt. In the case of Andrew Johnson, although it was clear that the radical Republicans were out to get him, they nevertheless appeared to have a good "criminal case." They impeached Johnson with far better reason than the circus trial of Clinton--and he was, nonetheless, acquitted by the Senate, with the Chief Justice presiding.

As usual in matters political and historical, Brandon, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Your brain shuts down and your partisan knee-jerk responses take over.

In this case the statute is FISA and Bush violated the statute by authorizing surveillance of US citizens without the warrant REQUIRED by statute. Bush has ADMITTED he did it so there is little question about the facts of what he did.

Amigo, not to rain on your parade, but Nixon was not impeached. When he fired Archibald Cox, the Special Prosecutor, there was a hell of furor and demands that he be impeached. The Republican leadership were barely able to stem the tide against him. As more revelations surfaced in the Senate Watergate Committee, the proceedings of which were broadcast on daytime television to an audience of tens of millions, the Republican leadership put more pressure on the elder George Bush (who was then the Chairman of the Republican National Committee), who eventually made Nixon see that he must go, or risk destroying the party's electoral chances for years to come. So, Nixon resigned rather than force a situation in which the House would vote a bill of impeachment.

I dare the Democrats to try it. Impeached for intercepting terrorist communications in an attempt to protect Americans, perfectly legal and constitutional by the way, and certainly nothing new. Ooooookaaay? Whatever. People advocating such a thing are certainly not in the mainstream of reasonable thinking. You are way out in left field. I don't know anybody that knows what you are talking about, why you are so angry, and why are you so paranoid? Proof again that nothing constructive comes out of the Democrat Party these days. I have never seen such obsession and anger by a political party to try to regain their power.

Why do you think the CIA was created for as long as its been around if it wasn't to conduct spying activities against threats to the country?

I voted yes!!!!!!!!!!!

The man is monster material!

The CIA should also follow rules of law (both domestic and international) but they often do not. That doesn't give them carte blanche to do whatever it is they do in secrecy.

That some of you are willing to overlook the breaking of laws by our government shows your lack of knowledge concerning our Constitution and for the rule of laws.

I'm posting this before reading it.


January 2, 2006
Bush Defends Spy Program and Denies Misleading Public
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 - President Bush continued on Sunday to defend both the legality and the necessity of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, and he denied that he misled the public last year when he insisted that any government wiretap required a court order.

"I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy's thinking, and that's what we're doing," Mr. Bush told reporters in San Antonio as he visited wounded soldiers at the Brooke Army Medical Center.

"They attacked us before, they'll attack us again if they can," he said. "And we're going to do everything we can to stop them."

Mr. Bush's strong defense of the N.S.A. program, which he authorized in 2002 to allow some domestic eavesdropping without court warrants, came as a leading Democratic lawmaker called on the administration to make available current and former high-level officials to explain the evolution of the secret program.

Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has already pledged to make hearings into the program one of his highest priorities.

In a letter to Mr. Specter on Sunday, Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who is also on the committee, said the panel should also explore "significant concern about the legality of the program even at the very highest levels of the Department of Justice."

The New York Times reported Sunday that James B. Comey, then deputy attorney general, refused to sign on to the recertification of the program in March 2004.

That prompted two of Mr. Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel and now the attorney general - to make an emergency hospital visit to John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, to try to persuade him to give his authorization, as required by White House procedures for the program.

Officials with knowledge of the events said that Mr. Ashcroft also appeared reluctant to sign on to the continued use of the program, and that the Justice Department's concerns appear to have led in part to the suspension of the program for several months. After a secret audit, new protocols were put in place at the N.S.A. to better determine how the agency established the targets of its eavesdropping operations, officials have said.

Asked Sunday about internal opposition, President Bush said: "This program has been reviewed, constantly reviewed, by people throughout my administration. And it still is reviewed.

"Not only has it been reviewed by Justice Department officials, it's been reviewed by members of the United States Congress," he said. "It's a vital, necessary program."

But Mr. Schumer, in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," said the White House should have to explain the apparent internal dissent over the program.

"I hope the White House won't hide behind saying 'executive privilege, we can't discuss this,' " Mr. Schumer said. "That's the wrong attitude."

"A discussion, perhaps a change in the law," he said, "those are all legitimate. Unilaterally changing the law because the vice president or president thinks it's wrong, without discussing the change, that's not the American way."

But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said on the same television program that Mr. Bush had acted within the Constitution to protect the country from another terrorist attack. Mr. McConnell said the focus now should be on identifying who disclosed the existence of the classified operation.

The Justice Department said Friday that it had opened an investigation into the disclosure of the N.S.A. program, which was first reported by The Times on Dec. 15.

Mr. McConnell said of the disclosure, "This needs to be investigated, because whoever leaked this information has done the U.S. and its national security a great disservice."

As Mr. Bush continued to defend the program in San Antonio, he was asked about a remark he made in Buffalo in 2004 at an appearance in support of the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, where he discussed government wiretaps.

"Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap," Mr. Bush said in Buffalo, "a wiretap requires a court order."

He added: "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

Democrats have seized on the remark, made more than two years after Mr. Bush authorized the N.S.A. to conduct wiretaps without warrants, in charging that the president had misled the public.

Asked about that charge on Sunday, Mr. Bush said: "I was talking about roving wiretaps, I believe, involved in the Patriot Act. This is different from the N.S.A. program.

"The N.S.A. program is a necessary program. I was elected to protect the American people from harm. And on Sept. 11, 2001, our nation was attacked. And after that day, I vowed to use all the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people, which is what I have been doing and will continue to do."

Mr. Bush also emphasized that the program was "limited" in nature and designed to intercept communications from known associates of Al Qaeda to the United States. He said several times that the eavesdropping was "limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States."

This assertion was at odds with press accounts and public statements of his senior aides, who have said the authorization for the program required one end of a communication - either incoming or outgoing - to be outside the United States. The White House, clarifying the president's remarks after his appearance, said later that either end of the communication could in fact be outside the United States.

The Times has reported that despite a prohibition on eavesdropping on phone calls or e-mail messages that are regarded as purely domestic, the N.S.A. has accidentally intercepted what are thought to be a small number of communications in which each end was on American soil, due to technical confusion over what constitutes an "international" call.

Officials also say that the N.S.A., beyond eavesdropping on up to 500 phone numbers and e-mail addresses at any one time, has conducted much larger data-mining operations on vast volumes of communication within the United States to identify possible terror suspects. To accomplish this, the agency has reached agreements with major American telecommunications companies to gain access to some of the country's biggest "switches," carrying phone and e-mail traffic into and out of the country.

Where you asleep from 1992-2000? At least this has a legal basis for impeachment talk and it is only talk. Before Clinton even testified in the Jones case in Jan of 1998 Bob Barr with 17 cosponsers had introduced an impeachment of Clinton into Congress in Nov of 1997 for made up reasons.

The CIA was created to deal with OVERSEAS surveillence. It is ILLEGAL for the CIA to conduct any domestic activity.

The CIA:

Goals, Direction, Duties and Responsibilities With Respect to the National Intelligence Effort

1.1 Goals. The United States intelligence effort shall provide the President and the National Security Council with the necessary information on which to base decisions concerning the conduct and development of foreign, defense and economic policy, and the protection of United States national interests from foreign security threats. All departments and agencies shall cooperate fully to fulfill this goal.

(a) Maximum emphasis should be given to fostering analytical competition among appropriate elements of the Intelligence Community.

(b) All means, consistent with applicable United States law and this Order, and with full consideration of the rights of United States persons, shall be used to develop intelligence information for the President and the National Security Council. A balanced approach between technical collection efforts and other means should be maintained and encouraged.

(c) Special emphasis should be given to detecting and countering espionage and other threats and activities directed by foreign intelligence services against the United States Government, or United States corporations, establishments, or persons.

(d) To the greatest extent possible consistent with applicable United States law and this Order, and with full consideration of the rights of United States persons, all agencies and departments should seek to ensure full and free exchange of information in order to derive maximum benefit from the United States intelligence effort.

Sounds like thats what they're doing. Good job, keep it up, we need it. Seems much less intrusive than searching my bags at the airport.

I know it's in the public domain, but a citation would be appreciated.

I absolutely agree with this, but that includes impeachment, which, can only be imposed for specific criteria. A little bird told me that even the impeachment of Andrew Johnson was for breaking a law.

DNC:

Connect the dots, dang it! Just do it while blindfolded with only part of the information. What's the problem?