Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment?

okie, The Constitution limits the power of the president - not enlarges it. If the link you posted is the article by John Schmidt, you don't understand how irrelevant his arguments are. It's been poo-pooed by the experts.

His opinion is irrelevant according to you because he doesn't agree with you. At the bottom of the article, apparently the man was an associate attorney general under Clinton in the 90's. Probably not what you could label an ultra right wing Bush supporter. I don't know the guy, but he's obviously not the only one with that opinion. Not everyone agrees with you, face it. Everyone that agrees with you is an expert and everyone that doesn't is irrelevant. I get it now.

Titles do not mean much in this world; learn to live with it.

So much for this fiasco of a thread. To explain, the Dems keep looking for a horse to ride to the promised land. It was the National Guard story. Then it was Halliburton. Then it was the Bush lied about WMD story. Then its the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson fiasco, Karl Rove, blah blah blah. Then its extremist court nominees. Then its Katrina. Then its Tom DeLay or Bill Frist. Now its wiretapping. I'm sure I've forgotten a few concocted stories. Oh yeah, remember the missing explosives in Iraq? None of the horses are any good so far because none of them amount to a hill of beans. What next?

None of these people cared when Clinton gave secrets to China for campaign contributions, raped women, threatened them, or when he used the IRS to intimidate his opponents, or when his accomplices were thrown in prison for embezzlement, or when a bar bouncer ran White House security, or when he pardoned terrorists and known crooks, or when Hillary made a cool 100 grand kickback. I could name a few more, but you get the drift. Impeaching Bush has nothing to do with corruption. Its all about politics. Its all about getting their power back in Washington in case some of you haven't figured it out.

okie, That's what Bushco supporters do best; talk about Bill Clinton. Your inability to compare what the republicans did to Bill Clinton for a private sexual encounter vs Bush's wars, lies, and incompetence, makes us wonder how your heads are screwed on.

I would prefer to forget Clinton. I only use it to show the obvious hypocrisy. If you were interested in stamping out corruption, your interest would have started long before Bush took office. Kind of revealing isn't it?

P.S. Monica was a symptom, not the disease. The disease was very pervasive and very bad.

What hypocrisy are you talking about? That the repubs spend $50 million dollars to investigate Clinton about a private, consentual, sexual encounter?

The hypocrisy I am talking about - I am sure you probably know exactly what I am talking about. I am talking about all the serious scandals of the 90's. There was no curiosity by your side. All Democrats get a pass. Unfortunately, Monica was a symptom of the irresponsibility of the administration. More interested in having a good time than doing the job. Thats why we are so fed up with the sickness of politics nowadays. Like a bunch of kids in Washington, and the hypocrisy is indeed glaring. Being president is a serious job, not a sport. Sorry, but some of us have had it. Time to tell it like it is. Its time for you libs to take a real good look in the mirror.

Here, okie, read the following and enjoy. I couldn't have said it any better.

The Sharks Are Circling in Washington
By Jim Lobe
Deceit - Corruption - Incompetence - Betrayal or Treason?



To say that there's blood in the water and the sharks are circling around the Bush administration's Iraq policy would be understatement at this point. It's more like a blood bank that's been dropped into the water, the sharks have taken the first bites, and Amazonian piranhas are clamoring for visas on an expedited basis.

The administration of US President George W Bush--including virtually all of its top officials, from Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice--is on the defensive. Not only have the president's approval ratings plunged to the lowest level in his term, but his administration has opened a potentially lethal credibility gap on so many different fronts that reporters hardly know which to write about.

The Justice Department's announcement on Tuesday that it has launched a formal investigation at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency of the identification by as-yet-unidentified "senior White House officials" of a covert CIA agent is just the latest of a series of brewing scandals that are likely to dominate the media agenda in the coming weeks and months.

With the exception of practicing extramarital sex in the Oval Office, Bush and his Iraq policy are now being charged with violating just about every imaginable tenet--from deceit and corruption, to incompetence and betrayal--of what has come to be called "good governance".

That many of these charges have moved in just the past few weeks from the alternative to the mainstream media and from grassroots activist groups to Capitol Hill indicates the seriousness of the situation faced by Bush.



Deceit

The administration's claims regarding Iraq's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) programs, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion about an active nuclear-weapons program, have been totally discredited. It now appears that Iraq never reconstituted its WMD efforts after the first Gulf War in 1991.

The failure of chief WMD hunter David Kay and his team of 1,400 troops and experts to find any evidence of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons after four months of scouring Iraq has now created a major credibility problem for the administration. It has now retreated from its earlier promise to release Kay's report when it was filed, and most experts do not expect early disclosure. No matter, the damning details--no evidence of WMD--are being leaked to Congress and the media.

Worse, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Porter Goss (himself a former CIA official), and the committee's ranking Democrat, Jane Harmon, have now publicly charged that, in making its case that Iraq posed a major WMD threat, that the underlying intelligence did not support such a conclusion.

"It appears, and I hate to say this, that the Iraqis were mostly telling the truth," said Joseph Cirincione, a weapons specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The corollary--that the United States wasn't--is being increasingly embraced by Democrats running for president.



Venality and Corruption

Lawmakers are also increasingly unnerved by the extent to which Bush's and Cheney's political and business cronies appear to be profiting from the Iraq war and its reconstruction. Congressional complaints have already resulted in the decision to rescind a huge no-bid contract that went to Halliburton, the giant construction company that Cheney headed (and retains an interest in) before becoming vice president.

But evidence that Bush's major campaign contributors and associates are looking to make big money in the reconstruction effort is growing almost daily; indeed, the administration's opposition to inviting the United Nations or other countries to take a bigger role in the effort is increasingly being attributed to the White House's desire to pass along the goodies to its supporters back home.

"By treating contracts as prizes to be handed to their friends, administration officials are delaying Iraq's recovery, with potentially catastrophic consequences," warned Harvard economist Paul Krugman on Tuesday in a New York Times column that charged the administration's beneficiaries with "war profiteering".

The Times disclosed that a group of businessmen closely linked to Bush, his family and other top officials--including his 2000 campaign manager--have set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq.

The news followed a report last month that a former Israeli law partner of Douglas Feith, the senior Pentagon official in charge of postwar planning in Iraq, was also advising companies on business opportunities in Iraq in association with the nephew of the Pentagon-backed leader of the Iraqi Congress (INC), Ahmad Chalabi. The nephew, Salem Chalabi, is advising the 25-member, US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council on reconstruction.

Added to these concerns is the lack of transparency, a potential new scandal that surfaced this week when a Florida newspaper reported that Rumsfeld's office had asked the Special Operations Command in Tampa to "park" US$40 million for eventual use by the secretary. The diversion, which was disclosed by a "whistleblower" in the Pentagon, was never reported to Congress and is now being investigated by an internal auditor. The Washington Post on Tuesday called the investigation "explosive", in major part because lawmakers have long complained that Rumsfeld has kept them in the dark on many issues.



Incompetence

Evidence of sheer incompetence both in the postwar planning and in its implementation has now become the dominant view in Washington, particularly since Bush himself implicitly admitted that things were not going according to plan by asking Congress to approve $87 billion for expenses in and Afghanistan over the coming year.

Not only did postwar planners fail to anticipate the armed resistance that has killed at least one US soldier every 36 hours, but they also completely underestimated the frailty of Iraq's infrastructure. Compounding the problem has been the preference of the big US companies that grabbed the reconstruction contracts for importing expensive new equipment that may not be compatible with the existing system, over seeking out older spare parts that would get basic systems up and running much more quickly and cheaply.

And, while the administration still insists that it doesn't need any more than the 130,000 US troops currently deployed in Iraq, top commanders say they cannot begin to control Iraq's borders through which, it is believed, hundreds of Islamist and other fighters are being infiltrated. Worse, they have also been unable to secure literally thousands of munitions sites containing tens of thousands of tonnes of weapons and ammunition and will be unable to do so for years, according to an account in Tuesday's Times.



Betrayal, if Not Treason

This concern arises from this week's big scandal: the apparent involvement of "two senior White House officials" in leaking the name of a CIA agent in retaliation for her husband-diplomat's role in discrediting Bush's contention in last year's State of the Union Address that Iraq tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger.

The case revolves around retired ambassador Joseph Wilson, who traveled to Niger in 2002 at the CIA's behest to check out the story (which turned out to be based on forged documents). His conclusion--that the story was a fraud--was reported back to the CIA many months before Bush gave his address. After the Iraq invasion, he published an article in the Times that recounted both his trip and his conclusions, noting also that he had been told by the CIA that Cheney had explicitly requested that the story be investigated.

Shortly after the appearance of Wilson's article, at least six reporters, including right-wing columnist Robert Novak, were informed by "two senior White House officials" that Wilson's spouse, whom they identified by name, was a covert CIA agent working on non-proliferation issues who had urged that her husband be assigned to Niger.

The apparent intent was to discredit Wilson, although Wilson has said it was designed to demonstrate to other former and serving officials that they would pay a price for crossing the administration. Wilson, who has very good contacts within both the State Department and the CIA, has also claimed that Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, "at a minimum condoned" the effort to expose his wife, and may even have been one of those two "senior White House officials". Rove and Novak, who ironically opposed the Iraq war, have long been close.

Under a 1982 law, however, identifying a covert CIA agent is a felony punishable by 10 years in prison. The CIA filed a complaint invoking the law with the Justice Department shortly after Novak's column appeared, and three weeks ago turned in the paperwork required for the investigation to proceed. The Justice Department announced on Tuesday that an investigation had been launched.

Democrats are already demanding that, given Attorney General John Ashcroft's status as an administration appointee, the case should be handed over to an independent prosecutor, demands that so far have been rebuffed. But, based on what is already known by the press--including the reporters who were contacted by those two, still-unnamed, "senior White House officials"--there appears little doubt that a very serious felony has been committed and that a major scandal is in the offing.



Inter Press Service, published on October 2, 2003

Jim Lobe, works as IPS' correspondent in the Washington, D.C., bureau. He has followed the ups and downs of neo-conservatives since the well before their rise in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks

Hold onto your seatbelt, kiddo, you and your party are going for a ride that is promised to be rough and tough - and hopefully many years spent in the slammer.

Concoct all the sharks you want. Go for it. Shows your real character. I guess you are sharks? I hope you all are very proud. Your side is raising the stakes. With the press on your side, I won't predict who will win. You have a chance if you your propaganda campaign is successful. You are desperate for your power back and will lie, slant, and twist any story to do it. Please be aware though that you are not assured of victory, and you could lose again at the ballot box.

The real loser is honesty, civility, and decency. Your false accusations are hard to sweep under the rug.

The American People will win when the Justice Department corrals all the crooks in Washington and throws them in federal prison.

Finally you're right on something. There won't hardly be anybody left, but maybe a handful of Republicans and 1 or 2 Democrats to run the country. And maybe the news reporting would improve because half of the press would be in jail as well.

Here, okie, get a gander at this.

Abramoff is Making Congress Crap

Well Jack Abramoff is working on a plea deal, and congress is shitting themselves on who is going to take with him, and he is going to take people down.

From UPI via The Washington Times

Authorities are putting together the pieces of the lobbying web of Jack Abramoff, and the resulting investigation could brew into a wide Washington scandal.

Abramoff is scheduled to go on trial Jan. 9 in Florida on charges he bilked former clients. Prosecutors are trying to convince him -- as they have some of his associates -- to enter a plea deal and help with further investigations. Considering Abramoff dealt with many members of Congress -- mostly Republicans but also some Democrats -- there are many uneasy people inside the Beltway.

Several lawmakers and staff members have been linked to trips arranged by Abramoff, who bragged of his access to highly placed officials. As a result many politicians have tried to distance themselves from Abramoff and some have returned thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the lobbyist or his various groups.

Former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., told The Washington Post of a conversation he had with one of Abramoff's attorney who said, "There are going to be guys in your former line of work who are going to be taken down."

Ouch, I am guessing he will show up dead soon, the Republicans will do anything to keep power. They will allow Bush to cornhole the Constitution, I am sure they will kill to keep power, I mean they don't seem to mind the death of 2100 plus American soldiers.

I say let all of those that tool this crooks money to get to hell, or jail, they maybe the same. My exact sentiments.

America, take action!

www.votetoimpeach.org

You guys are living in a fabtasy-world.

Brandon, Look in the mirror.

Yea, Look in the mirror butterhead.

(I don't know what that means)

Inauguration a reminder of Bush's failures
By: Jacqueline Deelstra
Issue date: 1/20/05 Section: Opinions

With Republicans beaming ear to ear and Democrats still clinging to their Prozac, President Bush will be inaugurated today for his second term as president. With protestors on hand, we will be reminded that the dream of a united America is far from a reality.

Lobbyists and interest groups welcoming four more years of President Bush are some of those funding the lavish week-long inauguration ceremonies. Critics say such a celebration is inappropriate during a time of war, record deficits and in the shadow of the massive death and destruction that occurred in Southeast Asia.

Ceremonies included a star-studded salute to the troops Tuesday night, with actors Kelsey Grammer and Darrell Hammond at the MCI center in Washington, D.C. During this ceremony, broadcast on closed circuit television to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush took the chance to thank the troops for their contributions to "landmark events in the history of liberty," including the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and elections in Afghanistan. Today's events include the inaugural parade and nine balls are scheduled for the evening.

Bush says that the inauguration celebration is an important display of the glory of our nation and what people are aiming for abroad.

"With an election behind us, the American people come together in unity to celebrate our freedom," Bush said, according to CNN. "A presidential inauguration is a testament to the power of democracy, a symbol of our confidence in the popular will and a sign of hope for freedom-loving people everywhere. We are blessed to live in hopeful times when the promise of liberty is spreading across the world."
Bush probably doesn't know about the spread of terrorism around the world, more dead American soldiers and innocent Iraqis, and the democracy in Iraq is a god-send to Iran.

Those environmental, anti-war and human rights groups in charge of the "counter-inaugural" activities likely disagree that Americans are celebrating in unity and that liberty is being spread abroad.
Unity? He probably doesn't understand the definition! The division in this country is the worst during my lifetime, and I'm over 70 years old.

Looking back over the last four years and what has fundamentally changed in the United States, it does not surprise me that we are a fractured nation. We are a nation at war. While some are able to focus on the key accomplishments of war, as mentioned by Bush on Tuesday night, others just see troops that are still dying at a steady pace, thousands of Iraqi citizens killed, a budget being drained and "officially" no weapons of mass destruction.


While some say that they are willing patriots and will happily abide by the restrictions imposed by the USA PATRIOT Act, others see severe problems in the intense racial profiling used against the U.S. Arab population and find it ironic that we are fighting abroad for freedoms of speech, expression and privacy that seem to be slowly deteriorating at home.

The Bush administration presents the United States as a nation of liberty and justice for all, though over the last four years it has tried to deny rights to the gay population through a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Strategists even promoted hate and used anti-same-sex marriage initiatives on state ballots as a way to motivate conservative Christians to come out and vote to protect their religious morals and then make the "moral" choice for Bush.

Though we are still truly blessed people to live in the United States because of our relative personal freedoms, prosperity and ability to pursue our chosen path, I think we can do better and must bring attention to what has started to deteriorate.

Huge problems and disparities in our education system still exist; racial, gender and societal inequalities are rampant in a society where all men and women are supposed to be created equal. Journalists and other professionals have started to feel the restraints of a more restricted flow of free information and expectation to be patriotic.

What concerns some about four more years of Bush is that he no longer has to worry about re-election and thus can be freer to pursue a more partisan or radical agenda.

As he said on CBS, "The good news is I'm not running again, so maybe politics won't creep in quite as fast."

The fact that Bush does not have to listen to outside voices and pressures worries those who seem to have the most to lose from a conservative, Christian agenda.

As we officially start off a new presidential term all should wonder whether we will continue to be proud of the United States after four more years or whether our position in the world will include even more resentment, our civil liberties be even more limited and hatred even more propagated.

Will we continue to be a nation so blinded and focused on our own lavish goods and ceremonies that we forget about what suffering and injustice continues beyond our own borders, because of outside forces and also because of U.S. action?

The choice depends on the demands of the people and the attention given to domestic and foreign affairs. It's become cliché, but these are divisive and important times.

We all might be a little exhausted from politics after such an intense election, but it is definitely not the time for the U.S. population to take a nap for the next four years.

Jacqueline Deelstra's column "Thinking Outside the Box" runs every Thursday. To comment on this column e-mail [email protected] or call (213) 764-5665.