Gov. Bill Richardson is concerned that some of his phone calls were monitored by a U.S. spy agency and transcripts of them were given to the president's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

http://tinyurl.com/akv2h


From Information Clearing House

Illegal under Domestic and International Law: The United States is holding an unknown number of terrorism suspects in secret overseas locations, and refusing either to acknowledge the detentions or to give information on the fate or the whereabouts of these detainees. These detainees have been held incommunicado, without trial, some for as many as four years. Some of the detainees are reported to have been tortured in custody.

http://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/us1205/index.htm


From Information Clearing House

Accounts from detainees at Guantánamo reveal that the United States as recently as last year operated a secret prison in Afghanistan where detainees were subjected to torture and other mistreatment, Human Rights Watch said.

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/19/afghan12319.htm


From Information Clearing House

This formula, which is being used to reach those who the Guard thinks are most likely to join, is helping reverse a precipitous decline in the ranks.

http://tinyurl.com/e3gt5


From Information Clearing House

What everyone should know about Jose Padilla

By Mike Whitney

The constitution is the last flimsy obstacle between Bush and absolute power. That is why the administration has persisted for nearly 4 years in its case against Jose Padilla. The Padilla case has nothing to do with Al Qaida, “dirty bombers” or terrorism. These are simply the empty diversions that conceal the administration’s real intention; to remove the final impediment to the supreme authority of the executive.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11393.htm

By James Petras

Who were the fabricators of war propaganda, who was Libby protecting? And not only the "fabricators of war", but the strategic planners, speech-makers and architects of war who acted hand in hand with the propagandists and the journalists who disseminated the propaganda? What is the link between all these high- level functionaries, propagandists and journalists?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11385.htm

I first realized the enormous pressures on American journalists in the Middle East when I went some years ago to say goodbye to a colleague from the Boston Globe. I expressed my sorrow that he was leaving a region where he had obviously enjoyed reporting. I could save my sorrows for someone else, he said. One of the joys of leaving was that he would no longer have to alter the truth to suit his paper's more vociferous readers.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122705S.shtml

What sense does it make that some of the same Washington media and political leaders who countenanced the Clinton impeachment, somberly intoning about the "rule of law," consider impeaching Bush beyond the pale? No sense at all, according to Ruth Connif of the Progressive.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122705Q.shtml



http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo

[please forward widely]

John Calvert


"Putting the president above the Congress is an invitation to tyranny. The president has no powers except those specified in the Constitution and those enacted by law. ... Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later."

Barron's editorial calls for Congress to consider impeachment
12/24/2005 @ 3:49 pm
Filed by RAW STORY

Barron's editorial page editor Thomas G. Donlan penned a column for Monday's edition entitled "Unwarranted Executive Power" which calls on members of the House Judiciary Committee to investigate if the Bush Administration violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and to either change the law or consider impeachment, RAW STORY has learned.

Barron's Magazine is a weekly publication for investors published by the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpts from the subscriber only editorial:
#

...Putting the president above the Congress is an invitation to tyranny. The president has no powers except those specified in the Constitution and those enacted by law. President Bush is stretching the power of commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy by indicating that he can order the military and its agencies, such as the National Security Agency, to do whatever furthers the defense of the country from terrorists, regardless of whether actual force is involved.

Surely the "strict constructionists" on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary eventually will point out what a stretch this is. The most important presidential responsibility under Article II is that he must "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." That includes following the requirements of laws that limit executive power. There's not much fidelity in an executive who debates and lobbies Congress to shape a law to his liking and then goes beyond its writ.

Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.

It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.#

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Barrons_editorial_calls_for_Congress_to_1224.html


http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo