With the White House defiant : Why no outcry for Bush’s impeachment?

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/bush-d21.shtml

Despite the brazen declaration by President Bush that he authorized illegal electronic eavesdropping on Americans and will continue to do so, in defiance of clear legislative prohibitions, the response in official Washington has been remarkably muted. There has been some verbal condemnation and calls for congressional hearings on the secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA), but no serious consideration of the constitutional remedy for presidential lawbreaking: impeachment.

One congressman, Democrat John Lewis of Georgia, suggested in a radio interview that Bush’s actions recalled “the dark past when our government spied on civil rights leaders and Vietnam War protesters,” and could warrant impeachment. “It’s a very serious charge, but he violated the law,” Lewis said. “The president should abide by the law. He deliberately, systematically violated the law. He is not king, he is president.”

One senator, Barbara Boxer (Democrat of California), has announced that she is investigating the possibility of impeachment, seeking opinions from four presidential scholars on whether Bush’s actions constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But no other senator or congressman, and not a single congressional leader of either party, has allowed the “i-word” to cross his or her lips.

<edit>

Given the rubberstamp character of FISA, the decision to bypass the required legal procedure must have been motivated by some other reason than avoiding a bureaucratic encumbrance. Logic and the political record of the Bush administration suggest two basic motives: the administration was deliberately seeking to establish a precedent for executive powers unconstrained by the constitutional requirements of judicial and congressional oversight, and it wanted to carry out surveillance of people who could not plausibly be connected to any terrorist threat, even in the eyes of the compliant FISA. In other words, the Bush White House has been compiling a Nixon-style “enemies list” of political opponents, especially opponents of the war in Iraq, and targeting them for illegal spying.

That this is the case is underscored by the reports Tuesday, based on documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, that FBI counterterrorism units have conducted political spying and infiltration against environmental and antiwar groups such as Greenpeace, the Arab-American Anti-Defamation Committee and Catholic Worker (a pacifist group whose “semi-communistic ideology” was noted in one internal FBI report). This follows the revelation last week that the Pentagon was accumulating a database on antiwar activists through surveillance of meetings and protests opposing the war and military recruitment.

<edit>

As for the congressional Democratic leadership, it is both cowed and compromised: frightened that the Bush administration will target Democrats politically as opponents of the “war on terror,” and complicit in having received briefings from the administration on the secret illegal spying at various times over the past four years, and saying nothing about it.

more...

Conyers is going for censure, momentum is building, the holidays are coming up, and Rome wasn't built in a day.

blogs. I believe this time we are more united than ever.

Junior threw down the gauntlet. He issued a challenge to the American people when he said yes, I spy, and I'll keep doing it.

I believe Americans will rise to meet that challenge!

But there are 300,000 million of us. It's going to take some organization.

We will pummel Congress into doing our will for once.

Reminding him of his own statements regarding the importance of checks and balances on executive power.

Always there for democracy, whether the cause is popular or not.

Never thought we'd ever have anything in common with some of these folks, but there you have it.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47970

The anti-American president
Vox Day
WorldNetDaily Exclusive Commentary
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: December 19, 2005
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Sept. 11 changed everything" has been the mantra of the strong government conservative, the pragmatic dialectoids who are flexible enough to justify any expansion of central government power in the name of the very conservatism that opposes it. Since "we are at war," Republican media whores have repeatedly claimed that because of an attack that killed the same number of people who die on American roads every 26 days, the following actions are therefore justified:

An undeclared war of indefinite end against an undefined enemy.

Invading two sovereign nations without a congressional declaration of war.

The anti-American Patriot Acts I and II.

The suspension of habeus corpus.

Torture.

snip

I have little doubt that this column will infuriate many Republicans and conservatives, millions of whom twice voted enthusiastically for George Bush. It is always painful to realize that one has been betrayed, and even more painful to discover that one has been made a willing accomplice in the destruction of that which one cherishes. You can continue to believe that George Bush is a patriotic American, though he is not. You can dismiss me as a liberal, a left-winger or a lunatic, though I am not.

But as you do so, try to keep in mind that railing against the messenger does not make the message any less valid.
---------------------

Vox Day is a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist church, and has been down with Madden since 1992. Visit his Web log, Vox Popoli, for daily commentary and responses to reader email.

nt

On the whole, elected Dems are fucking pussies.

what wasn't elected in the first place?

If you allow Bush to be impeached, the whole point of having an unaccountable Dictatorship is lost!

would be in legal jeopardy if bush is impeached. they've both admitted that they were informed of the warrantless wire-tapping back when it first started. the law requires them to act if they have knowledge of the Prez committing a felony. there won't be an impeachment over this - be sure.

any Dem be in if he or she were informed?

--snip--
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), one of the congressional leaders who was briefed about the program, asked the National Security Agency on Tuesday to declassify a letter she wrote several years ago expressing concern.
--snip--

from http://www.latimes.com/la-na-spy21dec21,0,3287644.story?coll=la-home-headlines

If members of congress had knowledge that the prez. is engaged in illegal wiretapping, doesn't the law require them to inform Dept of Justice so they can investigate?

Does the law require them to inform the Dept of Justice? I don't think it does (in fact, I thought the law required them to tell no one, not even their staff).

statutes in many states impose an affirmative duty on every person to report a felony, who knows that a felony has been committed or is being committed.

This is one of the most important tools to fight corruption in government offices that is immunized by the mob mentality of the system.

Title 18 U.S.C. § 4. Misprision of felony. Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

They both sent secret letters to him saying they coudln't evaluate let alone approve or perform oversight on these programs.

Go sell crazy somewhere else.

Impeachment scares the crap out of most people, especially those in the government. They'll have to have a few weeks or even months to feel enough pressure, outrage, and security to advance it in any kind of honest way. The investigation will have to proceed and I suspect a lot depends on the 06 election. You get a democratic majority in congress and the whole game changes. Till then it's going to depend totally on waking up about 65% of the US Population enough to get them to march on a republican congress and scare the bejezzus out of them.

The 2nd or 3rd week in January, is my guess.