Writings

Let the People Lead 9/17 John Nichols Online Beat The Nation also in:The Capital Times - Madison, WI

I stopped short when I saw a front page New York Times
article about the Bush administration and domestic eavesdropping
in late 2005. The story exposed a secret wiretapping
program in the United States, set up with the approval
of President Bush. Without court oversight, without judicial
warrants, the domestic spying described by James Risen and
Eric Lichtblau defied a federal statute. In the weeks following
the mid-December publication, the president declared it was
within in his power to authorize the program, despite the law.
The president said he would continue to do so.

I experienced the same sick sensation in my stomach that I
had during the Watergate hearings when I was a member of
Congress, sitting on the House Judiciary Committee while
we considered the impeachment of President Richard M.
Nixon. Then, the flagrant abuse of our constitutional system
at the hands of the president made an undeniable case for
impeachment.

Now I was hearing George Walker Bush, president of the
United States, declare that he had the right to eavesdrop on
hundreds, possibly thousands or millions, of people in the
United States without getting court approval. He claimed
that right despite the prohibitions of the Federal Intelligence
Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution.

Richard Milhous Nixon, when president, also engaged in
illegal wiretaps. He, too, said it was for national security. He,
too, put himself above the law. This formed one of the
grounds for impeaching Nixon. Now I realized that it was
time to look at President Bush in the same light.

With Nixon, the American people finally demanded that
Congress act. The House of Representatives empowered the
Judiciary Committee to begin an inquiry into presidential
impeachment in late fall 1973. After months of careful work,
a bipartisan majority of the thirty-eight committee members
voted for the impeachment of President Nixon in July 1974.
Ultimately all of the committee members, Democrats and
Republicans, supported his impeachment.

We had many grounds for the impeachment of Nixon.
Illegal wiretapping sat high on the list; misleading the public
and abusing the powers of his office figured prominently.

The Judiciary Committee proceedings were thorough and
fair. The grounds for impeachment were strong. As a result,
Nixon resigned from office, the first president ever to do so.
In resigning, he avoided becoming the first president ever to
be removed from office.

I thought at that time that our work—careful and
bipartisan—would send the strongest possible signal to
future presidents about the need to obey the rule of law. I
was wrong.

Thirty-three years later, the same issues, the same arrogance,
the same abuse of power emanate from the White
House, threatening our constitutional system. President Bush
had completed one year of his second term when the illegal
wiretapping scheme became public. The president’s response
was to carry on, regardless of the law against it and regardless
of his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws of the
United States. The only way to stop him is impeachment.
Having watched the unfolding of Watergate from the inner
halls of Congress, I understood that the impeachment of
President Bush wouldn’t happen quickly. The American
people need to evaluate the president’s conduct and to recognize
that his removal from office is the only way to preserve
our democracy. People need an opportunity to see and hear
and weigh the evidence. This book offers that possibility.

From Publisher's Weekly Review:

…Talk of presidential impeachment is in the air. Holtzman, former congresswoman and Brooklyn D.A., and Cooper, a journalist and lawyer, have assembled a compact but thorough legal and constitutional accounting of five major issues upon which they claim the current president could be impeached. They are "Deceptions into Taking the Country into War in Iraq"; "Reckless Indifference to Human Life in Katrina and Iraq"; "Illegal Wiretapping and Surveillance of Americans"; "Permitting Torture"; and "Leaking Classified Information." While the authors have a clear political agenda, their book also provides a useful guide to the theory behind and the legal mechanisms of presidential impeachment, clearing up many misunderstandings readers might have, such as the fact that "high crimes and misdemeanors are not limited to actual crimes" and the correct use of the Independent Counsel Act (which Holtzman helped author in 1978). The book argues its points based on examples from the impeachments of Nixon and Clinton (Holtzman sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment). While this volume will be read and cherished by those who agree with its political stance—and dismissed and argued against by those who don't - it's an important, comprehensive argument and document for our current political moment.

Read entire review >>>

Visit Publisher's Weekly Review website

Why I Believe Bush Must Go
Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse.
By George McGovern
Sunday, January 6, 2008; B01
As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.
After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.
Today I have made a different choice.
Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising.
But what are the facts?
Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.
From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.
In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.
All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?
How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?
It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an "imminent threat" to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks -- another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson's observation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world -- more than a billion people.
Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.
Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.
Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies -- especially the war in Iraq -- have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others.
Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.
Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.
As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, "it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws -- that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors."
I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.
There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered.
anmcgove@dwu.edu

Ex-Dem pol's how-to for impeaching W
BY CORKY SIEMASZKO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER10/25/06

Former Brooklyn Rep. Liz Holtzman has a new book out - and its premise is a dream come true for many Democrats.

It's called "The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens." Holtzman knows a thing or two about taking on a President because she worked on President Richard Nixon's impeachment.

"This came out of what I would call my niche expertise," Holtzman said. "I know what constitutes a high crime and misdemeanor."

The genesis for the book were newspaper reports that President Bush had given the National Security Agency approval to engage in domestic spying. "

One of the grounds for Nixon's impeachment was wiretapping in violation of the Constitution," Holtzman said. "I said, 'Oh, no, here were go again.'"

In her book, Holtzman and co-writer Cynthia Cooper lay out four other issues on which they believe Bush could be impeached: lying about weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq, allowing the torture of prisoners, leaking classified information and botching the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

"I thought that when we voted to impeach Richard Nixon, this would send a very strong message to future Presidents - do not put yourself above the rule of law," said Holtzman, a Democrat. "That message was not heard by President Bush."

A Republican National Committee spokesman panned the book on behalf of the White House.

"Clearly, Ms. Holtzman is a hyperpartisan interested in getting her name in the newspaper," said the spokesman, Danny Diaz. "Unfortunately, she represents a party that is more focused on leveling political attacks than supporting measures that protect the American people."

Democrats, though, aren't eager to utter the "I" word, either.

Even with polls showing her party could take over the House and possibly the Senate, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pledged on Sunday not to call for Bush's impeachment.

Holtzman said she wasn't surprised. "Impeachment has to have the support of the American people," she said.

President Bill Clinton's impeachment for lying about Monica Lewinsky backfired on the Republicans because much of the country wasn't for it, Holtzman said.
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens, by Elizabeth Holtzman, former Congresswoman and member of the Nixon impeachment panel, and Cynthia L. Cooper (Nation Books, 268 pages, $14.95), an excellent and readable book, lays out five major grounds for the President's impeachment, and offers a bonus section on Dick Cheney.

"The Constitution requires that the President "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Former Congresswoman and Judiciary Committee Member Elizabeth Holtzman in her new book, The Impeachment of George W. Bush, argues that Bush's neglect of New Orleans (and other presidential duties) violated this responsibility and so constitute high crimes and misdemeanors. Holtzman puts into this category as well the administration's failure to provide U.S. troops in Iraq with proper body armor, and the failure of the President and his top officials to plan for the occupation of Iraq." Read More>>>

Former Congresswoman, Author Elizabeth Holtzman on Bush's New Executive Privilege: Immunity from War Crimes Prosecution Publishers Weekly 9/5/2006

The Impeachment of George W. Bush
Elizabeth Holtzman and Cindy Cooper. Nation, $14.95 paper (256p) ISBN 1-56025-940-X
With the midterm elections—and the possibility of majority shifts in both the House and Senate—talk of presidential impeachment is in the air. Holtzman, former congresswoman and Brooklyn D.A., and Cooper, a journalist and lawyer, have assembled a compact but thorough legal and constitutional accounting of five major issues upon which they claim the current president could be impeached. They are "Deceptions into Taking the Country into War in Iraq"; "Reckless Indifference to Human Life in Katrina and Iraq"; "Illegal Wiretapping and Surveillance of Americans"; "Permitting Torture"; and "Leaking Classified Information." While the authors have a clear political agenda, their book also provides a useful guide to the theory behind and the legal mechanisms of presidential impeachment, clearing up many misunderstandings readers might have, such as the fact that "high crimes and misdemeanors are not limited to actual crimes" and the correct use of the Independent Counsel Act (which Holtzman helped author in 1978). The book argues its points based on examples from the impeachments of Nixon and Clinton (Holtzman sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment). While this volume will be read and cherished by those who agree with its political stance—and dismissed and argued against by those who don't—it's an important, comprehensive argument and document for our current political moment.

From the Library Journal:

Should President Bush be impeached? Former U.S. Congresswoman
Holtzman believes so. Holtzman, who now practices law, earned
credentials to make her case in 1974 when she served on the House
Judiciary Committee whose hearings led President Nixon to resign
rather than face impeachment. Holtzman and freelance journalist
Cooper (coauthor with Holtzman, Who Said It Would Be Easy?) offer a
short review of the Nixon resignation and of the process of
impeachment. They then present a well-organized brief for lay
readers, arguing that Bush should be impeached for deception over the
Iraq war, illegal wiretapping, condoning torture, reckless
indifference to human life during Hurricane Katrina and in Iraq, and
for the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. They also offer advice to
citizens who favor impeachment and a short appendix of pertinent
legal documents.

Michigan Congressman John Conyers, who has introduced a House
resolution on impeachment of the President, commissioned this
congressional report from the current Judiciary Committee's
Democratic staff. He is the committee's ranking minority member. The
ground it covers is similar to Holtzman's, although this is a
sprawling text far less suitable for reading. While its centerpiece
is made up of excerpts from the "Downing Street Minutes," leaked
British government memos from 2002 that seem to show a U.S. decision
to go to war more than a year prior to the 2003 invasion, most of its
some 1400 footnotes refer to media reports and official documents.
Diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband, adds a brief
introduction. Conyers's staff earlier brought out a similar report,
What Went Wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential
Election.

Supporters of the President will dismiss both books as partisan
projects, but his critics will welcome them, especially Holtzman's,
which is recommended for public libraries and for those academic
libraries seeking to document contemporary politics.

WRITINGS REVIEWS INTERVIEWS
Home / Preface / Buy This Book / Links / Media / Events // About The Authors / Contact
Read the Preface >>> ALSO BY Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia L. Cooper Who Said It Would Be Easy: One Woman’s Life in the Political Arena by Elizabeth Holtzman with Cynthia L. Cooper (New York: Arcade, 1996).
Other writings by Elizabeth Holtzman Breathing the 'i' word The Impeachment of George W. Bush The Nation 1/11/2006 Torture and Accountability The Nation 6/18/2005 Bush seeks immunity for violating War Crimes Act Chicago Sun Times 9/23/06 Editorial on Truthout Impeaching Bush to Preserve the Constitution Ford's pardon of Nixon led to Bushes flouting law 1/13/2007 Elizabeth Holtzman Chicago Sun-Times Impeachment: The Case in Favor Elizabeth Holtzman The Nation 2/12/2007 Testimony By Elizabeth Holtzman On Senate Joint Memorial 8016 3/3/2007 The Case Against George W. Bush 3/2007 ForeignPolicy.com Beyond Mukasey's Confirmation, White House Liability Issues Loom Large 11/2007 TruthOut	Other writings by Cynthia L. Cooper www.cyncooperwriter.net Media and Impeachment Not for discussion, only for derision By Cynthia L. Cooper Extra! • July / August 2007

REVIEWS Publisher's Weekly Review --- Read Excerpt of review Library Journal review Ex-Dem pol's how-to for impeaching W Review by CORKY SIEMASZKO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER 10/25/06 From David Swanson, co-founder AfterDowningStreet.org review Former Congresswoman, Author Elizabeth Holtzman on Bush's New Executive Privilege: Immunity from War Crimes Prosecution Publishers Weekly review 9/5/2006 Let the People Lead 9/17 John Nichols Online Beat The Nation also in:The Capital Times - Madison, WI John Dean and Elizabeth Holtzman Live on Impeaching Bush 9/21-The Hollywood Liberal Fast Track to Den Hague OpEdNews.com PREFACE "The Impeachment of George W. Bush" Why This Book: Time to Begin I stopped short when I saw a front page New York Times article about the Bush administration and domestic eavesdropping in late 2005. The story exposed a secret wiretapping program in the United States, set up with the approval of President Bush. Without court oversight, without judicial warrants, the domestic spying described by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau defied a federal statute. In the weeks following the mid-December publication, the president declared it was within in his power to authorize the program, despite the law. The president said he would continue to do so. I experienced the same sick sensation in my stomach that I had during the Watergate hearings when I was a member of Congress, sitting on the House Judiciary Committee while we considered the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon. Then, the flagrant abuse of our constitutional system at the hands of the president made an undeniable case for impeachment. Now I was hearing George Walker Bush, president of the United States, declare that he had the right to eavesdrop on hundreds, possibly thousands or millions, of people in the United States without getting court approval. He claimed that right despite the prohibitions of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Richard Milhous Nixon, when president, also engaged in illegal wiretaps. He, too, said it was for national security. He, too, put himself above the law. This formed one of the grounds for impeaching Nixon. Now I realized that it was time to look at President Bush in the same light. With Nixon, the American people finally demanded that Congress act. The House of Representatives empowered the Judiciary Committee to begin an inquiry into presidential impeachment in late fall 1973. After months of careful work, a bipartisan majority of the thirty-eight committee members voted for the impeachment of President Nixon in July 1974. Ultimately all of the committee members, Democrats and Republicans, supported his impeachment. We had many grounds for the impeachment of Nixon. Illegal wiretapping sat high on the list; misleading the public and abusing the powers of his office figured prominently. The Judiciary Committee proceedings were thorough and fair. The grounds for impeachment were strong. As a result, Nixon resigned from office, the first president ever to do so. In resigning, he avoided becoming the first president ever to be removed from office. I thought at that time that our work—careful and bipartisan—would send the strongest possible signal to future presidents about the need to obey the rule of law. I was wrong. Thirty-three years later, the same issues, the same arrogance, the same abuse of power emanate from the White House, threatening our constitutional system. President Bush had completed one year of his second term when the illegal wiretapping scheme became public. The president’s response was to carry on, regardless of the law against it and regardless of his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. The only way to stop him is impeachment. Having watched the unfolding of Watergate from the inner halls of Congress, I understood that the impeachment of President Bush wouldn’t happen quickly. The American people need to evaluate the president’s conduct and to recognize that his removal from office is the only way to preserve our democracy. People need an opportunity to see and hear and weigh the evidence. This book offers that possibility. INTERVIEWS Elizabeth Holtzman Calls for Americans to Put Impeachment Where It Belongs -- Back On the Table A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW 12/11/2006 Elizabeth Holtzman on Impeaching George W. Bush - 9/12 By Blair Golson - Truthdig interview An interview with Elizabeth Holtzman - 09/12 Bush-impeachment update Greg Pollowitz National Review Online Coalition of Antiwar, Veteran Groups Launching National Movement to Impeach Bush and Cheney - Transcript of Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales interview with Elizabeth Holtzman, Daniel Ellsberg and Nancy Pelosi on Democracy NOW 11/10/2006 From Publisher's Weekly Review: …Talk of presidential impeachment is in the air. Holtzman, former congresswoman and Brooklyn D.A., and Cooper, a journalist and lawyer, have assembled a compact but thorough legal and constitutional accounting of five major issues upon which they claim the current president could be impeached. They are "Deceptions into Taking the Country into War in Iraq"; "Reckless Indifference to Human Life in Katrina and Iraq"; "Illegal Wiretapping and Surveillance of Americans"; "Permitting Torture"; and "Leaking Classified Information." While the authors have a clear political agenda, their book also provides a useful guide to the theory behind and the legal mechanisms of presidential impeachment, clearing up many misunderstandings readers might have, such as the fact that "high crimes and misdemeanors are not limited to actual crimes" and the correct use of the Independent Counsel Act (which Holtzman helped author in 1978). The book argues its points based on examples from the impeachments of Nixon and Clinton (Holtzman sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment). While this volume will be read and cherished by those who agree with its political stance—and dismissed and argued against by those who don't - it's an important, comprehensive argument and document for our current political moment. Read entire review >>> Visit Publisher's Weekly Review website Why I Believe Bush Must Go Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse. By George McGovern Sunday, January 6, 2008; B01 As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president. After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me. Today I have made a different choice. Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising. But what are the facts? Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard. From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation. In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion -- by far the highest in our national history. All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era? How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness? It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an "imminent threat" to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks -- another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson's observation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world -- more than a billion people. Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus. Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades. Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies -- especially the war in Iraq -- have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others. Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot. As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, "it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws -- that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors." I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin. There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered. anmcgove@dwu.edu Ex-Dem pol's how-to for impeaching W BY CORKY SIEMASZKO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER10/25/06 Former Brooklyn Rep. Liz Holtzman has a new book out - and its premise is a dream come true for many Democrats. It's called "The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens." Holtzman knows a thing or two about taking on a President because she worked on President Richard Nixon's impeachment. "This came out of what I would call my niche expertise," Holtzman said. "I know what constitutes a high crime and misdemeanor." The genesis for the book were newspaper reports that President Bush had given the National Security Agency approval to engage in domestic spying. " One of the grounds for Nixon's impeachment was wiretapping in violation of the Constitution," Holtzman said. "I said, 'Oh, no, here were go again.'" In her book, Holtzman and co-writer Cynthia Cooper lay out four other issues on which they believe Bush could be impeached: lying about weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq, allowing the torture of prisoners, leaking classified information and botching the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. "I thought that when we voted to impeach Richard Nixon, this would send a very strong message to future Presidents - do not put yourself above the rule of law," said Holtzman, a Democrat. "That message was not heard by President Bush." A Republican National Committee spokesman panned the book on behalf of the White House. "Clearly, Ms. Holtzman is a hyperpartisan interested in getting her name in the newspaper," said the spokesman, Danny Diaz. "Unfortunately, she represents a party that is more focused on leveling political attacks than supporting measures that protect the American people." Democrats, though, aren't eager to utter the "I" word, either. Even with polls showing her party could take over the House and possibly the Senate, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pledged on Sunday not to call for Bush's impeachment. Holtzman said she wasn't surprised. "Impeachment has to have the support of the American people," she said. President Bill Clinton's impeachment for lying about Monica Lewinsky backfired on the Republicans because much of the country wasn't for it, Holtzman said. New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com From David Swanson, co-founder AfterDowningStreet.org: The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens, by Elizabeth Holtzman, former Congresswoman and member of the Nixon impeachment panel, and Cynthia L. Cooper (Nation Books, 268 pages, $14.95), an excellent and readable book, lays out five major grounds for the President's impeachment, and offers a bonus section on Dick Cheney. OpEdNews.com - David Swanson 10/5/06 "The Constitution requires that the President "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Former Congresswoman and Judiciary Committee Member Elizabeth Holtzman in her new book, The Impeachment of George W. Bush, argues that Bush's neglect of New Orleans (and other presidential duties) violated this responsibility and so constitute high crimes and misdemeanors. Holtzman puts into this category as well the administration's failure to provide U.S. troops in Iraq with proper body armor, and the failure of the President and his top officials to plan for the occupation of Iraq." Read More>>> Former Congresswoman, Author Elizabeth Holtzman on Bush's New Executive Privilege: Immunity from War Crimes Prosecution Publishers Weekly 9/5/2006 The Impeachment of George W. Bush Elizabeth Holtzman and Cindy Cooper. Nation, $14.95 paper (256p) ISBN 1-56025-940-X With the midterm elections—and the possibility of majority shifts in both the House and Senate—talk of presidential impeachment is in the air. Holtzman, former congresswoman and Brooklyn D.A., and Cooper, a journalist and lawyer, have assembled a compact but thorough legal and constitutional accounting of five major issues upon which they claim the current president could be impeached. They are "Deceptions into Taking the Country into War in Iraq"; "Reckless Indifference to Human Life in Katrina and Iraq"; "Illegal Wiretapping and Surveillance of Americans"; "Permitting Torture"; and "Leaking Classified Information." While the authors have a clear political agenda, their book also provides a useful guide to the theory behind and the legal mechanisms of presidential impeachment, clearing up many misunderstandings readers might have, such as the fact that "high crimes and misdemeanors are not limited to actual crimes" and the correct use of the Independent Counsel Act (which Holtzman helped author in 1978). The book argues its points based on examples from the impeachments of Nixon and Clinton (Holtzman sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment). While this volume will be read and cherished by those who agree with its political stance—and dismissed and argued against by those who don't—it's an important, comprehensive argument and document for our current political moment. From the Library Journal: Should President Bush be impeached? Former U.S. Congresswoman Holtzman believes so. Holtzman, who now practices law, earned credentials to make her case in 1974 when she served on the House Judiciary Committee whose hearings led President Nixon to resign rather than face impeachment. Holtzman and freelance journalist Cooper (coauthor with Holtzman, Who Said It Would Be Easy?) offer a short review of the Nixon resignation and of the process of impeachment. They then present a well-organized brief for lay readers, arguing that Bush should be impeached for deception over the Iraq war, illegal wiretapping, condoning torture, reckless indifference to human life during Hurricane Katrina and in Iraq, and for the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. They also offer advice to citizens who favor impeachment and a short appendix of pertinent legal documents. Michigan Congressman John Conyers, who has introduced a House resolution on impeachment of the President, commissioned this congressional report from the current Judiciary Committee's Democratic staff. He is the committee's ranking minority member. The ground it covers is similar to Holtzman's, although this is a sprawling text far less suitable for reading. While its centerpiece is made up of excerpts from the "Downing Street Minutes," leaked British government memos from 2002 that seem to show a U.S. decision to go to war more than a year prior to the 2003 invasion, most of its some 1400 footnotes refer to media reports and official documents. Diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband, adds a brief introduction. Conyers's staff earlier brought out a similar report, What Went Wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election. Supporters of the President will dismiss both books as partisan projects, but his critics will welcome them, especially Holtzman's, which is recommended for public libraries and for those academic libraries seeking to document contemporary politics. My experiences over the past week have simply reinforced my belief that many Americans are hungering for a way to hold Bush accountable but are unfamiliar with impeachment and to the extent they even think of it believe it has been tarnished by its abuse during the Clinton impeachment. There was a huge crowd in Los Angeles--more than 800 people--attending my conversation with John Dean about crimes in the Oval Office. Similarly, at a Brooklyn literary fest on Saturday, the Court room at Borough Hall was packed to hear three of us (Katha Pollitt, Patricia Williams and me) discuss this administration's assaults on the constitution. Dozens were turned away from the door. Even at Camp Democracy, in jaded Washington, more than 100 people came to the afternoon session on impeachment. My book was sold out in Brooklyn and Washington. That is why it is so important for people to inform themselves on impeachment and help educate their neighbors and friends. We have got to shift control of the Congress this November in order to lay the groundwork for the impeachment of President Bush. Bush spoke at the UN today, even though this was the situs four years ago of his gross deceptions that drove the country into war. He spoke as though those falsehoods mattered not at all. But they do. The world is wary at best and hostile at worst to him. Statement by the Hon. Elizabeth Holtzman on Attorney General Gonzales' Resignation NEW YORK, Aug. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire <www.prnewswire.com> Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman served on the House Judiciary Committee during Nixon's impeachment. She co-authored the 1973 special prosecutor statute, and co-wrote (with Cynthia L. Cooper) the 2006 book The Impeachment of George W. Bush (http://www.impeachbushbook.com). She made the following statement today: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has given us the worst, most lawless Justice Department since John Mitchell. Like Mitchell, who authorized the Watergate burglary and lied about it, Gonzales has earned his reputation as a staunchest of Bush loyalists, whose loyal services have seriously compromised the Department and may have included criminal activity: possible perjury before the Senate and other possible violations of law connected to the firing of US Attorneys, torture and mistreatment of detainees, warrantless wiretapping programs and other serious matters. It appears the Senate Judiciary will have an opportunity to confirm a new nominee to replace the Attorney General. It can and should require as a condition of confirmation that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate possible crimes and abuses of power during Attorney General Gonzales' tenure. There is ample precedent for the Senate Judiciary Committee to impose such conditions. In 1973, when John Mitchell's successor as Attorney General Richard Kleindienst in turn stepped down amid Watergate scandals, the new nominee Elliott Richardson was brought before the committee for confirmation. The Committee agreed to confirm him on the condition a special prosecutor be appointed. On taking office, Attorney General Richardson duly appointed Archibald Cox to the position, whose investigations and summary dismissal ultimately resulted in President Nixon's resignation. While the United States needs to find and confirm a new Attorney General in a timely way, and would do well to choose someone who can restore a measure of confidence in the Justice Department, we cannot afford to simply "move on" from the debacles of the Gonzales era. Confirmation hearings will once again give the Senate the power to demand a special prosecutor be appointed to bring abuse of power and possible criminal activity into the light of public scrutiny. After suffering from the damage Attorney General Gonzales' tenure has inflicted on our chief law enforcement agency, the American people need and deserve nothing less. SOURCE Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman November 12, 2006 Impeaching Bush to Preserve the Constitution By Elizabeth Holtzman This is a transcript of a talk given at the Impeach for Change conference, on November 11, 2006, Veterans Day, at the Constitution Center, in Philadelphia, facing Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. I want to talk to you about preserving our constitution. Veterans day is about those who fought and died and gave so much and sacrificed, those who returned healthy and those who didn't. Why did they do that? To preserve, they were told, our democracy, to preserve our liberty, to preserve the benefits this country provides to so many but not to all. And so, it is an extraordinary subversion of the constitution to send people to die, to be maimed on the basis of a lie. Democracy means you trust people to make their own minds up, But this president knew that if he told the truth, that we wouldn't be in this war. The framers of the constitution of the constitution knew that someday there was going to be a Richard Nixon who was president of the United States and someday there was going to be a George Bush who was going to be president of the United States, and they gave us the power of impeachment to revoke them. They put in the impeachment clause because they said that we know that there will be presidents who will commit grave and dangerous offenses that would subvert the constitution. They knew that subverting that constitution was the greatest danger that could befall our country. So all of us here have to be soldiers in that cause. The Nixon impeachment started-- the act that constitutied the basis for the Nixon impeachement-- started with the illegal bombing of Cambodia. Why? Because it was illegal and it was secret, and when the press began to find out about it, Richard Nixon said, "That can't happen. I don't want the American people to know about this. I don't want the congress to know. So we're going to wiretap... illegally." And that then led to all the rest of the illegalities, because he thought, as president, he could do whatever he wanted, and started out the course of keeping that war going and depriving the American people of the truth. Not too different from today. The American people get it now on the war in Iraq and they get it on the culture of corruption and arrogance in Washington. And they have said, resoundingly, "No. We're going to have change." An if you think this change doesn't include impeachment, you're wrong. Well some of the people who were running the elections, until September, thought that the war didn't count. They were wrong. When they start seeing polls they understand how wrong they are. Newsweek did a poll two weeks ago. It is a critical poll. It showed that a majority of Americans are open to the idea of impeaching George W. Bush. What's amazing is that they got it even though there's no discussion of impeachment on the Today Show... , not even the other side. It's a nonentity, it doesn't exist. The mass media hasn't referred to it, except to say "It's a bad thing. It's the democrats." So there's no discussion of impeachment. Yet the American people get it, that this president has subverted the constitution and represents a threat to our democracy. The interesting thing is, those opposed to impeachment are 44%, and some of those, I believe, were so disgusted by the partisan impeachment conducted by the Republicans the abusive, improper impeachment conducted by them, that they said-- "impeachment, never again." They don't remember how congress did the right thing in the right way, with regard to Nixon. I want to give you a comparison of these polls with the polls on Clinton, because it shows you where the American people really are. 44% opposed to impeaching George W. Bush. 63% on average, opposed to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. 51-53% open to impeachment of George W. Bush. 26% in favor of the impeachment of Bill Clinton. This is a huge, huge, important statement. The American people, not for the first time, are ahead of the politicians in Washington. But I want to tell you that the American people can make Washington sit up and pay attention, because they did it once before. It's important to consider, because sometimes people get discouraged-- Richard Nixon was elected in November of 1972 with one of the biggest landslides in the history of the United States. That's because the criminal coverup was so successful, no was even mentioning that there was anything with the president and his top people and the break-in at the Watergate otel. But that started to unravel and John Dean and others had revelations. But did congress talk about impeachment? Absolutely not. The Democrats were in control of the house and senate. Did they say, "Oh, we've got to have an impeachment now." Absolutely not! They did nothing. They did NOTHING! Then the American people spoke. President Nixon fired the special prosecutor who was trying to get information about him and the American people said, "that's it. Enough is enough. We can't have a president who is above the law. We can't have a president stop investigations. We are not a banana republic, We are the United States of America. And the congress, you have to act." And they forced the congress to act. It was the American people. This is so critical. Cindy Sheehan was so correct when she said "People have to walk and educate their congresspeople." They have to educate other Americans that this is possible. I believe it is mandatory, because the constitution was given to us as a precious legacy from those before us. How are we going to hand it down to our children? Shriveled, shrunken, torn? Scratched, stained? That's what we want? I don't think so. Let me give you the "weapons" for those who are going to be the naysayers here.Plenty of people didn't want to do it. They were forced to do it because of the American people. People say, "Why should we have impeachement? We now have the democrats in charge. that'enough. Checks and balances are restored. Who needs it? Well, we had checks and balances in regard to Nixon. We had the democrats controlling the house and senate and we had the president of the United States. Why'd we have to do impeachment if we had checks and balances? The constitution doesn't require the minimum. It requires the maximum. We can't have a president of the United States who puts himself above the rule of law if we want to continue with this democracy.That's it. No ifs ands or buts. The fact that we have checks and balances does not mean that we are not obliged to remove the person who threatens our democracy from the presidency. Secondly, it's not about revenge. The effort against Richard Nixon was not about revenge. Far from it. It was a bi-partisan effort. it was supported by an overwhelming majority of the American people, most of whom had voted for Nixon. The same people who had voted for Nixon where the ones who phoned and telegrammed their members of congress and wrote the them and protested in front of them, because they understood that this man was shredding the constitution. It's not a partisan thing, not a matter of revenge. It's a matter of setting the right standards and holding those accountable who lied and deceived the American people and who want to shred the constitution still. There are also those who say that this will disrupt congress. There are some people who say that congress can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Congress, during the impeachment of Richard Nixon, did all the other business of the country and the house judiciary committee did its job. Nothing was disrupted. And to those who say it divided the country-- the impeachment of Richard Nixon brought it together. How? We all recognized that we shared the same values as a country-- the values being, not a president, one person, not a party, not a political situation, but our commitment to the constitution and to the rule of law. When we discovered that we shared those values, it strengthened us and united us. Some say that Americans only care about improving the minimum wage, about lower interest for student loans, about health care. But don't Americans care about the constitution? Don't we care about freedom? Don't we care about liberty? Of course we do. And anyone who says that (that we need to focus on getting legislation done on healthcare, etc.) is denigrating the intelligence of the American people, because it is our constitution and our democracy that makes all of those other things possible. We need to investigate. There's no formula for how you conduct an impeachment. You don't need a Conyers investigation., Actually, if you go back to Watergate, you had a select senate committee that began the investigation-- started in the senate, bipartisan, equal representation. That's where Howard Baker asked the famous quesion, "What did the president know and when did he know it?" The same question is applicable to George W. Bush. What did the president know before the war started and when did he know it. Same questions. There's no formula. The house can conduct inquiries. The senate can conduct inquiries. Those inquiries have to be focused though, on getting us the answers to the basic questions. What are those? Why did the president drive us into war on the basis of deception? And how did he do it and document what he knew and when he knew it. That's critical, because no American should have to give one drop of blood for a lie, ever. What exactly did the president know about the torture and the mistreatment of detainees? What was he told and when was he told it? Why didn't he ever follow the law and bring to punishment and bring to accountability, those, even up to the top, who ordered or engaged in torture? And what about katrina? We never got all the emails from the Whitehouse... Yes, we need investigations of Haliburton and yes we need investigations of corruption, but we need to get investigations that will ultimately expose the lies and misconduct that amount to impeachable offenses. I believe we have the evidence we need. As a former prosecutor, I would like to have more. It's good to have your quiver full of a lot of arrows. We could do those investigations. We have to have a process that's fair, bipartisan, that the American people can support. We're here today, to assure the framers of the constitution, the veterans who fought in our wars and the prior generations who brought us to where we are today, that we are going to hold up our end of the bargain and preserve the constitution for future generations and bring George W. Bush and Richard Cheney to account and to impeachment. Authors Bio: Elizabeth Holtzman, is a former Congresswoman and Brooklyn District Attorney who was a vital member of the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. She is the co-author, with Cynthia Cooper, of The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens Breathing the 'I' word - Elizabeth Holtzman Friday, November 10, 2006 Though Democrats' gains on Tuesday were hard fought, they still pulled one big punch during the campaign. Party leaders chose to refrain from publicly uttering any "i" words -- investigation, immunity, and above all, impeachment -- and to dismiss those who did, for fear of somehow galvanizing disaffected GOP voters. But whether they admit it or not, with a Democratic Party-led Congress, President Bush could well become the target of congressional investigations, challenges to presidential immunity and eventual impeachment inquiries. Big legislative changes are probably not in the cards, but willingness to use subpoena power and pursue investigations into controversial Bush administration actions and inactions are among the main things that will change under Democratic leadership of Congress. Even if impeachment is "off the table," according to Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi (who as the new Speaker of the House will be next in line for the presidency after Vice President Dick Cheney), recent national polls and impeachment-ballot initiatives in San Francisco, Berkeley, and two townships in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., and elsewhere, show it is on Americans' table. Leaving aside partisan "gotcha" tactics, such as the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, which fail because they lack public support or constitutional basis, Congress has been historically reluctant to undertake impeachment, including during Watergate. But it has done so when public sentiment reaches a boiling point and demands holding a president accountable, as it did in 1973 after President Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Today we may be closer to reaching that boiling point again than some may think. The Chronicle's online poll question this week surveyed readers, 77 percent of whom to date thought impeaching President Bush may be constitutionally required if the president were found to have abused the power of his office. A recent Newsweek national poll showed 53 percent of Americans thought impeachment should be on the agenda (either as a "top" or "lower" priority), with 44 percent opposing impeachment outright. Compare these numbers to 1998 polls, where an average of only 26 percent of Americans were open to or favored impeaching Clinton, while an average of 63 percent opposed it outright. Public sentiment for impeachment is strong, and stands to grow stronger given a thoughtful discussion of constitutional standards and a full and fair inquiry, one that allows the president to explain and defend his conduct fully. But beyond public opinion, there are legal and constitutional considerations that make impeachment a live concern now. High crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office, may well apply to President Bush's systemic abuses of power and failures to uphold the law. These include directing illegal domestic wiretapping and surveillance, detainee abuse and torture, indifference to human life in responding to Hurricane Katrina, ill-equipping U.S. soldiers and failing to plan for the Iraq occupation, deceiving Congress and Americans about reasons for the war in Iraq and possibly seeking to cover up those deceptions by leaking misleading classified information. These actions have disturbing parallels with offenses for which Nixon was impeached. I served on the House Judiciary Committee which voted to impeach him. It did painstaking, bipartisan work in assessing and applying constitutional and legal standards to Nixon's actions. Measured by the same objective standards as were used in Nixon's case, an impeachment inquiry into Bush's actions would be appropriate, and a vote to impeach at the end of that inquiry would not be a surprising outcome. When checks and balances fail to restrain a president from abuses of power or from subverting the Constitution, impeachment and removal from office is the framers' remedy. It is the tool they gave future generations to protect democracy and the rule of law, and not to explore it now would be a culpable failure to follow their intent. That's why U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., in line to chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and some 37 congressional Democrats, already have uttered the "i" word and raised the issue of impeachment before the election, even though the Democratic leaders didn't want to discuss it. Whether out of political strategy or timidity we fail to breathe a word about, much less openly debate, impeaching a president so committed to executive overreach, Americans -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- risk undermining the Constitution and compromising our ability to hold future presidents accountable under the law. Elizabeth Holtzman represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 1981. She is the co-author, with Cynthia L. Cooper, of "The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens," (Nation Books, 2006). Coalition of Antiwar, Veteran Groups Launching National Movement to Impeach Bush and Cheney - Democracy NOW 11/10/2006 A coalition of groups are meeting near Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Saturday to announce plans to mobilize a national movement to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. We speak with former New York Congressmember Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the committee investigating Watergate, and we speak with Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. [includes rush transcript] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Saturday, a coalition of groups are meeting near Independence Hall in Philadelphia to announce plans to mobilize a national movement to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Groups backing the effort include Progressive Democrats of America, CodePink, Gold Star Families for Peace and Veterans for Peace. While the pro-impeachment movement has received little media attention, polls show growing numbers support for Congress to take such action. A recent Newsweek poll found 51 percent of all Americans - including 20 percent of Republicans - feel impeachment should be on the table. But it appears the new Democrat-led Congress will not take up the issue. Nancy Pelosi, who is set to become House Speaker, was asked about it on Wednesday during her first press conference since the mid-term election. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D - CA), Democratic Congressional leader. There is support for impeachment in the House. Over three dozen Democrats in Congress have publicly supported an inquiry into possible impeachable offenses by the Bush administration. The list includes John Conyers of Michigan who is positioned to become chair of the House Judiciary Committee. To talk more about impeachment, the mid-term elections and the war in Iraq, we are joined by two guests: Elizabeth Holtzman and Daniel Ellsberg. Elizabeth Holtzman, served four terms in Congress, where she played a key role in House impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon. She is co-author of the new book "The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens." She will be speaking in Philadelphia on Saturday at the pro-impeachment rally. Daniel Ellsberg, may be the country's best known whistleblower. He leaked to the press the Pentagon Papers, the 7,000 page top-secret study of U.S. decision making in Vietnam. This set in motion actions that would eventually topple the Nixon presidency. He recently published an article in Harpers magazine about Iran. It is called "The Next War." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AMY GOODMAN: Nancy Pelosi who is set to become House Speaker was asked about it on Wednesday during her first press conference since the mid-term election. REP. NANCY PELOSI: Democrats are not about getting even. Democrats are about helping the American people get ahead. And that's what our agenda is about. So while some people -- are excited about prospects that -- that they have in terms of their priorities, they're not our priorities. I have said and I say again that impeachment is off the table. AMY GOODMAN: There is support for impeachment in the house over the three -- over three dozen democrats in congress have publicly supported an inquiry into possible impeachable offenses by the Bush Administration, the list includes: John Conyers of Michigan, positioned to become Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. To talk more about impeachment, the mid-term elections, and the war in Iraq we are joined by two guests, Elizabeth Holtzman and Daniel Ellsberg. Elizabeth Holtzman served four terms in Congress, where she played a key role in House impeachment process against President Richard Nixon. She is co-author of the new book The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens. Welcome to Democracy Now! You’re going to be speaking at a pro-impeachment rally on Saturday in Philadelphia? ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Correct. -- In an effort to try to bring, -- to create a grassroots movement around the country and press Congress to do what should be done. AMY GOODMAN: What’s your response to the Speaker in waiting, Nancy Pelosi saying it’s off the table? ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well it’s very understandable. It was off the table to the democrats in 1973 when the democrats controlled the House and the Senate—and you had Richard Nixon as President. AMY GOODMAN: He had won by a landslide victory in 1972. ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Correct. He had won by a landslide and impeachment was off the table then. Nobody, -- no democrat was pushing for it. And in fact, as the revelations came out, it still wasn't on the table. It took the American people after the Saturday night massacre sending a clear message to -- AMY GOODMAN: The Saturday night massacre being? ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: The firing by Richard Nixon of the special prosecutor who was investigating him. It took that clear signal from the American people who said enough is enough. We are not a banana republic, a president cannot be above the law, he can't stop an investigation into possible criminal behavior by him or his top aides. And we want Congress to hold him accountable. So it came from the American people. It didn't come from the congress. It’s -- understandable that congressional leaders, members of congress will be very reluctant to take this enormous step to protect our constitution and our democracy. But the American people still, -- we have a democracy, you saw what happened at the polls, members of Congress will get it if the American people want it. JUAN GONZALEZ: Of course, in the – in the Clinton scandal it wasn’t a demand that came from the American people for impeachment it was one that came directly from the Congress itself –- ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Correct. JUAN GONZALEZ: and, of course, that was the level of alleged crimes there was certainly not at the level that we're talking about here. ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well, remember, under the constitution, first of all you don't need a crime to commit an impeachable offense it doesn't have to be a crime. A high crime and misdemeanor – is really an archaic British term that means an abuse of power. It’s a political offense, not a criminal offense. -–Um-- President Clinton did very bad things, but they were not abuses of power. They did not threaten our democracy and the American people got it. They understand what impeachment is about. They --and that's why they in the end supported the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Because what he was doing was an abuse-- involved an abuse of power, what he was saying was that he was above the law and the American people said, no, we don't want that kind of -- abuse of our democracy. I think the same thing can happen again. Of course you can't have a top down impeachment. You can't have a partisan impeachment. If an impeachment happens it has to be done, -- I think the way we did it in Watergate, which was bipartisan, to include the American people, to be um – to have a process that was extremely fair, nobody could question the fairness of it-- AMY GOODMAN: Explain how it worked, because Nixon resigned, he wasn't impeached. ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Nixon resigned because the process was so fair and so thorough and so honorable that he was going to have no support. Maybe 1 or two people would have voted for him -- to stay on as President in the House and maybe 1 or two people would have voted for him in the Senate. He had lost all support in the Congress. And that's why a delegation of top republican leaders, um-- including Howard—um-- Barry Goldwater went to see Richard Nixon and told him, you have no support in the House or Senate. You can go through an impeachment trial, you will be surely impeached in the House and you will be surely removed from the senate. Because, what happened was -- our first vote on the house judiciary committee was a bipartisan vote. We had members of the republicans as well as democrats including very conservative democrats voting for impeachment. Then the smoking gun tape was released by order of the Supreme Court, that's a tape that showed that Richard Nixon from the get-go had ordered the cover-up and an obstruction of justice. And once that tape came out every republican on the House Judiciary Committee, even those who initially voted against impeachment said he has committed impeachable offenses. JUAN GONZALEZ: Let me ask you, -- ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: It was clear. JUAN GONZALEZ: --John Conyers, who head the House Judiciary Committee certainly is not one who is afraid to begin these kind of investigations. What-what was the relationship in the House Judiciary Committee then between the chairs there and the leadership? ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well, uh-- it was first the American people that galvanized congress into action that lit that fire. That's what happened. The house judiciary committee, --um-- the leadership had a key decision to make, was it going to be the house judiciary committee that undertook this or was there going to be a special select committee? That was the first, I think strategic and important decision. They said okay it’s going to the judiciary committee. Because, if we create a special committee, the American people will say that we stacked the cards. We’re going to take the existing committee and use that committee and that's the committee that –warts and all-- brand-new members and all, that was the committee that was given this assignment. But we never were, I never was given any instruction from any member of the leadership or by the chair of the committee as to how to vote. AMY GOODMAN: Nancy Pelosi would be president, she’s third in line.-- ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Correct. AMY GOODMAN: --that is if uh, --Vice--uh President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were impeached -- but what are you talking about when it comes to Vice President Dick Cheney? ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well, my view right now is that I'm not sure we have the overwhelming evidence. That's not to say that he hasn't committed impeachable offenses just that we don't have the same kind of level of evidence that we have with respect to President Bush. On the illegal wiretaps, for example, it is President Bush who repeatedly and admittedly signed these orders –uhh--directing wiretaps in violation of the explicit language of the statute. We don't have Dick Cheney signing that. I mean, that is a very good example of how we have President Bush, but we don't see Vice President Cheney's fingerprints. That is not to say that he wasn’t part and parcel to this but, we don’t see that so-- AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to former Congress-member Elizabeth Holtzman who has written a book on impeachment. Daniel Ellsberg is also with us, perhaps the country’s best-known whistle blower. Leaked to the press the Petagon Papers, the 7,000-page top-secret study of U.S. decisions making in Vietnam that set in motion actions that would eventually topple Nixon. He recently published an article in Harper's Magazine about Iran it’s called "The Next War." How do you tie this in? What your campaign is now? Which is not exactly impeachment, Daniel Ellsberg. DANIEL ELLSBERG: I think the impeachment process starting with the investigations is very important, but it is not the only important thing right now. Uh, actually Maurice Hinchey introduced a bill on June 20 of this year calling for Congress to cut-off any funds, to deny any funds of the appropriation bill for an attack on Iran unless that had followed as in article 1, section eight from a decision by congress. And it was a very brief little discussion in the night of June 20th, two hours later there was a vote. He had 158 votes in, in favor of that. Some what surprisingly. That is the way that the Vietnam War was stopped. I don't think they’ll stop the Iraq War very quickly that way. It takes a long time for the congressmen to face the charge that he’s taking money away from the troops, no matter how long, whether they should be there or not. But the Iran War has not yet started and a measure to prevent it before it starts has, I think, a lot more promise and I think that approach, with Congress -- with a new Congress has real promise. But even so, uhh, you would need I think a crucial aspect of that is information from inside the government and this applies both to the impeachment process and to measures like this. If you rely entirely on the administration cooperating by providing -- the documents that you're asking and the witnesses that you're asking, that is not going to happen. They promised already, I think that Cheney said it would be a cataclysmic fight to the death before they will let these documents get out. Now a process like that is what finally emboldened congress or enraged congress to the point where, in fact, they did begin to cut off the funds for the war and they did seriously begin to look into impeachment if the president was going to totally subordinate their role, rule it out of the constitution essentially that finally got their backs up. That could happen here, as investigations start on a variety of reasons, which should happen, including Cheney you will get the facts on the table from leakers. The facts you’ll get will be unauthorized. And now an unauthorized disclosure, uh leak has a chance of being acted on by congress. Which in the last several years people have gotten discouraged. They’ve put out the truth to Sy Hersh and others and we can all see not much happens. Congress, uh the republican committees are not interested in hearing that. They don't want to act on it. Now it's a challenge. If somebody inside the government gives information either on criminal wrongdoing by their bosses which bears directly or you know terrible high crimes and misdemeanors which bears directly on impeachment, if they give that to Congress and the press, Congress can’t-- Congress now led by the democrats, cannot just ignore it at least not if we let them. We can demand that they do act on it and that’s a great inducement to get. JUAN GONZALEZ: So what you're saying in essence is that another Daniel Ellsberg is needed and then maybe even another John Dean, to come forward from the inner circle. DANIEL ELLSBERG: Both of those and more are needed and we need them in a more timely way than either of us did it. Dean knew about the burglary of my psychiatrist's office years before he revealed it under pressure. I knew about what was happening in Nixon, years before I finally saw the light that it had to be given not only to Congress, which was sitting on it, but to the press. And I'm sorry that it took that long, but when it comes to impeachment, --say I have a full disclosure here to make, uh, it was crimes that Nixon did against me in part we learned by leaking, uh that were a major part of the impeachment process, that you were looking at. That he was committing those crimes. If Dean had not revealed them in order to cop a plea himself in the process and had not told the truth, they would not have called other people back to the grand jury and discovered they had enough basis for an impeachment. And likewise if I hadn't put the documents out, Nixon wouldn't have been so afraid of me as to commit the crimes to shut me up. I, uh, I don't suppose I’ve made Bush as afraid of me then, I’m sorry to say-- if he has committed crimes against me, I don't know them he yet, if I have been listened in on warrant-less wiretaps, I imagine I have, but it may be a while before I learn it. But there are others who could supply the names of who --which Specter was not able to get from the president. Republican headed Judiciary Committee was not able to get the names or even the programs. There are people in N.S.A. who could tell him that. And if a democrat now wants to hear that, which Specter didn't, he can call those people, he can put them under oath and he can hear their testimony, people like Sibel Edmonds, Russell Tice, and people in N.S.A., who know the crimes that have been committed. AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon whistleblower calling for whistleblowers today to come out especially around plans for Iran and former Congress Member Liz Holtzman, she has written a new book it’s called The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens she will be speaking on Saturday in Philadelphia at a pro-impeachment rally this Veteran’s Day weekend. To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (888) 999-3877. Ford's pardon of Nixon led to Bushes flouting law 1/13/2007 BY ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN In assessing Gerald Ford's legacy, a posthumous new spin on his pardon of Richard Nixon demands closer examination. The claim heard nowadays is that the pardon healed the wounds of a divided nation and laid Watergate to rest, and in hindsight, was a good thing. The problem with this version of events is that it is simply not true. Pardoning Nixon did not put Watergate behind us. It inaugurated a culture of impunity that made it possible for President George W. Bush to stray disastrously far into the Nixonian territory of flouting federal laws, conducting illegal wiretaps, misleading Congress into a war. After it conducted impeachment proceedings that led to Nixon's resignation, Congress hoped it had laid such abuses of presidential power to rest forever. Yet a mere 30 years later, they are back with us again. The pardon didn't heal any wounds. On the contrary, it provoked a firestorm of public anger, which together with Nixon's misconduct caused huge losses for the Republicans in the 1974 midterm elections. The anger still hadn't abated two years later, and Ford lost his bid for the presidency as a result. Americans opposed the pardon for good reasons: First, they thought it smacked of a deal trading Nixon's resignation for Ford's pardon, and they may have well been right. Bob Woodward's 1999 book Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate describes Ford's private conversation with Nixon's top aide, Alexander Haig, where they discussed Nixon's possible resignation and Ford's elevation to president ''in return for an agreement that [Ford] would pardon Nixon.'' Ford ''accepted the judgment of his advisers that [Haig's] offer was in practical terms a deal'' and apparently backtracked, making two phone calls purporting to cancel any private understanding with Haig. But as we know, he never canceled the pardon itself. Second, whether or not it was a backroom deal, Americans felt the pardon was reckless. It could have jeopardized the trials of Nixon's top aides, Haldeman and Ehrlichman, because a jury might well have said it was unfair to hold underlings responsible when the boss got off scot-free. Ford was indifferent to that consequence, but Americans weren't. Third, as part of the pardon, Ford gave Nixon all the White House tapes and documents that hadn't been turned over to the Congress or the special prosecutor. Congress had to enact legislation to stop this, but the appearance that President Ford was perpetuating a cover-up of Nixon's misconduct further alienated Americans. Fourth, the pardon set up a dual system of justice -- one for ordinary citizens and the other for presidents. But the rule of law does not excuse misconduct based on status or wealth. Americans saw the pardon as a frontal attack on the basic concept of equality before the law. What was less apparent, but now emerges as the most harmful consequence, was the insidious culture of impunity the pardon created, whereby presidents could flout the law with no real fear of criminal consequences. That post-Watergate precedent of impunity was at work when President George H. W. Bush pardoned President Reagan's aides who were convicted of crimes in the Iran-contra affair, and again when President George W. Bush inserted a provision in the Military Commissions Act that exonerated all government officials -- including himself -- from criminal liability under the War Crimes Act of 1996 for mistreatment of detainees, even when such treatment amounted to torture or murder. Ford probably never foresaw these particular consequences when he pardoned Nixon. But it should be clear enough that exempting a president from the law undermines the rule of law that holds us together as a nation. The pardon and the precedents it created were unpardonable in 1974 and remain so today. Testimony By Elizabeth Holtzman On Senate Joint Memorial 8016 Before the Government Operations and Elections Committee of the Washington State Legislature regarding the Impeachment of President George W. Bush At the request of State Senator Eric Oemig, I respectfully submit this testimony in support of Senate Joint Memorial 8016 calling on the US Congress to determine whether there is sufficient evidence for and if so to commence the constitutional process of impeachment with respect to President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach President Richard M. Nixon, a process that has withstood the test of history, I developed a niche expertise on the subject of presidential impeachment. It is from that perspective, that I have reached the sad conclusion that the systematic and grave abuses of power of President George W. Bush warrant his impeachment and removal from office. No one can take any pleasure in reaching this conclusion. When the House Judiciary Committee voted its first article of impeachment against Richard Nixon, the chair of the committee, Representative Peter Rodino, went back to his office and cried. He needn’t have done so. The impeachment vote, which prompted the resignation of President Nixon, vindicated the deepest values that guide our republic—commitment to the constitution and the rule of law. Impeachment did not divide our country but strengthened it: we recognized that as Americans more important than party, more important than any single president was the rule of law. That is what is at stake again. Once again, we are confronted with a president who has put himself above the rule of law to the grave detriment of the people of the United States. The impeachment power was placed in our constitution to preserve our democracy. The framers understood human nature. They knew that even though they had created powerful checks on the presidency, a president could still, during his term of office, create such a threat to our democracy that he would have to be removed. In other words, the framers anticipated Richard M. Nixon—and they anticipated George W. Bush. And, they gave us the remedy to address their abuses. Impeachment was designed to remove a president who committed treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. High crimes and misdemeanors, we know from the constitutional debates, are “great and dangerous offenses that subvert the constitution.” Let me briefly describe the impeachable offenses that I believe President George W. Bush has committed. (More details are contained in my book, The Impeachment of George W. Bush, co-authored with Cynthia Cooper, and in two articles published in the Nation. ) First, President Bush repeatedly and systematically violated the laws of the United States, in particular the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, by refusing over a period of several years to seek court approval for an extensive wiretapping program of telephone calls or other electronic communications involving Americans in the United States. FISA, the violation of which is a federal crime, was enacted in the wake of revelations of illegal wiretapping by President Richard Nixon. That wiretapping constituted one of the grounds for the impeachment of President Nixon. Seeing what unchecked presidential wiretapping produced, Congress enacted FISA which requires court approval for all foreign intelligence wiretaps. No president was going to be permitted to conduct wiretaps on his own say so ever again. Nonetheless, President Bush has admitted to ordering repeated wiretapping without the FISA court’s approval. Court approval, the President and his team said, could not accommodate the exigent circumstances in the war against Al Qaeda. Yet, once the Democrats took control of Congress in the November 2006 elections and asked for an explanation of the wiretaps, the Administration announced that it was going to abandon its past practice and obtain court approval for all wiretaps. What was “impossible” was now possible, creating grave questions about the bona fides of the President’s claim that that seeking FISA court approval would hinder intelligence gathering. In any case, no president can be permitted to violate the law or take the law into his own hands, whether in the interests of national security or anything else. Otherwise, we go down the long road to tyranny. The plain language of the constitution mandates that the president obey the law. Moreover, there is a Supreme Court case directly in point, involving President Truman’s effort to seize steel mills to keep them running during the Korean War in the face of a possible strike. The Court told the President hands off. The President, the court noted, was only the commander in chief of the army and navy, not the commander in chief of the country. If President Bush thought FISA was unwieldy or hampered him in his intelligence gathering efforts, he needed to ask Congress to amend the statute or else he had to obey it. He never sought to amend FISA to permit his wiretapping program to go forward. Second, President Bush drove us into the war in Iraq—a war now acknowledged by most Americans to be a disastrous mistake—by lies, deception and exaggerations. This, too, is a great and dangerous offense that subverts the constitution. The framers placed the power to go to war in the hands of the Congress, as well as the president. They did so not only because going to war, the gravest decision a nation can make, should be made only after the most careful and thorough consideration, but also because they believed that Congress would be a brake on the historical tendency of executives to engage in needless war making. But lying, deception and exaggeration subvert the constitution by depriving Congress and the American people of the true facts on which to make a decision to go to war and thwarting their ability play the role the constitution requires of them. As we know now, many of the President’s claims about the reasons for going to war were untrue. In some cases, it is clear that the President personally knew that his claims were untrue. The President falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were in cahoots, thus justifying any attack on Saddam as retaliation for 9/11. The connections were so frequently suggested by the President and his team that by the time of the invasion, most Americans thought Saddam was responsible for 9/11 and US soldiers were saying their presence in Baghdad was “payback” for 9/11. But, the President knew that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. He was personally told this by Richard Clarke, one of the top counterterrorism figures in the US government, right after 9/11. Similarly, the President said in his January 2003 State of the Union address that the British government had found that Saddam was trying to buy uranium in the African country of Niger. This was proof, supposedly, that Saddam was reconstituting his nuclear weapons capacity. But US intelligence knew that the claim was phony and based on forged documents. So, President Bush could not cite US intelligence to make the Saddam/uranium argument in his speech. On the other hand, he was on notice that something was wrong, since as President, he was asking the American people to go to war based on British information. If he had asked what US intelligence had to say about the British claim, then he was simply lying to the American people about the uranium; if he didn’t ask, he was reckless in taking us to war without satisfying himself about what US intelligence had to say on the subject. Full investigation will show exactly what the President knew and when he knew it about the reasons for going to war and the extent to which he deliberately deceived the Congress and the American people. The same holds true for Vice President Cheney whose repeatedly false statements about the war are legion. Third, the President facilitated the mistreatment of detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and US statutes (including the War Crimes Act of 1996) by in effect removing the protections of the Conventions from Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. Further, after abuses at Abu Ghraib became public, the President, in violation of his obligations under the Geneva Conventions and under the constitution to faithfully execute the laws, failed to ensure that thorough investigations were conducted into the highest echelons of the chain of command and that those responsible, including higher ups, were brought to justice. Finally, the President failed to take care that the laws were faithfully executed in connection with his gross disregard for human life that occurred in the wake of Katrina. In a video conference, the President was personally warned that a catastrophe was about to engulf New Orleans and that the impending hurricane could breach the levees. Despite the fact that under the structure of laws governing disaster relief, the president is the only one who can mobilize all government resources, President Bush asked no questions at the briefing as to what preparations had been made and what else could be done by the federal government to help. Instead, he called for prayers and went back to his vacation. When thousands of lives, the future of one of the world’s great cities and billions of dollars of property are at stake, and when the president is given unique powers to act to ameliorate the disaster, President Bush’s failure to lift a finger is not just morally reprehensible, it is a failure to execute his oath of office and a failure to take care that the laws are faithfully executed—it is an impeachable offense. Failure to hold the President accountable for his actions is to condone them and to signal to future Presidents that lying to drive us into wars or refusing to obey the laws of this country are acceptable modes of conduct. But these are not acceptable. We cannot, we dare not turn over to future generations a shriveled and shrunken constitution. Some say impeachment is a distraction from a more important policy agenda. But that argument insults Americans. As important as better health care, education and job creation are, Americans understand that these objectives become possible only in the context of a vibrant democracy. There is nothing more important that we can do to for the achievement of a policy agenda than to make sure that our constitution is intact and the rule of law governs. During the Nixon impeachment effort, it was not the Congress that put impeachment on the table. It was the American people who said enough is enough when President Nixon fired the special prosecutor investigating him. Americans did not want to see the rule of law destroyed; they did not want to see this great country become a banana republic. Congress commenced impeachment proceedings only in response to the firestorm of public anger. That is why passage of the Senate Joint Memorial 1816 by the legislature of the State of Washington is so important. It is a way of telling Congress that the American people all over this great land want to see constitutional sanity restored and the rule of law prevail, which can happen only after full investigations of the actions of the President and Vice President are conducted and they are held accountable, if warranted, under the impeachment provisions of the US constitution. Thank you for your consideration of my views. Not for discussion, only for derision Media and Impeachment By Cynthia L. Cooper Extra! • July / August 2007 Ocean Beach in San Francisco was abuzz with 1,500 people who showed up to spell out a giant "Impeach Now" with their bodies on April 28, all in the home district of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi made a splash prior to the November 2006 election by saying that a Bush impeachment was "off the table" (Washington Post, 5/12/06). Several scandals later—the Libby conviction, fail- ing Iraq "surge," U.S. Attorneys' purge and missing White House e-mails—peo- ple across the nation served up their own impeachment proposals. But "impeach" is barely in the lexicon of major national media; on the rare occa- sion it's deployed, it's generally accompa- nied by derision, dismissal and denial. Commentators expressed shock when Rosie O'Donnell dared to mention impeachment on the View (3/29/07), ask- ing: "What do you have to do to get impeached in this country? What do you have to do?" She might have added: What do you have to do to get impeachment dis- cussed by the news media? O'Donnell is not alone in her interest in impeachment. Thirty-nine percent of people favor impeaching the president, reported columnist and pollster Matt Towery in the conservative Townhall. corn (5/8/07). InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion found only 55 percent in opposi- tion, and the "biggest news"—42 percent of independents favor impeachment. Former Rep. Bob Barr (R.-Ga.) told Townhall that he and other leaders of the Clinton impeachment had never experi- enced polling numbers so favorable. On the weekend of April 28, impeachment rallies raised the issue in 125 loca- tions, including Seattle, Minneapolis, Boston, Honolulu and Memphis. On April 20, the Vermont Senate passed 16-9 a nonbinding resolution supporting impeachment proceedings. On March 1, the Washington State Senate held hearings on SJM 8016, which would be a formal request for an investigation of the sort states are allowed to make under the House of Representatives' impeachment procedures. Scores of towns and cities passed resolutions, which, if nonbinding, demonstrate public hunger. A "red state" mayor, Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City, crisscrossed the country, calling for impeachment. He explained on the Situation Room (CNN, 3/19/07): This president, by engaging in such incredible abuses of power, breaches of trust with both the Congress and the American people, and misleading us into this tragic and unbelievable war, the violation of treaties, other international law, our constitution, our own domestic laws, and then his role in heinous human rights abuses: I think all of that together calls for impeachment. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R. Neb.), a power- ful member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said "there are ways to deal with a president" (ABC's This Week, 3/25/07), and in April's Esquire magazine, he elaborated, "You can impeach him [Bush], and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeach- ment." Equally startling were comments of Rep. John P. Murtha (D. Penn.), a close advisor to Pelosi, who volunteered that impeachment is one of the ways Congress can "influence" a president (CBS's Face the Nation, 4/28/07). Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio) called for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney on April 24. On May 10, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Bush administration Secretary of State Colin Powell, said on National Public Radio that an impeachment inquiry would be a reasonable thing for Congress to do. Yet perusers of mainstream media would be hard-pressed to find discus- sion of any of this—impeachment, it seems, is off the assignment desk. In the New York Times, a reader might have to scour the obituary of Molly Ivins (2/1/07), where Katherine Q. Seelye noted that the columnist had called for Bush's impeachment. The newspaper has not reviewed any of five recently pub- lished books on impeachment of Bush (one co-authored by this writer) or pub- lished a single op-ed. To its credit, the Times published an op-ed (5/3/07) and an editorial (5/12/07) that suggested impeaching U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales following the firing of U.S. attorneys. But when it comes to the White House, Times news coverage seems to fall under a bargain basement 98-words-or-less rule. Ninety-eight words were allotted to a "National Briefing" about Kucinich's res- olution (4/24/07). There was no room to quote Kucinich, but 36 words were devot- ed to Cheney's spokesperson, who said that the V.P. "is focused on the serious issues facing our nation." In other words, impeachment is not serious. The Times managed to eke out anoth- er 98 words in "National Briefing" on the Vermont vote (4/21/07). The paper found 87 words for the hearings in Washington State, featuring Mayor Anderson (3/2/07), and followed up—not with a policy dis- cussion—but a "love 'im/hate 'im" profile of Anderson (3/22/07). It took the Salt Lake Tribune to run "The Time Has Come for an Impeachment Tutorial" by law professor Ed Firmage (4/27/07), breaking down the history, theory, lan- guage and arguments for impeachment. The tone of coverage was set in a December op-ed by history professor David Greenberg (Washington Post, 12/3/06), who argued that Bush wasn't nearly as bad as Nixon. "Something close to a national consensus emerged" about the need to remove Nixon, Greenberg wrote, and "no such consensus exists for a Bush impeachment." But the "consensus" on Nixon came after five months of inquiry by the House Judiciary Committee, complete with sub- poenas, sworn testimony and a staff of 100. When the committee approved three articles of impeachment on July 27-29, 1974, more than one-third of the members held out for Nixon. A full consensus only emerged days later, when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release tapes that contained damning comments by the president, and Nixon resigned. Since there has been no inquiry into the Bush administration, a comparison is not apt. Nonetheless, the public "consen- sus" on Bush places him in close proxim- ity to the low regard the public had for Nixon when he departed. A Harris poll taken April 20-23, 2007 put Bush's approval rating at 28 percent. In August 1974, when Nixon resigned, his approval rating was 24 percent, and at that moment of "consensus," he had a lower disap- proval rating (66 percent) than Bush had in April (70 percent). In the same April poll, Cheney rated only a 25 percent approval rating. Yet when Kucinich announced House Resolution 333, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post (4/25/07) encouraged Kucinich to "contact planet Earth," poking fun at his height ("standing perhaps S Icci 5 inches tall in shoes") and his hair "weighted by Brylcreem"). Milbank gave •iot the slightest attention to the substance of the arguments. The low level of Milbank's discourse was betrayed a week later by fellow :olumnist Richard Cohen (Washington -*ost, 5/2/07). "The congressman's case is persuasive," wrote Cohen. While dis- agreeing on the need for impeachment, Cohen provided solid information about potential high crimes and misdemeanors , and quoted Kucinich's charge that. Creney "purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress." No one who reads the docu- ments, Cohen wrote, "can fail to conclude that this is a rational serious accusation." No one ever accused cable television pundits of reading documents. Fox's Sean Hannity, interviewing Kucinich (Hannity & Colmes, 3/22/07), charged that impeachment advocates were damag- ing the country, a repeated theme among Fox pundits. "Don't you see that as reck- less, when our country is at war?" Hannity demanded. In a show about Vermont towns that passed impeachment resolutions (O'Reilly Factor, 1/30/07), Fox's Bill O'Reilly did- n't bother with an opposing view; he booked a politician, Rep. Charles Rangel (D.-N.Y.), who said he doesn't agree with impeachment. O'Reilly rifled the the- saurus for derogatory terms, calling impeachment "loony," "nonsense," "nutty stuff," "foolish" "misguided," "insane," "fringe," "off the chart," without "a shred of evidence," "irresponsible" and, in the pundit mantra, "undermining a sitting president who's in the middle of the war." When Rangel insisted on a right of free expression, O'Reilly turned impeachment talk into a terror threat: "It hurts every one of us because we're diverting attention "way from the real problem . . . Islamic terrorists." CNN (Situation Room, 4/24/07) at least allowed an impeachment proponent to say a few words. Although Kucinich was introduced as a "presidential wannabe," Wolf Blitzer let him outline his case. But Blitzer could not stop himself from resorting to the Fox playbook:, "What about the argument, congressman, :hat this is during a time of war, and that's not a time to go after impeaching a sitting vice president?" Kucinich responded that a conflict was underway during the Nixon years, too, and the deceptions leading to war were key to his resolution. Three weeks earlier on Situation Room (3/2607), reporter Carol Costello concluded a Reality Check segment by saying, "The only way President Bush can be impeached is if he violates the law." Untrue, according to constitutional schol- ars, who note that abuse of power and sub- version of the constitution are clearly impeachable offenses. Even so, Costello neglected to. mention that impeachment proponents argue that Bush has admitted violating federal laws on domestic surveil- lance (FAIR Action Alert, 3/30/07). At a time when people need coherent, informative and probing discussions of presidential misconduct and constitutional standards, the major media are simply missing the mark on impeachment. • Cynthia L. Cooper, a former practicing lawyer, is an independent journalist in New York and co-author, with Elizabeth Holtzman, of The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens (Nation Books, 2006).