Tag: prosecutions

Whew.  Can't believe I just wrote that headline. 

 For all this time, we have been told to keep our powder dry.  That he's on our side, got our best interests at heart.   For all this time, the focus and outrage has been directed to Bush/Cheney. There is plenty of evidence he's doing the bidding of the military industrial complex, and not the bidding of his constituents. 

Obama has been in office for just over 4 months.   In that time, he has had the time to:

1) Extend warrantless wiretapping, and even extend his claim to that power

2) Defend government secrecy – even exceeding Bush's claims of executive power.

3)  Publish evidence of Bush era war crimes

4) Declare theintention not to prosecute said war crimes

5) Close, then not close GTMO

-calling the detainees 'too dangerous to let go'

6) Reinstall military commissions for 'dangerous terrorists we CAn prosecute'

 7) Continue unabated the TARP program, while doing little to save people's homes from foreclosure.

8) Bail out giant carmakers without requiring the money be used to support jobs at home.

9) Kept key Bushies like Gates on – keeping the previous military structure in place so propaganda can leak out just like before. 

10) Asserted the intent to keep Don Seigelman in jail.

How on earth does this look different, other than the party label, than the last 8 years? 

* <sup>(budhydharma)

         (TM)</sup>

Shoulda’ happened yesterday already!

Cong. Tammy Baldwin has introduced a bill “Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2009” (H.Res. 417), “calling on President Obama to reverse the damaging and illegal actions taken by the Bush/Cheney Administration and to collaborate with Congress to proactively prevent any further abuses of executive branch power.”   h/t David Swanson

Here are the key points of the bill:

“Over the past several years, serious questions have been raised about the conduct of high ranking Bush/Cheney Administration officials in relation to some of the most basic elements of our democracy: respect for the rule of law, the principle of checks and balances, and the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights,” said Baldwin. “We must restore Americans’ faith that in a democracy, we follow the rule of law and that nobody – even the President and Vice President of the United States – is above the law,” Baldwin said.

“President Obama has already begun the work of reaffirming American values of justice and freedom. I commend him for his orders to close the detention facility at Guantanamo and prohibit illegal and immoral interrogation techniques. President Obama’s efforts to renew America must also include restoring executive branch accountability. We had an administration that spied on Americans, outed a covert intelligence agent, suspended habeas corpus, held people without charges and without access to counsel, and used torture and rendition. This measure lists steps President Obama can take to proactively prevent any further abuses of executive branch power and restore the public’s faith in our government,” Baldwin said.

The Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2009 calls on President Obama to:

* Affirm our nation’s commitment to uphold the Constitution;

* Fully investigate Bush/Cheney administration officials’ alleged crimes and hold them accountable for any illegal acts;

* Hold accountable Bush/Cheney Administration officials who showed or show contempt for the legal duty to comply with Congressional subpoenas; disclosed the identity of any covert intelligence agent; pursued politically-motivated prosecutions;

* Ensure that any Bush/Cheney administration official guilty of a war crime is prosecuted under the War Crimes Act and the Anti-Torture Act;

* Affirm that it is the sole legal right of Congress to declare war;

* Criminalize lying to Congress and the American public about the reasons for going to war;

* Restore the writ of habeas corpus as an essential principle of our democracy;

* Ensure that torture and rendition are uniformly prohibited under United States law;

* Responsibly close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp;

* Ensure that Americans can bring claims against their government;

* Immediately take affirmative steps to protect all Bush/Cheney Administration documents;

* Publicly review potential abuses of the presidential pardon process; and

* Further reform the use of presidential signing statements.

A copy of the Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2009 as introduced can be found in this PDF.

Congresswoman Baldwin explains why she feels this bill is necessary:

Sam Stein weighs in on Obama’s pre-approved, bipartisan-tested, generic excuse for not enforcing the law against BushCo criminals . . .

Asked for the first time to respond to the likelihood that Spanish prosecutors will target officials in the Bush administration for sanctioning torture at Guantanamo Bay, Barack Obama stressed, once again, that he prefers to look forward, not backward.  “I’m a strong believer that it’s important to look forward and not backwards, and to remind ourselves that we do have very real security threats out there,” said Obama.

I think it’s important to remind ourselves, Mr. President, that war criminals are still running around loose all over Washington D.C.  Their smug faces can still be seen on national television, they’re writing op-eds in the fucking Wall Street Journal, they’re getting million dollar book deals and are still wined and dined at Georgetown cocktail parties, while the victims of their war crimes can’t look forward to anything ever again because they’re dead, or are still in Gitmo, or have been shattered physically and psychologically by American torturers acting upon the orders of an American president and vice president, who paid American lawyers to tell them it was legal to violate the law, the Constitution, and the Geneva Conventions.

“Legal cover”, bought and paid for . . .

with 30 pieces of silver.

You want to focus on the very real threats “out there”, Mr. President?   I’m just a nobody who worked his ass off to help get you elected, but I think you need to focus on the very real threats to the Constitution and American democracy that are staring us all in the face right here in the United States.  Those very real threats are not “out there” in Afghanistan or Pakistan, they’re right here in America, entrenched in the CIA, the NSA and the Pentagon, they’re in those Wall Street banks you keep bailing out, they’re in the leadership and rank and file of that mindless cult of subversion, racism, and corporate fraud that used to be the Republican Party.