Far more important is forcing the floor vote (ROLL CALL!) on the Contempt of Congress citation of Karl Rove. IF that SOB can be forced to testify under penalty for Perjury if he lies, (which he will!) using the "Steal back your vote" website as information source, and IF the Committee hearing can be televised (C-SPAN will probably do it if alerted; I guarantee no other media outlet will!) MAYBE you can find out EXACTLY how the Republicans plan to steal their third election in a row. What you can DO about it is problematical; the truth will not necessarily set you free; you have to operate on its basis, and everyone who hasn't been asleep for several years KNOWS exactly what the Rover boys plan to do; (Problem is that I hear a vast snore from the great unwashed electorate.) BUT - if Rove is NOT forced to testify, or IF the coming election theft is not publicized, we're doomed to another Bu$h - like term, and the organized crime Syndicate gets even more influence on our government, thanks to the fact that they own McCain.

Sorry you had to suffer the consequence of believing in John Conyers!
He did say the Constitution is in crises!
What he meant was, FUCK ALL OF YOU SUCKERS!
He collected 500,000 + signatures and handed that list over to Homeland security!

As you may have seen here ,people are being arrested "PRE-EMTEVLY.
How NAZI-ESQUE
Yes Alan, America has become her own worst enemy!
Good to see you are still FREE!

There's a BBQ and tire swings to be interested and distracted by...

Was it the Greens that stole the Florida Election of 2000? I had no clue that the Greens were the cause of all our problems. Was Catherine Harris a member of the Green Party?

Maybe if we had only ONE Party to vote for, this Democracy wouldn't have a damn thing to complain about... NO? Funny, that in a "DEMOCRACY" the scapegoat of failure is chastising the free exorcise of one's personal vote. Funny indeed.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we should be glad that at least this Government of ours lets us pretend we still live in a Democracy. I mean, we still can vote... NO? It's just how and who counts those votes and why John Conyers hasn't done a damn thing to ensure that another election wouldn't be stolen...

Oops. Then we had 2006...
... Oh well, there's always 2008... YES?

Dear John Conyers,
Even the Captain of the Titanic had to wake the fuck up and admit his ship was sunk!

BULLSHIT on those few that voted thier conscience.
What are you doing demonizing the Green Party for the crooked shit that went down?
How in the hell can you whine about the left not being recognized,and then bitch about them in one breath.
Meanwhile EVERYONE knows what went down in both elections,Vote theft ect.ect.ect.
If you are ,at this late stage still looking for the guilty parties,you need to take off your "Hate Blinders"and read some of your own postings!
I'm sure Mark that you know the old saying,If you are not part of the solution ,you are part of the problem. Remember it was the greens that brought the suit about the recount.

The Bush Administration Is an Ongoing Criminal Conspiracy Under International Law and U.S. Domestic Law
by Prof. Francis A. Boyle

Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference:
Planning for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals
Massachusetts Law School
September 13-14, 2008
Andover, Massachusetts

Since the impeachable installation of George W. Bush as President in January of 2001 by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Gang of Five, the peoples of the world have witnessed a government in the United States that has demonstrated little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, human rights, and the United States Constitution.

What the world has watched instead is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic legal orders by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian and Straussian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs. Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the Bush administration’s foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare (1956), all of which apply to President Bush himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.

Depending upon the substantive issues involved, those international crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offenses of crimes against peace: For example, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and perhaps their longstanding threatened wars of aggression against Iran and now Pakistan. Their criminal responsibility also concerns Nuremberg crimes against humanity and war crimes as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and of the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare: For example, torture at Guantanamo, Bhagram, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere; enforced disappearances, assassinations, murders, kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, “shock and awe,” depleted uranium, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, Fallujah, and the Gitmo kangaroo courts.

Furthermore, various members of the Bush administration have committed numerous inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offences that under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as paragraph 500 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 are international crimes in their own right: planning and preparation—which they are currently doing today against Iran and Pakistan—solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting.

Finally, according to basic principles of international criminal law set forth in paragraph 501 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, all high level civilian officials and military officers in the U.S. government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their control (such as the C.I.A. or private contractors), committed or were about to commit international crimes and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of international crimes.

At the very top of America’s criminal chain-of-command are President Bush and Vice-President Cheney; former U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld; Rumsfeld’s Deputy Paul Wolfowitz; Secretary of State Rice; former Director of National Intelligence Negroponte; National Security Advisor Hadley; his Deputy Elliot Abrams; former U.S. Attorneys General Ashcroft and Gonzales, criminally responsible for the torture campaign launched by the Bush Jr. administration; and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staffs along with the appropriate Regional Commanders-in-Chief, especially for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

These U.S. government officials and their immediate subordinates are responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10. Today in international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law and U.S. domestic law because of its formulation and undertaking of serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany.

Of course the terrible irony of today’s situation is that six decades ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government participated in the prosecution, punishment and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous international crimes that the members of the Bush administration currently inflict upon people all over the world. To be sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any human being for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes, whether they be Bush Jr., Tony Blair, or Saddam Hussein.

As a consequence, American citizens possess the basic right under international law and United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by Bush administration officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism. Today’s civil resisters are the sheriffs! The Bush administration officials are the outlaws!

We American citizens must reaffirm our commitment to the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles by holding our government officials fully accountable under international law and U.S. domestic law for the commission of such grievous international and domestic crimes. We must not permit any aspect of our foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged “war criminals” according to the U.S. government’s own official definitions of that term as set forth in the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Four Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations. The American people must insist upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment, conviction, and long-term incarceration of all U.S. government officials guilty of such heinous international and domestic crimes. If not so restrained, the Bush administration could very well precipitate a Third World War.

In this regard, during the course of an October 17, 2007 press conference, President Bush Jr. terrorized the entire world with the threat of World War III if he could not work his illegal will upon Iran. It is my opinion that the Bush administration is fully prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons against Muslim and Arab states and peoples in order to break the taboo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001 the United States of America has vilified and demonized Muslims and Arabs almost to the same extent that America inflicted upon the Japanese and Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. As the Nazis had previously demonstrated with respect to the Jews, a government must first dehumanize and scapegoat a race of people before its citizens will tolerate if not approve their elimination: witness Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In post -9/11 America we are directly confronted with the prospect of a nuclear war of extermination conducted by our White Racist Judeo-Christian Power Elite against Peoples of Color in the Muslim and Arab worlds in order to steal their oil and gas. The Crusades all over again. But this time nuclear Armageddon stares all of humankind right in the face!

We American lawyers must be inspired by the stunning example set by those heroic Pakistani lawyers who led the successful struggle against the brutal Bush-supported Musharraf military dictatorship in Pakistan. We American lawyers must now lead the fight against the Bush dictatorship and empire! This is our Nuremberg Moment!

Thank you.

Francis A. Boyle is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Attempted Statutory Immunity For The Executive's War Crimes.
September 4, 2008

By now it seems beyond serious doubt that George Bush and company committed numerous war crimes. There has now been book after book detailing their actions; some of the books are legal in character, even when directed at a much broader audience than lawyers, while others are not legal in nature (e.g., Charlie Savage’s and Jane Mayer’s). The question now, in reality, is not whether crimes have been committed. It is, rather, what if anything to do about them. Suggestions range from doing nothing, to a truth and reconciliation commission, to Congressional hearings (ala the Church committee), to criminal trials before state, federal, foreign or international courts, to civil suits for damages brought by injured persons (e.g., innocent persons -- some of whom are Americans) who were detained for months or years and/or physically abused or tortured.

I shall deal here only with certain matters relevant to criminal trials in American courts and possibly relevant, to some extent, to civil trials for damages in domestic courts.

Based on fairly extensive readings from about 2002-2003 until today, it seems pretty clear that people who were responsible for or committed torture were well aware from the get - go that what they were doing constituted crimes. That realization is why CIA officials, from 2002 to 2006 or 2007 demanded memoranda, from the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice, falsely claiming that the abuse and torture were not criminal acts. The officials wanted these OLC memos so that they could later avoid or defeat prosecutions by claiming that the decisionmaking office of the DOJ had approved the legality of what they were doing. The officials wanted a “golden shield,” a “get out of jail free card.”

As well, knowledge that the acts and Justice Department memoranda supporting them would be strongly opposed if they came to light were among the crucial reasons the acts and supporting memos were kept secret for years. The opposition, it was well understood, would be based both on American concepts of morality and the fact that the acts were violations of both international criminal law and domestic criminal law. It was understood by perpetrators and legal enablers of torture that many lawyers in the Executive Branch and the military would be among the strong opponents of what was being done -- lawyers such as the generals and admirals who were the military JAGs, certain armed forces General Counsels, State Department lawyers, and DOJ lawyers. Thus these lawyers were kept out of the loop to the maximum extent possible. Information was kept on “a close hold” or “a very close hold,” information was confined to as few people as possible, so that there would be no knowledge, or as little knowledge as possible, on the part of those who would object to the criminal acts. The perpetrators and enablers feared the objectors would say the acts were criminal, would say so internally if not externally and, in some cases (e.g., if opponents were legislators), might publicly denounce and condemn the actions as criminal.

It is, frankly, impossible to overestimate the crucial importance of, and concern for, secrecy to hide the criminal acts. It was well understood that what was being done could not be done if there were widespread knowledge of it. While the Executive likes to claim that secrecy was essential lest terrorists learn what was being done and prepare themselves for it -- the type of claim that in the last few years has been made to cover many Executive misdeeds -- it is at least equally if not more true that secrecy was employed because of knowledge that torture and abuse would have to end - - because they would be seen as both immoral and criminal -- when and if they and their supporting DOJ memos became widely known.

...

... there is also a broader point, one that, at least morally speaking, and perhaps legally speaking too, is far more important. It goes something like this: Can a person, knowing that acts are unlawful, engage in those acts and then obtain immunity by exercising power over the legislative process and by finding lawyers who are willing to write the most incompetent and atrocious legal opinions designed to give the guilty a get out of jail free card?

It is evident that if these things can be done, then there is an end of law where the truly wealthy and powerful are concerned. Whether it is Al Capone or Dick Cheney, the filthy rich or obscenely powerful will have it in their power to do the most awful things yet escape the law by using contributions or power to obtain immunity from preexisting law and to buy the opinions of immoral lawyers. That is the moral and philosophical basis why these things can’t be permitted. What the precise legal rationale would be is something I’m not sure of, is something on which research must be done. Perhaps there is some constitutional argument about perverting the legislative process -- which, however, is often perverted -- or some so-called “equitable” doctrine, or some (long forgotten?) doctrine of criminal law, which bars this kind of societal distortion. Or perhaps there is some theory which sets aside immunity if the provision granting it is the product of what in effect is a criminal enterprise. I myself am not sure of what the legal grounds would be, but I do feel that the immunity here is impermissible, and that a legal methodology must be found to render it impermissible, if we are to have a country of laws.

The issue of acting on advice of counsel raises additional questions. It is widely thought that there are perhaps six to ten lawyers who are guilty of crimes because they facilitated, they enabled, the criminal conduct perpetrated by torturers. The names Yoo, Addington, Haynes, Gonzalez, Flanigan, Bradbury, Bybee are among those that leap to mind. These people cannot claim advice of counsel; they were the counsel who were doing the advising and were drafting get out of jail free cards for others. They also knew that what they were advising was illegal, which was one of the main reasons they kept everything a close hold and insured secrecy so that Executive lawyers and officials who would object to their advice as immoral and unlawful would not learn what they were doing.

Guys like Cheney and Bush shouldn’t be able to plead good faith reliance on the advice of counsel either, because they told the counsel what advice to give. Could Al Capone or Lucky Luciano receive immunity for acting in accordance with the advice of counsel when they told counsel what to advise? Not to mention that, rather than acting in good faith reliance on the advice of counsel, Cheney and Bush knew that they were ordering violations of law. The fact that they were doing so, and were well aware they were doing so, was one of the reasons why they, like a significant number of CIA officials who knew the same, demanded that lawyers produce legal cover for them in the form of OLC memos authored by the likes of Yoo and Bradbury.

Then there is the situation of the lower level CIA and military people -- persons in the chain of command and/or who committed the torture and the renditions for torture. These people did not read the Yooian type memos -- actually a lot of involved higher level people didn’t either -- so they cannot claim direct reliance on advice of counsel. But, high level or low, no doubt they were told that torture was approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, these people too cannot claim good faith reliance on the advice of counsel. For they had to know that torture was forbidden no matter what some lawyers said. You could not grow up in America and not know this. (Would someone be allowed to successfully claim to have thought murder was lawful because some lawyer told him so?) People who grew up in America cannot realistically claim that they thought it was lawful to beat people mercilessly, to smash their heads against walls, to kill about one hundred of them apparently, to hang them from ceiling hooks, to make them freeze, to deny them sleep for weeks on end, and so forth. I don’t care what they were told lawyers supposedly had said. They knew what they were doing was wrong. FBI and NCIS guys on the scene knew it regardless of what lawyers like Yoo said, and it was knowledge that what they were doing was wrong that caused some lower level CIA guys too to want a get out of jail free card.

Beyond all this, the claim of good faith reliance on counsel, like the cognate claim of being tasked or ordered to torture, kidnap or rend, and like the immunity provisions themselves, simply are an effort to escape the Nuremberg principles by saying that others said what the culprits were doing was okay. Nuremberg established the principle that there are things that simply can’t be done, a principle later furthered in other treaties, conventions and cases. Nuremberg also established that one cannot rely on the defense that one is merely doing what others said to do. But claiming that their actions were immune because others okayed them is precisely what Cheney, Bush, their whole crowd, and even McCain have been attempting to do. They have been and are seeking to do forbidden acts and then to escape punishment by retroactive immunity, including immunity based on the so-called advice of counsel. They knew what they were doing was illegal, as evidenced by the extreme secrecy they practiced lest it be learned they were practicing, and lest they be accused of practicing, the crimes they were in fact practicing. Morality, decency, and Nuremberg alike forbid this.

* * * * *

There is another question, one analogous to immunity, which has also arisen. What if Bush, it is asked, before leaving office, were to pardon himself and all others involved in the crimes at issue? The theory widely accepted is that the pardon power is absolute, so the President can pardon himself and anyone else for all crimes. Some people feel the President cannot grant himself a pardon, precisely because he grants pardons - - the theory here being, I presume (but don’t actually know), that you can only grant something to someone else, not yourself. (This is purely semantic and not very persuasive, I would think.)

The idea that a President has an absolute, unfettered ability to grant pardons does not strike me as persuasive. Could a President order the mass murder of 5000 people and then allow the perpetrators and he himself to escape all punishment by pardoning them and himself? The idea is preposterous and would mark the end of a government of laws. Were such a pardon permissible, the law is at an end and we might as well all move to Canada -- or, as I believe Lincoln said, to Russia, where they take their tyranny straight, without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

So there must be some limits to the pardoning power. No doubt they are inherent in the history of the original creation of the power (perhaps in England?), a history I know nothing of and have never seen reference to. We need research on the subject. Perhaps the research will show that there cannot be a pardon for the President’s own criminal acts or for other persons who helped him carry out his criminal acts. Perhaps it will show other limits. But it is not really possible that the pardoning power lets a President commit whatever crimes he chooses, no matter how heinous and obviously unlawful, and then pardon himself as well as all others who helped him carry out atrocious illegal acts like killing hundreds or thousands of people. A claim of such unfettered power defies common sense*

*This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel.

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Holding murderers accountable: The case against Bush, Cheney et al.
By William John Cox
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Sep 3, 2008

Although Americans have access to the greatest selection of information sources in the world, including books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cable, and the Internet, the frequency of the news cycle has increased to the point where we have forgotten that our president and vice president have committed horrendous war crimes, or we may have missed the fact as it flashed by.

Most of us may have been fleetingly aware in 2006 that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were lying to us about their reasons for the Iraq War, which caused the murder and maiming of tens of thousands of our American troops and the waste of billions of our tax dollars. We elected a majority of Democrats to Congress to hold them accountable; however, the Democratic leadership immediately announced that impeachment was off the table and it has been business as usual ever since.

Recently, there has been a flood of new evidence clearly proving beyond any reasonable doubt that our president and vice president, along with others, conspired to engage the United States in an unnecessary and illegal war and repeatedly and deliberately lied to the American people about the true facts of the matter. Most specifically, the president committed felonies when he lied to Congress about his justification for ordering the attack on Iraq which resulted in the murder of all who have died in his fraudulent “War on Terrorism.”

As governor of Texas, Bush executed 152 people, including Karla Faye Tucker, a born-again Christian, whose plea for clemency caused Bush to purse his lips in a false smirk of desperation and to whimper, “Please don’t kill me.” Under the “Felony Murder Rule,” known in Texas as the “Law of the Parties,” if a person commits a felony and someone dies during the course of the felony, all parties to the felony are guilty of murder irrespective of which one actually does the killing.

There is strict liability under the rule, even if the death is accidental or unintended. Almost 20 percent of all murder prosecutions result from the rule, and a significant number of Bush’s 152 executions involved criminals who had engaged in felonies where the actual killing was done by others.

Not only has the president escaped all accountability for the serial murders he committed during his phony “War on Terrorism,” he recently asked Congress to further aid and abet his crimes by acknowledging “again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”

We now know to a high degree of certainty who the slaughterers are. The only remaining question is whether the murderers will escape justice.
(continued)

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I'm surmising, that in an effort not to appear "too left," Obama continues to become more centrist and, in reality, that is what is hurting him right now, I think. His stand in relation to FISA, Afghanistan are not gaining him popularity -- he is supposed to be an agent of change and these and other such issues, do not represent change.

I'm going to call their offices, as well as my own Congressman Jackson's offices and makes some suggestions.

As to the McCain convention and speeches, although I didn't listen to it all (couldn't), what did you come away with? I came away with having listened to the same rhetoric as in the past eight years, attacks on Obama and absolutely nothing about the welfare of our soldiers, the American people, our bankruptcy -- nada, zilch!

Obama, on the other hand, spoke hard and strong on all of the issues above with some plans to righten so much that is wrong.

What is it that people don't get?

"There is nothing to fear but fear itself."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Hey Democrats are you listening?

We voted for you in 2006 because you promised accountability, an end to the war, and restoration of the Constitution. You've failed to deliver any of the above.

You have done little to Nothing to make sure that voters would not be disenfranchised, or that our votes would actually be counted as we cast them.

So, if you don't win in November, don't blame us--you've only to check the mirror to see who's to blame for rolling over and letting the republicans control the message, control the voting booths, and control: You. You're the ones to blame for caving in & for failing to fight back. Isn't anything worth fighting for?

This video should be played prime time daily!
HIS SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM SHOULD BE MADE MANDITORY FOR EVERY VOTING MASCHINE CO.

The Republican vote theft gang has thought up a new one. They are "Carefully watching" FORECLOSURES, in order to make certain that NO VOTES are cast from premises on which foreclosure action has been taken. IN OTHER WORDS, anyone who has been victimized by a predatory lender, is now not only HOMELESS, but he/she is also DISENFRANCHISED! (P.S. Yes, probably a registered Democrat - and Black, to boot.)

A team of scientists at UCSB has demonstrated that Sequoia machines are so vulnerable that they can be infected with a virus in seconds that flips votes, not only on the 'treated' machine, but on nearby ones as well - untraceably, so that the "Voter verified Paper Trail" is totally defeated. Can't we make voting machines, AS A CLASS, ABSOLUTELY ILLEGAL IN FEDERAL ELECTIONS? The Rovians are counting on them to steal the election for the Republicans - probably in Congress as well as at the top of the ticket.