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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 8/3/08

Bush Appointee Bates: Meirs Must Testify, Sets Up Constitutional Crisis

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With Judge Bates ruling against immunity for Harriet Meirs, and ruling that "executive privilege" claims are invalid against orders to produce certain documents, it is clear that congress has no business going into recess in the middle of a constitutional crisis. They have just been handed a major victory, by a Bush appointee, no less. Republicans of integrity are emerging from the shadows, most dramatically with the nine who broke with the party to vote for having the hearings which took place on July 25. Judge Bates said: Even if you're my friend, George, you still have to, um, obey the law.

The next order of business is to prevail upon congress to cancel its summer recess, to complete the unfinished business of restoring the Republic over the New Executive Branch Monarchy, through impeachment. The most common argument by the well-meaning American for why impeachment is a "waste of time" is that they will be out soon. This is like saying, while a gang is robbing a bank and down to carting away the furniture, they'll be done soon.

You don't wait until they're done. You intervene.

The damage to the Constitution and the rule of law cannot be allowed to stand, as the partisans in any party which holds a majority in the future will be able to say, "well Bush did it." Start a disastrous war based on lies? Well Bush did it. Trample the rights of even born-and-bred American citizens? Well Bush did it. Torture prisoners of war who later turned out to be innocent,
caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? Well Bush did it. All because Americans have forgotten who they are and have begun acting like sheep every time Bush plays the Fear Button. Our forefathers on the nation's battlefields of generations past would disown us, to see how soft and cowardly 60 years of prosperity have made us.

The only warning we needed that these people were out of control was when Bush declared the radical doctrine of wartime powers which over-ruled the Fourth (search and seizure) and Sixth (jury trial) Amendments of the Constitution, forever. He took powers which existed in previous wars then applied them to "a new kind of war," meaning: The permanent kind. The power to throw someone in a dungeon to rot or to ransack his home, without a warrant, are the powers of a monarch. And in America, we don't do monarchs.

If congress does not cancel summer recess, referred to in the official calendar as their "District Work Period," we must be clear that we will be camped on their front lawns with signs. They will come out and talk to us and explain why they aren't in Washington doing their jobs. There will be no fiddling while Rome burns.

Contact your own congressman

Phone numbers for House Judiciary Committee (has outstanding subpoena to Harriet Meirs, has held one impeachment hearing).

What Price Freedom, and the Way of Life We Have Enjoyed? Of the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence:

-Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.

-Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.

-Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured.

-Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.

-Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.

-Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him.

-Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.

-Legend has it when Thomas Nelson Jr was told the British General Cornwallis had taken over his home for British headquarters, he replied, "Blow the damn thing down." Nelson's house is still standing at Yorktown and there are cannonballs embedded in its east wall.

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Ralph Lopez majored in Economics and Political Science at Yale University. He writes for Truth Out, Alternet, Consortium News, Op-Ed News, and other Internet media. He reported from Afghanistan in 2009 and produced a short documentary film on (more...)
 

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