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Stonewalling to the bitter end!

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Message winston smith

Back on March 17, 2007, at
click here
the topic "How many impeachable offenses has W committed?" had a subject "These aren't isolated incidents of W's minions running amok," which stated "These are the results of W's proclaiming unitary executive privileges, which is the underpinning of all of his crimes, and includes those committed by his subordinates at our Justice, Legislative, and Executives branches and those in the US 4th estate!

As the above noted site indicates during the week of March 18th 2007 we were being slapped in the face by the FBI secretly obtaining information on US citizens via national security letters, the White House being involved in firing US Attorneys, the US military destroying evidence of their misdoings in Afghanistan, and Maliki, W's hand-picked stooge, changing his government, and missing deadlines Bush vowed that Maliki would keep. What do these seemingly disparate events have in common? They could occur only in a dictatorship--not a democracy. That is what W is attempting to accomplish--without announcing it to our great, but dozing, common people!"

What are the headlines just today? They are just an outgrowth of the earlier items. Due to our 4th estates' apathy, as well as the ignorance and indifference of our red staters, these crimes have been allowed to recede from our collective consciousness.

The Attorney General's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 24, 2007 raised a lot more troubling questions than it answered - not just about his own conduct of and honesty about the U.S. attorney firings, but also about the Administration's domestic intelligence gathering programs.

Senator Specter is the ranking Republican on Senate Judiciary Committee and he savaged Gonzales regarding the NSA domestic surveillance program.

Gonzales tried to get the then Attorney General, Ashcroft, who had, due to illness, temporarily handed over his position to Deputy Attorney General James Comey. Gonzales tried to get Ashcroft to approve of the program. Specter asked Gonzales how he could coerce Ashcroft to approve of the program as Ashcroft had relinquished his powers.

Gonzales continued lying and Specter bellowed that Ashcroft was sedated.

That didn't stop Gonzales who tried to say that many chief executives in the US government approved of the warrantless domestic spying program, but everyone knows that that the deep doubts about the program's legality and oversight almost led to the resignations of Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and others.

Specter warned Gonzales "My suggestion to you is you review your testimony to find out if your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable."

When Specter asked Gonzales whether the President has the right to prohibit the Department of Justice from pursuing Congressional charges of contempt against former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten - the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow is expected to issue two contempt citations for their refusal, citing executive privilege, to comply with subpoenas to testify - Gonzales had a short lawyerly response. "I am recused of speaking on that matter due to the ongoing investigation," he said.

This is the hugest reach of W's sinking ship. The Chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee Senator Leahy attempted to get Gonzales' opinion as whether big bro 43's claim of executive privilege in this matter was unconstitutional. Gonzales wouldn't answer.

The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted in a 22-17 party-line vote to recommend that the House seek contempt charges against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers for refusing to comply with subpoenas that require information about the federal prosecutors' dismissals. Should the House approve the contempt citations, the matter would be sent to the US attorney for the District of Colombia to pursue grand jury indictments.

W's claim that his executive privilege precludes Congress from ordering his Justice Department to prosecute contempt charges against these 2 loyal flunkies.

This ploy by big bro 43 is reminiscent to "Tricky Dick" and his belief in the "unitary executive" powers.

It is all b.s. as the article "Bush's 'executive poppycock'" at
click here
makes clear as "Richard Nixon once famously declared that "the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive power is not subject to questioning by another branch of government."

In 1974, when Nixon tried to keep secret the Watergate tapes from a federal grand jury under a blanket absolute "executive privilege" claim, the Supreme Court answered Nixon's arrogance in this way: "Neither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances ... Absent a claim of need to protect military, diplomatic or sensitive national security secrets ... the very important interest in confidentiality of Presidential communications is significantly diminished (by in camera court production) with all the protection that a district court will be obliged to provide."

Who was famous for his "unitary executive" stance? No one other than heartless, reckless, feckless, dickless-yes the impotent one, Cheney! The lies about "unitary executive powers" didn't work during the Reagan administration and since the US Constitution hasn't changed in the interim, they won't work now either!

Cheney has been in the corridors of power, or directly outside of the main loop--for so long, that he has uttered enough venom that some of it was inadvertently bound to stick on the propagandist extraordinaire, "dicky boy", mentor of the "bubble boy". Cheney is on the record about this.

The Boston Globe article "Cheney aide is screening legislation" at
click here
details this as "Cheney also offered a roadmap to his thinking about presidential power. He told reporters to read a 1987 report whose production he oversaw when he was a leading Republican in the House of Representatives. The report offered a dissenting view about the Iran-Contra scandal.

"If you want reference to an obscure text, go look at the minority views that were filed with the Iran-Contra Committee," Cheney said. "Nobody has ever read them, but . . . I think [they] are very good in laying out a robust view of the president's prerogatives with respect to the conduct of especially foreign policy and national security matters."

Now the "oval office cabal" has picked up the "disdain for the law" that the Reagan era "cabal of zealots" possessed. Of course Cheney was in the center of it then, and now, and 43 is his willing pupil.

"But some of the Republicans on the committee, led by Cheney, refused to endorse that finding. They issued their own 155-page report asserting the real problem was Congress passing laws that intruded into a president's authority to run foreign policy and national security. "Judgments about the Iran-Contra affair ultimately must rest upon one's views about the proper roles of Congress and the president in foreign policy," Cheney's report said....

Cheney's report includes a lengthy argument that the Constitution puts the president beyond the reach of Congress when it comes to national security. Some 18 years later, the Justice Department would repeat these same arguments in a 42-page memo arguing that Bush's warrantless wiretapping program is a lawful exercise of presidential power."

One of the major crimes that Gonzales was grilled on by the Senate Judiciary Committee was NSA's warrantless wiretapping program and Cheney was behind it.

What happens? Eventually, this might take us past the end of W's evil empire. If it doesn't he has stacked the US Supreme Court with his poppy 41's minions, including Judge Alito.

... The Constitution "makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that," Judge Alito said in a speech to the Federalist Society at Washington's Mayflower Hotel. "The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power -- the whole thing."

Judge Alito was describing the theory of the "unitary executive," an expansive view of presidential powers that he and his colleagues set forth while working in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Reagan Justice Department. Although the Supreme Court has not always agreed, he said in his speech, "I thought then, and I still think, that this theory best captures the meaning of the Constitution's text and structure."

President Bush has repeatedly invoked this theory as he asserts broad presidential powers to fight the war on terror. Now the president's approach to executive power -- including his authorization of a domestic surveillance program -- is drawing criticism in Congress. Disputes over some White House policies may ultimately be resolved by federal courts. The record of Judge Alito, who is Mr. Bush's latest nominee to the Supreme Court, suggests he could support the president's viewpoint. ...

Will this have legs? We have seen the apathetic manner in which the 4th estate has attacked big bro 43. there are isolated pockets who attack W and pursue the truth, such as a few editorialists in the Washington Post and New York Times, but the latter, "all the news that is fit to print", had Judith Miller acting as a secretary to put into the public's mind Chalabi's lies. The 4th estate isn't doing enough searching for the truth!

Unbelievably there are still pockets of propaganda that try to peddle lies as truth as The July 8th, 2007 article "Grand delusion" at

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/233562

notes as "Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece in which it respectfully asked Ahmed Chalabi's views on the effectiveness of the U.S. "surge" of troops into Iraq that began earlier this year. The interview with Chalabi was prominently flagged on the front page with a portrait of the man Donald Rumsfeld and fellow neocons once hoped would become president of a U.S.-friendly Iraq."

Why is there even one source quoting this thug as last as July 8th? "Alone among major Western media outlets, the Wall Street Journal clings to the belief that Chalabi retains a shred of credibility."

If Murdoch has his way more than one source will peddle GOP hypocrisy as news "As Rupert Murdoch and the Bancroft family, which has controlled Journal parent Dow Jones & Co. since 1902, inch toward agreement on a $5 billion (U.S.) purchase of Dow Jones by Murdoch's News Corp. empire, it's telling that there has been no outcry about the fate of a publication that media insiders still routinely describe as one of the most influential in the English-speaking world.

Except, that is, among distraught Journal employees who rightly fear the loss of their journalistic independence. Murdoch has ceaselessly meddled with every major paper he's laid his hands on. The question is whether anyone other than the Journal's editors and reporters still regard the paper as a national treasure - or, for that matter, should."



Related articles

"Bush's 'executive poppycock'" at
click here

"Cheney aide is screening legislation" at
click here

"Grand delusion" at
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/233562
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Winston Smith is an ex-Social Worker. I worked in child welfare, and in medical settings and in homeless settings. In the later our facility was geared as a permanent address for people to apply for welfare. Once they received that we could send (more...)
 
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