Thanks, everyone, for your support, your encouragement and for your idealistic optimism.

This is my last post. I have run out of words. And, let’s face it, words have proven completely ineffective in moving the media or the government to restore the Constitution and to hold our political criminals accountable for their extraordinary crimes. Bush Cheney have been allowed to walk and have a free pass to continue violating the law and the spirit of the law until they leave office. The evidence of monumental corruption is obvious and widespread. No more words are needed to prove the case that Bush Cheney have long ago violated laws that would under normal circumstances result in impeachment, conviction and jail terms. So…to hell with them all.

Vote Nader.

Over and out.

Hint: It’s not a Republican. I have concluded that the reason the Democrats are avoiding an impeachment is simply because, like Toto pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz, what we would see would be so much worse than merely the evidence of already voluminous crimes committed by this administration. We would see that the entire system has been infested with a fatal case of rot requiring the demolition of the house itself.

Our federal level democracy would be shown to be a shallow shell of its former self, lost somewhere between Ford’s pardon of Nixon (or Reagan’s swearing in) and the advice given John McCain by erstwhile Democrat and former Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Lieberman. Lieberman, the first admitted Republicrat actually told McCain to simply ignore Congress in pursuit of his Iraq policy, domestic spying, and relations with the Middle East.

The single most salient take-away from the last eight years is that there is now a new tool in the already extra-Constitutional toolbox of the imperial Presidency. A President need not worry about a legislative censure when he does what he pleases. Simply ignoring the Congress and doing what he wants, regardless of its legality, as if to say, “I dare you to stop me” to Congress, is the new norm. But now, he need not even dare Congress. Congress’s insistent and steadfast inaction has already proven to be consent. There is no longer even the slightest pretense of using the obligatory checks and balances to restrain the abuses of executive power. There isn’t even the pretense of playing by the rules. HELLO? ANYBODY OUT THERE?

Opening impeachment hearings would force us to deal with the alcoholic in the family - the punch drunk, power crazy, bully we call the President. But to do so wouldn’t just limit the inquiry to documented abuses and crimes, it would unleash a flood of enabling henchmen who have handsomely profited from the shameless, even proud dereliction of duty of this administration. They would so disrupt the proceedings and the public discussion that Washington and the media would be buried in trash-talk. The resultant chaos would make unbelievers out of the most patriotic Americans.

The best case scenario, if impeachment proceedings did bog down, there would be a rise in cynicism to the point of mass alienation from the system. The worst case scenario if impeachment failed would be that the definitive end of America as we know it would be written for eternity in the transcripts.

However, if the Democrats could somehow develop the intestinal fortitude to shut down the obfuscaters, the detractors, and sideshow barkers, the sociopaths now defending those in power, to complete the impeachment process and actually hold the President and Vice President accountable, the relief of the people, after the restoration of our guiding principles, would be a sigh heard ’round the world. But the Dems have no spine and not the slightest inclination to move on impeachment, soooooo…..

www.Wethepeopleimpeach.org placed this ad in Roll Call, the newspaper of the pols in Washington, D.C. Put it in your hometown newspaper. Send copies to your Representatives.

If you can’t download this in a usable fashion, visit their website. www.wethepeopleimpeach.org. It’s on their homepage, but you need to scroll down.

Congressman Kucinich has laid out an extensive indictment of the president. Here is the index of proposed articles of impeachment:

Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq

Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of
Aggression

Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War

Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States

Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression

Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114

Article VII
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.

Article VIII
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter

Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor

Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes

Article XI
Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq

Article XII
Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation’s Natural Resources

Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries

Article XIV
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency

Article XV
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq

Article XVI
Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors

Article XVII
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives

Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy

Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture

Article XX
Imprisoning Children

Article XXI
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government

Article XXII
Creating Secret Laws

Article XXIII
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act

Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment

Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens

Article XXVI
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements

Article XXVII
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply

Article XXVIII
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice

Article XXIX
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare

Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency

Article XXXII
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change

Article XXXIII
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.

Article XXXIV
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001

Article XXXV
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders

The full text of the articles is available at:
http://chun.afterdowningstreet.org/amomentoftruth.pdf

Congressman Wexler has announced today, that Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers officially invited Mr. McClellan to testify under oath on Friday, June 20th at 10AM.

Mr. McClellan was a major figure in the Valerie Plame/CIA scandal, as well as a leading propagandist for the Bush White House’s deliberate attempts to hide the true costs of this war from the American public.   As such, Mr. McClellan will testify under oath (and be subject to perjury charges should he lie) and be asked about the following matters:

1. What role did President Bush, Vice President Cheney , and key administration officials take in the effort to reveal the identity of covert CIA agent Valeria Plame Wilson – thus destroying her network and putting lives in jeopardy?
2. What role did President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and key administration officials take regarding the firing of U.S. Attorneys or political reasons?
3. What role did President Bush, Vice President Cheney, key administration officials take in conspiring to blatantly break U.S. and International laws prohibiting the use of torture?

Nor should it stop there:  Karl Rove has thumbed his nose to the Judiciary Committee’s subpoena – joining Harriet Miers, Joshua Bolten and Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff David Addington as the only Administration officials in history to claim Congress has no power to even bring them before a committee to be questioned.

Wexler has called for Karl Rove to be held in inherent contempt and for the other renegade officials to appear as required by their subpoenas, or be forced to do so by the House Sergeant of Arms.

Our nation’s self-respect demands impeachment

By LINDA BOYD
GUEST COLUMNIST

I wept to see Sami al Haj embrace his young son for the first time after six years in Guantanamo prison. Sami al Haj, a Sudanese news cameraman, was seized in Pakistan while working for al Jazeera News. He was imprisoned, tortured and brutalized by Americans while there. Like most prisoners held at Guantanamo, al Haj was never tried or charged.

After his release, Sami al Haj arrived in Sudan and was immediately rushed to a hospital by ambulance, weakened by his 438-day hunger strike in Guantanamo. His message to our government: “Torture does not stop terrorism, torture is terrorism.”

The U.S. government evidence against him says, “He was trained in the use of cameras by al Jazeera News.”

The American people have a choice ahead of them. They can continue to be shamed as a nation of torturers, or they can put a stop to this administration’s ongoing crimes against humanity.

Abusing and terrorizing innocent people doesn’t make us safer. Imprisoning people without due process doesn’t make us safer. Violating our laws, treaties and values doesn’t make us safer.

U.S. military and FBI interrogation experts affirm that testimony obtained under torture is inaccurate and unreliable. In May, the FBI issued a scathing 371-page report on torture and war crimes compiled from observations at Guantanamo. Even the CIA concluded in a 1963 study that coercion is “not very helpful outside the context of producing false propaganda.”

George W. Bush said, “We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture.”

Recently, Bush admitted that he knew top administration officials met repeatedly in the White House to discuss coercive interrogation techniques, including torture, and that he “approved them.”

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top administration officials have in fact condoned torture, and violated domestic and international laws that ban cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of human beings.

These laws include the Geneva Conventions, the 1984 U.N. Convention Against Torture and the U.S. Constitution. These laws are not invalidated, as the Bush team alleges, if prisoners are not on U.S. soil.

Torture laws are jus cogens, meaning “compelling law,” said constitutional law Professor Marjorie Cohn, in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. “There can be no immunity from criminal liability for violation of a jus cogens prohibition.”

Being a rogue nation is not in our best interest and exposes our soldiers and citizens to grave danger. Why hasn’t Congress stopped torture?

It is unconscionable to simply wait for the torture team to leave office while hapless individuals are imprisoned without due process and tortured. Sami al Haj spoke of the many prisoners languishing in Guantanamo. In despair, many have tried to commit suicide.

Taking impeachment off the table means there is no limit to the Bush team’s depravity, and that torture will continue in our name.

The administration is already expanding prisons around the world, where the abuse of human rights will continue. A new 40-acre prison is under construction in Afghanistan.

While Guantanamo’s prison population is shrinking, prisoners from around the world are being redirected to U.S. prisons in Iraq, where they’ll be more hidden from the public eye. Particularly disturbing are reports of children imprisoned by the U.S. in the Middle East and Guantanamo.

Eventually, some of our highest officials will be tried for war crimes in a court of international law.

Already, charges of condoning torture are advancing against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in France. Author Philippe Sands quotes a judge with experience in international criminal cases who says “It’s a matter of time” before members of the Bush administration are arrested for war crimes while traveling abroad.

Why bother with impeachment if charges for war crimes will eventually catch up with the torture team?

Criminal charges can punish individuals for their crimes, but impeachment has the power to restore the rule of law, and redeem the office of the executive. Impeachment hearings will put the truth on the congressional record. Unlike other subpoenas, impeachment subpoenas cannot be denied.

Impeachment establishes legal precedent, so that future public officials will not be able to abuse power in the same way. The American people can signal to the world that they have taken responsibility for their own government, and ensure that torture will never again be this nation’s policy.

We must demand that Congress make ending torture the top priority. They know about torture, and their silence makes them complicit.

The eyes of the world are upon us. There’s plenty of time to impeach. Our self-respect as a nation demands it.

Linda Boyd is director of Washington for impeachment; washingtonforimpeachment.org

I remember the exact year I learned that mom was Santa Klaus. My older brother shattered my Santa fantasy with a level of glee that devastated me. I was seven. Some believe I held that idea too long, anyway. Still, he just blurted it out like he couldn’t help himself any longer. He sure didn’t want to play along for one more year. He was a big shot getting ready to move into junior high school. He picked Christmas Eve to break the news.

“Really, mom?” I asked him.

“Do you see a chimney anywhere?”

“No of course not, he comes down the fire escape, not the fireplace, stupid.”

“Ha. Well how fast would he have to be to reach every apartment in the world? And how long would THAT take? You’re the stupid one, you little creep. Come here,” he said, beckoning me to follow him the few steps to the hall closet. At seven years of age I was introduced to the idea of empirical evidence. He opened the closet, moved away some clothes, and lifted a fallen coat to reveal beautifully wrapped red boxes with green and gold bows.

“So, maybe he came early. He’s got a lot of stops you know,” I said desperately holding on to my illusion.

“Look idiot, no old man in any red suit is going to be flying through the sky behind reindeer. Have you ever even seen a reindeer? Besides, what’s he gonna do? Park his sleigh on the roof, crawl down that rickety old fire escape, and break through all the locked windows without anyone seeing him?”

At least he hadn’t slapped me around yet or called me a moron. “But mom wouldn’t lie…” I yelled.

“She has to. All old people do, everyone does,” he blurted out disappointed that his truth telling was taking so long to get through to me.

I was clearly shaken. First it was the Tooth Fairy, then the Easter Bunny, now Santa. My world was crumbling much too fast. I had this foreboding that Peter Pan and Tinkerbell wouldn’t be far behind.

“Prove it!” I demanded. “So what if there were wrapped boxes in the closet.”

“Okay, moron, tonight we stay up and watch the fire escape.”

Uh oh, he called me a moron. “I’m not a moron. You are.” I said in utter frustration, knowing he was probably right but not wanting him to be. “You’ll see.”

I’d fallen asleep but he wouldn’t let me off the hook. He wakened me at 11:30 whipping my covers off and in a loud whisper while shaking me, he said, “Okay, moron, now we’ll see.”

I couldn’t refuse. I sat up and looked at the fire escape. A moment later I said, “What if he doesn’t come tonight because you’ve been so bad to me?”

“Yeah, well if that’s the case, I won’t get a present tomorrow, right?

“Right.”

“Wanna bet I do?”

“Well, um…” I was trapped. I knew it. He knew it. “Yeah, how much?”

Let’s just say I lost the bet, was miserable through New Year’s, and grew up much too quickly.

Today, I realize the Constitution, much like Santa, is a figment of our collective mythology. We hail the document for establishing a system of law not of men, of creating the checks and balances and the separation of powers that have defined our governance system as a bold experiment in representative democracy. But, alas, the Constitution has been rendered a mere piece of paper to be read on Constitution Day. Our rogue President, enabling Congress, disinterested media, and complacent public have proven the Constitution no longer matters; it really is just a piece of paper. That suits the politicians just fine. As we have seen, there are more important reasons for using impeachment than sending troops to die in a war of choice, torture, spying etc etc. Extra marital affairs and hiring hookers and extramarital affairs and hiring hookers and oh, DUIs are now the only generally accepted uses for the impeachment provision of the Constitution.

No matter how old I get, it is good to know I still have much to learn. I feel a deep melancholy but will get over it. I have accepted the fact that the world is round and there is no Santa. So, I’ll just have to accept that we do not have a functioning Constitution any longer - at least not one that Presidents need follow.

Just when I was wondering what happened to him, he must have been re-awakened - as many of us were - by the Scott McClellan bombshell. Well, not so much a bombshell, we knew what he reports, but coming from him it carries a huge amount of weight. Maybe now Congress will stop playing out the clock. I’m glad to see Wexler’s not wasting any time. Read, support him, and pass it on.

A Message From Congressman Wexler (abridged):

Last night, significant news broke that directly impacts our push for Impeachment Hearings and a possible Inherent Contempt charge for Bush Administration officials such as Karl Rove:

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has revealed in his upcoming book that:

• Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Vice President Cheney lied about their role in revealing the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson – actions easily amounting to obstruction of Justice.

McClellan also admitted that:

• There was a coordinated effort within the Bush Administration to use propaganda to pump up the case for the Iraq war and hide the projected costs of the war from the public.

Scott McClellan must be called to testify under oath before the House Judiciary Committee to tell Congress and the American people everything he knows about this massive effort by the White House to deceive this nation into war.

Last week, a subpoena was issued for Karl Rove to testify before the Judiciary Committee. It appears he will take every legal action to block this subpoena. The truth is that Congress has the right – and obligation – to hold him accountable now - not months or years from now. It is long past time to pass Inherent Contempt and bring Rove, Libby and others before Congress.

We simply cannot ignore these recent developments, nor should we postpone serious inquiry until after the next election.…..

Many of you have written me, asking for an update on where we stand with regards to impeachment hearings. I know most of you believe - as I do - that impeachment hearings for Vice President Cheney – are not only justified, but that it is our constitutional obligation to look into the serious allegations of wrongdoing that have been raised. This is especially true based on the newest revelations from Scott McClellan….

I understand the challenges that we are up against, and I recognize the odds that we face. Nevertheless, I remain unfazed and unyielding.

This new evidence from Scott McClellan could be the tipping point – but we must move quickly. I will use the McClellan admissions to help convince my colleagues that we must hold impeachment hearings.

Sincerely,

Congressman Robert Wexler

Let’s help him out. Call your Congressperson, Pelosi’s office and Conyers’ office. Yes, they are tired of hearing from you. Tell them to act on the new evidence and to support the issuance of an inherent contempt citation. Impeach Cheney. Arrest Rove. Subpoena McClellan.

From Alternet

By Vincent Bugliosi, Vanguard Press

Posted on May 24, 2008, Printed on May 24, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/86232/

The following is an excerpt from Vincent Bugliosi’s new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.

With respect to the position I take about the crimes of George Bush, I want to state at the outset that my motivation is not political. Although I’ve been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for “the little guy”), my political orientation is not rigid. For instance, I supported John McCain’s run for the presidency in 2000. More to the point, whether I’m giving a final summation to the jury or writing one of my true crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. Therefore, my only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. This is why I can give you, the reader, a 100 percent guarantee that if a Democratic president had done what Bush did, I would be writing the same, identical piece you are about to read.

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That’s almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That’s just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he’d still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.

Let’s look at the way some of the leading liberal lights (and, of course, the rest of the entire nation with the exception of those few recommending impeachment) have treated the issue of punishment for Bush’s cardinal sins. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about “the false selling of the Iraq War. We were railroaded into an unnecessary war.” Fine, I agree. Now what? Krugman just goes on to the next paragraph. But if Bush falsely railroaded the nation into a war where over 100,000 people died, including 4,000 American soldiers, how can you go on to the next paragraph as if you had been writing that Bush spent the weekend at Camp David with his wife? For doing what Krugman believes Bush did, doesn’t Bush have to be punished commensurately in some way? Are there no consequences for committing a crime of colossal proportions?

Al Franken, on the “David Letterman” show, said, “Bush lied to us to take us to war” and quickly went on to another subject, as if he was saying “Bush lied to us in his budget.”

Sen. Edward Kennedy, condemning Bush, said that “Bush’s distortions misled Congress in its war vote” and “No president of the United States should employ distortion of truth to take the nation to war.” But, Senator Kennedy, if a president does this, as you believe Bush did, then what? Remember, Clinton was impeached for allegedly trying to cover up a consensual sexual affair. What do you recommend for Bush for being responsible for more than 100,000 deaths? Nothing? He shouldn’t be held accountable for his actions? If one were to listen to you talk, that is the only conclusion one could come to. But why, Senator Kennedy, do you, like everyone else, want to give Bush this complete free ride?

The New York Times, in a June 17, 2004, editorial, said that in selling this nation on the war in Iraq, “the Bush administration convinced a substantial majority of Americans before the war that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to 9/11 … inexcusably selling the false Iraq-Al Qaeda claim to Americans.” But gentlemen, if this is so, then what? The New York Times didn’t say, just going on, like everyone else, to the next paragraph, talking about something else.

In a Nov. 15, 2005, editorial, the New York Times said that “the president and his top advisers … did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It’s obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein’s weapons and his terrorist connections.” But if it’s “obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans” in taking them to a war that tens of thousands of people have paid for with their lives, now what? No punishment? If not, under what theory? Again, you’re just going to go on to the next paragraph?

I’m not going to go on to the next unrelated paragraph.

In early December of 2005, a New York Times-CBS nationwide poll showed that the majority of Americans believed Bush “intentionally misled” the nation to promote a war in Iraq. A Dec. 11, 2005, article in the Los Angeles Times, after citing this national poll, went on to say that because so many Americans believed this, it might be difficult for Bush to get the continuing support of Americans for the war. In other words, the fact that most Americans believed Bush had deliberately misled them into war was of no consequence in and of itself. Its only consequence was that it might hurt his efforts to get support for the war thereafter. So the article was reporting on the effect of the poll findings as if it was reporting on the popularity, or lack thereof, of Bush’s position on global warming or immigration. Didn’t the author of the article know that Bush taking the nation to war on a lie (if such be the case) is the equivalent of saying he is responsible for well over 100,000 deaths? One would never know this by reading the article.

If Bush, in fact, intentionally misled this nation into war, what is the proper punishment for him? Since many Americans routinely want criminal defendants to be executed for murdering only one person, if we weren’t speaking of the president of the United States as the defendant here, to discuss anything less than the death penalty for someone responsible for over 100,000 deaths would on its face seem ludicrous.** But we are dealing with the president of the United States here.

On the other hand, the intensity of rage against Bush in America has been such (it never came remotely this close with Clinton because, at bottom, there was nothing of any real substance to have any serious rage against him for) that if I heard it once I heard it 10 times that “someone should put a bullet in his head.” That, fortunately, is just loose talk, and even more fortunately not the way we do things in America. In any event, if an American jury were to find Bush guilty of first-degree murder, it would be up to them to decide what the appropriate punishment should be, one of their options being the imposition of the death penalty.

Although I have never heard before what I am suggesting — that Bush be prosecuted for murder in an American courtroom — many have argued that “Bush should be prosecuted for war crimes” (mostly for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo) at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. But for all intents and purposes this cannot be done.

*Even assuming, at this point, that Bush is criminally responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 people in the Iraq war, under federal law he could only be prosecuted for the deaths of the 4,000 American soldiers killed in the war. No American court would have jurisdiction to prosecute him for the one hundred and some thousand Iraqi deaths since these victims not only were not Americans, but they were killed in a foreign nation, Iraq. Despite their nationality, if they had been killed here in the States, there would of course be jurisdiction.

**Indeed, Bush himself, ironically, would be the last person who would quarrel with the proposition that being guilty of mass murder (even one murder, by his lights) calls for the death penalty as opposed to life imprisonment. As governor of Texas, Bush had the highest execution rate of any governor in American history: He was a very strong proponent of the death penalty who even laughingly mocked a condemned young woman who begged him to spare her life (”Please don’t kill me,” Bush mimicked her in a magazine interview with journalist Tucker Carlson), and even refused to commute the sentence of death down to life imprisonment for a young man who was mentally retarded (although as president he set aside the entire prison sentence of his friend Lewis “Scooter” Libby), and had a broad smile on his face when he announced in his second presidential debate with Al Gore that his state, Texas, was about to execute three convicted murderers.

In Bush’s two terms as Texas governor, he signed death warrants for an incredible 152 out of 153 executions against convicted murderers, the majority of whom killed one person. The only death sentence Bush commuted was for one of the many murders that mass murderer Henry Lucas had been convicted of. Bush was informed that Lucas had falsely confessed to this particular murder and was innocent, his conviction being improper. So in 152 out of 152 cases, Bush refused to show mercy even once, finding that not one of the 152 convicted killers should receive life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. Bush’s perfect 100 percent execution rate is highly uncommon even for the most conservative law-and-order governors.

Vincent Bugliosi’s most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, became the basis of his classic, Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true-crime book in publishing history. His forthcoming book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, is available May 27.

© 2008 Vanguard Press All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/86232/

Annie Demille inspired by Women In Black, … a world-wide network of women committed to peace with justice and actively opposed to injustice, war, militarism and other forms of violence, today held a silent vigil on Main Street in Brattleboro to stop torture. Check out the website: www.womeninblack.org.

Thanks, Annie. You are courageous and reminding us once again that the United States of America is committing torture. We all know it. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretaries of Defense Rumsfeld and Gates, National Security Adviser Rice and others have admitted to subjecting prisoners to physical abuse and simulated drowning. Yet, where is everybody? Why aren’t there crowds outside the White House, Congress, and The Pentagon insisting that we put an end to torture and restore the rule of law?

Where is the media? Where are the Constitutional Lawyers? Where is our Congressman, Peter Welch? This is a national disgrace of historic proportions. Bush Cheney have turned the United States into a terrorist haven and are destroying the last vestiges of our reputation as a haven for human rights.

Annie Demille