Contact your US Rep. and express your opinions on Impeachment bill introduced against Pres. George W Bush

Legislation including 35 Articles of Impeachment against Pres. George W. Bush was introduced in the US House recently by Dennis Kucinich (D-OH); Robert Wexler (D-FL) is a leading co-signor. Kucinich, a leader of the Progressive Caucus of the US House Democratic caucus, earlier this year ran unsuccessfully for his party's presidential nomination.

On April 24th, Rep. Kucinich introduced H.Res.333, Impeachment against Vice Pres. Richard Cheney. There are presently 26 Co-Sponsors- it was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, which has taken no action on the resolution.

Express your opinion on this legislation by contacting your US Representative- all congress members have official US House websites with feedback/contact forms; you may request a reply to your letter, but they are not always returned. A new, expanded "Contact your representative tips" is on this blog's left-side column. Thank you

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Call U.S. Attorney General Mukasey and ask him to meet with Common Cause

From Common Cause:

Over the seven years of the Bush Administration, the American justice system has taken quite a beating. From the denial of fundamental civil rights and civil liberties to the outright abuse of our Constitution – the integrity of our justice system is in jeopardy.

So, Common Cause is stepping up to the plate to restore our democracy's rule of law. Our first step was to ask new Attorney General Michael Mukasey for a meeting to express our concerns and recommendations. But he refused. I am writing to you today to ask you to make a simple, quick phone call to Attorney General Mukasey, urging him to meet with Common Cause.

Common Cause is running a telephone campaign. They are having difficulty getting U.S. Attorney General Mukasey to talk with them. We can help by calling his office directly ourselves and asking him to meet with Common Cause, then leaving the answer at Common Cause's webpage for this campaign. The number is (202) 514-2001. Be sure to report your call! Thank you.

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Twelve steps to restore checks and balances: a report on presidential powers and the Constitution

The Brennan Center for Justice has released a new report by Aziz Huq, entitled "Twelve Steps to Restore Checks and Balances". You can download the report here.

Executive Privilege. Extraordinary Rendition. Torture Memos and other secret legal opinions. Warrantless wiretapping. Indefinite detention. Suspension of habeas corpus. America's system of checks and balances is eroding, upsetting the delicate balance of power set forth in the Constitution. Twelve Steps to Restore Checks and Balances proposes specific reforms designed to keep the nation secure and free, as the Constitution's Framers intended.

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Attorney General Mukasey will not enforce contempt charges against executive branch officials from Congress

TPMmuckraker blog has an update on Attorney General Mukasey's interview before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. On the issue of whether he would enforce a charge of contempt by Congress against executive branch officials who deny subpoenas, he said "no". This is clearly against his charge of office. In controversy after controversy from the Bush administration, the executive branch has been siding on obfuscation, denial, rejection, lies and contempt when it has been asked for further information from Congress.

Perhaps Senator Robert Wexler's intent to call for impeachment hearings against Vice President Cheney is due to, as he says, "these abuses of executive power and the fact that the White House still refuses to provide any answers whatsoever to subpoenas."

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Attorney General Mukasey: USDOJ Office of Legal Council pardons lawbreakers in advance

TPMmuckraker reports the ongoing struggle between the U.S. Department of Justice and Congress. New Attorney General Michael Mukasey is defending the Justice Dept's. Office of Legal Council, even if it's opinions may breach actual law.

The Justice Department will not investigate whether CIA agents engaged in torture by waterboarding detainees, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said earlier. Ditto goes for the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, Mukasey added later, when asked by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) whether he would appoint a special counsel to investigate. The question came after Mukasey had baldly asserted that it was not a "practical view" that the president could order someone to act outside the law. Nadler wanted to know if the president hadn't done just that with his warrantless wiretapping program, which had ignored the constraints of FISA. Well, Mukasey said, the President had ordered that on the advice of the Justice Department that it was lawful. So, just as he will not initiate an investigation of waterboarding since the DoJ had given its OK, he will also not investigate whether the warrantless wiretapping was lawful, since it was legal, because the DoJ said it was ("there are views on both sides of that" he acknowledged). Mukasey also went back to correct his statement during last week's hearing that he "didn't know" if the President had ordered the warrantless wiretapping outside the law. Silly me, he said, of course it was legal -- it was authorized by the DoJ.

Now you know why Jack Goldsmith, the former chief of the DoJ's Office of Legal Counsel, said that OLC has the power to issue “free get-out-of jail cards,” or "advance pardons" with its opinions.

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Consumer Product Safety Commission unresponsive to dangerous and defective company product reports

Public Citizen has released a report on the lax public notifications of product defects by the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission). This is yet another example of an administration that has politicized its public service. Based upon similar backass services from a host of Executive branch agencies, I must assume that politicization is endemic throughout the system under Bush's watch.

Here is Public Citizen's description of its newest report on consumer product safety issues and the federal government:

U.S. Consumer Protection Officials Wait Months to Notify Public of Dangerous, Defective Products, Public Citizen Study Finds

Despite a law requiring manufacturers to provide the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) with “immediate” notification of dangerous products, the agency typically delays nearly seven months after learning of dangerous, defective products before telling the public. A new Public Citizen study, Hazardous Waits: CPSC Lets Crucial Time Pass Before Warning Public About Dangerous Products, reveals that companies fined for tardy reporting took an average of 993 days – 2.7 years – between learning of a safety defect in their products and notifying the CPSC. Perhaps as shocking, the CPSC then took an average of 209 additional days before disclosing the information to the public – even though each case concerned a product defect so dangerous that the item was recalled.

• Read the press release
• Read the report
• Read a summary of the differences between the House and Senate versions of the Consumer Product Safety Reform/Modernization Act
• Read an in-depth comparison of the House and Senate bill

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President Bush signs bill then ignores crucial amendments of it

POGO (Project on Government Oversight), a federal government contracting watchdog, has reported that President Bush has actually struck out of a bill certain parts it proactively supported during the bill's Congressional legislation. President Bush feels that he has the power to sign a bill and then ignore certain parts of it through a "signing statement", a very controversial action. I provide the full text of their post on this important and critical finding:

Crucial Amendments Fall Prey to Presidential Signing Statement

In an outrageous but all-too-familiar move, President Bush has declared in a signing statement that he is entitled to ignore certain provisions of the FY 2008 Defense Authorization Bill, which he signed into law yesterday. One of these provisions would establish an independent, bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting; another would extend whistleblower protections to employees of defense contractors.

POGO strongly supported both of these provisions (see here and here), and we’re dismayed to learn that the White House now considers them to be optional.

According to the White House press release, the burdensome provisions “purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations...The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.”

As many reporters have pointed out, the use of presidential signing statements has increased at an alarming rate under the current administration. But should the president be allowed to selectively disregard any part of a bill that he signs into law? Senator Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CQ Today that “the courts have ruled that the president cannot pick and choose provisions of appropriations bills that [he wants] to comply with.” A blue-ribbon American Bar Association task force also found that these signing statements “undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers.”

-- Michael Smallberg

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Right wing power grabs for the Civil Rights Commission

CREW, a public advocacy organization, has issued a press release concerning the Bush legacy of politicizing civil rights-- the Civil Rights Commission is stacked with partisans.

Washington, DC – This morning, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) hosted a press conference call with the NAACP and MALDEF to demand that U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey rescind a Bush legal memo that authorized deceptive appointments of exclusively partisan Republicans to the bipartisan Civil Rights Commission.

The letter, signed by LCCR, CREW, NAACP, MALDEF, National Women’s Law Center, National Partnership for Women & Families, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, National Congress of American Indians and the ACLU is online:

http://www.civilrights.org/library/advocacy-letters/usccr-letter.html

In order to circumvent the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Bush Justice Department wrote a memo allowing Republican members of the Commission to switch their party affiliation to “independent.” That allowed the president to appoint more Republicans to the bipartisan eight person commission under the guise that they were somehow “independent,” allowing the Bush administration to circumvent the law requiring that no more than four members of any party serve on the commission.

During his confirmation hearing, Mukasey pledged to review “significant” decisions of the Office of Legal Counsel to ensure that such decisions were “sound, soundly reasoned, soundly based.” Allowing this deception in the appointment process was neither sound, soundly reasoned or soundly based and is a continuation of the Bush administration's legacy of undermining the credibility and subverting Congress' intent to retain the commission's independence and bipartisan membership

Mukasey is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

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$55 billion in improper HHS payments in 2007

According to The Swine Line, the blog of Citizens Against Government Waste, work has begun in Washington to calculate the improper payments made by its various federal agencies:

The GAO just released its most recent report on estimated improper payments made by federal agencies. Overall 2007 estimates for improper payments (overpayments or underpayments, but guess which one is most prevalent?) were $55 billion. The most vulnerable federal program was the Medicaid fee-for-service program, which had an estimated $13 billion in improper payments and that was only for its fee-for-service program and only for six months worth of claims. Government Executive Magazine reports that:

HHS is not the only agency still working to develop improper payment estimates. GAO reported that the fiscal 2007 estimate did not include data from 14 risk-susceptible programs with outlays of $170 billion. Nine of these fall under the Homeland Security Department and were only recently identified as risk-susceptible. GAO considered the identification of programs as an important step toward proper reporting and prevention of improper payments. Twelve of the 14 programs that did not report estimates aim to do so for 2008. The other two did not report target implementation dates.

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Lies, lies and more lies-- the U.S. Executive branch leading to the Iraq War

The Associated Press reports on a study done by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism. It collected and analysed false statements made by many leaders of the U.S. Executive branch for the two years following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, leading up to the war with Iraq.

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

UPDATE: Check out the CPI report, which includes a database.

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Call U.S. Senator Feingold on illegal lobbying by the U.S. Dept. of Justice

.gov Watch blog alerts us to an illegal operation presently taking place at the U.S. Department of Justice. In violation of U.S. Code Title 18 Section 1913, the Executive branch department is using Congressionally-appropriated money to lobby Congress on a bill.

Titled "LifeandLiberty.gov", USDOJ asks our legislators to pass the Protect America Act. This Congress-subsidized lobbying effort is apparently illegal, from the justice department no less.

Thanks goes to .gov Watch for the alert; they recommend we call Senator Russ Feingold at (202) 224-5323 and let him (his staff) know about the illegal lobbying effort of LifeandLiberty.gov by the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

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Tell the FEC NO on this Friday's ruling about presidential public financing

Public Campaign has issued a letter to the FEC (Federal Election Commission) concerning the public financing of presidential elections. The FEC is considering a ruling that would prevent some small-dollar donations given through the web from triggering public matching funds for candidates who have opted into the system.

The FEC vote for this is scheduled for this Friday, December 14. Public Campaign urges us to turn down this new rule, so that small donors can keep a stake in the race for presidential campaign contributions. If you agree, please take action here to "sign" Public Campaign's letter to the FEC.

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As internet reveals government increasingly, Bush administration is secret

I am continually amazed at the rush of government databases available to the citizen these days. If you look at my left-hand column, you will see an ever-growing list of mostly free-to-use campaign finance, government finance and document databases.

As the internet has been integral in empowering American citizens to see what their government is up to, the Bush administration has been stonewalling most attempts by Congress to review Executive branch documents. In fact, it was determined in spring of this year that at least 5 million emails were destroyed by the administration between 2003 and 2005; there is still a chance there is a backup of these on tape. Now, according to a press release from CREW, the number of lost emails is probably much more-- between 10 and 20 million messages!

What has the Bush administration to hide, for such a long period of time? All government officials are ultimately answerable to we, the people, the citizens of the United States. Just as the law to maintain all emails was passed after the 1970's Watergate scandal, we must see that transparency in government is still very important to an accountable government.

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Election Assistance Commission withholds provisional balloting reform report from the public

VoteTrustUSA has an almost complete, leaked copy of a "provisional balloting reform" paper presented to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. It appears the EAC has withheld the document from release to the general public. VoteTrustUSA has the downloadable report and a statement of the circumstances surrounding this withholding by the federal commission.

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Tell your Congressmen NO to the NAFTA Trucks Pilot Program

Public Citizen is asking us to contact our Congressmen to stop the NAFTA Trucks Pilot Program.

Mexico-based trucking companies are gaining access to the U.S. with insufficient protections in place. Now, Congress is acting, but the Bush administration is threatening to veto any legislation that would hinder this pilot project. We are so close... the House and Senate came out of their negotiations on the final Department of Transportation appropriations bill with wording that would end all funds directed to a cross-border trucking program. This dangerous program cannot be allowed continued access to our nation's highways without proper safeguards.

If you wish to take action, please go to this website or contact your Representative and two Senators directly yourself.

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Travel restrictions in the Congressional ethics bill apply to the administration

A light has now shined on executive branch travel finances: Bush administration officials have been routinely accepting trips from companies and trade associations with a stake in their agencies' decisions. From April, 2006 to March, 2007, more than 100 of these trips would be out of bounds for members of Congress under the recently passed ethics bill, because they lasted more than one day and were paid for by companies or groups that employ lobbyists; the bill doesn't apply to the Executive or the Judicial branches of federal government.

The ethical question would be, of course: do the special interests paying for these trips by their regulators constitute a conflict of interest? It would seem to me that, if Company X in a resort area has polluted the river next to it, and flies Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials there for free to argue their cause, that would be a conflict of interest. The EPA is the regulator, and it's financial support must come exclusively from the American taxpayer, so that a hands-off relationship with their regulatees is maintained.

The Congressional ethics bill to be given a veto or signing by President Bush should have applied to the Executive branch as well. Otherwise, executive officials not mindful of their only financial supporters may continue falling for these travel finance mistakes.

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Keep party politics out of elective office

According to a recent Washington Post article, U.S. Justice Department officials attended a dozen political briefings at the White House since 2001. They included preparations for upcoming elections. Partisan use of the Executive Branch should be prohibited, as it should be representative of all of the people, not just one political party.

A drawback to partisan political parties is their present reach into the elected offices of government officials. The exclusive role of a political party is to attract, nominate and support candidates before an election. It is when the Democratic and Republican Parties are special interests of those elected officials, that they lose their representation of all of their constituents.

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The Executive Branch represents ALL of the people

On July 18th, the Washington Post revealed energy industry's role in V.P. Cheney's Energy Task Force of 2001. To no one's surprise, most of the final report reflected industry's input.

The Executive Branch represents the whole country, not select pieces of it. Sure, there may be particular problems that rely mostly on certain segments of the population for input. However, on fundamentals like national energy policy, all players must have a voice. When one sends a letter on a national issue to the Vice President, for example, they should not be fearful of biased reception of it. We, the people can hire and fire any elected official at will.

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Tell the EPA to allow states to regulate car emissions

California and 11 other states have passed bills to cut global warming pollution from cars. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is standing in the way. Yes, the ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION Agency [emphasis mine].

In spite of a recent Supreme Court ruling urging the EPA to FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING, they have not taken the first modest step of granting states a routine waiver to cut auto emissions. Please, do your part-- ask the EPA Administrator to grant California's waiver to regulate car emissions; help pave the way for statewide global warming actions across the country.

The EPA is doing damage right now by not helping. The fight against global warming starts at the local level, and states are having a stronger effect than our feds.

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Encourage good business and dismantle the CPSC federal agency!

President Bush has chosen a chair for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC): Michael Baroody, Executive Vice President for the National Association of Manufacturers; the Senate will hold a confirmation hearing for him as early as the first week of May. Mr. Baroody has a history of relaxing product hazard notices to the very consumers he does business with.

Why would our Chief Executive Officer choose someone who hates to notify the public about even minor safety concerns? I graduated with a degree in management, and I can tell you it's not good business to harm your customers-- if your product is defective, you should immediately notify it's owners, apologize profusely for the carelessness, and offer a replacement free of charge. We shouldn't have a CPSC anyway, because a company is fully responsible for the products/services it provides.

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