We the People

Happy constitution day! Yep, today is the 220th anniversary of the adoption of the United States Constitution , that rather quaint little document that our shrub has been ignoring.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.

Read it, repeat it, shout it at congress. Whatever it takes. We need to remind our government of that most important phrase "We the People".

Resigned

Gonzales resigns. Somehow, I'm not celebrating yet. I fear that our shrub will come up with an appointee who's a better liar. Gonzo's credibility was shot. He even lied to the end.

As recently as Sunday afternoon, Mr. Gonzales was denying through his press spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, that he intended to leave.

Mr. Roehrkasse said Sunday afternoon that he had telephoned Mr. Gonzales about the reports circulating in Washington that a resignation was imminent, “and he said it wasn’t true, so I don’t know what more I can say.”

Steven Lee Myers, New York Times

My next question is if this will cause the congressional investigations to lose steam. With all the damage AG did to our constitution, I want to see him prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But I doubt that congress has the guts.
Added: our shrub: "After months of unfair treatment". Gah!

It is a Constitutional Crisis

OK, I'm beyond being shocked by anything from our shrub's mis-administration. But we're now at a point where congress must stand up or become irrelevant.

Alberto On Thin Ice

Democratic Representative Jane Harman ☼, formerly the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and Jay Rockefeller, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee contradicted Alberto Gonzales’ testimony Tuesday about a congressional briefing in 2004 regarding the Terrorists Surveillance Program. Then Wednesday night, Gonzales was busted by the Associated Press and tagged for perjuring himself at Tuesday’s testimony. Arlen Specter has already warned Gonzales against perjuring himself. And Pat Leahy has now threatened a perjury probe.

When the head of our law enforcement decides that he is above the law he must be removed.

Otherwise there is NO LAW.

Nowhere is the Republican ability to lie, cheat and use dirty tricks to get what
it wants more obvious than in the person of Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General
and longtime Bush-pal. He's in the position of an inveterate liar who can't recall all the lies he's told anymore. So he's dropped the ball on the existance of more secret warrantless spying programs that even the last AG thought were illegal, pretended to be dumbfounded by unprecedented authority over the DoJ by administration officials when he signed the order for it, and generally left himself in a position where impeachment looks like the best option.

Meanwhile, back at the White House, the Cheney advisor who was doing Fourth Branch's dirty work in bacckstabbing Condi Rice and convincing people to talk Bush into attacking Iran is resigning - and finding it difficult to get a new job.http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/

The pattern of arrogance has been expanding over recent months. The administration has thumbed it's nose at congress for way too long.

There are three steps for the House to bringing contempt charges against an
individual: committee approval, a floor vote in the House, and a referral to the
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

The House passed step one

Impeachment is the only means left to save our constitution.

Added: The senate has taken the first steps:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats called for a special counsel to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied under oath and subpoenaed top presidential aide Karl Rove Thursday in a widening probe into the dismissal of federal prosecutors.

"It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements," four members of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement.

They dispatched the letter shortly before Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced the subpoena of Rove, the president's top political strategist.

"We have now reached a point where the accumulated evidence shows that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing of at least nine United States Attorneys last year," said Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070726/ap_on_go_co/congress_gonzales&printer=1;_ylt=AuU6KPTF.HIrjf5.8iOgl4OMwfIE

The Padilla Trial

Jose Padilla's trial begins today on charges of aiding terrorism. Fine. But when he was arrested in 2002?

In 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Padilla’s arrest and said
authorities had thwarted an Al Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive bomb in a major city. Those allegations have been dropped.

I've been outraged about the breach of constitutional rights that this case shows. Mr. Padilla is a U.S. citizen. The administration held him without charge for 5 years, may have used torture, and denied counsel for 3 years claiming that he is an "enemy combatant". That should scare the shit out of anyone paying attention. If the administration can detain someone without charge by simply accusing, none of us are free.

Jose Padilla is the U.S. citizen who supposedly plotted to detonate a "dirty bomb." Since his capture -- not on the battlefields of Afghanistan or Iraq, but at Chicago's O'Hare Airport -- he has not been charged with any crime.

Padilla's indefinite detention, without access to an attorney, has civil libertarians up in arms. That's why the Cato Institute, joined by five ideologically diverse public policy organizations -- the Center for National Security Studies, the Constitution Project, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, People for the American Way, and the Rutherford Institute -- filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Padilla v. Rumsfeld, now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.

Consider this specious logic, endorsed by the Bush administration: Under the
Sixth Amendment, the right to counsel does not apply until charges are filed.
The government has not charged Padilla. Ordinarily, U.S. citizens cannot be
detained without charge. But the administration has avoided that technicality by
designating Padilla as an "enemy combatant," then proclaiming that the court may
not second-guess his designation.

Essentially, on orders of the executive branch, anyone could wind up imprisoned by the military with no way to assert his innocence. That frightening prospect was echoed by J. Harvie Wilkinson, the respected and steadfastly conservative chief judge of the Fourth Circuit. In a case involving another U.S. citizen, Yaser Hamdi, Wilkinson warned, "With no meaningful judicial review, any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely without charges or counsel." Judge Wilkinson upheld Hamdi's detention but pointedly noted that Hamdi's battlefield capture was like "apples and oranges" compared to Padilla's arrest in Chicago. "We aren't placing our imprimatur upon a new day of executive detentions," Wilkinson cautioned.http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-21-03.html

Mr. Padilla may be as dangerous as the administration claims. Fine. Charge and let a jury decide. But do it as our constitutional laws require.