Yet more impeachable revelations: We sit on a decisive precipice

This morning the New York Times presents, in effect, a devastating bill of particulars for impeachment.

In a lengthy article -- "Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations" -- that explores the history of the White House and Justice Department's sinister workings to violate domestic and international laws against torture, the Times has done much of the work for Congress, specifically its judiciary committees.

The particulars are, in a word, sickening. Much of the history is familiar, yet some is based on "classified opinions, never previously disclosed," as well as interviews with current and past officials who are as sickened by the administration's illegal and inhuman tactics as any mentally stable person would be.

This passage summarizes the squalid state of affairs: "Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions [that affirm the techniques] remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums.... They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics."

One of those opinions, in 2005, "for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures." Proving that diseased minds think alike and tend to gather in like sewers, "the C.I.A. had constructed its program ... by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods."

At the insistence of the Oval Office and vice-president's cadre, the former attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, gave his stamp of approval to the "combined effects" of such techniques, but against the vehement protestations of the deputy attorney general, James Comey. "Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be 'ashamed' when the world eventually learned of it." That, of course, was the singular flaw in his own reasoning.

There were other memos, other internal battles, other minds of decency versus monstrous proclivities that are related by the Times, but the nut of the story is that the White House secretly did whatever it damn well wanted, notwithstanding those pesky democratic institutions of Congress and the courts.

The administration's responses to these compounding revelations have been as detestably laughable as they are abominably pathetic. Said White House spokesman Tony Fratto yesterday, "We have gone to great lengths, including statutory efforts and the recent executive order, to make it clear that the intelligence community and our practices fall within U.S. law."

That was the pathetic angle. The laughable? That was left to Steven Bradbury, who heads the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. "In my experience, the White House has not told me how an opinion should come out," said Mr. Bradbury. "The White House has accepted and respected our opinions, even when they didn’t like the advice being given."

Is there much of titanic newness in the Times' historical tale? Not really. It mostly fits the drift of the news of the last few years. But its precise presentation, trenchantly bundled and bowed, shows a White House that has consistently, secretly, deviously and illegally defied every decent and democratic strain of the American tradition and American law.

When added to the long list of other known constitutional violations -- warrantless surveillance, suspension of habeas corpus, extraordinary rendition, an "executive" judiciary, secret prisons -- this history of White House gestapoism makes one wonder how many violations are required before Congress does its constitutional duty: before, that is, it puts aside the admittedly thorny political questions of impeachment, and declares -- however unsuccessfully under this administration -- that such executive transgressions will no longer be tolerated.

True, impeachment proceedings at this late date would be but a warning shot across the executive bow. But if not fired now, future chief executives -- be they Republican or Democratic -- will build on Bush's illegalities as Congressionally condoned.

And that -- forever -- will be all she wrote.

Comments

[Tim Hollis]

This Congress isn't going to do anything about these atrocities. There can't be political solutions without an opposition party and there is no opposition party. It's time to take matters into our own hands, as we should have done in 2000. This is an illegally installed regime; something most prefer to forget or to ignore.

[chabuka]

you gotta be kidding right...? Pelosi wouldn't put "impeachment on the table" unless Bush and Cheney actually killed one of her grandchildren...I'll bet she would still make excuses...like.. "well, I still have other grandchildren" or "they were just having a really bad day and didn't really mean it" spineless c--t..!

[VL]

Well, like what? Protest? I do. Send emails to elected representatives? I do. Call any and all members of the Senate and Congress when they take actions that are helpful or not, as the case may be? I do.

What does "taking matters into our own hands" mean? How do you take matters into your own hands when they're in plastic handcuffs, behind barbed wire at the RNC?

[Mooser]

And destroyed a country. All Bush's bullshit, and all Bush's men won't ever put Iraq together again, not that they want to.

[Right Wingman]

The Constitution is just a piece of paper--just like Charmin tissue.

[J. Bush]

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty." -Thomas Jefferson
Pelosi and most of the other Democrats are worse than timid. They are enablers, and that makes them part of the problem.
If they are not going to support and defend our Constitution, then why shoud we support them?

[Doug Stamate]

You might want to inform your Senator/Representative that the Constitution forbids the President from issuing pardons to people involved in impeachment investigations; ie, no get-out-jail free cards.

[The Old Hippy]

When the government fails to represent the will of the people, it is the right and duty of the people to change the government.

Since the government has been outsourced to the corporations and the corporations own communications, energy, transportation, medical, insurance, agriculture, courts, both houses of congress and everything else you can think of - how do we throw off our chains?

Think 1776 not 911.

[DumpBush]

Remember this on election day and elect a very solid Democratic majority and whichever Democratic candidate wins the nomination.

Until then, the Democrats are afraid that they would lose support in the election if they brought impeachment proceedings - like the Republicans did after they impeached Bill Clinton.