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Will
George Bush Be Impeached
for
Breaking the Law? Some Think It's Time!
Congressmen Questioning Presidential
Scholars Did Bush Commit an
Impeachable Offense?
By Senator Barbara Boxer
t r u t h o u t | Letter
Monday 19 December 2005
Boxer asks presidential scholars about former
White House counsel's statement that Bush admitted to an
'impeachable offense.'
Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer
(D-CA) today asked four presidential scholars for their opinion
on former White House Counsel John Dean's statement that
President Bush admitted to an "impeachable offense"
when he said he authorized the National Security Agency to spy
on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge. Boxer said, "I take very seriously Mr.
Dean's comments, as I view him to be an expert on Presidential
abuse of power. I am expecting a full airing of this matter by
the Senate in the very near future."
Boxer's letter is as follows:
On December 16, along with the rest of
America, I learned that President Bush authorized the National
Security Agency to spy on Americans without getting a warrant
from a judge. President Bush underscored his support for this
action in his press conference today. On Sunday, December 18, former White House
Counsel John Dean and I participated in a public discussion that
covered many issues, including this surveillance. Mr. Dean, who
was President Nixon's counsel at the time of Watergate, said
that President Bush is "the first President to admit to an
impeachable offense." Today, Mr. Dean confirmed his
statement.
This startling assertion by Mr. Dean is
especially poignant because he experienced first hand the
executive abuse of power and a presidential scandal arising from
the surveillance of American citizens. Given your constitutional expertise,
particularly in the area of presidential impeachment, I am
writing to ask for your comments and thoughts on Mr. Dean's
statement. Unchecked surveillance of American citizens
is troubling to both me and many of my constituents. I would
appreciate your thoughts on this matter as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Barbara Boxer
United States Senator
Source:
Truthout
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Raising the Issue of
Impeachment
By John Nichols
The Nation
Tuesday 20 December 2005
As President Bush and his aides scramble to
explain new revelations regarding Bush's authorization of spying
on the international telephone calls and emails of Americans,
the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has begun
a process that could lead to the censure, and perhaps the
impeachment, of the president and vice president.
US Representative John Conyers, the Michigan
Democrat who was a critical player in the Watergate and
Iran-Contra investigations into presidential wrongdoing, has
introduced a package of resolutions that would censure President
Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a select committee to
investigate the Administration's possible crimes and make
recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.
The Conyers resolutions add a significant new
twist to the debate about how to hold the administration to
account. Members of Congress have become increasingly aggressive
in the criticism of the White House, with US Senator Robert
Byrd, D-West Virginia, saying Monday, "Americans have been
stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an
overzealous President. It has become apparent that this
Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting
pattern of abuse against our Country's law-abiding citizens, and
against our Constitution." Even Republicans, including
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania,
are talking for the first time about mounting potentially
serious investigations into abuses of power by the president.
But Conyers is seeking to do much more than
schedule a committee hearing, or even launch a formal inquiry.
He is proposing that the Congress use all of the powers that are
available to it to hold the president and vice president to
account - up to and including the power to impeach the holders
of the nation's most powerful positions and to remove them from
office.
The first of the three resolutions introduced
by Conyers, H.Res.635, asks that the Congress establish a select
committee to investigate whether members of the administration
made moves to invade Iraq before receiving congressional
authorization, manipulated pre-war intelligence, encouraged the
use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and used their positions
to retaliate against critics of the war.
The select committee would be asked to make
recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment of
Bush and Cheney.
The second resolution, H.Res.636, asks that
the Congress to censure the president "for failing to
respond to requests for information concerning allegations that
he and others in his Administration misled Congress and the
American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq,
misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the
justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel,
inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and
permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of his
Administration, for failing to adequately account for specific
misstatements he made regarding the war, and for failing to
comply with Executive Order 12958." (Executive Order 12958,
issued in 1995 by former President Bill Clinton, seeks to
promote openness in government by prescribing a uniform system
for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national
security information.)
A third resolution, H.Res.637, would censure
Cheney for a similar set of complaints.
"The people of this country are waking
up to the severity of the lies, crimes, and abuses of power
committed by this president and his administration," says
Jon Bonifaz, a co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org
coalition, an alliance of more than100 grassroots groups that
has detailed Bush administration wrongdoing and encouraged a
Congressional response. Bonifaz, an attorney and the author of
the book, Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush
(Nation Books), argues that, "Now is the time to return to
the rule of law and to hold those who have defied the
Constitution accountable for their actions."
Bonifaz is right. But it is unlikely that the
effort to censure Bush and Cheney, let alone impeach them, will
get far without significant organizing around the country. After
all, the House is controlled by allies of the president who have
displayed no inclination to hold him to account. Indeed, only a
few Democrats, such as Conyers, have taken seriously the
Constitutional issues raised by the administration's misdeeds.
Members of Congress in both parties will need
to feel a lot of heat if these important measures are going to
get much traction in this Congress.
The grassroots group Progressive Democrats of
America (PDA), which has had a good deal of success organizing
activists who want the Democrats to take a more aggressive
stance in challenging the administration, will play a critical
role in the effort to mobilize support for the Conyers
resolutions, as part of a new Censure Bush Coalition campaign.
(The campaign's website can be found at www.censurebush.org.)
PDA director Tim Carpenter says his group
plans to "mobilize and organize a broad base coalition that
will demand action from Congress to investigate the lies of the
Bush administration and their conduct related to the war in
Iraq."
Getting this Congress to get serious about
maintaining checks and balances on the Bush administration will
be a daunting task. But the recent revelations regarding
domestic spying will make it easier. There are a lot of
Americans who share the view of US Senator Russ Feingold,
D-Wisconsin, that Bush and Cheney have exceeded their authority.
As Feingold says of Bush, "He is the president, not a
king."
It was the bitter experience of dealing with
King George III led the founders of this country to write a
Constitution that empowers Congress to hold presidents and vice
accountable for their actions.
It is this power that John Conyers, the
senior member of the House committee charged with maintaining
the system of checks and balances established by those founders,
is now asking the Congress to employ in the service of the
nation that Constitution still governs.
Source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122005Q.shtml
posted 21 December 2005
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Go,
Tell Michelle
African American Women Write to the New First Lady
Edited
Barbara A. Seals Nevergold and Peggy Brooks-Bertram
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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5 February 2012
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