US Attorney Firings helping Bush to Cover Up the US Attorney Firings

Get this.

Harriet Miers was told by President Bush to not show up in response to a Congressional subpoena. She obeyed, like the good little puppy she is. Even though she was ordered to do this by her master, she is legally in contempt of Congress and should be prosecuted accordingly.

The House Judiciary Committee has already requested that Miers be held in contempt, but in order for the case to continue, the grand jury must be convened by the DC US Attorney.

The DC US Attorney is Jeffrey Taylor, who is refusing to move forward to convene the grand jury.

Jeffrey Taylor is a former counsil to Alberto Gonzales. His name was one of those kicked around to replace Carol Lam of San Diego after their purge, who was likely fired because of her investigations of Republicans such as Duke Cunningham. However, before Carol Lam could be canned, Gonzales and friends granted Jeffrey Taylor the DC US Attorney position. His is an interim appointment, which has not been confirmed by the Senate, because of the same provision to the Patriot Act that allowed Tim Griffin to serve un-checked in Arkansas.

Their plan is working. Round and round we go...

Knowing what you're fighting for

There are so many things going wrong right now, that it seems impossible to tackle them all. We try to pick the one we care about the most, and do something to make a difference. However, in our focus to fix the problem we find most pressing, we ignore the others to our own detriment.

Take the war. People have been fired up because we need to find a goal in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our citizens are dying over there, so we focus on that issue before anything else. And rightfully so. But in the attempt to find a reasonable solution to this crisis, we are not able to focus on immigration, social security, healthcare, education, global warming, or any other emergency situation facing the United States. It makes sense. How can you possibly do everything possible to find a solution to the war and fight everything else at the same time?

Sounds tough, but it might actually be possible. What if, instead of frantically focusing on a single issue, we took a breath, found the source of the problem, and eliminated it? What if we found one thing we could change that would allow us to adjust our course on a lot of different issues at once.

The first step would be to find the source of the problem, and it seems to me that the source of the problem is the Constitution losing its power to the executive branch. When the Constitution had control of the government, the three branches of government were co-equal and they kept each other in check. No executive could declare war on its own. No Congress could pass important bills without an executive signature. No branch could behave as it pleased without regard to the other branches.

But times they are a’changin. Every time the executive defies the legislative branch, whether it be through signing statements or obstructing Congressional investigations, it chips away at the Constitutional power of that branch. Every time the executive puts another one of its drones in the judicial branch, it eliminates that check and balance. Every time the executive branch chips away at their Constitutional powers, it comes closer to owning the legislative and judicial branches. Once this happens, the executive branch will have control of the country and our Constitution, which the executive may make irrelevant, if it pleases. Which at the moment, it pleases the executive very much.

And an irrelevant Constitution is a destroyed Constitution. That is what is at stake.

We need to remember that the Constitution is just a piece of paper, as our President so eloquently pointed out. It cannot protect itself and requires that the other branches of government step up and defend it when one branch seeks to do it harm.

Luckily, the founders knew this very scenario would be possible and even anticipated the executive branch being the most likely to stray. Brilliantly, the Constitution gives us a vaccine to eliminate this ailment. I’m talking about impeachment.

The only catch: The legislative branch needs to administer our vaccine.

One would think that the people who get the privilege to be a part of the legislative branch would be lining up to protect the Constitution, not only because they took an oath to do so, but because if they don’t, they render their own branch of government powerless.

But, sadly, that is currently not the case. Whether they fail to administer impeachment because they are afraid of the election next year, or because they don’t want to upset the other members of their party, or because they just don’t want to, I’m afraid the reality is that the current members of Congress simply do not understand their jobs. Their job is to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”, which means to administer the life-saving vaccine when needed. So far, very few of them realize this most basic point.

Even though we should be deeply disappointed with our Congressional representatives, We the People must accept our large chunk of the blame. It is our fault that these people have their seats in Congress. It is our fault that we didn’t find out more about them before we gave them our votes. It is our fault that we turned our backs while our country got hijacked. We have not sent our best and brightest to defend our Constitution, and it was our responsibility to do so.

The point is, we got into the mess together. We need to come together to get us out.

So how do we do it? As much as I wish we had a way to get new people into Congress now, we are unfortunately stuck with the hand we have dealt ourselves. We're in store for a tough, but winnable fight. Our fight, however, is not a fight of weapons. We need to use our words. We need to flood Congressional offices with calls and letters reminding them of their oaths of office and demanding impeachment be administered. We need to call and write our local newspapers and make sure the press knows our representatives are not doing their jobs. We need to give our friends who haven’t been paying attention books and dvds that show them what is going on. We need to get as many voices as possible together to make the Congress listen.

We need to build an outcry loud enough not to be ignored.

Impeachment. This is what I’m fighting for.

Open Letter to Senator Russ Feingold

Dear Senator Feingold,

I’m writing to you in response to your post titled “The Question of Impeachment”, submitted on July 16th on Daily Kos.

I’m afraid you have disappointed me quite deeply with this post. Your name was on my list of Senator’s that seemed to be trying to uphold the Constitution. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Let me explain.

In your post, you stated that, despite the fact that you know that crimes have been committed by this administration, you do not want to call for impeachment hearings because you want Congress to be able to “do what it was elected to do – end the war and address some of the other terrible mistakes this Administration has made over the past six and a half years. “

This statement tells me that you do not understand your oath of office. May I remind you that you were elected to:

“Support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic… “

Our Constitution is under siege by the executive branch, and in this statement, you exhibited that you are currently behaving as a politician, as opposed to behaving as a statesman. You know that you are almost in an election year and the Democrats want to win it. You know that you will be throwing a stick in the DNC’s plans for 2008 if you throw your full support behind impeachment. You know that your job might be at risk if you anger the party. So instead, you say that you want to end the war and you throw an insult in Bush’s direction. Scores you points with “the left”. No political risk.

If you were acting as a statesman, however, you would acknowledge that the Constitution is under attack from within and you would make it your mission to support and defend it, as your oath of office demands.

We are in a Constitutional crisis and impeachment is the cure. This issue actually has very little to do with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. It is an issue of the executive branch turning the legislative and judicial branches into extensions of the White House, as opposed to two other co-equal members of the government. Inaction on the issue of impeachment will establish precedent that the executive branch is above the legislative and judicial branches, and ironically, you will have diminished the value of your own position.

Make no mistake. This is bigger than the war. The war is a symptom of an executive branch out of control. You must stand up for the Constitution. You must stand up for your branch of government. You must put your country above your job.

The future of the Constitution and our democracy is in your hands. I sincerely hope you reevaluate your priorities and decide to defend the Constitution instead of maneuvering with your political party and protecting only yourself.

Oh and by the way.

“As I pointed out, it is the role of the House to impeach, and it is the role of the Senate to try impeachments. The Constitution left it up to the judgment of members of Congress whether or not moving forward with impeachment is best for the country.”

The Constitution left it up to the people to decide who gets to serve in Congress and who gets thrown out on their arrogant little asses. Watch yourself, sir.


Thank you.

Serve your country tonight - by watching tv

Ok, so I have a proposal for you for tonight. Hear me out:

Tonight is Tuesday. Tuesday night in the summer. Everything is in repeats. There's nothing on tv.

Tonight though, we’ve got a damn good tv option: The Senate is going to be on CSPAN2 debating the Iraq war all night long.

I know. Woo hoo! Can't wait to watch CSPAN!

But seriously, tonight is an opportunity to watch our government at work and to get a glimpse into the minds of the Senators who are making life and death decisions which affect our military, our civilians, and countless other people in the Middle East.

It’s one thing to read the blurbs and hear the sound bites, but you get a totally different understanding when you watch the Senators un-interrupted as they go back and forth on tv. You can see their body language and the looks on their faces. You can see who is listening to other people’s speeches and who had to be hauled in by the sergeant at arms. You can tell the difference between someone who believes what they are saying and someone who is struggling to fill up their time with words. You learn a lot more about who these people are and how they really feel. And they all know that they’re on primetime tonight. They will be performing for us all evening. We can get the reviews from the cheeseball news commentators tomorrow. But tonight, it’s live and unfiltered. We get to decide for ourselves who is, and who is not, a big bag of bullshit.

Now I know that the experience of watching CSPAN2 doesn’t sound exciting, and truthfully, for the most part, it isn’t. It does have its entertaining moments. You never know when John Boehner will cry or when Joe Biden’s head will explode. But for the most part, you may want to have a crossword or gameboy handy.

But despite the slow storyline, the reason to dust off old CSPAN2 tonight is that we, as citizens, have a duty to be informed in order to serve our country. Many of us seem to have forgotten, or never realized, that joining the military, while it certainly is the most noble way, it is not the only way to serve our country. The rest of us can serve our country by picking good leaders and keeping them accountable to the People. We also serve our country by making sure that while our friends in the military are away fighting our battles, our leaders are behaving responsibly with their lives. The only way we can serve our country in these capacities, however, is to be informed.

Because we can’t hold anyone accountable for sucking if we don’t know that they suck.

I hope at least a few people will watch.

Thanks for listening.

Nevada Gambling with their Water Supply

I recently took a trip to Lake Mead and was shocked to find that the lake was disappearing. Places that used to be covered in water were turned into parking lots. Boat docks were abandoned, replaced with new docks hundreds of feet away at the new water's edge. The campsites, which used to be beachfront, were now a short drive from the shore. When at the water's edge, the top of the white ring marking where the water used to be was 100 feet above our heads.

It looked like a disaster zone.

I did a little research when I got home and found that Lake Mead's water level is approaching the lowest it has ever been since the Hoover Dam's construction created the lake in 1931, and as one park ranger told me, the water is not expected to come back. The Southwest region has experienced droughts in the past that usually rebounded in around a decade. However, this time drought conditions are here to stay because of global warming.

Lake Mead is the main source of water for southern Nevada, providing 90% of their water resources. The drought stages for the state are directly related to the water level reading at Lake Mead because of the lake's critical function as the state's main water reserve.

According to NASA, the average water level in the month of August is 1,176 feet. When the water level diminished to 1,145 feet in January 2004, the Southern Nevada Water Authority declared a drought alert, the middle stage of drought, which triggered restrictions on watering lawns and washing cars.

A drought emergency, the highest stage of drought, is supposed to be declared by the Southern Nevada Water Authority when the water level shrinks to 1,125 feet. The declaration of a drought emergency would require tighter restrictions on water use, higher water usage fees, and larger fines for wasting water. Las Vegas residents may even be required to cease re-filling their swimming pools.

According to the Bureau of Reclamation, Lake Mead's water level is currently at 1,112 feet, and getting lower every day due to the brutal desert sun. Even though a drought emergency should have been declared 13 feet ago, the Southern Nevada Water Authority still has the region under a drought alert and has no plans to declare a drought emergency in the near, or distant, future.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority says that declaring a drought emergency is not necessary because current conservation methods are reducing water usage. While it's great that their current conservation methods have been successful so far, the conservation methods for a drought alert were deemed insufficient for a drought emergency that lowers the lake's water level below 1,125 feet.

Yes, it would be inconvenient to pay more for water. Yes, it would be less pretty in Las Vegas without perfect green lawns. Yes, it would suck to not have a pool. But the people of Nevada knew they were moving to the desert and approximately 5,000 people are joining them in the land of no rain every single month.

I know that residents of Nevada are risk takers and are not afraid to gamble. But you don't declare bankruptcy when you lose this bet. When you run out of water, you're either forced to move or you die.

Is it really worth the risk?

Nancy Pelosi's Job in Danger

Cindy Sheehan announced that she will run against Nancy Pelosi for her Congressional seat if Nancy Pelosi does not publicly put impeachment back on the table by July 23rd.

I've never been a Cindy Sheehan fan, but not because I don't agree with her. Its pretty much been because of those tacky outfits. No matter what anyone might think of her though, she is sticking her neck out for the rest of us and is actually putting her money where her mouth is. It's something to be admired.

And I think she's got a pretty good idea. We all know that most Congressional actions stem from individual Congressmen's fears of losing their jobs (hence why Republicans are running away from Bush as fast as they can). Since all members of the House are up for re-election next year, this strategy might actually work.

I hope that anyone who reads this, who wants the Bush administration held accountable, will write to the speaker and tell her that you will support Cindy if impeachment is not put back on the table.

Let's help scare her into action. Asking nicely has gotten us nowhere.