I’m not against moving bills forward, even meaningless bills if they send a helpful message. I’m not against ending the war in a way that leaves the president in charge of Congress, if that proves the fastest way to end the war — even though it leaves us in a state in which more wars are inevitable. I don’t think we’re especially likely to force the House to cut off the funding next month.

But forcing a debate on the war, and forcing congress members to put their names down on one side or the other, does not make those members more likely to stick with those positions. It makes them more likely to oppose the wars. Why? Because it raises public awareness and public pressure. Those who voted to end the war are now being thanked and rewarded and pressured to vote no on funding what they just claimed to want to end. Those who voted to keep the war in Afghanistan going are now being pressured to change that position in a way that they were not when all was silent. Hayden, of all people, is leaving the public out of his calculations.

If we are handed an opportunity to — at least temporarily — block the funding, because all the Republicans vote No for some unrelated reason, we will need to seize that opportunity. It will increase the same dynamic of public involvement. It will advance a strategy that is one of the most likely to eventually end the wars. And it will advance an understanding of power dynamics in Washington that will discourage wars by shifting war powers back away from presidents, something that will also be needed in the coming months if we are to end the war in Iraq that too many people naively believe we’ve already ended.

Those who think that opposing wars should involve, you know, opposing wars, should build on the recent debate and vote, by joining in upcoming actions including:
Brown Bag Vigils, and
Peace of the Action.

Pelosi does not sincerely want anything substantive and tends to lie whenever her lips move. And here’s what she says about war and impeachment:

Pelosi: The issue that … bothers me the most is the issue of the Iraq War. There’s so much evidence that there was no reason for us to go into that war at that time or to go into it period. But to think that thousands of lives have been lost, lives affected to the tune of hundreds of thousands, the cost in terms of our military readiness it has not made our military stronger, in terms of dollars to the treasury, but again most of all loss of lives our precious treasure on this war and there was really no price to pay for it so…

Maddow: Do you regret having taken impeachment off the table?

Pelosi: No, no, I believe that the if there was evidence, if we could have the evidence to impeach the president then that could come forward. Just because I say it’s off doesn’t mean if the evidence is there that something wouldn’t go forward. It’s not a question of not knowing where the culpability is, it’s what you can demonstrate and what you can prove. But I do think that those who had a hand in perpetrating not just going to war but misrepresentations to the American people – . Every piece of evidence that we have points to the fact that there was no reason in terms of weapons of mass destruction to go into Iraq…. It’s one of the great tragedies.

So it is. And truly tragic as well is the brazenness of it. Pelosi’s poodle, John Conyers, who backed off impeachment at her command, offered a wide and varying and self-contradictory list of excuses why, but never present among those excuses was any claim of lacking evidence. Conyers’ committee staff spent most of the relevant years publishing books documenting the evidence. His excuses were about electoral campaigns and the corporate media and the likelihood of winning conviction in the Senate.

The level of mendacity in Pelosi’s remarks above, her dedication to obeying the president (articulated just prior to what I’ve quoted), and her allegiance to the war machine: this is what we are up against. We will not defeat it without a massive public movement. We will not generate a massive public movement if we are afraid of raising the issue, pressing our demands forward, naming names, and rewarding and punishing elected officials as merited. This is a life and death struggle, brothers and sisters, and it’s not going to be won through fear, stealth, or timidity.

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

Of course, it’s almost taboo among the most serious peace and justice advocates to cite positive precedents from Jefferson, because he was a slave owner. But Jefferson’s views on the structure of a government don’t actually become less admirable (or more) when we remember the horrors he inflicted on the people at Monticello.

On the other hand, protesting someone like John Yoo (a march and rally are planned) is almost verboten among the comfortable liberals in Charlottesville, because of a Jeffersonian view of free speech as absolutist as the ACLU’s defense of campaign bribery. “We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it,” quoth Jefferson.

Yet this admirable line of thought came from the same enlightenment that gave us this one: “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” In fact, the author of the Declaration of Independence, that lengthy list of crimes committed by King George, would not have approved of the College of William and Mary inviting the King to lecture on law. Jefferson and his fellow revolutionaries would have sought to kill or imprison such a lecturer. Translated into an age of nonviolence, they would have PROTESTED him.

John Yoo’s book “Crisis and Command” discusses Jefferson at length and devotes a chapter to his presidency. Yoo finds much to lament in Jefferson’s opposition to expanded presidential power, and much to praise in Jefferson’s expansions and abuses. I would reverse Yoo’s attitudes, praising what he laments and denouncing what he praises. But I don’t argue with his basic outline of the facts of the matter. I argue with the further expansions Yoo assisted in during his employment at the Justice Department, expansions that went far beyond those of Jefferson and did so in violation of a body of laws and treaties that did not exist in Jefferson’s day.

Jefferson thought a president should only veto a bill if he believed it to be unconstitutional. Today presidents routinely veto bills they simply disagree with. Or they alter bills with signing statements or with memos drafted by people like John Yoo. Or they simply violate the law. While Jefferson did not casually veto or alter laws with signing statements or memos, he did choose to simply not enforce laws based on his interpretation of their unconstitutionality. He claimed equal power with the Supreme Court in making such interpretation, something presidents since him — including Bush — have not tended to assert.

Jefferson favored the frequent use of impeachment, but not purely to protect the legislative branch, rather to advance the interests of a political party led by a president. Jefferson refused to comply with a court subpoena. He launched military operations without Congress, including covertly. In some cases he took unconstitutional actions while Congress was not in session, a situation that does actually provide him with an excuse that presidents don’t have today. In other cases, Jefferson simply acted outside the constitution, claiming to represent the will of the nation. The action Yoo seems to admire most for its brazen lawlessness is Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana. But Yoo also seems to recognize the immense impact Jefferson had in developing a two-party system and the notion of a president possessing a national policy mandate.

Yet Jefferson was no Dick Cheney. Claiming to act, and plausibly acting, on behalf of majority opinion (or majority wealthy white male opinion) is — at least in retrospect — a dangerous precedent for an official who was supposed to execute the will of Congress. But the Bush-Cheney White House claimed the power to act without even a pretense of acting on behalf of the nation’s people. They were acting simply on behalf of Bush and Cheney. Jefferson worked to limit or avoid a standing military.

He acquired territory by purchasing it. Yoo praises Jefferson for purchasing Louisiana because it was an act of presidential assertiveness. And Yoo blames President James Madison for allowing Congress to lead him into a disastrous invasion of Canada, because Madison was following Congress, just as the Constitution he’d played a central role in writing required him to do. What Yoo misses is that negotiations tend to work and wars tend to be catastrophes no matter who makes the decisions. In comparison with Bush and Cheney, Jefferson was an opponent of the greatest evil there is: war. The Congressional Research Service just released a list of hundreds of overt U.S. military actions. Most of them have been launched by presidents. Most of them have been murderous and criminal catastrophes.

Yoo wrote memos that were treated as secret laws by a president. His memos authorized aggressive war and torture, which have been banned by international treaty and domestic laws since Jefferson’s day. Jefferson honored treaties. Yoo does not. Jefferson made exceptions to his adherence to laws. Yoo proclaims presidential liberty to openly ignore all laws. Yoo has famously gone so far as to argue that a president can crush testicles, massacre villages, or nuke cities. Nuclear weapons and most other weapons of war did not, of course, exist when Jefferson went after pirates without congressional authorization. The level of destruction in war was as small then as the body of law restricting it. Yoo lives in an age of far more evil wars, yet allows no limits on presidential war making. A president could nuke city after city until none remained, according to John Yoo’s theories, which I find it very hard to imagine Jefferson accepting or even hypocritically acting upon.

When pressed, Yoo recognizes the power of Congress to stop a president through defunding or impeachment. But Yoo has never, to my knowledge, opposed Bush’s unconstitutional spending of funds for uses other than those for which they were appropriated. And crimes and abuses must be crimes and abuses even prior to an impeachment and conviction. The partisan system developed during Jefferson’s presidential election makes presidential impeachments very unlikely. In fact, they are only possible when the Congress is controlled by the other party and that other party has not become complicit in the president’s crimes or abuses. The same Justice Department that Yoo worked for argued that a president can violate a law until the Supreme Court says otherwise, even though the Supreme Court cannot possibly rule in a timely manner on every law passed by Congress, and even though the Supreme Court is also corrupted by the party system.

While Jefferson advanced the shift of power from Congress to the White House, not to mention that he owned slaves and held every power over them that the United States military holds over prisoners in Bagram, there is only one thing that it is clear to me Jefferson would have done upon learning that John Yoo had been invited to speak at the University of Virginia. Jefferson would have demanded the resignation of the university president.

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

Cole argues persuasively that we lock up a dramatically higher percentage of our people than any other nation because it is mostly poor African-American communities that get hit. He points out that when segregation was legal in the 1950s, African-Americans were 30 percent of the prison population, whereas now, with a monstrously increased prison population, African-Americans and Latinos make up 70 percent of it. Sixty percent of African-American high school dropouts have spent time behind bars.

Of course it costs less money to educate people than it does to incarcerate them. It costs less to treat them for drug addiction than to incarcerate them. It costs less to help them get on their feet than it does to repeatedly lock them up. And it is these cost considerations that are driving some badly needed, and encouraging, reform.

When Cole spoke on Friday at the University of Virginia, I asked him where the best successes were to be found. While Virginia Sen. Jim Webb has proposed a national commission, Washington D.C. is obviously the last place anything is going to be reformed. The racism and demagoguing are joined by the legal bribery from the privatized prison industry, the corruption of the corporate media, and the control of party leaders. We must look to the states for action. But which states are making the most progress?

Cole pointed me to a new study by the indispensible Sentencing Project which looks at four states where incarceration is being downsized: Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York.

These states have “reduced their prison populations by 5-20% since 1999 without any increases in crime. This came about at a time when the national prison population increased by 12%; and in six states it increased by more than 40%. The reductions were achieved through a mix of legislative reforms and changes in practice by corrections and parole agencies.”

That crime did not increase as these prison populations shrank is not shocking. But it’s also probably not because crime shrank and incarceration shrank with it. The many-fold increase in US incarceration over the past 35 years did not follow any crime increase; it was the creation of more punitive laws and policies. And scholars give it very little credit for having reduced crime. In fact, with prisons no longer concerning themselves with rehabilitation, there is always the possibility of incarceration increasing crime.

The reforms the Sentencing Project found include:

“* Kansas – Changed sentencing guidelines to divert lower-level drug cases to treatment rather than incarceration; Expanded supportive services to people on parole supervision.
* Michigan – Eliminated most mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses; enacted statewide initiative to reduce parole revocations and enhance employment, housing, and treatment services for people leaving prison.
* New Jersey – Increased parole releases by adopting risk assessment instruments and utilizing day reporting centers and electronic monitoring.
* New York – Scaled back harsh drug penalties, established Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison programs, and applied ‘merit time’ credits to speed up parole consideration.”

Another Sentencing Project report, “The State of Sentencing 2009: Developments in Policy and Practice,” looks at newly enacted reforms in 19 states:

“* Three states – Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island – significantly scaled back the scope of mandatory sentencing laws for certain drug offenses.
* Seven states increased the proportion of “good time” credits to be earned in prison to expedite parole eligibility.
* Four states Arkansas, Illinois, Nebraska and New Jersey – established oversight committees to examine sentencing policies, prison overcrowding and reentry services.”

These reforms may be driven more by budget cuts than by demands for racial or class fairness. But they will produce that fairness in the end, and more humane and effective approaches to law enforcement will be proven to work by experience long before we develop a communications system that would permit a victory in the policy debate.

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

“Yesterday Jay Bybee sat with the 9th Circuit as they modeled appellate court for 140 law students at the University of NV’s law school in Las Vegas. I sent out a plea to [Progressive Democrats of America's] Vegas list of edresses, and about 10 people responded. Of them, two showed up with signs and we handed out Impeach Bybee postcards and talked with the law students as they waited to get through security to go inside. I was appalled at their ignorance and/or lack of outrage. Two older students said he was a friend (he lives in Henderson, just outside Vegas), and a young one said his parents were friends of Bybee.

“We finally got inside, and listened quietly to the cases, as usual. We were ready to speak out at the end, but instead they announced they would hold a Q&A for the students. We moved down to the second row, and I asked the first question:

‘Mr. Bybee, given the new information that’s come out in the Office of Professional Responsibility Report, and the information in the missing emails, which we will surely find, what will your defense be to prosecution of conspiracy to commit the felonies of aggressive war and torture?’

‘I’m not answering that.’

‘Oh. Well.’

“Another activist, there for an unpleasant immigration case, asked something about the memos from the back, and Bybee gave the same cool, stolid non-answer.

“I would have sat quietly, but the students were asking idiotic questions, like ‘How should we refer to our clients when addressing judges?’

“Finally one asked about career options in a shrinking economy. The three judges gave good answers (‘my first case in front of the Supremes was pro bono – do pro bono work for experience’), and when they were done I turned and said, ‘And if you’re willing to break the law, you might wind up a 9th Circuit judge.’ Then the very patient and polite marshals decided enough was enough, and asked us to leave.

“Tyler, an iron worker, gave me a unique tour of the Strip, pointing out buildings he’d worked on (and hadn’t fallen from), some of which are sitting, unfinished hulks, when the money simply ran out.

“I think we have the possibility of getting some activists together in Vegas!”

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

State Senator John Marty was the Democratic nominee for governor of Minnesota 16 years ago and is making another run for it. My friend Vin Gopal, who’s working on Marty’s campaign, tells me “Senator John Marty is the real deal. If he gets elected Governor this year, which he has a good shot at, it’s a whole new ballgame for the single-payer movement. No other statewide candidate in the country is as committed to the movement as he is.”

Marty tells me he’s optimistic about bringing single-payer healthcare to Minnesota, and that he has a third of the legislature on board with it at this point. Marty’s election campaign can be supported here http://johnmarty.org and the campaign for single-payer in Minnesota can be found here http://muhcc.org and here http://mnhealthplan.org

The legislation currently moving forward is somewhat unusual. Like any single-payer plan, it would eliminate the for-profit health insurance companies and all of their bureaucracy. It would cover all medical needs of all Minnesota residents. There would be no co-pays, deductibles, or out-of-pocket expenses. All bills would be paid by the single plan. Those who now have no coverage would be covered. Those who do have coverage would, in most or all cases, save money in the new system which would be far more efficient, purchase drugs in bulk, etc. All of that should be familiar to supporters of single-payer or visitors to civilized nations. What’s different is that the word “premium” would still be around.

Most single-payer healthcare plans raise funding through taxes. The Minnesota plan would ask the same Department of Revenue that collects taxes to collect premiums from both individuals and businesses, but the premiums would go into a separate fund for healthcare that could never be tapped for anything else. Premiums would be based on each person’s ability to pay, but they would not be optional. However, they would fund a public system developed by elected representatives, unlike the legislation being considered in Congress which would require people to fund for-profit corporations that come with the built-in motivation to provide as little healthcare as possible.

Will Minnesota be our Saskatchewan, the Canadian province that led the way on healthcare? Not if Maryland can help it. I asked Eric Naumburg, a doctor with the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, where things stood in his state, and he told me:

“We have bills in both the Maryland Senate (SB-682) and House of Delegates (HB-767). The Senate Bill has 12 co-sponsors and the House Bill 38; that’s approximately 1/4 of each chamber. So far we have only Democrats on board. The leadership has not taken serious notice yet but there are some good signs and we are really just getting started. Also, between the state’s budget problems, the upcoming election and the health insurance reform mess in Washington, we hear lots of excuses for why not this year.

“The reality is that our bill, which is modeled after the one that has passed twice in California, has only general language about funding. We are raising money for an economic impact study on the effects of single payer. Key areas would include the effect on the state budget and economic growth within Maryland. This will help us with the best ways to fund the system. We continue to build our grassroots movement. This summer we are planning a concerted effort to talk to as many legislators as possible.

“As you have probably heard we have been collaborating on a weekly basis with groups from California and Pennsylvania; learning from each other’s experiences. California and Pennsylvania are further along in this process than we are; but we’re working to catch up. Also, the knowledge that there are several states working on state level single-payer healthcare reform has had a positive effect on some of our legislators. Down the road there is the possibility that a region could develop single payer reform, e.g. two or more adjoining states.”

Maryland and Pennsylvania? The Mason Dixon line crossed by a humane healthcare region? Why not. And who knows, maybe the nation someday!

The Maryland Senate bill is scheduled for a hearing March 10th at 1:00 p.m. in the Finance Committee.

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

Photo/Wikimedia

We’re about to witness the pretense of war lawyer hearings without the war lawyers (commonly known as torture lawyers by those willing to ignore their role in “legalizing” aggressive war). This may highlight for many observers the little-known fact that Congress no longer has the power of subpoena.

During 2007-2008 Democratic congressional committees subpoenaed dozens of Bush officials, who simply refused to comply. Although any committee has the undisputed power to use the Capitol Police to enforce its subpoenas, none did. They asked the Bush Justice Department to do it. They sued the Bush Justice Department in court. But, with the exception of a weird deal for partial and secret compliance by Karl Rove in 2009, not a single one of the scofflaws has been compelled to show up.

During 2009-2010 none of the subpoenaed officials have been re-subpoenaed. When torture memos were made public in April 2009, Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked memo author Jay Bybee to testify, and Bybee declined. Leahy did not issue a subpoena. Congressman John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, in 2009 and 2010 has impeached a judge for groping and another for petty corruption, but has not so much as asked Bybee (or Yoo) to appear.

The new Justice Department, equal to the last in its subservience to the White House, will no more enforce subpoenas for congressional committees than the last one would. None of the committees have sprouted testicles, and are apparently afraid that John Yoo would crush them if they did. So, the Capitol Police have not been asked to pick any witnesses up. And the power of congressional subpoena has been laid to rest in the receding history of our free republic. And nobody has even noticed.

Of course, there will be occasions when the president approves of congress subpoenaing a witness. Perhaps some committee will find the courage to go after steroid use in another sport, for example. Maybe the oversight committee will decide to look into excessive activism by peace groups. But when it comes to using the power of subpoena against members or former members of the so-called executive branch, the only chance of revival will be a division of powers between the two main institutions of our government, the Democratic and Republican parties, and in fact — given the bottomless timidity of congressional Democrats — it will require a Republican congress. Thus the only hope of rolling back any presidential power, will be for a Republican congress to oppose a Democratic president strongly enough to neglect its principled concern for shifting all power permanently to the presidency.

In the meantime, we’ll be treated to hearings on people’s crimes without the presence of those people. What fun to question John Yoo and Jay Bybee without them in the room. How much more comfortable and reassuring not to have to face such dreadful enemies. How responsible to leave it to the citizen disrupters of book tour events and appeals court proceedings to question these national traitors.

And along with the power of subpoena, the power of impeachment must die as well. How could the House Judiciary Committee impeach Mr. Bybee, if it wanted to, given its inability to subpoena him?

And with the power of impeachment, the power of representative government must die as well. How can our representatives be compelled to represent us if they have no power to restrain the secondary (executive and judicial) branches’ abuses of power?

Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler will fill in for Yoo and Bybee at Leahy’s hearing on Friday. I can imagine how this will go:

“When John Yoo says that a president can crush testicles, massacre villages, and nuke cities, Mr. Grindler, are there limits to that? Would a president have to stop after eight cities? Nine cities? Where’s the line, if there is one?”

“I don’t know,” Senator. “I imagine you’d have to ask Professor Yoo. But to do that you’d need to stop being too chickenshit to enforce your own subpoenas, since we’re not going to help you. We encourage you instead to go dick cheney yourself. With all due respect, sir.”

“Understood, Acting Deputy Attorney General, but let me follow up if you don’t mind with this question. If Mr. Yoo’s contention is that it is legal for a president to do such things, would he maintain that it might conceivably be legal for another nation’s president to do the same, including to our cities and villages and (if we had any) testicles? And, given that Professor Yoo has argued explicitly that neither international nor domestic law can be a constraint on such presidential prerogatives, isn’t it almost a certainty that other nation’s presidents must have the same prerogatives, unless there is something unique about our nation? What would that be, sir? And if there is not a satisfactory answer to that question, and if it is legal for presidents to destroy all human life, then it would seem to be legal to eliminate all law, since law will die with the human race. Can the elimination of law really be considered legal?”

“With all due respect, Senator, there’s a Muslim behind your chair. Ha! Made you look. Oh god, that was a good one. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m. Senator? Are you . . . Somebody pick him up. Somebody. Oh, Jesus, call 911. Call 911!”

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

Photo/Wikimedia

Everything you’re reading about torture lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee getting off the hook is wrong. They are not torture lawyers, they are not off the hook, there never was any hook, they may not be lawyers for long, impeachment and indictment are on the agenda, and you have a role to play.

Calling these men “torture lawyers” is dramatically dumber than labeling Al Capone a tax cheat. These are people who provided “legal” cover for aggressive wars, who put down in documents treated as secret “laws” that any president can launch any aggressive war at his whim, without regard to domestic or international law, Congress, the Supreme Court, you, me, or morality.

The very report that is the subject of the latest “news” flurry quotes Yoo declaring that, “Sure!”, a president can order a village massacred. Yoo’s previous declaration that a president can crush a child’s testicles is soooooo much more shocking, I realize, but the villagers’ testicles WOULD die with the rest of them upon being massacred. Over a million Iraqis lie dead. So stop obsessing on the torture for godsake and try to focus on the fact that these people are conspirators in the supreme crime of war. Read the memos of September 25, 2001, and October 23, 2002, if this is all new to you.

How many villages could a president “legally” massacre? You’re missing the point. John Yoo’s president cannot be limited in any way when it’s war time, and it’s always war time. And can other nations’ presidents potentially “legally” massacre our villages? Again, you’re missing the point. The ONLY way to prevent them from doing so is to massacre enough of their villages first. And the only way to do that is to empower presidents. Thus think these psychopaths, and so will our children think like this if we do not put a stop to it now.

Yoo and Bybee are openly guilty of conspiracy to engage in aggressive war, banned by the U.N. Charter and Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, and of conspiracy to torture, a felony under 18 U.S.C. § 2340A-c and § 2441, and to spy without warrants, banned by the Fourth Amendment. Their memos are public. The fact that everyone waited for years to do anything about it, until they could see the Justice Department’s own report on the matter doesn’t change the absolute irrelevance of such nonsense. Yoo’s and Bybee’s actions, no matter what you make of them, consist entirely in authorship of a series of written documents available for all to read. And those documents constitute overwhelming grounds for impeachment and indictment.

That being said, the report that everyone waited years for was finally snuck out the door last Friday night. Of course, we already knew what it would say, what the original version had concluded, and what was later done to that conclusion. But nobody has hidden any of that. They’ve released the first, second, and third versions of the report, plus documentation of the fact that they edited their conclusions at the bidding of the men who are the very subjects of the report. The report concludes that these war lawyers “committed intentional professional misconduct”. The fact that some schmuck in the DOJ adds a note saying that they don’t really mean it, doesn’t change the fact that any institution in which Yoo’s and Bybee’s behavior did not constitute misconduct would need to be destroyed in its entirety beginning with actions to newly identify as unacceptable Yoo’s and Bybee’s crimes. And that they are crimes is not really impacted by whether or not they are “misconduct”.

The DOJ’s designated hack does not recommend disbarment, but says that the bars can make that decision themselves. Of course they can, whether or not they’re given a blessing by the DOJ. Everyone reporting and lamenting that these criminals cannot now be disbarred or impeached is trying to give the very department that oversaw the crimes the power to determine how independent institutions, like Congress and bar associations, respond. Do you think Congress would not have impeached Nixon if he’d just put out a report recommending against it?

Of course the war lawyers can and must be disbarred, and you can help at http://disbartorturelawyers.com

Senator Patrick Leahy and Congressman John Conyers understand the need to at least pretend that they are not taking their orders from an agency conducting a transparent fraud. At http://lawsnotmen.org we filed a freedom of information act request for the various versions of the report, hoping to expose how the original conclusions were modified. Whether that request was an influence or not, the reports are now public and the fraud out in the open. But Leahy is asking Bybee to resign, Conyers is avoiding the word “impeachment,” and neither one of these gentlemen — stand-out frauds in their own rights — is talking about subpoenas.

Two things are needed here. First, we need to deter ongoing crime through punishment. Aggressive wars, torture, lawless imprisonment, and warrantless spying are continuing because Yoo and Bybee and their co-conspirators have not yet been prosecuted. And they are not being prosecuted because the new president is continuing the crimes. We must raise our voices for the rule of law. Spain is seeking to indict these killers but is facing strong resistance from the White House.

Second we need to find a way for the public to re-enter our government and gain some modicum of control over what it does. That is going to require restoring powers to Congress, and that is going to require at least one committee at the very least enforcing its own subpoenas through the Capitol Police force, if not the Congress impeaching and removing from office someone who used to work in the so-called executive branch. There is a campaign building pressure to demand Bybee’s impeachment at http://impeachbybee.org

The Justice Department has been publicly and lawlessly ordered by the president not to enforce laws against the war lawyers. The threat of the DOJ issuing an official recommendation of disbarment does not exactly qualify as a hook (to be let off of). Nor does impeachment, although it serves the critical purpose of shifting power back to Congress, sufficiently deter ongoing crimes. What’s going to be needed in the end is prosecution. But that’s going to have to come through massive public pressure and intense pressure from Congress, from abroad, and from a strengthened independent communications system.

On March 19th the eighth year of this war will begin in Iraq, Afghanistan will still be escalating, and John Yoo will be coming to speak here in Charlottesville, Va. We’re putting up WANTED posters and planning a “Funk the War” musical march and a protest rally. No one will be left with any doubt that this man is not welcome in this part of the country or why. Most other parts of the country are delivering the same message. This is how we begin to change the culture, not by repeating as fact meaningless statements about getting off the hook, not by calling mass murderers torturers, and not by imagining that what John Yoo wants for this country cannot fully happen here.

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

I’d rather have a party that “supported” wars but didn’t fund them, if that option were available. I’d rather have a brand new party, if that were possible. But, given the dominance of the Democratic Party, passing progressive resolutions and working to someday elect progressive representatives looks like an admirable project, and — at least from afar — one imagines that it must be having an impact in Sacramento if not yet in Washington.

Brad Parker is a California Democratic Party (CDP) Progressive who has published a book about his intra-party struggles called Left Turn Only and I recommend it for a number of reasons. For one thing, Parker is a fabulous writer. His critiques of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are wonderful. His vision of a progressive political platform is strong and pointed. His use of details and historical references enriches his writing. Much of the book reads like rally speeches and some of it is. It’s a collection of blog posts, speeches, articles, and resolutions dating from 2005 through 2009.

Absent from the book is any argument for working within the Democratic Party. Good arguments can be made for it, but Parker doesn’t attempt one, he just assumes it. Instead he provides repeated accounts of the behavior of Democratic insiders as so loathsome that he writes of his need to “take many showers to get the foul stench of this process off me.” And yet, ever the cheerful optimist, Parker jumps right back into the foul stench time and again, with the best intentions of disinfecting it at close range. This book seems as likely to drive people out of the Democratic Party as to pull them in, but what might pull them in is the example of Parker and his colleagues, their vision, their dedication, and their marginal successes.

I know a lot of the people Parker mentions and others he doesn’t who have been involved in building the Progressive Caucus in the CDP, and they are all well-intentioned and inspiring. And so is Parker’s book if one focuses on his vision and hopefulness. His recounting of party platform and resolution fights, on the other hand, doesn’t do a lot for me. “California is the conscience of the nation,” Parker said in April 2005 in successfully urging the CDP to pass a resolution against the Iraq War, and other state parties did follow. But California Democratic congress members went right on funding war.

Parker’s next chapter heading reads “Progressives Embraced by the CDP,” but were they embraced or mugged or groped? Their positions were adopted and their candidates brutally rejected. Parties are very disciplined institutions, but they enforce the will of the leaders of the party who control the purse strings, not the will of the positions articulated in party platforms or resolutions. Following an unsuccessful effort in 2006 to move the CDP to endorse Marcy Winograd’s electoral challenge to Congresswoman Jane Harman, Parker swore he would have nothing to do with endorsements again, a strange and clearly untenable conclusion. But by the next chapter Parker is arguing with all his might for an endorsement of Howard Dean’s candidacy for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, fully aware of Dean’s flaws.

Then it’s back to more resolutions, including one to censure Senator Dianne Feinstein, who of course continues to perform her duties as atrociously as ever. And eventually it’s on to the struggle to insert some semi-progressive platitudes into the 2008 national Democratic Party Platform, none of which are guiding decisions in Washington now.

It’s easy to suggest that if Parker and his allies all abandoned ship and began a new party it would be a force to reckon with. But it’s just as easy to recognize that if everyone already overboard climbed onto Parker’s ship they could steer it in a much more progressive direction. What I think would help motivate more people to get involved within the CDP would be a focus on candidates over resolutions.

And I want to be clear what I mean by that. I want issues to be front and center. I want endorsements to be based on hard policy positions, not personalities or cronyism, height, looks, or fundraising prowess. But I’d like to see more activism focused on electing the people who make the right policy commitments, and even more on rewarding and punishing elected officials once they are in office. This need not be at the expense of passing resolutions, but I think it should be far-and-away the top priority.

I suspect Parker might agree with me at the moment, given the candidacy of Marcy Winograd again this year working to knock Jane Harman out of her seat in Congress. That the progressives in the CDP have come this close to replacing someone like Harman with one of their own is the example they can hold up to the rest of us. And if passing resolutions within the state party against everything the party works for nationally has helped to inspire and engage the people now knocking on doors for Marcy, then it has been well worth all the effort.

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

Now North Carolina house candidate Marcus Brandon has pledged to introduce a bill to create single-payer healthcare in that state. Brandon, whom I know and like and who worked for Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign, is a candidate in North Carolina House District 60. That’s near Greensboro, where I can just picture Marcus sitting at a lunch counter and refusing to be provoked.

Brandon has promised that if he is elected, the first piece of legislation he will introduce will be the “North Carolina Healthcare Act” which will provide universal single-payer healthcare to every citizen of the state.

Brandon says that he remains a supporter of national single-payer healthcare and will continue lobbying for passage of HR 676, Congressman John Conyers’ bill:

“The HR 676 fight is definitely not over, but we must now strategically shift the focus to the state level. When other states see that we can cut the cost of healthcare, streamline our medical industry, and still provide universal coverage to all North Carolinians, then all of the sudden, single-payer health care doesn’t look so bad.”

Brandon argues that a single-payer system could save over $1.5 billion per year in reduced bureaucracy in the state of North Carolina alone. And he speaks confidently about making this happen:

“North Carolina is poised to be the first state to adopt single-payer, once I am able to introduce it. North Carolinians are ready for real solutions to healthcare. North Carolina has the third highest healthcare cost of any state, while it sags at 37th in average income. This is a disparity that most North Carolinians feel when they have to think about healthcare. Every day, as I am knocking on doors to talk to voters, I hear stories of people who cannot afford insurance and become victims of this for-profit industry.”

Brandon says his bill is similar to other states’ initiatives such as the “Minnesota Health Act” or the “California Universal Healthcare Act.” Brandon points to these two bills as excellent examples of how a single payer healthcare system could be both fiscally sound and provide full coverage.

Brandon served in 2007 and 2008 as Dennis Kucinich’s National Finance Director and Deputy Campaign Manager. He says that Kucinich inspired him:

“Dennis urged me to run for office so we could build a state-by-state grassroots movement for single payer and other progressive issues. My campaign for the North Carolina House is an extension of the work I did with Dennis Kucinich.”

While Kucinich has struggled unsuccessfully thus far to pass federal legislation facilitating the state creation of single-payer healthcare systems, states are pressign ahead and will deal with lawsuits from “health” corporations when and if they arise.

Marcus Brandon’s website is at
http://www.marcusbrandon.com

He has a primary on May 4th. Those who want a real healthcare system in this country would be wise to pour money into his campaign and those of other state leaders across the country.

Alternatively we could keep putting all our eggs in the basket of fantasies about the United States Senate getting its act together.

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

Photo/Wikimedia

It’s not that I really object to lies about Obama. Most people lie about Obama to make him look good, for the same reason they lie about death or God — because they can’t handle the truth. Others lie about Obama because Fox News told them to or because he’s black, but they mostly make him look better too (“socialist!” “pacifist!” “government healthcare!”).

What does disturb me is the entire 16-page afterword to John Yoo’s book, Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush, in which he criticizes Obama for all the wrong things, praises him for all the wrong things, and packs both procedures so full of lies that only a Fox News viewer could claim to understand it on a first reading.

Yoo describes the state of the world as Obama became president:

“Al Qaeda, which, along with its Taliban allies, continues to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan, remains a threat.”

A threat to whom? A threat justifying wars and crimes? The Taliban and al Qaeda are allies?

“North Korea, the most brutal totalitarian dictatorship on the planet, successfully tested a nuclear weapon and continues its quest for a long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.”

I’m sorry, but didn’t the United States’ president threaten Korea, Iran, and Iraq, and proceed to slaughter and displace more people in Iraq than the entire population of Pyongyang? Doesn’t the United States have more people behind bars than that same entire population? Doesn’t the United States have death camps around the world and openly defend the use of lawless kidnapping, imprisonment, and torture? Doesn’t the United States have a larger military than the rest of the world combined, including bases and ships and missiles targeting North Korea?

And Iran, another consistent foe of the United States, continued its own efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology in defiance of international sanctions.”

If “international sanctions” refers to punishing trade policies enforced by the same nation illegally occupying the nations to the east and west of Iran, then yes. But who ever heard of behaving “in defiance” of such things? This sounds more like Iran is acting “in defiance” of laws or treaties, and it is not — as far as we know — doing so. The United States, in contrast, clearly and unambiguously is violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, not just Article I on not sharing technology (how does Yoo think Pakistan got nukes and Iran got plans to build them?) but also Article VI:

“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

How is that coming along? And since when is Iran a “consistent foe” of the United States? Granted, we’ve overthrown their government, we’ve funded a war against them, we’ve threatened to destroy their country. But what exactly has Iran ever done to us, or anyone else for that matter?

Yoo lists Reagan as a “great” president and claims that Reagan won a sufficient percentage of the popular vote in his elections to have a mandate to radically change the nation’s policies. Obama’s popular vote victory was smaller, and therefore he does not have the same “legitimacy” in trying to “realign” anything. This is curious coming from a former employee of the president who most drastically realigned things in Washington, who was never legitimately elected to that office, and who didn’t even claim a popular vote victory at all prior to asking Yoo to write memos legalizing aggressive war and torture.

But this whole argument is shaped around Yoo’s conception of executives as people whose role has almost nothing to do with executing the laws passed by Congress and everything to do with single-handedly running the world, almost as a “totalitarian dictatorship” you might say. Yoo buttresses his claim of Obama’s illegitimacy by arguing that California voted overwhelmingly for Obama while also voting for initiatives including one to prohibit same-sex marriage. But the issues involved had almost nothing to do with the presidential election, the vote on Proposition 8 (same-sex marriage) was very probably corrupted, according to the Election Defence Alliance, and reshaping the laws of our country is a job for Congress, not for interpreters of whether public opinion gives a particular president a mandate to abuse power.

Yoo is mostly concerned that Obama not change U.S. foreign policy, and he praises Obama’s selection of Hillary Clinton, James Jones, and Robert Gates to continue charting our course to disaster. Yoo is heartened by Obama’s failure to withdraw from Iraq and his decision to escalate in Afghanistan, and expresses strong hope that Obama will be willing to attack Iran and North Korea as well.

Yoo both warns Obama not to change anything and encourages him to get around Congress in order to run the nation from his throne:

“While avoiding the Scylla of overconfidence in his mandate, Obama almost [also??] must skirt the Charybdis of Congress.”

Yoo raises his suspicions that Obama won the Democratic primary over Clinton by cutting deals and promising favors to super-delegates. Yoo is perfectly right to denounce the anti-democratic nature of the delegate selection process in the Democratic Party’s primaries (although that is not actually Yoo’s concern). And he is right to suspect that Obama cut deals with congress members. We’ve seen him cut lots of deals with congress members since he became president. But Yoo’s fear is of “a President who obey[s] congressional wishes.” Now, nobody wants a president who obeys secret pacts made to corrupt our open government. But obeying congressional wishes is actually the Constitutional mandate every president holds. Yoo actually admires the anti-democratic nature of Democratic primaries, which he says serves to

“head off insurgent candidates like a George McGovern or a Jimmy Carter who might be crushed in the general election.”

Never mind that the Democratic primaries have been conducted this way since before Carter was nominated, and never mind that Carter won. Yoo is not trying to slip into honesty here, he’s trying to argue that rightwingers are a majority and that Congress interferes with the service of that majority performed by deserving Republican emperors.

Yoo complains when Obama does not write every word of a bill for Congress and actually allows the legislative branch to play a minor role in the legislative process. And Yoo blames this imperial failure on the corrupt hold Congress has over Obama:

“Obama would fulfill the role set out for him by the Framers by checking Congress’s instinct to overregulate and hand out benefits to interest groups, rather than asking for stimulus bills and letting Congress fill in the details.”

Of course, in reality, presidents tell Congress what to do far more than the reverse. In June 2009, Obama wanted yes votes on a bill for war money and IMF bailouts for bankers. He threatened a loss of election funding, the backing of challengers, removal of chairmanships, blockage of earmarks and bills, and promised money, advertising, PR events with big-shot White House staffers, and economic goodies for districts. Congress fell into line. Yoo, you can be sure, was not disturbed by the backroom corruption.

When Yoo turns to matters of illegal wars, assassinations, lawless imprisonment, and torture, he writes of his initial worry that Obama might be straying back toward the rule of law, and his relief in observing Obama’s Bushlike trajectory. Yoo credits this to Obama becoming aware of the real and scary world out there. Others credit it to a combination of Obama’s initial feints in the direction of decency having been dishonest, and the influence of the permanent Washington war machine having taken over. Regardless of the explanation, however, Yoo is pleased, the law is trashed, and either the majority of us are displeased (as some polls suggest) or “the left wing of the Democratic Party” is upset, as Yoo alleges.

Who knew the Democratic Party had a left wing?

What upset Yoo were Obama’s early PR stunts announcing an end to torture and the closure of the death camp at Guantanamo, his decision to give “enemy combatants” a new label, and his release of secret memos, most of them involving the handiwork of John Yoo himself. Yoo is ever the disinterested party whom you’d never realize risks dying in prison if established laws are enforced against him. While Obama’s misguided actions, Yoo says

“certainly pleased the left wing of the Democratic Party, they also threatened to handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks.”

And yet no one has shown any possible way in which any of the memos that have been made public have endangered the people of the United States, with the possible exception of people like John Yoo and Jay Bybee who wrote the criminal memos. The same argument was made by Obama to the United Kingdom in demanding that a court there not reveal that our “intelligence agencies” had extensively tortured an innocent man named Binyam Mohamed. Obama threatened to cut off “intelligence sharing.” He freed the innocent prisoner, a step our Yoovian government resists above all others. But in the end, the court made public its brief summary of what our “intelligence agencies” had shared, and there was nothing in there to endanger anyone other than CIA officials who prefer to stay out of prison.

Yoo is, in fact, very concerned that some “terrorists” might be charged with crimes and tried in courts of law. And he is frightened by the mythical dangers arising from fraudulent claims to have eliminated torture:

“The CIA must now conduct interrogations according to the rules of the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive techniques, threats and promises, and the good-cop, bad-cop techniques used in police stations throughout America.”

The Army Field Manual (see Appendix M) does no such thing, and the CIA is actually forbidden to torture people by the Bill of Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the U.S. Code, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113C, which made all acts of torture and conspiracy to torture felonies under our law before President Cowboy and his gang of lawyers moved to Washington. And why doesn’t Yoo like Obama pretending to “ban” torture be executive decree?

“President Bush already banned torture or physical abuse in 2002.”

We can’t have every president re-banning torture, now can we? Sooner or later someone might notice that it was already illegal under a real law. And, besides, Obama’s ban on torture goes too far, at least when the marijuana smoke drifts up the Berkeley hill on which Yoo lives:

“President Obama’s new order amounts to requiring — on penalty of prosecution — that CIA interrogators be polite.”

Who knew?

Yoo goes on to lie that “coercive measures” protect the country from dangers and are the only way to get “timely information from captured al Qaeda terrorists.” Never mind that such a thing has never been accomplished, only lied about. Yoo claims that all prisoners will completely refuse to talk, contrary to extensive evidence that prisoners talk more, and more honestly, when not tortured. On top of this frightening fantasy, Yoo suggests, accused criminals given trials will force the government to make public all information related to them even if some of that information endangers the country. Of course, Yoo provides not a single example of this having ever happened.

Then Yoo turns to praising Obama and finds much to be misguidedly pleased with. Yoo is delighted by Obama’s willingness to keep warrantless spying programs going, and to continue and expand upon the use of unmanned drones to murder people around the world — something Yoo accurately describes as

“a far greater deprivation of civil liberties than detention, interrogation, and trial by the military.”

Yoo means that as a compliment. Depriving people of civil liberties is high praise from Professor Torture. Yoo is also pleased with Obama keeping Guantanamo open, imprisoning people without charge, and trying people with military commissions. Yoo concludes, and again this is high praise:

“None of these policies would be legal unless the United States were at war.”

In reality, of course, there’s nothing legal about any of this, and the United States is not “at war”, especially not with random victims of our abuses around the world or here at home. But Yoo’s point is that Obama is using powers that no one has ever asserted a president had without claiming that they were magical powers that appear when there is a war on, even if it is an eternal global war.

Yoo then seems to admit that such abuses of power and human rights are not actually popular with Americans. He compares Obama to former president Eisenhower,

“another President whose personal popularity outstripped the public support for his policies.”

Eisenhower campaigned, Yoo argues, as less of a militarist and warmonger than he served as once elected. He became Truman, and Obama has become Bush. Again, remember, these are meant as compliments:

“Similarly, President Obama has come to have more in common with the ends of the Bush administration’s terrorism policies than did Candidate Obama. It should be clear, further, that this would not be possible were it not for a broad view of presidential power.”

Yoo stresses that he supports that “broad view.” He’s being modest. He INVENTED it. He bestowed as many new powers on the current and every future president as anyone in history. Together with Jay Bybee he counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, wrote memos authorizing aggressive war at the whim of presidents, claimed the power to decree that the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming, and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of war and to announce a new definition of torture limiting it to acts causing intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result.

Yoo claimed in 2005 that a president has the right to enhance an interrogation by crushing the testicles of someone’s child. Yoo currently teaches California’s children at the University of California – Berkeley.

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.