Okay, Denis Moynihan of Democracy Now(!) is filling in for Amy Goodman as moderator; that's fine, we'll roll with it.
Holtzman fields a question about the nature/balance/ease of impeachment. Nixon's was bipartisan, Clinton's partisan.
Kadidal fields a question... (I miss most of it, reading about Moynihan and Goodman and Hustler magazine. Interesting but sort of psycho. Seems like Moynihan and Goodman are against exploitation, so, go them.)
Now we go to Valeriani, who says Nixon, if alive, would ask, regarding Bush's surveillance and its extraordinary success, "Why the hell didn't I do it?"
(Some thoughts on this very humorous older fellow - Valeriani in a Huffington Post blog post: "Bin Laden tape rants against capitalism. Yo, Osama, where did you get your millions? Tape also urges Americans to convert to Islam. No thanks, we prefer the 21st Century."
Huq quite ably defends Muslim-Americans in another H.F. post.
But don't worry, V. skewers everybody: "Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego announces $198 million settlement with plaintiffs who claimed they were sexually abused by priests. Big Bucks for Buggery.")
Valeriani is a journalist. He contacted Russians and worked in Cuba, back in the Cold War days, and had his phones tapped. The FBI called him routinely to ask him to help get Russians to give away sensitive information. When he didn't respond to FBI phone messages for two days, they showed up in front of buildings where he was headed. He had his records with the FBI checked - he was listed as "turned," a friendly informant. Lol.
Holtzman gets a round of vigorous applause for defending the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, no matter how hard such a process would be. (She's responding to V. and his assertion that - because, in the event of a successful B&C impeachment, Nancy Pelosi would become president - some might see an impeachment as an attempt at a "Democrat coup," which does sound silly, typing it.
She points out that a successful impeachment must be bipartisan; if Republicans don't want to impeach Bush, Democrats won't be able to do it alone.
Huq very smartly brings the whole question around to what will happen with the next president, regardless of her party? Will the next president not only abandon but help dismantle and prevent from being reinstated the illegal, warrantless surveillance programs? The extraordinary renditions to secret jails in Syria and Egypt? He defines the "Cheney version of the Constitution," which is that whenever the executive feels it needs to extend its powers in the name of national security, it simply can, no questions.
Don't think, Huq counsels, that a Pres. Obama or a Pres. Hillary won't use the Republican programs of domestic terror that Culture Project, Democracy Now(!), the CCR, the ACLU, and so many others are fighting against.
Valeriani speaks on "scar tissue," how we're no longer shocked by Bush's evils.
Audience Q1: Pressures on the election...
Holtzman says we need the president to be brought to justice, to show that Congress can do its thing(s) - pass laws and remove tyrants from office.
Audience Q2: If Pelosi hadn't taken impeachment off the table...
Kadidal, Holtzman, and Valeriani note that the American people and Dennis Kucinich want to impeach Bush; keep the pressure on, Pelosi will have to. It wasn't a problem (for the Speaker of the House - third in line for pres. after pres. and VP - to bring the pres. to justice) during Watergate.
Audience Q3: Cheney = brains of operation...
Valeriani: He lied about WMDs.
Huq: There's a great deal of public evidence about Cheney's aide's roles in setting aside FISA, torture laws, and the Geneva Conventions. You'd subpoena [Cheney's aides].
Audience Q4: How would ordinary people get Congress to listen, seriously...?
Holtzman: When was the last time you contacted your Congressperson? Get a meeting. Email. Get your block to sign a petition.
Moynihan has a show of hands for who gets the "Saturday Night Massacre" reference. (The audience, educated and in many cases old enough, gets it.)
Holtzman: The tapes were critical. Elliot Richardson appointed a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who looked for the tapes. The tapes got Nixon impeached. (People got fired, hence the massacre.) "We would have seen a similar event" - Ashcroft would have resigned. It's not clear what they changed to make their program compliant with FISA.
Audience Q5: 200,000 phone calls, that night, Saturday Night Massacre, to the Congress. We had 200,000 phone calls. You heard from us.
Audience Q6: Should we impeach Cheney first, because people seem to favor that, in polls? Then impeach Bush?
Holtzman (again): It will take a while to do two. It took a while for us to do one. We had to hire lawyers. The Democrats hired a Republican lawyer, and the Republicans hired a Republican lawyer. It hadn't been done in a hundred years - these things had to be studied. It took about nine months. So there's really enough time, to do it still. But there's not enough time to do Cheney and Bush. We have Bush's fingerprints on it. My whole view is to start the proceedings against Bush; we will accumulate evidence against Cheney.
One of the articles against Nixon was that he stonewalled us for information, and that was voted on by a bipartisan base. So there's a precedent. There's a lot of sentiment around the country for impeachment.
(Have any Congresspeople - Dems or Reps, candidates or not - seen our videos, site, blog? Do they know about this event? Shouldn't we, CP, tell them? Shouldn't we all?)
Huq: The Congress can hold court on its own. (Holtzman: We have our own jail!) The Congress can specifically subpoena the president and hold him in contempt if he doesn't show.
Qs-Final, there's a short storm of them.
Kadidal notes that other forms of government have Justice Departments that can go after corrupt executives. We do not have this. Certainly not in Mukasey...
Holtzman: What happened not only to Congress, but to the ACLU? I still believe it can be done, has to be done. With all the defects in the impeachment process, this is what the framers had exactly in mind. They were freaked about the misuse of power. They knew there was gonna be a Richard Nixon, a George Bush. There's too much misunderstanding about it. Even Obama said it's not democratic - it's in our Constitution, it's exactly democratic. What's the shape of our country going to be? No one else can make that decision for us?
***
This has been live blogging on surveillance; I'm back for one more live-blog-impeachy event on Sunday... (And, yes, for those who have read some of my earlier posts, I still like Obama but disagree with Obama on impeachment and wish Kucinich was as popular.)
Showing posts with label pelosi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pelosi. Show all posts
Monday, December 10, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
Alec Baldwin moderates the Katrina Panel (long)
Alec Baldwin notes that, if you care, you think about "why" and "how it [everything Bush] got to this level" all the time. You have to train yourself to stop asking why, how...
At a dinner party, Alec Baldwin asked Bill Clinton about how spending by the government is prioritized. Clinton just gave him a look as if to say, "Don't go there." Baldwin discusses in general how we are all tied to the idea that government just gets to spend tons of money, gets to hire nepotistically... Very disturbing, discussed much by Lapham in books (why we are always at war).
Baldwin wonders what impeaching Bush with only one year left.
Baldwin to Cynthia Cooper: Can Bush be impeached for Katrina?
Cynthia Cooper and a prominent Watergate lawyer looked intensely at the question. Cooper says the president is supposed to uphold the law and take care. She says the Stafford Act very clearly is Bush's purview; he failed to uphold his duty to mobilize the government according to the Stafford Act. The president was specifically told that lives were on the line. He did nothing, prayed for a good outcome. He failed to live up to a presidential standard of upholding the law and Constitution.
Baldwin to Gardner: What do you think Bush should have done? What could have been done in two days?
Gardner: He could have stopped his vacation. He was on vacation. He could have show, on a basic level, compassion. Should have evacuated right away - helped those with no transportation get away from the [ginormous] hurricane. Judith Browne-Dianis says the administration just didn't care, figured the hurricane would literally blow over; people would forget that some citizens had been screwed over. The city's evacuation plan relied on buses, and the bus drivers left.
Erica Hunt points out that there was a yard full of buses only blocks from the Super Dome, unused...
Baldwin: Were there any heroes, of Katrina?
Cooper: National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield. He tried to personally motivate Bush.
Lapham: The government behaved exactly how it was supposed to, according to Republican ideologues - who want the smallest possible government. Two nations, divisible by magnitude. The more poor that can be eliminated, the better. The government has no purpose for the rich. They don't need the government. (More privatized cops now than public.)
Baldwin: The fraud and waste of the welfare system is minuscule compared to the fraud and waste of the defense system. Do you think Republicans hate the poor more because of what they cost the system, or more because they vote for Democrats?
Lapham: It's George Bernard Shaw. If you're poor, you deserve to be punished.
Baldwin: Do you think Bush should be literally impeached?
Browne-Dianis: I don't think it would happen now. We're going into an election year. I think he has done enough to show that he should be impeached.
Cooper: Absolutely. Even if on his last day in office. He has many more months to screw up this country.
Gardner: Totally. There was a growing movement to impeach him; the Dems won Congress; Pelosi took it off the table. Kucinich introduced it again.
Jackson: Yes. Bush has continued Reagan's campaign against the poor.
Hunt: Yes, impeachment may be in order, but she's concerned about the symbolism of impeachment and how it might obscure the root causes (of the crimes that led to impeachment). Off course Pelosi took it off the table - she doesn't believe in a common wealth, a common good, any more than most Republicans.
Lapham: Yes, on two grounds - Iraq, a criminal fraud. Second, it's the Constitutional task of the Congress to preserve the balance of power, to assert the legislative authority - unless it does that, it destroys the principle on which this country was set up. (I.e., not just Bush, but any president will be too powerful.)
Baldwin: What happened with Pelosi?
Lapham: Conyers made the grounds for impeachment clear; Pelosi didn't see it as politically useful and abandoned it.
Baldwin: Most people don't want to impeach a president at war, whether or not the war was just to start. Baldwin goes into a long story about Reagan - old-school, against taxes, in favor of letting people admit that they'd rather have a new swimming pool than social programs elsewhere - and how different Bush is. Bush sees Iraq as money to be made. The economy has to be in perpetual debt in order to cut useful social programs. He goes into the racket of war. (You can and should read the book War Is A Racket.)
Baldwin: Lewis, are these people [B&C] the same as we've seen before, and they've just been emboldened by Clinton-fatigue and 9/11? Or are they the worst you've ever seen?
Lapham: These guys are the worst I've ever seen. I see Bush the way I see Britney Spears. Spoiled rich kid adolescents. How do spoiled rich kids show their power? They break things. They spend money.
Baldwin: Goes off about how empty the Texas governorship was, even under Bush. He was a ribbon-cutter.
Baldwin: What can people do now? I don't want people to come into this room and have the "awareness orgasm" where they learn some facts, go home, and have completion. What should they do?
Browne-Dianis: I represent N.O. residents in class-action suits. People are getting kicked out of FEMA trailers. Rents are going up all over. Bulldozing public housing. The federal government runs the housing authority of New Orleans. They're demolishing brick public housing built to survive hurricanes (that did survive hurricanes - they just need new flooring and mold removal). But the plan is to keep the poor out. The right to return does not exist. We have tried ever legal way to stop the bulldozers. We have been denied. Local authorities don't want to be on the side of their constituents, the developers, in case the poor come back and vote somehow. But they don't want to be on the side of the poor. December 15th, let's do something to stop the bulldozers. (She leaves the stage to massive applause.)
Cooper: Let's get major media to look at impeachment. Call the public editor of the NYTimes.
Gardner: We have to stop the assault on the poor; public housing is being demolished all over. The Gulf Coast Recovery Act is being held up by a Republican senator from Louisiana, this jerk. We have to contact Sen. Charles Schumer and get him to pass the bill.
Jackson: December 10th, come to New Orleans. Get organized to stop the bulldozing on the 15th. Contact Jackson at jackson-action@hotmail.com. Help us get the GCRA bill passed. Fight that jerk Vitter; call Schumer.
Gardner: Go to http://www.peopleshurricane.org/.
Baldwin: Have a banner on the website to list everything. (Okay, note to self - I think I've just had my first freelance job request from Alec Baldwin.)
Hunt: Two great sites that can help you keep up with news and events are: Color of Change and Katrina Information Networkth.
Audience1: There's a rally in New York on the 10th. (Send CP info on this, please.)
Audience2: How/why can anyone respect the U.S. if it lets its president defraud us? We must impeach Bush.
Cooper: Bush won't turn over emails; his staff refuse to testify. Same as Watergate (but worse). The people have to stand up in larger and larger numbers and demand impeachment.
Audience3: During the 70s, we had more alternative news, a free press. How do we get the average Joe to know about the impeachment movement?
Cooper: Demanding it can only help; media activism is necessary.
Audience4: Barbara Jordan pointed out that unless we use impeachment, we might as well shred the Constitution. We have to make sacrifice to make change - stop shopping, go down to New Orleans. Buy a ticket, go down there, stand with the residents against bulldozers.
Audience5: I'm not really so sure whether Bush should be impeached. If we impeach Bush and the Dems win the next presidential election, the Reps will use impeachment against the Dems. (?) (Murmuring of dissatisfaction with question.)
Baldwin: Impeachment is a very difficult thing, on purpose. Long aside about Tom Delay. (More murmurs.)
Lapham: (Too quiet to hear, I think he said "it's necessary.")
Audience6: If you don't have time to go to New Orleans, I'm sure one of us displaced New Orleanians (sp?) would be willing to go in your place. (Applause.) If culture is demolished, what is the future of New Orleans?
Jackson: We had doctors, lawyers, musicians in public housing, not just drug-dealers. Really, public housing in New Orleans was not like they said (the media?).
Gardner: Now they're asking for expensive funeral permits. More about the destruction of culture in N.O.
Baldwin thanks everyone; we're out of time.
Cue zydeco. Cue applause.
At a dinner party, Alec Baldwin asked Bill Clinton about how spending by the government is prioritized. Clinton just gave him a look as if to say, "Don't go there." Baldwin discusses in general how we are all tied to the idea that government just gets to spend tons of money, gets to hire nepotistically... Very disturbing, discussed much by Lapham in books (why we are always at war).
Baldwin wonders what impeaching Bush with only one year left.
Baldwin to Cynthia Cooper: Can Bush be impeached for Katrina?
Cynthia Cooper and a prominent Watergate lawyer looked intensely at the question. Cooper says the president is supposed to uphold the law and take care. She says the Stafford Act very clearly is Bush's purview; he failed to uphold his duty to mobilize the government according to the Stafford Act. The president was specifically told that lives were on the line. He did nothing, prayed for a good outcome. He failed to live up to a presidential standard of upholding the law and Constitution.
Baldwin to Gardner: What do you think Bush should have done? What could have been done in two days?
Gardner: He could have stopped his vacation. He was on vacation. He could have show, on a basic level, compassion. Should have evacuated right away - helped those with no transportation get away from the [ginormous] hurricane. Judith Browne-Dianis says the administration just didn't care, figured the hurricane would literally blow over; people would forget that some citizens had been screwed over. The city's evacuation plan relied on buses, and the bus drivers left.
Erica Hunt points out that there was a yard full of buses only blocks from the Super Dome, unused...
Baldwin: Were there any heroes, of Katrina?
Cooper: National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield. He tried to personally motivate Bush.
Lapham: The government behaved exactly how it was supposed to, according to Republican ideologues - who want the smallest possible government. Two nations, divisible by magnitude. The more poor that can be eliminated, the better. The government has no purpose for the rich. They don't need the government. (More privatized cops now than public.)
Baldwin: The fraud and waste of the welfare system is minuscule compared to the fraud and waste of the defense system. Do you think Republicans hate the poor more because of what they cost the system, or more because they vote for Democrats?
Lapham: It's George Bernard Shaw. If you're poor, you deserve to be punished.
Baldwin: Do you think Bush should be literally impeached?
Browne-Dianis: I don't think it would happen now. We're going into an election year. I think he has done enough to show that he should be impeached.
Cooper: Absolutely. Even if on his last day in office. He has many more months to screw up this country.
Gardner: Totally. There was a growing movement to impeach him; the Dems won Congress; Pelosi took it off the table. Kucinich introduced it again.
Jackson: Yes. Bush has continued Reagan's campaign against the poor.
Hunt: Yes, impeachment may be in order, but she's concerned about the symbolism of impeachment and how it might obscure the root causes (of the crimes that led to impeachment). Off course Pelosi took it off the table - she doesn't believe in a common wealth, a common good, any more than most Republicans.
Lapham: Yes, on two grounds - Iraq, a criminal fraud. Second, it's the Constitutional task of the Congress to preserve the balance of power, to assert the legislative authority - unless it does that, it destroys the principle on which this country was set up. (I.e., not just Bush, but any president will be too powerful.)
Baldwin: What happened with Pelosi?
Lapham: Conyers made the grounds for impeachment clear; Pelosi didn't see it as politically useful and abandoned it.
Baldwin: Most people don't want to impeach a president at war, whether or not the war was just to start. Baldwin goes into a long story about Reagan - old-school, against taxes, in favor of letting people admit that they'd rather have a new swimming pool than social programs elsewhere - and how different Bush is. Bush sees Iraq as money to be made. The economy has to be in perpetual debt in order to cut useful social programs. He goes into the racket of war. (You can and should read the book War Is A Racket.)
Baldwin: Lewis, are these people [B&C] the same as we've seen before, and they've just been emboldened by Clinton-fatigue and 9/11? Or are they the worst you've ever seen?
Lapham: These guys are the worst I've ever seen. I see Bush the way I see Britney Spears. Spoiled rich kid adolescents. How do spoiled rich kids show their power? They break things. They spend money.
Baldwin: Goes off about how empty the Texas governorship was, even under Bush. He was a ribbon-cutter.
Baldwin: What can people do now? I don't want people to come into this room and have the "awareness orgasm" where they learn some facts, go home, and have completion. What should they do?
Browne-Dianis: I represent N.O. residents in class-action suits. People are getting kicked out of FEMA trailers. Rents are going up all over. Bulldozing public housing. The federal government runs the housing authority of New Orleans. They're demolishing brick public housing built to survive hurricanes (that did survive hurricanes - they just need new flooring and mold removal). But the plan is to keep the poor out. The right to return does not exist. We have tried ever legal way to stop the bulldozers. We have been denied. Local authorities don't want to be on the side of their constituents, the developers, in case the poor come back and vote somehow. But they don't want to be on the side of the poor. December 15th, let's do something to stop the bulldozers. (She leaves the stage to massive applause.)
Cooper: Let's get major media to look at impeachment. Call the public editor of the NYTimes.
Gardner: We have to stop the assault on the poor; public housing is being demolished all over. The Gulf Coast Recovery Act is being held up by a Republican senator from Louisiana, this jerk. We have to contact Sen. Charles Schumer and get him to pass the bill.
Jackson: December 10th, come to New Orleans. Get organized to stop the bulldozing on the 15th. Contact Jackson at jackson-action@hotmail.com. Help us get the GCRA bill passed. Fight that jerk Vitter; call Schumer.
Gardner: Go to http://www.peopleshurricane.org/.
Baldwin: Have a banner on the website to list everything. (Okay, note to self - I think I've just had my first freelance job request from Alec Baldwin.)
Hunt: Two great sites that can help you keep up with news and events are: Color of Change and Katrina Information Networkth.
Audience1: There's a rally in New York on the 10th. (Send CP info on this, please.)
Audience2: How/why can anyone respect the U.S. if it lets its president defraud us? We must impeach Bush.
Cooper: Bush won't turn over emails; his staff refuse to testify. Same as Watergate (but worse). The people have to stand up in larger and larger numbers and demand impeachment.
Audience3: During the 70s, we had more alternative news, a free press. How do we get the average Joe to know about the impeachment movement?
Cooper: Demanding it can only help; media activism is necessary.
Audience4: Barbara Jordan pointed out that unless we use impeachment, we might as well shred the Constitution. We have to make sacrifice to make change - stop shopping, go down to New Orleans. Buy a ticket, go down there, stand with the residents against bulldozers.
Audience5: I'm not really so sure whether Bush should be impeached. If we impeach Bush and the Dems win the next presidential election, the Reps will use impeachment against the Dems. (?) (Murmuring of dissatisfaction with question.)
Baldwin: Impeachment is a very difficult thing, on purpose. Long aside about Tom Delay. (More murmurs.)
Lapham: (Too quiet to hear, I think he said "it's necessary.")
Audience6: If you don't have time to go to New Orleans, I'm sure one of us displaced New Orleanians (sp?) would be willing to go in your place. (Applause.) If culture is demolished, what is the future of New Orleans?
Jackson: We had doctors, lawyers, musicians in public housing, not just drug-dealers. Really, public housing in New Orleans was not like they said (the media?).
Gardner: Now they're asking for expensive funeral permits. More about the destruction of culture in N.O.
Baldwin thanks everyone; we're out of time.
Cue zydeco. Cue applause.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Sisterhood out the window!
I think that imaginative, vocal, and serious protest to hold our elected leaders accountable is crucial, especially in the world we're living in today. That's what Women Center Stage here at CP is all about after all - amplifying the voices calling for change. But I get very concerned when "liberals," "Democrats," "lefties," and related ilk decide to go after "liberals," "Democrats," "lefties," and related ilk.
Why do we keep going after one another? What happened to solidarity?
The NY Times reported yesterday that Cindy Sheehan has issued an ultimatum to Nancy Pelosi:
Maybe I'm naive, but I feel so strongly that those of us trying to change this country do ourselves a major disservice by publicly attacking our allies.The war protester Cindy Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son was killed in Iraq three years ago, said in May that she was quitting her prominent role in the antiwar movement and severing her ties with the Democratic Party. But her retirement from politics may prove short-lived.
Now Ms. Sheehan, right, is talking about running for Congress as an independent candidate against Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2008 if Ms. Pelosi, left, a Democrat, refuses to move for the impeachment of President Bush.
Especially as women in movements for change, we are in a position to further and facilitate solidarity, to change the paradigm of power-mongering and scapegoating.
Not that we should let leaders like Nancy Pelosi, who are in powerful positions to make change, get away with resting on their laurels. But to go to battle publicly like this...I think it does far more harm than good, and allows Repubs to keep calling us flip-flopping dummies.
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