Surveillance Panel

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?

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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.)