Bush's Gravest Impeachable Crime

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/21200

Bush's Gravest Impeachable Crime
Submitted by dlindorff on Thu, 2007-04-12 21:56. Impeachment

When my co-author Barbara Olshansky and I wrote The Case for Impeachment during the waning months of 2005 and early 2006, it seemed clear to us that the biggest impeachable crimes of the Bush regime involved the illegal war against Iraq, and the trashing of the rights and civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution. Almost as an afterthought, we also included a proposed article of impeachment against the president for his insidious efforts to block any regulatory, Congressional or international action on confronting global warming.

Now that the first two UN reports on the causes and magnitude of the threats posed by global warming have come out--albeit in watered down form, thanks in part to the administration’s continuing efforts to downplay the crisis--and now that independent scientific research is suggesting that the disaster facing life on earth, and human life and civilization in particular is of catastrophic proportions, it seems that perhaps we should turn things around.

At this point, arguably, Bush’s greatest crime is not the Iraq War, terrible as that has been. Nor is it his revocation of habeas corpus or his authorization of torture. It is not the usurpation of the legislative power of the Congress. It is not the felonious violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or his obstruction of the investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

His biggest crime is a deliberate campaign of inaction and active obstruction in the face of a clear need for the United States to act decisively to stop or slow catastrophic climate change.

This president has not simply denied the reality of global warming. He has actively lied to the American people about the dangers ahead, and has had his administration, through intimidation and post-hoc editing by political hacks, block the publication of government scientific reports on global warming. He has defunded projects that would help document the growing crisis, for example cutting funding for satellites that would measure the effects of climate change on the surface of the planet. He has pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto Protocol--the first global effort to confront the problem and try to limit production of greenhouse gasses. He even went back on a 2000 campaign promise to limit carbon emissions from power plants, and instead has given virtual carte blanche to power companies to build the most carbon-spewing coal-powered generating stations possible, complete with gratuitous tax breaks. He has threatened countries with trade sanctions for trying to take actions that would combat global warming, and has even had the US government go to court against state governments, like California’s and Vermont’s, to try to block them from acting to reduce carbon emissions on their own, by for example setting mileage standards for vehicles sold in-state.

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[Uncle Joe]

1. I believe when the effects of global warming hit the fan, Katrina

will seem as a dress rehearsal and history will have Bush's face etched on a mountain of fecal material.

I also wonder what will become of the mass corporate media who report on the looming catastrophe of global warming as if only the third world will be effected. Will they say when Florida or Manhattan is swamped or when the Midwest is turned in to a dust bowl, who could have for seen this!? Why did they not warn the American People, the threat is against us as well? Is it because they thought we would not act if we perceived the threat was against someone else? I don't believe the American People will be very forgiving with them, and the tragedy is, I'm not sure they care.

[ms liberty]

2. K&R - too true. n/t

[Demeter]

3. I'm Ready to Impeach Him for Breathing Too Hard

I'm past my last nerve.

[babylonsister]

4. LOL! Me, too! nt