The past year has seen the public exposure of enough evidence of old, ongoing, and new crimes, abuses of power, and impeachable offenses by George Bush and Dick Cheney that in any remotely representative democracy, these two thugs would be out of office and behind bars. The chief reason this does not shock us is that the same could be said, and was said, of each of the previous six years. It's been quite a millennium so far for Washington, D.C.
Some of us began this year expecting something different. We had worked to elect Democratic majorities in Congress so that we might move in the direction of impeachment. If we didn't get to impeachment right away, we thought, at least real investigations with the power of subpoena would push a reluctant Congress in the right direction. With House committees having come within a vote of starting investigations, with the Democrats having shut down the Senate to try to force an investigation, with Chairman-to-be John Conyers having published a book on Bush and Cheney's crimes and held unofficial hearings in the basement, we had reason to be hopeful.
We are, alas, forced to place our hopes in 2008. Some of the 2007 evidence below was exposed by Congress, but most of it was unearthed by book authors, bloggers, independent reporters, federal prosecutors, and the corporate media. With the Democratic majorities came a complete ban on congressional investigations of war lies (not to mention an end to serious efforts to end the occupation of Iraq). Other investigations proceeded cautiously and at a glacial pace - and with no ultimate objective, Speaker Nancy Pelosi having declared impeachment "off the table." It took over 4 months for the opposition party to issue its first subpoena. In June there was a minor burst of subpoenas. But it was quickly established that Bush, Cheney, Condi, and their underlings, would never comply with subpoenas, and that Bush would even (feloniously) order former staffers not to comply. The Democrats let it go at that and largely stopped trying to compel incriminating testimony. That the House Judiciary Committee had, a single generation back, passed an article of impeachment against a president for refusing a subpoena was buried in our national amnesia.
In 2007 we saw the departure of Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Doug Feith, and other Bush cronies, but without public accountability or criminal punishment, and without accountability for their bosses. Having unilaterally disarmed by stripping impeachment from the Constitution, the Democrats in 2007 could only play at oversight on television, which left them subject to the owners of the television networks. This was a replay of the Democrats' restraint in the rigged Iran-Contra hearings. The goal of that unconstitutional restraint had been electoral victories, but the result had been losses and the creation of the Bush dynasty.
The result in 2007 was a lot of smoke, but no fire. In fact, the new Congress passed new legislation further stripping us of our Constitutional rights, and every now and then let slip a hint at the depth of bipartisan complicity. The year began with Senator Dick Durbin explaining that he had known before the Iraq invasion that the White House was lying to the public, but that he had not dared to say so for fear of disclosing classified information. The year closed with the revelation that Nancy Pelosi was one of a group of leading Congress Members informed of U.S. torture policies five years ago. She, too, dared not say anything, and still has said nothing. Maybe 2008 will be the year in which she finds her voice.
As you read through the following evidence, please bear in mind a couple of key points.
1. We didn't need any of it, or any of the previous year's evidence. We've had enough solid evidence for a 5-minute slam-dunk (than you, George) impeachment for years now. Here are the highlights:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/keydocuments2. While none of this is about sex, and all good impeachments simply must be about sex, we have learned in recent years of CIA prostitute parties and Halliburton gang rapes. And if that's not enough to convince you that something is rotten in the state of the Homeland, we learned in 2007 that (quick, cover your children's eyes) . . . "Bush Promised to Kiss Blair's Ass."
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24493 SECRECY AND COVERUPSHere is a collection of the outstanding subpoenas yet to be obeyed:
http://democrats.com/subpoenas Here are a few choice related headlines with links to the articles you'll want to savor as you look back across the past year of not having a clue what your government was up to:
A National Archives official reveals what the veep wanted to keep classified--and how he tried to challenge the rules
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29579Cheney Won't Even Say Who Works in His Office
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/17866Bush Won't Say Where His Prisons Are
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/21434Vice President Exempts His Office from the Requirements for Protecting Classified Information
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23834Bush Claims Oversight Exemption Too
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23932Bush Orders Miers Not to Testify
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24568Justice Dept. to White House officials: Ignore Congress
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24585 Whistle-blowers Face Punishment in Iraq; Contractors Say U.S. Military Jailed, Tortured Them for Reporting Fraud
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/26094 SIGNING STATEMENTS AND ASSERTIONS OF DICTATORIAL POWER2007 was the year of the unitary executive, as Congress and the courts largely stepped out of the picture. And the unitary executive had a lot of executivizing to do:
New Report Shows Bush's Presidential Signing Statements Have Been Used to Nullify Laws
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23764New Index of Presidential Signing Statements
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/26476Cheney Exempts His Office from Requirement to Protect Classified Information
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23834Cheney Destroys Visitor Logs
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23085A New Dick Cheney-Alberto Gonzales Mystery
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23979Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22710Bush Uses Signing Statement to Announce Refusal to Obey New Military Appropriations Law
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29071TURNING GOVERNMENT AGENCIES INTO REPUBLICAN PARTY MACHINEThis was the big new story of 2007, and Congress does get some credit for stirring the dirt on this one. It turns out that most of the executive branch of the government now works for the Republican party. U.S. attorneys who had failed to grasp that fact were fired. Emails that exposed it were destroyed. State governors who got in the way became political prisoners. And an intellectually challenged Attorney General who could take orders but not remember what he'd had for breakfast was scared out of town after committing perjury on television. His bosses laughed and replaced him with a clone. Congress complied.
Not that Congress wasn't very, very concerned. In fact, Rep. Henry Waxman alone destroyed a forest writing letters to the White House and publishing reports like this one:
http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070618105243.pdfBy the end of 2007 I saw an editorial cartoon in the paper with holiday lights on the White House spelling out: "No Comment: Ongoing Investigation." A man in the cartoon commented: "They just leave them up all year now." These were some of the choice headlines from 2007 on the your-tax-dollars-pay-for-the-Republican-Party theme:
Administration Withheld Emails About Rove
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22360GSA Chief Is Accused of Playing Politics
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/20480DOJ Made Immigration Judgeships Political
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22965New Justice Department documents show White House involvement in Attorneys firings
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23628Legal Memo Confirms White House Led Effort To Target And Remove U.S. Attorneys
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24124Politicization of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24781Conyers' Staff Documents More Crimes and Abuses, But He Still Won't Impeach
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25054Emails Detail RNC Voter Suppression in Five States
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25135Commerce, Treasury Funds Helped Boost GOP Campaigns
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25929State Department Agents Say Jobs Were Threatened
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27292The United States Attorneys Scandal Comes to Mississippi
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27631Daughter of jailed governor sees White House hand in her father's fall
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28972Bush Tries to Seize Control of Military Lawyers
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29429(Here's Why) Meet Tom Fiscus
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29041White House Illegally Deleted Over TEN MILLION Emails
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29258ELECTION FRAUDOf course, the point is to continue stealing elections. But some of the past crimes of that nature continued to bubble up unnoticed in 2007:
Former DoJ Attorneys Accuse Bush Admin of Restricting African American Vote
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/21712Ohio Secretary of State confirms 2004 election could have been stolen
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29380NH Phone jamming scheme
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/20/rnc-phone-jamming-doj/ SPYINGWhat would a 21st century year be without further shredding of the Fourth Amendment? Bush opened it with a bang by seizing a power Hitler too had seized early on: the power to open your mail.
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/16946It was all downhill without resistance from there.
NY Times: "Dick Cheney sent Mr. Gonzales and another official to Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital room to get him to approve the wiretapping."
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25214Unimpeachably Impeachable
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24216Cheney Urged Illegal Wiretaps
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23408Ashcroft's ex-no. 2 says Gonzales, Cheney tried to take advantage of sick Attorney General.
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22509Two FBI Whistleblowers Confirm Illegal Wiretapping of Government Officials and Misuse of FISA
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/19269Bush Decides to Continue FISA Violations After All
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22086Bush Dodges Comey’s Accusations That He Personally Arranged Ashcroft Hospital Visit
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22623FBI Finds It Frequently Overstepped in Collecting Data
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23655New NSA Whistleblower Speaks
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24183IRS tracked taxpayers’ political affiliation
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24415Cheney On Whether He Ordered Hospital Visit To Ashcroft: I Have ‘No Recollection’
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25295Bush "Authorized" Illegal Spying Programs
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25344Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27060White House Spy Docs Show Surveillance Was Illegal, Senator Feingold Charges
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27848GLOBAL WARMINGNow, admittedly there's no clause in the Constitution banning the warming of the planet, but 2007 was chock full of headlines like this one, that weren't really news, but were louder than they'd been before:
Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/17148It's that sort of thing that makes these headlines fit into the crime section:
Cheney Bypassed Environmentally ‘Clueless’ Bush To Craft Administration’s Climate Change Agenda
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/23/cheney-climate-clueless/Scientists 'pressured on climate findings'
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/17993Ex-Bush Official: I Fixed The (Climate) Facts Around The Policy
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/20207The Secret Campaign of President Bush's Administration to Deny Global Warming
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/23938Not an environment scare story
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/28262CALIFORNIA ENERGY CRISIS: NEW EVIDENCEHere's an oldie but goodie that came back for a cameo:
Cheney Suppressed Evidence in California Energy Crisis
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24875ONGOING INTENTIONAL DESTRUCTION OF NEW ORLEANS2007 closed out with the use of tazers and brutal crowd repression in New Orleans as people protested the ongoing intentional destruction of good housing. There was also this:
Two Years After Katrina, Billions in Relief Funds Are Missing
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/26123LYING TO CONGRESS AND PUBLIC IN STATE OF THE UNION - AN ANNUAL RITUALBush began 2007 with a claim in a State of the Union Address that he had thwarted a number of terrorist plots. They all turned out to be fictional:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/17806When no corporate media other than Keith Olbermann called Bush on his lies, he must have felt empowered to tell more:
Transcripts show evidence against Muslim charity fabricated
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/18982Bush-Cheney Blocked and Falsified Reports on Health and Medicine
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24538Your Tax Dollars Are Used to Tell You Lies
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/25828Bush Used Bogus Terror Threat To Scare Votes For FISA Bill
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/27129Oh, and you know that one about "America does not torture"? It looks like Bush watched the missing torture tapes before saying that:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/29596And this one just won't go away:
France (and CIA) knew in 2001 al-Qaida had a plot
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/21327THREATENING A WAR OF AGGRESSION IN IRANThis violation of the U.N. Charter and U.S. Constitution has been well documented by Congressman Dennis Kucinich:
http://kucinich.house.gov/SpotlightIssues/documents.htm We also learned in 2007 that Bush and Cheney were doing more in Iran than threatening it:
"Explosive" new Hersh scoop: Bush funneling money to Al Qaeda-related groups
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