Impeachment

Chairman John Conyers is on the House floor right now
http://c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN_rm.aspx
arguing that judges who abuse their power must be impeached. But the judge he has in mind is not Jay Bybee.

Which will get a federal judge impeached?

Worker fired for anti-Bush letter settles suit | News Tribune

A man who claims he lost his job with a vendor for the Missouri Department of Corrections because of an anti-Bush letter has settled his federal lawsuit with the state for $150,000.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reported on its Web site Friday that Tim Kniest said the settlement equals three years of back pay. Read more.

The Judiciary Committee should have dragged this out for a few years just to give plausibility to the length of time they always told us an impeachment would take. And it was supposed to feel a little more traumatic too.

By David Swanson

A judge gropes and harasses his female employees, lies about it to investigators, is tried and convicted, and is on his way to prison. The U.S. House of Representatives springs into action, activating something none of us even knew existed during the entire eight-year hell of Cheney-Bush: the House Judiciary Committee Task Force on Judicial Impeachment. And what did Judge Groper do on Wednesday? He chose not to show up, as requested by Congress, for his own impeachment hearing.

Over on the Senate side of Capitol Hill, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee recently asked a federal judge not yet convicted of authoring memos to facilitate torture if he wouldn't mind coming in to talk, and Jay Bybee replied "Um, let me think about it . . . no. You go ahead without me," or something roughly to that effect.

Convicted federal judge says he will resign next year
Juan A. Lozano, Associated Press | Dallas Morning News

A convicted federal judge told President Barack Obama in a letter Tuesday that he would resign from the bench in June 2010, nearly a year after he begins serving prison time for lying about the sexual abuse of two assistants.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent would draw a full salary of $174,000 a year and benefits until the resignation takes effect, said his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin. Kent decided on the delay so his wife could retain her medical benefits, DeGuerin said. He said Kent's wife has serious medical problems.

The resignation was submitted a week after denial of Kent's request to retire on disability due to depression – which would have meant full salary for the rest of his life. By resigning, he gets nothing after next year.

DeGuerin said Kent, 59, is resigning to avoid the "spectacle" of an impeachment process by Congress.

The lawyer also said it would probably take a year for the impeachment process to be completed in Congress and, "with him resigning, it's not necessary."

The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on the matter today. Read more.

Thanks to Bob Schacht and Progressive Democrats of Hawaii:

Resolution 09-01: SUPPORTING THE IMPEACHMENT AND REMOVAL OF JAY S. BYBEE FROM THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

Whereas, four memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel between August 1, 2002 and May 30, 2005 were released on April 16, 2009 by the United States Department of Justice relating to prisoner interrogation during President George W. Bush's administration which outline how the Bush administration conducted torture; and

Whereas, the memos were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country's most basic values; and

Whereas, the Obama administration has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners, in violation of international law and the Constitution; and

From PDA:

Judge Jay Bybee, one of the torture memo authors, is sitting this week in the Las Vegas 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Bush rewarded him for "legalizing" torture by giving him a lifetime appointment on this court. Can you go and protest his presence.

Court starts at 9:00 every day starting tomorrow through Thursday (he's not sitting on Friday), at Lloyd D. George United States Courthouse, 333 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Courtroom 7C, Las Vegas.

If you need to know more about Bybee, ask me.

Here are some signs to print off and bring -

http://pdamerica.org/pdacms/sites/default/files/Torture%20Judge(2).pdf

http://pdamerica.org/pdacms/sites/default/files/Bybee%20flyer_0.pdf

http://pdamerica.org/pdacms/sites/default/files/Bybee%20Poster%203(2)_0.pdf

We demonstrated last Thursday in almost all the 9th Circuit locations around the West, and will again on 6/25. Let's organize a BIG one in Vegas!

Here's his statement:

If there’s another terrorist attack, it will be because the mess the Bush administration ignored in Pakistan and Afghanistan spun beyond anyone’s control well before Americans could throw the bums out.

Of course it could also be because of the mess the Bush and Obama administrations created there and in Iraq and elsewhere. My point is not to agree with Rich but to notice that he thinks we somehow threw Bush and Cheney out and that he wishes we'd done so sooner. This is a common sentiment among columnists now that it's too late.

A Texan even. But he's already on his way to prison, so the legislative branch is playing catch up, not claiming any power. And, as with all impeachments in recent years, sex is front and center. (Somehow rapes of prisoners still doesn't qualify Dubya, and it's hard to imagine Conyers impeaching him even once he, too, is on his way to prison).

By Damon Agnos, Seattle Weekly

On the same day that the Telegraph reported that the unreleased pictures at Abu Ghraib include shots of prisoners being raped (something the US government disputes), the Seattle Times put up an op-ed in which a bunch of local lawyers call for the resignation of Jay Bybee, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge (the 9th circuit covers the West Coast.

From Fox Talking Head:

But look, this is all about, fundamentally a battle of vengeance. The Democrats did not impeach George Bush, so now they want to represent his entire administration as being a criminal enterprise. And the Republicans are fighting back by saying, look, you, Nancy Pelosi, in 2002, in the aftermath of 9/11, you agreed that this was OK. But now, you know, years later, she wants to join the hanging party of Bush.

By World Can't Wait, Honolulu

This morning more than 50 people responded to a call made by World Can't Wait-Hawai`i to demand the prosecution of Jay Bybee, the signatory to the now-notorious 2002 “torture memo” authorizing waterboarding, walling, sleep deprivation and other horrific forms of torture. The crowd was diverse. Lawyers and long-time activists. Pacifists and revolutionaries. Office workers and retirees. Some stayed for the morning. Some could only escape from their offices for an hour.

9:30 a.m. ET Wednesday, May 13th.

From Chris Floyd:

...the Italian bank BNL was one of BCCI's main tentacles. BNL's Atlanta branch was the primary conduit used to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam for arms purchases, including deadly chemicals and other WMD materials supplied by the Chilean arms dealer Cardoen and various politically-connected operators in the United States such as weapons merchant Matrix Churchill.

By AP

SAN FRANCISCO -- Pressure is mounting against two former Bush administration attorneys who wrote the legal memos used to support harsh interrogation techniques that critics say constituted torture.

John Yoo, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is fighting calls for disbarment and dismissal, while Judge Jay Bybee of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals faces calls for impeachment.

Justice Department investigators have stopped short of recommending criminal charges, but suggest in a draft report that the two men should face professional sanctions. A number of groups across the country agree.

"We believe there is a lot of evidence to suggest that war crimes were committed," said Laura Bonham, deputy director of the Progressive Democrats of America. "We believe the memos provided the Central Intelligence Agency with the cover they needed to begin torturing detaines for information."

By Dave Lindorff

In December 2001, an appellate judicial panel in the state of New York ruled that Yonkers City Court Judge Edmund G. Fitzgerald had to step down from his bench and leave his position following his disbarment for allegedly “misusing” $9000 in a client’s account prior to his election as a judge. In 2007, the North Carolina courts faced something of a dilemma when state judge James Ethridge, who had been disbarred the prior October by the North Carolina State Bar for “swindling an older woman of her house and savings” as an attorney six years earlier, refused to quit his judicial position. Under state law in North Carolina, judges are required to be licensed lawyers, so Judge Ethridge was barred from holding court or signing court orders, but he continued to collect his salary. Only the state’s Judicial Standards Commission, or the state legislature, through an impeachment, could remove him from his job.

By David Swanson

That's right, children, it's national Nancy Day, honoring the occasion on May 7, 2006, when Nancy Pelosi first allowed Tim Russert to badger her into agreeing that she wouldn't permit the impeachment of Saint George or Father Dick, not even if they barbequed children on the White House lawn.

The right honorable Republican National Committee had just sent out a press release reading, roughly, as follows: "Skin me, Miss Nancy, snatch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my yeras by de roots, en cut off my legs, but don't deprive me of mah rightful impeachment. Don't fling me in dat immunity-patch."