As Lucas wrote on Saturday, it is outrageous that the author of a 2002 memo authorizing torture is currently sitting in a lifetime appointment on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The good news is that there is a remedy: the US congress can and must impeach Judge Bybee. In the last 24 hours we've seen a growing chorus for impeachment including The New York Times editorial board and even Claire McCaskill put Bybee impeachment on the table on Fox News Sunday. Today, the Center For Constitutional Rights joined the fray.

Last week, President Obama released four torture authorization memos written by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) under the Bush administration that devised a legal framework for the justification of the Torture Program. The memos were released as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the Center for Constitutional Rights helped file with the ACLU and other organizations.  

The memos were intended to provide legal cover for officials to carry out abhorrent, illegal and ineffective techniques that were approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration in violation U.S. and international law and the U.S. Constitution.

One of the principal authors was Jay Bybee, the former head of the OLC and today a federal judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. His flagrant contempt for the rule of law is utterly inconsistent with his judicial position and speaks directly to his competency to function in that office.  It is unacceptable for an individual who abused his status as a government lawyer and violated the law in conspiring with other members of the Bush Torture Team to sit as a federal judge, someone who hears and decides issues of constitutional import. At the time of his confirmation hearing, his role in the Torture Program was secret,  as was the program itself. Jay Bybee's actions constitute High Crimes and Misdemeanors by any standard.

CCR has a letter writing tool calling for Congressman Conyers to hold a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee to determine whether grounds exist for Bybee's impeachment.

Because Bybee is sitting on the 9th circuit court of appeals here in California, local activists are organizing to get the California Democratic Party on the record in favor of Bybee's impeachment as well. Courage Campaign joined that call today.

Jay Bybee is now a federal judge here in California, serving on the important Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco. He has not been held accountable for the lawbreaking he committed and enabled.

The California grassroots are determined to change that. Los Angeles Democratic activists John Heaner, Agi Kessler and Richard Mathews have sponsored a resolution calling on the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against Jay Bybee.

The resolution says, in part:

Therefore be it resolved that the undersigned urge that the United States House of Representatives begin impeachment proceedings against Judge Jay Bybee of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, charging him with facilitating the authorization of torture while employed by the United States Department of Justice

Join my fellow California activists -- including Courage Campaign, the L.A. County Democratic Party, Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles -- in pushing the state party to exert even more pressure on Congress to hold Bybee accountable for having been the architect of an imoral and illegal policy.

The CDP convention is this weekend in Sacramento.