Crossposted from the Motley Moose

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) "isn't sure which side (President Obama) is on" with his "un-American" speech in Cairo.

Listen, jackass, this is our overwhelmingly-elected President you are talking about being "un-American".  This is our Commander in Chief who you are openly wondering "which side he is on".  Protecting your precious political career is no excuse for personal and moral cowardice, when you accuse the President of treason you should put your damn money where you fat mouth is.

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With Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner now saying that recently uncovered John Yoo memos constitute "treason" against "the institutions of the United States" by arguing formally for the revocation of the First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendments, (free speech, search and seizure without probable cause, and right to a jury trial,) it really boils it down to whether we have accepted a certain premise.  

Does the War on Terror meet all the definitions of George Orwell's state of permanent war?  If we have accepted a state of permanent war, then Yoo's memos are ultimately sound, as they are based largely upon claims of wartime powers which existed in previous wars.  If we have not, then the attempt to impose a definition of war which has "no end," in George Bush's words, amounts to pure treason.

After 9/11 Bush could have said, "We will not allow terrorists to frighten us into abolishing our own freedoms, the very freedoms they so hate.  We will show the world how a free and fearless people rises to this enormous challenge; this is a war for the hearts and minds of the world.  And that is a war America will win."

Instead, Bush said Be Scared, Be Damned Scared, and Give All Your Freedoms to Me Because I'll Take Care of You.

Bush made it clear that his war went beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, by calling it a "global" war on terror, with the enemy having sanctuaries in over 60 countries, including the U.S.  He claimed the authority to strike the enemy "wherever we may find him," be it Indonesia, the Philippines or South America.

The missed story of the century was Bush repeatedly flubbing his Oath of Office, by saying he was keeping to his most "solemn duty," perteckin the American people.  But the oath says only "to uphold, defend, and protect the United States Constitution," end of story, all she wrote.  It doesn't say a damned thing about perteckin the people.

The Founders left the people to protect themselves, and worried most about protection from an arrogant, greedy government like the one which is now giving all your money away to millionaires and billionaires, in addition to the half-trillion it has already given to Halliburton.  

And so it was, pondering this, that I happened across a brilliant little essay by one Jacob Levich, who soon after 9/11 wrote:

In his address to Congress Thursday, George Bush effectively declared permanent war -- war without temporal or geographic limits; war without clear goals; war against a vaguely defined and constantly shifting enemy...Its true purpose is to control dissent and sustain dictatorship by nurturing popular fear and hatred.

"Controlling dissent" could mean forcing us to accept, as the price of safety, what George Bush did to Jose Padilla, the first American "enemy combatant" arrested on American soil in the Forever War.  If we accept the premise of Orwell's Forever War, then what happened to Padilla is now perfectly legal and could happen to any one of us.  

If we say, Now hold on there, George Bush and John Yoo, we're going to call you on that one. By trying to slip past us the notion of Forever War, in tandem with claiming wartime powers which trump the Bill of Rights, you are committing treason, as Michael Ratner said, to "the institutions of the United States." You can have an open-ended war.  Or you can have wartime powers.  But you can't have both.

When the Founders required the president to swear to defend the Constitution only, they conspicuously left out any reference to physical territory, such as a "Homeland." This tells us they cared most about defending a form of government. A nation is not just dirt.  A nation is its laws and institutions.

Levich tightly lays out the case for how the Bushies tried to pull an Orwell, the remedy for which is the growing prosecution movement:

WAR IS PEACE. A reckless war that will likely bring about a deadly cycle of retaliation is being sold to us as the means to guarantee our safety. Meanwhile, we've been instructed to accept the permanent war as a fact of daily life. As the inevitable slaughter of innocents unfolds overseas, we are to "live our lives and hug our children."

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. "Freedom itself is under attack," Bush said, and he's right. Americans are about to lose many of their most cherished liberties in a frenzy of paranoid legislation. The government proposes to tap our phones, read our email and seize our credit card records without court order. It seeks authority to detain and deport immigrants without cause or trial. It proposes to use foreign agents to spy on American citizens. To save freedom, the warmongers intend to destroy it.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. America's "new war" against terrorism will be fought with unprecedented secrecy, including heavy press restrictions not seen for years, the Pentagon has advised. Meanwhile, the sorry history of American imperialism -- collaboration with terrorists, bloody proxy wars against civilians, forcible replacement of democratic governments with corrupt dictatorships -- is strictly off-limits to mainstream media. Lest it weaken our resolve, we are not to be allowed to understand the reasons underlying the horrifying crimes of September 11.

Ratner, a constitutional scholar, said:

Treason need not involve another state. Aaron Burr was tried for treason. The authority given by these memos that could be used to raid every congressional office, raid and search every home, detain tens of thousands, would certainly fit a definition of treason.
This would be the president making war against the institutions of the United States.

I can't wind up any better than Levich does:

Unlike 1984's doomed protagonist, we've still got plenty of space to maneuver and plenty of ways to resist.  It's time to speak and to act. It falls on us now to take to the streets, bearing a clear message for the warmongers: We don't love Big Brother.

Email for Senator Pat Leahy, the "Truth Commission": senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

LINK TO CONGRESS EMAILS.   LINK TO EMAIL WHITE HOUSE.

Jose Padilla in Military Custody

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Saying that calls for prosecution of Bush officials can never let up, the director of the staid and respectable Center for Constitutional Rights, who is a legal scholar, has said that the legal arguments made in the infamous Yoo memos amount to treason against the nation's institutions, similar to the "Fuhrer's law" of Nazi Germany.

Naomi Wolf, a non-lawyer, mused before her interview with Michael Ratner:

The memos [revealed in early March] lay the legal groundwork for the president to send the military to wage war against U.S. citizens; take them from their homes to Navy brigs without trial and keep them forever; close down the First Amendment; and invade whatever country he chooses without regard to any treaty or objection by Congress...The memos could not be clearer: This was the legal groundwork of an attempted coup. I expected massive front page headlines from the revelation that these memos exited. Almost nothing. I was shocked.

Wolf then sought out the Center for Constitutional Rights' Michael Ratner to understand what she was missing.  The Yoo memos seemed to say that the president's authority as commander in chief is not bound by any law, any treaty, or the protections of free speech, due process and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. "The First, Fourth and Fifth amendments -- gone," she wrote.  

Legal expert Michal Ratner agreed:

What [the Yoo memos] actually mean is that the president can order the military to operate in the U.S. and to operate without constitutional restrictions. They -- the military --  can pick you or me up in the U.S. for any reason and without any legal process. They would not have any restrictions on entering your house to search it, or to seize you. They can put you into a brig without any due process or going to court. (That's the Fourth and Fifth amendments.)

Who has suspended the law this way in the past? It is like a Caesar's law in Rome; a Mussolini's law in Italy; a Fuhrer's law in Germany; a Stalin's law in the Soviet Union. It is right down the line. It is enforcing the will of the dictator through the military.

Ratner says the biggest hint we had that this was coming was when the military picked up Jose Padilla, going to a civilian prison and "snatching" him off to a brig under the orders of the president.  

During his 3 1/2 year military detention, Padilla's lawyers said he was subject to hooding, stress positions, assaults, and threats of imminent execution.  

Warren Richey of the Christian Science Monitor reported:

"Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over. There was a toilet and sink. The steel bunk was missing its mattress. He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years....[Padilla's captors] punctured the extreme sensory deprivation with sensory overload, blasting him with harsh lights and pounding sounds."

     Padilla also stated that he was "injected with a `truth serum,' a substance his lawyers believe was LSD or PCP.  Deprived of any view of the outside world, with the lights always kept on, Padilla had no way of knowing what time of day it was or what day of the week.

      Padilla's attorney Andrew Patel said, "I was told by members of the brig staff that Mr. Padilla's temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of `a piece of furniture.' " Patel described how it was difficult to work with Padilla in his defense, because "Mr. Padilla remains unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually his attorneys or another component of the government's interrogation scheme."

Padilla was found guilty based on the testimony of a terrorist suspect whose interrogation tapes were among those ordered destroyed by CIA chief General Michael Hayden. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan and an editor of the Wall Street Journal, criticized the jury's verdict in the Padilla case as having "overthrown" the Constitution and doing far more damage to the US' liberty than any terrorist could.

Ratner states "We need the deterrence of prosecution so this does not happen again."

He said in the interview with Wolf:

Treason need not involve another state. Aaron Burr was tried for treason. The authority given by these memos that could be used to raid every congressional office, raid and search every home, detain tens of thousands, would certainly fit a definition of treason.
This would be the president making war against the institutions of the United States.

The law regarding American enemy combatants has been established...in a war with hardware and armies that can be seen, defeated, and the war declared over. The first thing Bush said was this is a war which has "no end," treasonous words if you are claiming powers over the Constitution.

Email for Senator Pat Leahy, the "Truth Commission": senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

LINK TO CONGRESS EMAILS.   LINK TO EMAIL WHITE HOUSE.

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I read Bob Burnett's excellent and timely post yesterday over at HuffPo, entitled "Bush's Day of Reckoning."  I recommend reading it in its entirety.  The topic is whether or not to proceed with criminal investigations of Bush, Cheney & their ilk over torture and any other violations of the Constitution.  Bob does point out that incompetence is not a crime and focuses on things like ordering torture or illegal spying on Americans, which are crimes.

He points out that Congress will not take the lead on prosecution because they rolled over for Bush & Cheney at every opportunity.  So, it comes down to Obama to take the lead on cleaning up the US Government, its checks & balances and the Constitution.  In other words: the rule of law.

(Cross posted at The National Gadfly)

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Bumped - Todd

With the Democratic nomination contest finally over, Democrats now have the opportunity to put the rancor of last many months behind them and unite to defeat the Republicans in November by taking the White House and adding to our leads in the House and Senate.

Among the most important issues that will arise for the next administration is the question of accountability for the villains that preceded it in the Executive Branch.  Yesterday on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Richard Clarke suggested a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission".  Some would go farther, others less far.

But few in American politics today have as much personal knowledge and experience with the Bush Administration's lies and its mafia-style intimidation as Ambassador Joe Wilson, whom clammyc and I will be interviewing today at 2pmPST/5pmEST.  And topic we'll be covering?  Accountability for Bush and his cronies after that glorious day on which they leave office.

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