For much of the last forty years, ever since America “fixed” its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, “When are African Americans finally going to get over it?

Now I want to ask:  “When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?

Recent reports that “Election Spurs Hundreds’ of Race Threats, Crimes” should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in “Bombingham,” Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than “talk the talk.” 
Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.

We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes.   Criticize them, yes.  Call for their impeachment, perhaps.

But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.

But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we’re back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we’ve proven what conservatives are always saying -that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that schoolchildren from Maine to California are talking about wanting to “assassinate Obama.”

Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, “How long?”    How long before we white people realize we can’t make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can -once and for all- get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color?  How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior?  How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?

How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin? How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?

I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loud mouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?

How long before we starting “living out the true meaning” of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that “red and yellow, black and white” all are precious in God’s sight?

Until this past November 4, I didn’t believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency.   I still don’t believe I’ll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem. But here’s my three-point plan:

First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built I’m going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.

Second, I’m going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.

Third, I’m going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can “in spirit and in truth” sing of our damnable color prejudice, “We HAVE overcome.”

It takes a Village to protect our President!!!

About the author: Andrew Manis is author of Macon Black and White and serves on the steering committee of Macon’s Center for Racial understanding.

This is a reprint of Mr. Kucinich’s Op/Ed statement:

America must move from the errant, retributive justice of 9/11 to a healing, restorative process of truth and reconciliation.

Before the Congress adjourns, I will bring forth a new proposal for the establishment of a National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, which will have the power to compel testimony and gather official documents to reveal to the American people not only the underlying deception which has divided us, but in that process of truth seeking set our nation on a path of reconciliation.

We suffer in our remembrance of 9/11, because of the terrible loss of innocent lives on that grim day. We also suffer because 9/11 was seized as an opportunity to run a political agenda, which has set America on a course of the destruction of another nation and the destruction of our own Constitution. And we have become less secure as a result of the warped practice of pursing peace through the exercise of pre-emptive military strength.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is not simply 9/11 that needs to be remembered. We also need to remember the politicization of 9/11 and the polarizing narrative which followed, locking us into endless conflict, a war on terror which has wrought further terror worldwide and which has severely damaged our standing worldwide as an honorable, compassionate nation. As we were all victims of 9/11, so we have become victims of the interpretation of 9/11.

Our government’s external response to 9/11 was to attack a nation which did not attack us. Indeed on the first anniversary of 9/11, the Bush administration issued a well-publicized stern warning to Iraq which was part of a campaign to induce people to believe Iraq had something to do with 9/11.

The deliberate, systematic connection of Iraq with 9/11 has led America into a philosophical and moral cul-de-sac as over one million Iraqis and over 4155 US soldiers have died in a war which will cost over $3 trillion. Additionally, soldiers from 23 other countries have died in the Iraq war.

We attempt to unite Iraq by further dividing it. We talk about restoring Iraq while taking steps to place control of its vast oil wealth in the hands of US oil giants. And we intend to impose upon the Iraqi people the cost of rebuilding a country which our government ruined, keeping a once prosperous nation lashed to debt and poverty for a long, long time. Iraq has paid for 9/11. We all continue to pay for 9/11.

The heartbreaking loss of the lives and injuries to America troops further binds us to the Administration’s illogic of the Iraq war: We remember our troops’ sacrifice by demanding more sacrifice; we support our troops by continuing the war.

The dominant color of our new national security since 911 is neither red, white nor blue. Everyday is orange. Everyday reminders of fear of 9/11 become banal.. Yet we no longer hear the airport announcements nor see the orange colored warnings because they have commonplace standards in our new national security state, as is the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and a host of invasions of privacy and diminution of civil liberties. The Constitution has been roundly attacked by the very people who took an oath to defend it.

There is a powerful desire across America for change, not necessarily from control by one political party to another, but a change from living with lies to living with truth.

Over two dozen nations, facing peril within and without, deeply divided by politics and war have travelled down a path of restoring civil society through a formal process of reconciliation. At some point within each of those countries it was understood that the way forward is shown through the light of truth. This process is not without pain because it requires a willingness to study evidence to which eyes had been averted and ears had been closed. But in the process of truth and reconciliation, nations found new strength, new resolve, new commitment.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation enabled that nation to come to grips with its past through a public confessional, bringing forward those who committed crimes and having the power to grant amnesty for full disclosure of crimes against the people. Of course, our path may necessarily be different: High US government officials stand accused in Impeachment petitions of violating national and international law. Our continued existence as a democracy may depend upon how thoroughly we seek the truth. I will call upon the America people to join me in supporting this effort.

The truth can move us forward, as a unified whole, so that we can one day become a re-United States. 9/11 is the day the world changed. It is the day America embraced a metaphor of war. If we are open to truth and reconciliation, we may one day be able, once again, to embrace peace.

Editor: This column appears as an op/ed piece on Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s site.

George W. Bush is perhaps the worst American president who has ever served.  To this day it is a mystery to me how the man was able to gain the Republican nomination, steal the election, start two wars, get re-elected and then drag on a failed war for five years and drive the economy into the ground without getting impeached. 

Although the light is fading on the Presidency of Bush, it is not too late to impeach the man who lied to us about weapons of mass destruction.  As of result of the President’s deception, over four thousand American soldiers have died in Iraq and tens of thousands have been wounded, not to mention the one million or so Iraqis who have died directly or indirectly due to Bush’s interference in their country. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

The case for impeachment is strong, so strong that it has been supported by numerous Congressional representatives, most notably by Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who introduced articles of impeachment in early June.  Kucinich had the courage and the tenacity to say what needs to be said and to do what needs to be done.  President Bush has violated the will of the people, but more importantly, he has violated the Constitution of the United States of America, a document that he was sworn to uphold and defend, and for this indiscretion President Bush deserves to be impeached.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear when she was elected Speaker of the House that impeachment was not on the table, and she has been true to her word since that date, betraying the trust of the American people and showing her true colors as well as those of the Democratic party generally, except for a few brave individuals such as Kucinich.  The irony is that the Democratic Party and the left would be stronger if they called the President to account for his actions.  In any event, there are numerous candidates outside of the two party duopoly who support impeachment because we believe this should be a campaign issue.  We feel strongly about our rights as Americans and do not believe that a corrupt administration can compromise those rights.  When they try, we believe that it is time to call them to account.

Bush must be called to account for the lies he has made in order to manipulate the general public.  Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat to America but the truth is that we were a real threat to Iraq.  His administration lied about the issue of significant quantities of uranium being brought into Iraq from Africa.  He lied about the connections between 9/11 and Iraq, continuously misleading the American people into believing there was a relationship.  Bush lied about Iraq and Al Qaeda, misleading the American people into believing there was a collaborative relationship between the two.  The President lied about weapons of mass destruction, insisting that there was evidence which consisted mostly of forged documents.  The United Nations found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction and intelligence services produced no credible information to support Bush’s claim.  As a result of these lies and misleading statements the United States was led into a war it could not win, spending hundreds of billions of dollars and causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

By supporting impeachment Kucinich has set in motion a process which calls to public light the terrible misdeeds of this administration.  The tide of public opinion has turned against Bush and across the nation people are calling for impeachment.  President Bush has condoned the use of torture on men, women and even boys in Iraq and at secret prisons around the world in the name of national security.  He violated the constitution by denying habeas corpus and has called for domestic spying on Americans. 

We can wait for the elections to remove Bush from office, but why wait until November? Indeed, although it is not a crime to be the worst President in the history of the United States, it is a crime to lie, mislead, deny constitutional rights, torture, spy and violate international law.  There has never been a better case to impeach a sitting President than now.  The people of Iraq, our soldiers abroad and ordinary Americans everywhere will all be better off once this criminal has been removed from office, and I say the sooner the better.

You wouldn’t know it if you just watch TV news or read the corporate press, but this past Tuesday, something remarkable happened. Despite the pig-headed opposition of the Democratic Party’s top congressional leadership, a majority of the House, including three Republicans, voted to send Dennis Kucinich’s long sidelined Cheney impeachment bill (H Res 333) to the Judiciary Committee for hearings.

The vote was 218 to 194.

Now the behind-the-scenes partisan maneuvering that preceded that vote was arcane indeed, with Kucinich first exercising a member’s privilege motion to present his stymied impeachment bill to the full House, only to have Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrange for a colleague (Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD) offer a motion to table it. The Republicans, anxious to embarrass the Speaker, threw a wrench into that plan, though, by voting as a bloc to oppose tabling. Since Kucinich already has 22 co-sponsors for his bill, it was clear that the tabling gambit would fail. As soon as that became apparent, rank-and-file Democrats, unwilling to be seen by their constituents as defending Cheney, rushed to change their votes to opposing the tabling motion. In the end, tabling failed by 242 to 170 with 77 Democrats supporting a pleasantly surprised Kucinich.

In order to avoid a floor debate on the merits of impeaching the eminently impeachable Vice President Cheney, Pelosi and her allies then moved to send Kucinich’s bill directly to the Judiciary Committee. They were joined by three Republicans, including maverick Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX).

Now the hope of the Democratic leadership is that this means Kucinich’s impeachment bill will continue to be safely bottled up in a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. But it may not work out that way for them.

Whatever the explanation, this impeachment bill has been endorsed by a floor vote of the full House, with bipartisan support.

For the Judiciary Committee to sit on it now and not schedule a hearing would be a gross travesty of parliamentary procedure and custom.

Indeed, some House members not associated with Kucinich’s resolution are now openly calling for immediate hearings into Cheney’s impeachable actions—specifically lying the country into a war in Iraq, and threatening war with Iran.

One indication of the change in the political climate in the House is the announcement by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a six-term congressman and a member of the House Judiciary Committee, that he will call for the Judiciary Committee to take up Kucinich’s impeachment bill. This is significant because Wexler, no left-wing hothead, is not a co-signer of the Kucinich bill.

In an email message to constituents, Wexler said:

I share your belief that Vice President Cheney must answer for his deceptive actions in office, particularly with regard to the preparations for the Iraq war and the revelation of the identity of covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson as part of political retribution against her husband.

…Cheney and the bush Administration have demonstrated a consistent pattern of abusing the law and misleading Congress and the American people. We see the consequences of these actions abroad in Iraq and at home through the violations of our civil liberties. The American people are served will with a legitimate and thorough impeachment inquiry. I will urge the Judiciary Committee to schedule impeachment hearings immediately and not let this issue languish as it has over the last six months. Only through hearings can we begin to correct the abuses of Dick Cheney and the bush administration; and if it is determined in these hearings that Vice President Cheney has committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors, he should be impeached and removed from office. It is time for Congress to expose the multitude of misdeeds of the Administration and I am hopeful that the Judiciary Committee will expeditiously begin an investigation of this matter.

Also calling for prompt action by the Judiciary Committee in the wake of the Tuesday House vote was Carol Shea-Porter, a first-term Democrat from New Hampshire, who also is not a sponsor of the Kucinich measure. In explaining her vote to send the Kucinich bill to the Judiciary Committee, she said:

It is the duty of the Vice President to faithfully execute the laws of the United States of America and to defend the Constitution. There is growing evidence that the Executive Branch has ignored some of our laws and has attempted to bend the Constitution to its will. Members of both parties decided that this issue is too important to ignore. I voted with my Republican and Democratic colleagues to investigate the Vice President’s actions in office.

She characterized the resolution sending the bill to the Judiciary Committee a “strongly bi-partisan vote.”

With these kinds of endorsements and calls for action, it is clear both that Speaker Pelosi is looking increasingly pathetic and out of touch with her “impeachment is off the table” mantra, and also that Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI), who seems to have been intimidated by the Speaker for the past year, but who earlier had been a leader in exposing the crimes of the Bush/Cheney administration, is getting strong support for taking a bolder stand.

Stephen Cohen (D-TN), a member of the Judiciary Committee who is a co-sponsor of the Kucinich resolution, says he thinks that there will be an impeachment hearing in the committee.

The 22 House members who have already signed on as co-sponsors of Kucinich’s Cheney impeachment resolution are: Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Maxine Waters D-CA), Hank Johnson (D-GA), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Lynn Woolsey D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Albert Wynn (D-MD), William Lacy Clay (D-MO, Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Jim Moran (D-VA), Bob Filner (D-CA), Sam Farr (D-CA), Robert Brady (D-PA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Donald Payne (D-NJ), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI), Ed Towns (D-NY, Diane Watson (D-CA, and Danny Davis (D-IL).

The change is attitude toward impeachment among the rank and file, and the evident increasing willingness to buck the Speaker, reflects growing awareness of the groundswell of popular anger with the Bush administration and the Democratic Congress over continued funding of the Iraq War, and over continued erosion of Constitutional government and civil liberties by an administration that wants unfettered executive power and by a Congress that is afraid to act.

The latest polls show three in four Democrats in favor of impeaching the vice president and president, while a majority of all Americans favor impeaching the vice president and roughly half of all Americans favor impeaching the president.

This is before hearings and presentation of evidence have even begun!

A failed strategy

The Democratic strategy for the 2008 election has been to do nothing overly confrontational, to pass no significant legislation, to collect lots of money from corporate interests, and to hope that the Republican Party, saddled with an unpopular administration and an unpopular war, will implode.

The strategy, however, is proving to be a disaster, as public support for the Democratic do-nothing Congress has fallen even below the president’s record low numbers. Just running against Republicans, Bush/Cheney, and the continuing war risks seeing Democrats go down to defeat in ’08.

It is awareness of this looming electoral disaster that underlies the growing restiveness among rank-and-file Democrats in the House, all of whom have to face the voters in less than a year’s time.

As recently as a month ago, it didn’t look like impeachment was in the cards,

Now it’s starting to look like we Cheney’s going to be put in the dock.

It may not be long before we start to see bills of impeachment filed against President Bush too.

The corporate media enjoy making fun of Rep. Kucinich, a height-challenged but dedicated progressive who has made a career of standing tall for his views. If his bill ends up leading to impeachment hearings against Cheney, Kucinich will end up having the last laugh.

About Dave Lindorff

Dave lindorff is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback).

His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net. He also contributes material to The Daily Kos.

The British are acknowledging this fact by pulling out their troops from Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, handing over the city to the control of Shia militias. For all intents and purposes, the “Coalition of the willing” is now dead. America is now going it alone.

Bush is not acknowledging defeat, but has indirectly admitted it by saying that some troops can start being brought home soon, even though clearly nothing has been accomplished with the addition of 30,000 troops for the last six months.

He acknowledged defeat too, by flying into Iraq stealthily in the dead of night this week, landing at a remote desert outpost in western Iraq, instead of going to Baghdad, and meeting with American military officials, instead of with the Iraqi government. (So much for Iraq’s being a “sovereign nation”! Can you imaging a head of state of some foreign government, together with his war secretary and his secretary of state, flying in unannounced to some remote American state, and not even meeting with American government officials?) Clearly the US military could not guarantee the president’s safety in Baghdad and the Green Zone, so he had to go to a remote outpost where he was safe behind razor wire, mines and an obscene arsenal of soldiers, tanks and gunships.

With the British giving up on their quadrant of Iraq—a strategically crucial location at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf, where the bulk of supplies for the US military in Iraq are offloaded, and from which the vast majority of Iraq’s dismal oil experts are exported—American troops are stranded, and dependent upon air drops for their secure delivery of supplies.

Reports say that the real reason Bush is talking about troops coming home is because the military in Iraq is broken, and can no longer sustain a commitment of 160,000 soldiers and marines in the country.

There is no choice; they have to start coming home.

As in Vietnam, where open mutiny and sullen disobedience became the norm after 1968, in Iraq, the military is finally cracking. Seven enlisted soldiers even dared to write an open and scathing critique of the war in an opinion piece in the New York Times, saying that the US was widely viewed as an occupation force in Iraq, and that Iraqis wanted us out—the sooner the better.  The organization Iraq Veterans Against the War is growing rapidly in membership. The military has resorted to offering potential enlistees a whopping $20,000 bonus to go to boot camp immediately, because recruitment and reenlistment numbers for this year are so dismally low. Junior officer resignations are at a record high.

As military family members are pointing out, the American military is no longer a volunteer force. In name it may appear to be, but once stop-loss orders start routinely preventing troops from quitting the service, it is no longer volunteer, whatever it may be called. People are being coerced into fighting. And once you have a coerced army loyalty goes out the window.

While there is nothing to be done about the disaster in Iraq, which will go down in military history as one of the great defeats of all time—the most powerful military the world has ever known beaten by a disorganized assortment of ill-trained and ill-equipped guerrilla fighters—this is nonetheless a dangerous moment.

Wounded animals are dangerous animals, and President Bush and his gang of Neocon wackoes, badly wounded by defeat in Iraq, are not anxious to slither off the political stage as losers. Hence the plans in the works to go double or nothing with an all-out aerial assault on Iran.

Numerous reports, including most credibly one in The Times in London (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.), suggest that a plan has already been laid out for a three-day massive bombardment on over 1200 targets in Iran, which would attempt to destroy not just that country’s nascent nuclear processing capability, but also its government, communications, and military facilities, essentially leaving the country of 70 million a smoking ruin.

Such an attack, with no international support, no UN sanction, no threat, imminent or otherwise, and no provocation, would be, pure and simple, a war crime of the first order. It would also put the US at war, not just with Iran, but also with virtually the entire Islamic world.

The Neocon fantasy is that after such a blitzkrieg, Iranians would rise up and overthrow their leaders—those leaders who survived—but history has shown that in such times of national disaster, people don’t turn on their leaders, but rather rally to them, however unpopular they may have been.  This is likely to be all the more true in the case of Iran, a country with a history going back as long as China’s with a strong sense of national identity, and a long recent history of feeling put upon by the U.S. (America, after all, overthrew Iran’s first democratic government in the 1950 in a CIA-inspired coup which set up the regime of the hated Shah Reza Palevi).

An Iran at war would be free to set its agents loose to attack American targets around the world, and inside the U.S., and under the doctrine of reciprocity, would be justified in attacking anything in America that came under attack in Iran. If we attacked Iranian nuclear facilities, they could attack American nuclear facilities, with all the concomitant resulting spread of radioactive materials. If we attacked power plants or oil refineries, they would be free to do the same. If we attacked radio and television stations, so could they. To be sure, Iran would have to use guerrilla tactics in its attacks, where America would be using B-1 and B-2 bombers and ship-launched cruise missiles, but as has been observed, a terrorist or guerrilla is just a bomber without a fancy plane.

As I’ve noted before, war with Iran would mean oil prices zooming to levels never before seen—perhaps as high as $200/barrel or 150% above the all time record of $80/barrel set a year ago. Such prices would bring America’s and the world’s economies to a screeching halt. Islamic governments allied with the US, most notably the one in Pakistan, already shaky, could fall to radical backers of Iran (and Pakistan has the Bomb).

The shocking thing is that even though all the signs of a Bush attack on Iran are there, including the build-up of an unprecedented Naval armada, armed to the teeth, in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, nobody in Congress or the American media is talking about this looming crime and imminent disaster. Most Americans are blissfully unaware, even though people in the military are watching it all unfold in horror.

In 2002, Bush illegally diverted billions of dollars Congress appropriated for the war in Afghanistan to a covert build-up of troops and weapons in the Middle East for an attack on Iraq. Now the president is asking Congress for another $50 billion for the War in Iraq, which he will almost certainly be diverting to the attack on Iran.

The pathetic Democrats in Congress, who already handed Bush $120 billion a few months ago for continuing and escalating his epic disaster in Iraq, are likely to grant him this new king’s ransom to finance an even worse disaster in Iran. If they do, the blood of Iranians and Americans will be equally on all their hands.

The clock is ticking. The only thing that could prevent this Crime Against Peace by the president would be for Congress, as one, to vote to rescind the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which Bush has claimed authorized an unending “war on terror,” and which will be his justification for attacking Iran, and to begin impeachment proceedings against the president and vice president for conspiring to violate the Nuremberg Charter by attacking a nation that poses no immediate threat.

Do Something!

Every American should contact their representatives to demand action! To reach your Congressional delegation, call the Capitol switchboard at 202-225-3121.

About Dave Lindorff

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative reporter and columnist. His most recent book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now available in a paperback edition). His work is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s not about Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, any longer, it’s about what’s right and wrong. Our nation stands on the edge of a cliff! Do the people of the United States passively stand by and allow this administration to continue to undermining the very foundations of this nation and the the liberties that we hold so dear, as they have for the last 7 years. Or do we stand up, say no more, and insist that the threat of impeachment be put back on the table and that it be used if this administration doesn’t immediately change their course.

The voters gave their elected representatives their marching orders in the last election. If they continue to ignore the will of the people, they will pay a very dear price for that choice in the upcoming election in 2008. It’s way past time for them to grow a spine and do what’s right for the United States, for the world.

Transcript

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on what is, in everything but name, George Bush’s pardon of Scooter Libby.

“I didn’t vote for him,” an American once said, “But he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

That — on this eve of the 4th of July — is the essence of this democracy, in seventeen words.

And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

The man who said those seventeen words — improbably enough — was the actor John Wayne.

And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair’s-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.

“I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier. But there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne’s voice.

The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.

We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president’s partisanship. Not that we may “prosper” as a nation, not that we may “achieve”, not that we may “lead the world” — but merely that we may “function.”

But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne is an implicit trust — a sacred trust:That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.

Our generation’s willingness to state “we didn’t vote for him, but he’s our president, and we hope he does a good job,” was tested in the crucible of history, and far earlier than most. And in circumstances more tragic and threatening.

And we did that with which history tasked us.

We enveloped “our” President in 2001.

And those who did not believe he should have been elected — indeed, those who did not believe he had been elected — willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and sharpened it to a razor-sharp point, and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete…

Did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice…

Did so despite what James Madison –at the Constitutional Convention — said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes “advised by” that president…

Did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder:

To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish — the President will keep you out of prison?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental compact between yourself and the majority of this nation’s citizens — the ones who did not cast votes for you.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President… of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party.

And this is too important a time, sir, to have a Commander-in-Chief who puts party over nation.

This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics.

The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of “a permanent Republican majority,” as if such a thing — or a permanent Democratic majority — is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.

Yet our democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove.

And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government.

But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain… into a massive oil spill.

The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment.

The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and “quaint.”

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws.

The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor…

When just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable “fairness” of government is rejected by an impartial judge…

When just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice…

This President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but instead to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of you becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20th, 1973, Mr. Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously:

“Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people.”

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.

It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party’s headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.

But in one night, Nixon transformed it.

Watergate — instantaneously — became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law. Of insisting — in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood — that he was the law.

Not the Constitution.

Not the Congress.

Not the Courts.

Just him.

Just – Mr. Bush – as you did, yesterday.

The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy… these are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush — and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal — the average citizen understands that, sir.

It’s the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one — and it stinks. And they know it.

Nixon’s mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency.

And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment.

It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to “base,” but to country, echoes loudly into history.

Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign

Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush.

And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney.

You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday.

Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters.

Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.

But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them — or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them — we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time — and our leaders in Congress, of both parties — must now live up to those standards which echo through our history:

Pressure, negotiate, impeach — get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

And for you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task.

You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed.

Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone — anyone – about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

Good night, and good luck. – MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann

Do something!

Contact your elected representatives, and Nancy Pelosi the speaker of the house, and insist that impeachment be put back on the table.

Lamar Alexander

455 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4944
Fax: (202) 228-3398

Bob Corker

Dirksen Senate Building SD-185
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-3344
Fax: (202) 228-0566

David Davis, 1st District

514 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
phone: (202) 225-6356
fax: (202) 225-5714

John Duncan, 2nd District

2207 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-5435

Zach Wamp, 3rd District

1436 of the Longworth Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-3271
(202) 225-3494 (fax)

Lincoln Davis, 4th District

1004 Longworth HOB
Washington DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3265
Fax: (202)-225-5663

Jim Cooper, 5th District

1536 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4311
Fax: (202) 226-1035

Bart Gordon, 6th District

2310 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4231
Fax: (202) 225-6887

Marsha Blackburn, 7th District

509 Cannon Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-2811
(202) 225-3004 fax

John Tanner, 8th District

1226 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4714
Fax: (202) 225-1765

Steve Cohen, 9th District

1004 Longworth HOB
Washington DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3265
Fax: (202)-225-5663

Nancy Pelosi, The Speaker of the House

235 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4965

Click here to view the embedded video.

BREAKING: Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) announced April 23rd, that he will file articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney. Further details will be released at a press conference on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at 5 p.m. on the Cannon Terrace, intersection of Independence and New Jersey Avenue.

George Bush and Dick Cheney have lied the nation into a war of aggression, are spying in open violation of the law, and have sanctioned the use of torture. These are high crimes and misdemeanors that demand accountability. Since Congress doesn’t seem to get it, on April 28 Americans from Miami, Florida to North Pole, Alaska are going to spell it out for them: IMPEACH! It’s time to say NO to impunity for lying, spying, and torture.

About the Hip Hop Caucus

The Hip Hop Caucus (H2C) is a nonprofit, non-partisan membership association created to establish a national and international coalition of pop-culture, social and political organizations, community based organizations, and individuals who believe in the collective powers of persons born after 1964.

The Hip Hop Caucus was established to provide a comprehensive agenda for the Progressive and Hip-Hop community both domesticlly and abroad. The Caucus’ programs promote social and political equality in the area of Economics, Education, Health Care, Housing, and Justice.

About the Hip Hop Caucus Institute

The Hip-Hop Caucus Institute (HHCi) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that strengthens social movements with independent research, visionary thinking, and links to the grassroots, the hip-hop community, scholars, and elected officials. The Hip-Hop Caucus Institute was established to provide a comprehensive agenda for the progressive and hip-hop community both domestically and abroad. The Institute’s programs promote social and political equality in the areas of economics, education, healthcare, housing, and justice.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr.: President and CEO

Dr. Roger Mitchell: Chairman of the Board, Hip Hop Caucus

Bill Fletcher, Jr.: Chairman of the Board, Hip Hop Caucus Institute

Congresswoman Barbara Lee: Chairwoman of the Hip Hop Caucus Advisory Board

If they won’t step down It’s time to impeach all complicit individuals in the Bush Administration, and let God sort them out. This includes the Attorney General, Harriet Myers, Karl Rove, and if they had any involvement at all the President and Vice President.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Howard Dean  also joined the chorus of people calling for Gonnzales to resign.

The best way for Attorney General Gonzales to accept responsibility is for him to step down,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. “The Bush White House has consistently put protecting the President and doing his bidding ahead of upholding the integrity of our nation’s laws. Karl Rove should pack his bags and go too. His type of leadership doesn’t belong at the White House. America deserves better. – Howard Dean

From the Associated Press comes information that this was planned, vetted, and approved by all levels of the Bush White House.

We’re a go for the US Atty plan,” Kelley wrote in a Dec. 4, 2006, e-mail to Sampson and Miers. “WH leg, political, communications have signed off and acknowledged that we have to be committed to following through once the pressure comes. – The Associated Press

Daily Kos summarizes it quite well:

Again, this is really, really simple. The whole White House gave the go-ahead on a plan to use provisions of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act to circumvent the authority of Congress in confirming replacements for U.S. Attorneys the White House was forcing out. It was purely, rawly political — they did it because they could, and they did it because it meant that their new appointees — some of them deeply controversial — wouldn’t have to go through the confirmation process. Didn’t have a damn thing to do with terrorism.

First they planned it. Then they did it.

Oh, and here’s Gonzales lying through his teeth about it in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. – Daily Kos

It’s past the time for Congress to act and remove this administration from office.

And what do they say now, given a rogue president who lied us into a war that has claimed the lives of over 3,000 of our soldiers and who knows how many Iraqis? A president who has declared war on the middle class and done everything he can to empty the national treasury into the pockets of the uber-wealthy. A president who not only tolerates incompetence, but rewards it with the “Medal of Freedom”. A president who stands idly by while a great city in the United States is reduced to rubble.

What they say is “America couldn’t stand the stress of an impeachment proceeding” and besides which, there’s no way that it could happen, given the makeup of the Senate. And I have to shake my head in wonder — just how else do they think this man will be stopped? And if he isn’t stopped, how much more will we be able to stand of what he may do? Can we live with a nuclear strike on Iran? Can we withstand the escalating attacks on our freedoms? And since when did just because we might not be able to pull it off become a reason for not attempting to do the right thing?

The founding fathers put impeachment in the constitution for this very reason. They understood quite well that a president is just another human, and being human is subject to human weakness. They knew that sooner or later we would get a president who either explicitly or implicitly was a threat to the constitutional republic that they had founded. And that, when that happened, the only recourse would be to remove that person, to limit the damage that can be done to our nation by that person.

Now I ask you: in all honesty, have we ever had a time when impeachment of  a sitting president is more warranted and more necessary than it is today? And are we going to continue to bury our heads in the sand while this man brings our nation crashing down around us, depleting the treasury, damaging our reputation abroad, throwing our young soldiers’ lives away in a baseless war, and all the time spying on us as though we were the enemy and taking away our freedoms? We might not be able to bring an impeachment to a successful conclusion, but we owe it to the principles that or nation was founded upon and to the good opinion of future generations to at least try.

Countdown’s Keith Olbermann gave a stirring ‘Special Commentary’ on 9/11, and the effect that it has had on Americans, and most especially the effect it’s leaders actions have had on the very fabric of our society.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jon Stewart on the ABC docudrama, The Path to 9/11

Click here to view the embedded video.

Protecting your family

Click here to view the embedded video.