Count Down To Accountability – Bush, Cheney Indictments

July 27, 2008

tags: Accountability, Bush, Bush administration, Cheney, consequences, Constitution, Hypocracy, indictment, integrity, Internal controls, Mismanagement, oversight, Politics, Regulatory agencies, Reporting requirements, social science, treason, War

by bosskitty

How Should the Next President Deal with the Bush White House’s Crimes?

A debate between two progressive legal experts on the FISA bill and the idea of prosecuting of Bush and White House officials for criminal acts.

Obama agreed that, if elected, he would have his Attorney General initiate an investigation into whether Bush and other senior officials violated criminal statutes and thus deserved to face prosecution.

“What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the

information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued,” Obama told journalist Will Bunch.

Government Performance: Lessons Learned for the

Next Administration on Using Performance Information to Improve Results

Over the past 15 years, legislative and executive branch reform efforts have attempted to shift the focus of federal government management from a preoccupation with activities to the results or outcomes of those activities. Based on over a decade of work in this area, GAO has found a transformation in the capacity of the federal government to manage for results, including an infrastructure of outcome-oriented strategic plans, performance measures, and accountability reporting that provides a solid foundation for improving the performance of federal programs. However, agencies have made less progress in getting their managers’ to use performance information in their decision making. GAO was asked to testify on the preliminary results of ongoing work looking at (1) trends in federal managers’ use of performance information to manage, both government wide and at the agency level; (2) how agencies can encourage greater use of performance information to improve results; and (3) lessons learned from prior management reforms for the next administration. Our statement is based on prior GAO reports and surveys we conducted in 1997, 2000, 2003, and 2007. For the results of our 2007 survey, see e-supplement GAO-08-1036SP. GAO will be issuing a report at a later date that will explore the use of performance results in management decision making at selected agencies.

GAO believes that the next administration should promote three key practices that we have identified in our work over the last 10 years: (1) demonstrate leadership commitment to results-oriented management; (2) develop a clear “line of sight” linking individual performance with organizational results; and (3) build agency capacity to collect and use performance information. In addition to encouraging agencies to employ these practices, the next administration should: (1) adopt a more strategic and crosscutting approach to overseeing government wide performance; (2) improve the relevance of performance information to Congress; and (3) build agency confidence in assessments for use in decision making.

Senate Appropriations Committee Holds Hearing on Efforts to Combat Fraud, Waste and Abuse in Iraq

Collateral Damage: How the War on Terror Hurts Charities, Foundations, and the People They Serve

White House Climate Change Policy — Delay, Delete, and Deny

Life’s Value Shrinks at EPA

Appropriations Breakdown Threatens Federal Investments

Let’s See How Our “Free Press” Covers Impeachment

LAW SCHOOL TO SPONSOR BUSH WAR CRIMES TRIAL

Wexler Wants Real Impeachment Hearing Now

The Judiciary Committee, we held a full day of hearings that focused entirely on the crimes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and featured testimony by Rep. Dennis Kucinich regarding his Articles of Impeachment against President Bush.

This is a great start – but I am far from satisfied. Following statements by Chairman John Conyers and the Ranking Republicans, I opened with a forceful call for genuine and immediate Impeachment Hearings for President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

L. Ali Khan, Professor of Law at the Washburn University School of Law says the ICC ignores “the crimes” of Western leaders and generals.

“The ICC has so far shown no interest in prosecuting President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and State Secretary Colin Powell for the crimes they planned, organized, incited, and committed with the help of lethal weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Ali Khan says.

A majority (over 62%) of 2382 respondents surveyed in an online Press TV poll said the ICC should first hear the case of President Bush’s war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This will be interesting to watch the anxiety surrounding the debate whether to indict the Bush Administration for treasonous behavior. The trashing of America, the trashing of the environment, the trashing of other countries, the crimes against humanity will most likely not be addressed …

Because the US Constitution has been emasculated, there is no foothold for legal recourse.

6 Comments

ProveOurDemocracy permalink

July 30, 2008 12:05 pm

from: Dennis Kucinich

URGENT: need your help –
Impeachment Petition Deadline Midnight Wednesday

Dear Friends,

Because of your vigilance and support for democracy, last Friday was a day of singular importance in Washington. The House Judiciary Committee met to discuss the Bush Administration’s abuse of executive power and for the first time the case for Impeachment was discussed in front of a Congressional committee, in depth, at length and with authority.

Twenty members of the Judiciary Committee attended the six hour hearing, during which twelve witnesses, including myself and four members of Congress testified. In this hearing I called for the Impeachment of the President for misrepresenting a case for war.

This week I will present members of Congress with Impeachment petitions submitted by those of you who have signed the on-line impeachment form.

I need your help. In the next few days we must redouble our efforts to get more signatures on the online petition at kucinich.us. I’m asking each of you to please contact at least ten of your friends to go to http://www.Kucinich.us now and sign the Impeachment petition that will be delivered by me. Wednesday night is the deadline.

Please send out an email to all your friends and family, post this link, http://kucinich.us to your blogs and make this effort count as this is the only petition that I will deliver.

…………….

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6214

KochIndustries

BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 7/24/2008 3:59PM

Rove Threatened GOP IT Guru If He Does Not ‘Take the Fall’ for Election Fraud in Ohio, Says Attorney

Letter Sent to Attorney General Mukasey Requesting ‘Protection for Mr. Connell and His Family From This Reported Attempt to Intimidate a Witness’ After Tip from ‘Credible Source’

UPDATE: OH AG Reportedly Asked to Provide Immunity Protection…

snip

“If there’s a credible threat, which I regard this to be,” he told The BRAD BLOG, “I have a professional duty to report it.”

Attempts to reach Connell for comment late this afternoon were not successful.

The disclosure from Arnebeck comes on the heels of a dramatic announcement last week, made at a Columbus press conference, announcing Arnebeck’s motion to lift a stay on the long-standing King Lincoln Bronzwell v. Blackwell federal lawsuit, challenging voting rights violations in the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio.
The motion was made following the discovery of new information, including details from a Republican data security expert, leading Arnebeck towards seeking depositions of Rove, Connell, and other GOP operatives believed to have participated in the gaming of election results in 2004. A letter [PDF] was sent to Mukasey at the same time last week, asking him to retain email and other documents from Rove…

“Mr. Rove’s e-mails from the White House to the Justice Department, the FBI, the Pentagon, Congress and various federal regulatory agencies are obviously relevant to the factual issues that we intend to address in this case,” Arnebeck wrote last week to the Attorney General. “We are concerned about reports that Mr. Rove not only destroyed e-mails, but also took steps to destroy the hard drives from which they had been sent.”

In his email to Mukasey today, Arnebeck writes: “We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to ‘take the fall’ for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations.”

“This appears to be in response to our designation of Rove as the principal perpetrator in the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim with respect to which we issued document hold notices last Thursday to you and to the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform,” the Ohio attorney writes, before going on to link to The BRAD BLOG’s coverage of his press conference last week and requesting “protection for Mr. Connell and his family from this reported attempt to intimidate a witness.”

The complete, short email, sent today from Arnebeck to AG Mukasey, follows in full below…

Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 10:51 AM
To: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Subject: Report of Rove threats against witness Michael Connell
Dear Attorney General Mukasey:

We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to “take the fall” for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations.This appears to be in response to our designation of Rove as the principal perpetrator in the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim with respect to which we issued document hold notices last Thursday to you and to the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform. See: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6189 and http://www.archive.org/d…tionFraudInOhioCourtCase.

I have informed court chambers and am in the process of informing the Ohio Attorney General’s and US Attorney’s offices in Columbus for the purpose, among other things, of seeking protection for Mr. Connell and his family from this reported attempt to intimidate a witness.

Concurrently herewith, I am informing Mr. Conyers and Mr. Kucinich in connection with their Congressional oversight responsibilities related to these matters.

Because of the serious engagement in this matter that began in 2000 of the Ohio Statehouse Press Corps, 60 Minutes, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, C-Span and Jim VandeHei, and the public’s right to know of gross attempts to subvert the rule of law, I am forwarding this information to them, as well.

Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney
###-###-####
Cell ###-###-####
cc: Robert Fitrakis, Esq.
Henry Eckhart, Esq

UPDATE: John Michael Spinelli of OhioNewsBureau, has more details at ePluribusMedia. Threat against Connell’s wife likened to attack against Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame; says Ohio’s interim Attorney General has now been asked to provide immunity protection services to Connell.