Hello, Ivan, my old freind, I've come to speak with you again.

I hope this message finds you well. How are things?

It's been so long since we have spoken. I miss you.

Claim. Pardoned officials can be brought to justice under U.S. law; specifically, they can be impeached and convicted, even post-term, and impeachment convictions nullify pardons. The second part of this claim is at odds with prevailing opinion in the legal community, so below are included the logical details of the nullification argument.

It's (almost) unbelievable that this could happen to anyone under American law.

The first person to be tried in a military tribunal at Guantanamo will remain incarcerated no matter the verdict. Concerns remain about the procedure's fairness.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 4, 2008

Clip of article is below the fold.

"Absolutely, 100%, Aye." Such was the enthusiastic vote of Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) today, when the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Karl Rove in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to a subpoena. The committee said that Rove broke the law by failing to appear at a July 10 hearing on allegations of White House influence over the Justice Department, including whether Rove encouraged prosecutions against Democrats.

Rove claims that Congress can't force him to testify because of . . . wait for it . . . executive privilege! Taking the Bush administration's already shopworn privilege claim to newly ridiculous extremes, Rove, who no longer works at the White House, is claiming executive privilege for allegedly illegal activity -- a claim that the Supreme Court ripped to shreds in the Nixon case some 30 years ago.

Last Thursday, Rep. Linda Sanchez called for Karl Rove to be arrested for failing to comply with a Congressional subpoena and appear before her Committee. While I applaud Congresswoman Sanchez's sentiments, I seriously doubt Karl Rove will face such action and I blame Sanchez and her ilk in Congress. Sanchez wrote:

"After my ruling that Mr. Rove's claims of immunity are not legally valid, Congressman Conyers and I gave him one last chance to comply with the law. He ignored us. As he let yet another deadline slip by this week, Mr. Rove's disregard for Congress has become intolerable..."

Translation: "I subpoenaed Mr. Rove and he didn't show up. Then I warned him and gave him one last chance, and he still didn't show up. Then I double warned him and he still didn't comply. If he refuses to comply any longer, I may have to super-duper double-secret warn him and see if he complies then..."

I have a ridiculously long post on torture and some of the revelations we've seen this week, in the Jane Mayer book, the Omar Khadr tape, etc.  Those who have been paying attention know what has been done in our name.  Much of the torture and abuse was subjected on people who had no intelligence value and were never credibly charged with any crime.  The methods were based on decades-old survival techniques produced by the Navy to resist torture, and a manual from the Chinese that used torture to elicit false confessions.  They used psychologists to develop a program of "learned helplessness", reverse-engineered from the SERE techniques.  In the end, not one terror suspect has been convicted of anything since 9/11.  The "intelligence" gained from the likes of Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was of the wild goose chase variety.  Evidence of torture inflamed the Islamic world and became a recruitment poster for Al Qaeda.  And on and on.

I wanted to reiterate some of it here, because it's indicative of the fundamental rot at the heart of the American system these days, and why we'll forever be diminished until we cut the rot away.

Crossposted from Docudharma

Rep. Jerrold Nadler,(NY) member of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, the committee whose Constitutional duty it is to bring impeachment charges against criminal presidents,  says it as baldly and plainly as it can be said:

The Bush Administration has committed War Crimes.The only thing stopping him from being impeached is politics.

Call, fax or email. It's too late now to send a postcard to stop this heinous capitulating "cave-in to be" but it's not too late to start letting them know that gutting our fourth amendment is not cool.

Why is it necessary, why is it politically expedient, to set in stone and make yet another law that falsely legitimizes the crimes of the Executive, of Congress, of the Department of Justice and the telecom industry?  In light of the FACTS that Bush Committed 30 Felonies and did not do so alone, did not act without support and protection from Congress -- what makes it so important that this must be passed today?  There are ongoing cases that this would shut down -- more reason, not less, to send this disgraceful veil of faux legitimacy to an early and ignoble grave.

Can anyone differentiate legally or logically for me between the President making the claim that he's the last word on the law when it comes to domestic spying, and the next Republican President making the claim that he's the last word on the law when it comes to any of the agenda items we hope to see signed into law by Barack Obama?

That's really the issue here. Not FISA by itself. But the foundation of our system of law and government that says the President doesn't get to rewrite the law on his say-so.

If you want Obama to win because you want to see new policies implemented that will change life for the better, then guess what? You're interested in the principle that lies at the heart of why we fight on FISA.

Still not in your top ten?

Senator Obama has said that he will vote for the pending FISA bill. Some of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, however, have pledged to vote against that piece of legislation and have offered their reasons for choosing to do so. Let us look at comments by some of those who stand in opposition to Senator Obama's position and why they stand in oppostion. This may better help us to assess where Senator Obama stands on the left/right political continuum.

I am well aware that FISA is an oft-discussed issue here on Daily Kos. And I am well aware that some will consider this hysterical over-reaction. But, personally, I think this entire nation is suffering from a horrific complacency of inaction, and so I'm going to say my piece.

As I celebrate this July 4th weekend -- one of my favorite holidays; the anniversary of this website's birth; and the always joyous occasion of opening a play -- my thoughts are consistently drawn back to the pending FISA legislation in Congress and the issue of telecom immunity. This is not unnatural, because the pending FISA legislation is a betrayal of the principles of government which were laid down by our founding fathers more than two hundred years ago. Since I consider the July 4th holiday to be a celebration of those principles and the nation those principles established, I actually consider it a celebration of sorts to take these issues under consideration.

NYT:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

In early December, the E.P.A.’s draft finding that greenhouse gases endanger the environment used Energy Department data from 2007 to conclude that it would be cost effective to require the nation’s motor vehicle fleet to average 37.7 miles per gallon in 2018, according to government officials familiar with the document.

About 10 days after the finding was left unopened by officials at the Office of Management and Budget, Congress passed and President Bush signed a new energy bill mandating an increase in average fuel-economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The day the law was signed, the E.P.A. administrator rejected the unanimous recommendation of his staff and denied California a waiver needed to regulate vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases in the state, saying the new law’s approach was preferable and climate change required global, not regional, solutions.

California’s regulations would have imposed tougher standards.

The EPA scientists said California's regulations should have been approved. But the political officials at the EPA were instructed to reject it anyway, and did so.

The Supreme Court said the EPA's process was B.S., and ordered the government to do a serious scientific evaluation of the effect of greenhouse gasses.

The EPA half-assed it, sent their report to the White House as ordered by the Supreme Court, but the White House told the EPA, and by fairly direct extension, the Supreme Court of the United States, to go pound sand.

So Waxman subpoenas the records, and they tell him the same thing. Astounded, Waxman declares, "I Don't Think We've Had a Situation Like This Since Richard Nixon.", even as we're seeing exactly this situation right now with Miers and Bolten, and Waxman had been in Congress nearly ten years already when Reagan's EPA Administrator also did this exact same thing -- advised, by the way, by the exact same White House counsel, Fred Fielding.

These are the guys who are supposed to be penned in by the brand new Double Secret Exclusivity provisions of the new FISA bill?

And they'll be watched by a Government Oversight chairman who doesn't remember the most spectacular contempt of Congress case in modern history?

Somebody wake me up from this nightmare.

Read this article on Putin's Russia, promoted on the Washington Post's front-page with this blurb: "Life in Putin's Russia: The right to commit crimes has become part of official privilege."

The most striking thing about everyday life in the Russia of Vladimir Putin (and make no mistake, it is Putin's Russia, despite the election of a new president, hand-picked by the great man) is the incredible corruption of ... all the institutions that are supposed to uphold law and order in a democracy and that in Russia today have been transformed into a cancer that's devouring the state.

More after the jump...

Well, today has been a sad day for anyone who respects the Rule of Law and our country's Constitution. My anger at the Democrats who've brought this bill to the House will hopefully help in their being defeated by more and better Democrats next primary season. I have already given to the ActBlue page twice, and plan to do so again soon. Frankly, I am angry and sad at all Democrats today, including Barack Obama.

My letter to him is after the jump. After a day like this I need to be happy and with friends, so I apologize but I will not be around to respond to comments until late this evening.

What has happened to us?

In this video clip from his show last night, David Gregory of MSNBC--a pretty good proxy for the MSM--seemed to be puzzled and quite dismissive of Obama's approach to fighting terrorism legally.  The notion of putting a terrorist on trial seemed like a total extravagance & waste of time to him:

It is a very difficult proposition to try any of these terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, let alone Osama Bin Laden, does it reflect some lack of experience, some naivete on the part of Obama and his team to suggest that they would waste all of that energy and expend all of that effort in such an enterprise.

The latest set-back for the Bush Administration is entitled Boumediene v. Bush and, IMHO, the conservatives are quite correct in being really upset.  Because Justice Kennedy has finally made his point that the Constitution is a limiting document, designed to define and restrict the behavior of the agents of government in exchange for their having been granted the power to use force.  As one of the commenters on the  News Hour pointed out, the implication of the decision reaches much further than the prison on Guantanamo.  In establishing that the Constitution follows the flag, it will affect U.S. government actions all around the globe.

[If you are a member of the Current community, please share with them as well.]

This is a personal question from me to the rest of the DailyKos community. I'm hoping that you'll pay it forward.

Knowing what you know regarding the conduct of the men in charge of our government right now, is just a little part of you afraid to speak out publicly?

Do you hesitate from bringing it up when given an opportunity?

Is there at least little part of you that is mortally afraid of what your government is capable of doing right now?

I am.

If you are, perhaps recommend to others outside this community. Obama is doing well, but I don't trust these guys when they're backed in a corner. And I feel like they could sneak up behind my back.

And share your fears. Because the only way these bastards win is through our silence.

Stay vocal. Stay vigilant.